The term implies that there is something immutable that makes a person not white, so that you can *look* white but not actually *be* white. But it doesn't work like that. It's visual. Whiteness is a political system that benefits people with a certain phenotype.

But this is more than about identity. It's material. Studies show that people's *externally identified* race is the best measure of social outcomes NOT self-identified race. How you look matters. How people see you matters.

@PhuzzieSlippers So what should we be saying?

@DrCareyYazeed You should be saying "white."

@PhuzzieSlippers This is a whole sermon and a call-out to a whole research agenda to think critically about race. It’s not a data issue. It’s a politically dynamic, structural and material issue. Thank you!

@TrevonDLogan Right! I've given two talks about this stuff in the last few weeks so I've been thinking about it a lot. We essentialize race with the same tools we claim we're using to deconstruct it.

@PhuzzieSlippers It's term loaded with what should be a lot more discourse than I see.

@PhuzzieSlippers In Native communities this gets pretty complex. Legally speaking, American Indian isn’t a race, it’s a political belonging (to a tribe). You’ve got plenty of white skinned folks who are tribal members. Would you prefer they say “White Ojibwa” for eg?

@PhuzzieSlippers I hate this term with a burning passion.

@PhuzzieSlippers Umhm, folks sho do be failing at the synthesis of "race is socially constructed" & "the material consequences of racism", huh? race = prescribed/passing/presenting (Period) Prove me now herewith. What folks be desperately tryna dodge is: White <=> evil...

@PhuzzieSlippers I know a few white-passing people that wouldn’t appreciate having their identity over-simplified in this way. “White-passing” is respectful of people’s actual identities and backgrounds. As far as I know we’re supposed to respect that stuff.

@PhuzzieSlippers So a person with one Black parent and one white parent who is very light skinned but is raised in a Black neighborhood with Black family should identify as white?

@PhuzzieSlippers @andrehenry But THAT there is a socially significant phenomenon called "passing" suggests there is something in our intuitions about "race," our collective understanding and construction of what it means, that is meaningful, no? (Thinking of Mills.)

@PhuzzieSlippers It’s an antebellum term. For a long time in the US there was something immutable that made someone not white: the one drop rule. There’s a long history of mixerd race southerners w what you call phenotypic whiteness that chose cultural blackness.

@PhuzzieSlippers THANK YOU!!!! I will always say this "passing" existed for a specific reason in the US that no longer applies to this day in age. It literally doesnt make sense and was a way of survival where even an ounce of Blackness in u made u subhuman. I dont know why folks would want to

@PhuzzieSlippers @koehunaziz This does not work for Aboriginal people designated Black at all.

@PhuzzieSlippers @anothercaprisun cant pass for a social construct that is not identifiable beyond appearance. i hate this idea that calling a spade a spade is erasure of ethnic identity bc racial categories were created to leverage on the privilege scale. To identify who is ok to dehumanize. Its so corny to me

@PhuzzieSlippers You're assuming "visible" whiteness/nonwhiteness is universally comprehended and not geographical. You are also completely ignoring the intergenerational trauma and lack of resources passed down via having a racialized or Indigenous parent DESPITE you're institutional privilege.

@PhuzzieSlippers You're ignoring the importance of community and culture that informs racial identity. You're are ignoring the ongoing realities of colonialism that makes Indigenous folx "look white". You're ignoring the fact that white folx read mixed folx as white bc they think everyone is