Being a Queer Female of Color has meant several specific things to me for the past few years, none of which having been directly compiled until this moment. Reading about Aisha Tyler’s struggle for acknowledgement and a voice in the gamer community, which is so exclusionary towards anyone who isn’t a Straight White Man, led me to epiphany (1).
I, the Queer Female of Color, stand at the gates of any community, physical or metaphorical. And I ask for permission to enter. Others, not only Straight White Men, come and go as they please without realizing, but I must stop and think. “Am I (blank) enough to go there? Is my belonging justified? Will I feel accepted and valued?” Who I am, where I go, and how I interact, is compartmentalized into the good, the bad, and the cautionary.
What does this all mean to me? It means that a third of the “minority trifecta” makes me an outcast in the eyes of my family’s god, a third is cause for carefulness in the wrong part of the very country I live in, and a third automatically decreases any contribution I make to my major and future line of work. It means that I feel the same amount of moderate worry that I’ll never see my nephew again when I tell my sister that I’m gay as travelling through the deep south in the summer, when my skin slips into a shade dark enough to be much less ambiguous. It also means that when applying for college I leapt for joy at the sight of a diversity essay. It means that I am a highly functioning victim of existential identity crisis.
But I know how to play the game. I recognize that I shamelessly take advantage of the system and I recognize that I am not, in fact, the highest difficulty setting. When we discussed affirmative action in class on Wednesday my thoughts immediately turned reflective. I graduated fourth in my class in high school. I was involved, and I had great recommendations, and I was fairly certain I could compete well with others for admission to UMD. But when I saw a diversity essay on the application, I’ll be honest. Maryland became my safety school. There is absolutely no doubt that universities want a diverse student body. I have heard President Loh, on multiple occasions, make remarks on how diverse the freshman class is. I watched one of my (white) best friends, who had credentials rather similar to my own, get rejected from the very school I was so confident I would be admitted to. Although we don’t know for sure why she was rejected, it presented both a conflict and a vote of confidence to me. My trifecta is my biggest secret weapon.
I’ve also realized that some of my other “stats” offer me great advantage in the world outside of college applications. I was fortunate to be raised in the upper middle class, something that my mother and father never had and worked their asses off for. Everything I ever needed was provided for me- education, medical attention, motivation, etc. Class distinction is as big of a factor as any when discussing Scalzi’s so called “difficulty settings” (2). Another big “boost” that I get is my half-white racial standing. There’s an excellent Button Poetry piece called “Da Rules” that profoundly states expectations of black young people in the society we live in. One part was even Just For Me! “Lightskins, be proud that you are ‘comfortable black.’ Your ambiguity is so interesting” (3). Biracial privilege is most definitely something that I believe exists. I have never had a problem with an authority figure. I do not fear police. I know that I don’t have to pay attention to how dark my clothing is, whether I’m wearing a hoodie, or if I have a smile on my face. I have often either felt too white for the black kids or too black for the white kids.
The more I write the more I understand criticism of Scalzi’s article. I still contend that it’s a fair “White Privilege, 101” for heteronormative white males who are painfully unaware of how many gates they can enter without any validation other than their appearance. However, when the analogy is extended it feels sinister and unsettling. To speak of things like wealth and being biracial as “stats” and “boosts” does not do justice to how consequential these things can be to quality of, and success in, life. I’m looking forward to delving into these concepts head-on during the semester so that I can better learn how to keep in mind the operating systems that govern our world, and yet also being to see myself as less of a Queer Female of Color and more of a human with worth and dignity, and incorporate that mindset with regards to all of my fellow humans.