A Handy Guide For White People To Not Do Racist Stuff in 2020
I had to go to this party. A friend of a friend was performing magic at this rich white dude’s 50th birthday extravaganza. The rich dude rented out half of a lame suburban bar, invited all of his pals to dress up and drown themselves in Bud Light while doing that weird arm swinging, hip rocking dance white people love. There was even an 80s hair metal cover band.
Aside from the fact that I wanted to hang myself, I look across the bar, past the fat guy dressed as pilled out Elvis, just beyond the guy dressed as the captain of the Love Boat, and land on a woman in a headdress. This was not an el-cheapo from Party City, but definitely handmade. She had this hanging around the house, you don’t casually grab a headdress just for shits and giggles. While I get that she was trying to pull off a "sexy Village People '' with her girls, it's wack.
Wearing a headdress is not cool. Please don't do it. No matter how much Jameson I tried to swallow, I couldn’t shake how bad this was and no one was like, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING KIM?” Instead, everyone was too busy off timed foot-stomping to Van Halen’s “Panama” played by some nerd with fake tattoo sleeves and an Axl Rose costume. This was not my ideal Saturday night. And I’m supposed to be into this, I’m a regular-ass white dude.
You know what I hoped for, ever since people started showing up at Coachella in headdresses? That people would collectively get their shit together. Wearing a headdress promotes stereotyping indigenous culture as something that gives a perception of cultural power. Hollywood manufactured the image of the warbonnet as a means to cartoonify a people via a traditional means of ceremony dress. They saw something that looked powerful and slapped it on every character actor and went with it for generations.
Indigenous people aren't walking around ceremonial gear every day. They do wear regular clothes. Don’t wear the headdress, not now, not ever. Especially at Chad or whoever’s birthday throwdown at “Woody’s.”
Apparently, I’m an idiot for thinking such fanciful things.
There are a megaton of awful people roaming like free-range cattle without that invisible social “I probably shouldn’t say or do this blatantly racist shit” but they do and they’re usually a dude named Travis, rocking a pair of Oakleys behind the wheel of his F-150, too busy ranting into his iPhone about freedom to notice he’s about to mow down some kid crossing the street, also staring deep into the void if their smartphone.
The thing is racism is woven into the fabric of America. You don’t even have to look all that hard. Just flip on ESPN.
No matter what you think, your sports team mascot is not ok
Sports fans don't even try. There's no defensible argument: Native American mascots are seriously fucked up. Let's start with the professional teams:
Kansas City Chiefs
Atlanta Braves
Washington Redskins
Cleveland Indians
Chicago Blackhawks
None of these get a cultural pass. Not one.
Then there are college teams like the North Dakota Fighting Sioux, and then there are a bazillion high schools and middle schools using Native heritage as a battle cry on the football field. All of these teams reinforce stereotypes. That's it. The name "Redskins" is awful, and no one on this side of the ball thinks it's a forgivable sin. The idea of warriors moving into battle is poetic and powerful, but not on the back of an entire people’s identity.
Whatever way you’re trying to justify history or culture or whatever, just don’t. The Cleveland Indians celebrating “Chief Wahoo” with a big shit-eating grin is pretty gross. Do you remember the old Braves logo? The one with the dude screaming with a mohawk? Not a good look, folks. The Atlanta Honkies or the Washington Missionaries (Not the religious people.) doesn’t exactly sound awesome, it sounds predatory.
Photo courtesy of Shelf Life Clothing
“My great-grandfather was —stop me if you've heard this one before —half Cherokee. That’s why I get so tan!”
Please stop saying this. It's a false narrative. It's a cultural cliché rooted in social dominance and weird ideas about high cheekbones. This is such a thing; it's even got a name: "Cherokee Syndrome."
Back in the 2010 census, over 800K people said they had Cherokee blood. Well, here's the thing about that… The combined population of the three Cherokee tribes (the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee in North Carolina) has less than 400K people listed on their official tribal scrolls.
I get the allure. If your heritage is bland-ass Europeans who rolled over on a boat, what's not to love about the mythology of people surviving on their guts and ability to tame a hard land? The long, raven hair, badasses doing badass stuff. Chances are though, it's low key white guilt, seeking something more in-depth than square dancing, non-spicy eating, cargo shorts-loving whiteness.
Kim TallBear, a professor of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, says there are no genetic markers of Native ancestry. She even wrote a book about it: Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Sense of Genetic Science. Tallbear states that tribal membership is legal, not genetic. Her research says that it's impossible to find a common thread that untangled the Gordian knot that are family history, reservation timelines, and tribal affiliations.
TallBear wrote, "Because we are all genetically related, there are no tribe-specific markers, i.e., no Cherokee, Pequot, or Lakota markers." There is no gene. "It's not about what identity you claim," TallBear said in 2016, "it's about who claims you." if you're not on tribal scrolls and aren't a part of the community, you're a regular-ass white person, just like me. And if you can get a tan, that is a genetic thing, but not like a tribe’s history.
What do I say?
Finally, let's do a little schooling on naming conventions. When referring to America's literal first people, use indigenous. It's easier, it works in the broad context, and everyone is on board with that one. Every specific person will have their own take on cultural ownership of what to say, but indigenous is safe on all fronts.
And honestly, if you don’t know something, ask. Seek out indigenous people, learn their culture, their stories, their struggles. Get a different perspective than what’s in the textbooks we read in school.
Don’t be the jerk in the headdress, don’t buy tie-dyed shirts with wolves and chiefs on them, don’t pretend your sports team isn’t super racist. If you’re going to be an asshole at a party, down half a bottle of Jameson and get kicked out for peeing in the fire pit like the rest of us.