Episode 1: When I Was White

Sarah Valentine is a writer, translator, and teacher of creative writing. She has taught at Princeton, University of California - Los Angeles, University of California - Riverside, and Northwestern University and holds a PhD in Russian literature from Princeton University. She is the author of the memoir  When I Was White.

We first met at a book reading for her memoir. I was taken with her stunning story and beautiful writing, in which she tackles the topics of race, identity, family relationships, and belonging so effortlessly in a personal coming of age story.

This conversation raises not only the question about how we come to understand race, but how we are able to shape our relationship to that racial structure as well.

We also have a book giveaway this week! To win a signed copy of When I Was White, be one of the first to rate and write a review of the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Pod Chaser. Then take a screen shot of the review and email it to unitedstatesofrace@gmail.com, for a chance to win!

Transcript

Sarah: 0:10

I grew up in the era of political correctness. In the 80s, the model for being non racist was colorblindness, you just didn't talk about race. If you saw a black person, well, I don't notice that you're black as if I didn't see their color. At that point, political correctness was the correct way to talk about race, which was, of course not to talk about it at all.

DB Crema: 0:37

This is United States of race, personal stories of how our earliest memories determine a lifetime of relationships. Look, race is a tough subject. Everyone's got an opinion, and they feel really strongly about it. But we rarely stop to ask where those opinions came from. And by sharing the stories when we first learned we are all different, we find the common thread that shows us how much we are all the same. I'm your host DB crema. Be sure to listen to the end of the episode to find out about an exciting giveaway! Today, we're speaking with Sarah Valentine, a writer, creative writing, teacher, and translator. She's taught at Princeton, UCLA, University of California - Riverside, and Northwestern University. And she holds a PhD in Russian literature from Princeton University. She's the author of the memoir When I Was White. I first met Sara at a book reading for her memoir, I was taken with her stunning story, and absolutely beautiful writing, in which she tackles the topics of race, identity, family relationships, and just a sense of belonging. And she does it so effortlessly in this personal coming of age story. And in our conversation today, she recounts some of that experience. And it's got me thinking about how we come to understand race and our relationship to it. You know, if we're taught about race at an early age, then there's also either an explicit, or an implied story about where we fit within a racial structure, and how we see ourselves in the world. Well, it's a reflection of how others see themselves in the world. Our identity is relative to others identity and what they think about themselves. Are you familiar with the quote by Robert Fulghum, you've probably heard it, don't believe everything you think. he's the author of all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten, which was this super popular book, I think, in the 90s. Maybe some of you are too young to remember. But it's true. This book is spot on so much of what we know and think is formed early on in our life, based on what we've been told. Which leads us to today's conversation. And this idea of Don't believe everything you're told, most all of us at some point, we'll change our opinion on something, we may have been taught to think a certain way about a topic. For example, some people have been taught that there's some inherent difference between the races. And at some point, some of those people will learn that it is scientifically proven, we're all genetically similar. And so they may change their opinion. We change our opinions all the time. And it causes us to see the world in a different way. But how many of us have had to completely change our concept of our own identity? Not only seeing the world in a different way, but who we are in that world in a completely new light? So what happens when our identity is shaped based on fears and falsehoods? Well, our conversation with Sarah explores this very idea of identity. It really makes you think about what is culture? What is identity, if not just generations of community, creating a common vision of the world. So when did you become aware of race?

Sarah: 4:10

I became aware of race in stages. So in first grade, there was a black girl in our class, the only black girl this time I thought she was the only black girl. And people always called me by her name. Adults would mix our names up. And I thought, you know, that's just so weird because this person, they don't look like me. Her skin was darker than mine. My hair is curly, her hair was straight. Our personalities were very different. And I thought at that time that people were identified by their personality, like Oh, I am Sarah. I'm this person. I'm this way. So that's how you understand me. know she was friendly. She was bubbly but we were just different people. And I thought that's so odd. That this girl who doesn't look like me, and does seem like me in terms of how I speak and act, that people are confusing me with her. And so that that difference really stood out to me that for some reason, I wasn't seen as just myself. I was seen, like, people saw this other girl, and they never confused me with any of the white kids names. I thought, you know, okay, whatever. And because I was raised in a family that was white, and that identified me as white. They never said I was different. I always assumed I was a white person. And then I have to say that my first conscious thoughts about race happened a couple years later, I was probably in second grade. And it was an incident with this same girl, the two of us were over playing at a friend's house, and she got a bloody nose. And when she went to the bathroom, I realized I was really curious to see what color her blood would be. Because I always I identified her as black and her as different. And the way I had come to understand race, in my community, which was a rural suburb, in the 80s, you know, near Pittsburgh, we didn't talk about race, as such, really, but I had definitely internalized the belief that black people were somehow fundamentally different than white people. And that led me to at this moment think, oh, blood must come out a different color. And of course, years later, I mean, that's the most mortifying and insanely racist thing to have thought. And then of course, it didn't, you know, on the towel, there's some red blood. And I was like, okay, whatever. That's not interesting. But not that something's different. But that's not it. Yeah, exactly. And so again, just remember, I'm seven. Okay. But I realized at that moment, even though I thought the thing that would have been different, like something about her as a human would be different from me, I still realized that her dark skin color made her different. And I keep saying this word different, because my family and I, well, I should say, the idea I internalized from my family and community was that white people weren't necessarily white, we were normal. That's how I thought about myself, even with my quote unquote, tan skin color, which is, you know, how my family would refer to me. So that we were normal, and she was different. And so at this point, in time, I became aware of not just a black and white, but of who was normal, and who was other,

DB Crema: 7:54

that white is just the norm, it's not even so much a color, it's just the norm. And everything else is something to be a distinction from, from the norm.Did it ever bother you that people would confuse your name with, specifically with her, that it was just her that people were confusing you with.

Sarah: 8:15

I didn't have a negative emotion. I was just confused. And people would always ask me in this is adults, for the most part, sometimes kids, but mostly adults. And remember, I'm six or seven years old. They say, Oh, where are you from? Who are your parents? And kids would ask me, What's your nationality? By that They mean your heritage or identity. So I'd say Oh, I'm Italian and Irish, because my dad was Italian American, and my mom was Irish American. And I don't think that answer was ever satisfying to people. Because it wasn't true, really. And I would just think, ha, I don't know how I can satisfy these people. And so it was not so much that being confused with this black girl who was in my class made me feel bad or made me feel like oh, I don't want to be associated with her. It was just part of this kind of series of experience I was having that I really didn't know if others were having. Sometimes I thought, Oh, well, maybe adults just ask all kids where they're from. But then sometimes I realized, you know, they asked me an awful lot and our community was fairly small. So there would be no reason to assume I was some kind of outsider. But of course many years later, I realized I was being perceived as other. I was being perceived as non white.

DB Crema: 9:43

Mm hmm. Do you recall how you saw yourself at that time? Did you see yourself like all the other kids? Did you see yourself being looking different from them?

Sarah: 9:54

I saw myself looking different, but within the spectrum of of whiteness, you know, my skin is dark, but my mother said that she would call it all of your skin's dark because of your Italian side. So I'm not particularly dark skinned as a black woman, I'm pretty light skinned. And one of my uncle's on my dad's side has curly hair, he has black curly hair. So they say, Oh, well, you get your cut your hair from your uncle John, you know, so there was always an explanation, that you could explain all of these features that I had separately, but when you put them together in the effort up to a person who looked a mixed race, that was where the conversation stopped. Then at that point, you know, from, let's say, middle school and high school, in particular, my friends, and I would joke about me being different, they'd joke that because our high school was very white that depending on how I wore my hair that day, the ethnic makeup of our school change, because it you know, whether it was pulled back, or whether it was, you know, curly and kind of an afro. So yeah, there would be all of these jokes. But it was something that none of us knew how to consciously talk about in the media and all of our cultural depictions of blackness at the time. And this was in the 80s and mid 90s, were of people who were different, they talk differently, they dress differently, they acted differently. They were, quote, unquote, urban. And because I was just like them, just like my friends, I mean, in every way, except for my features and skin color. They didn't identify me necessarily with being African American in that way.

DB Crema: 11:42

So you talked about how you saw, you saw in media, there's a certain way that black people were depicted or different races were depicted. What was your view of black people?

Sarah: 11:54

Yo, MTV Raps. I mean, I, I came of age, right at the time when rap and hip hop were becoming mainstream, like in the late 80s.

DB Crema: 12:04

So you learned everything you know about black people from Ed Lover. Okay.

Sarah: 12:08

And Dr. Dre, right. Um, and so there was a kind of edginess and coolness to that kind of black culture that was so far removed from my own, you know, white suburban experience we have in living color. At that time, there was a Cosby Show, which was also, you know, here is a middle class, black family parenthetical just like you, right, that's kind of what the understanding was, when it's being shown to these white middle class viewers. Although when I was growing up, I didn't see any black people in the same community roles that I saw, mainly white people. So that also reinforced my belief that, okay, black people exist elsewhere, whether they're middle class or whether they're, you know, rappers or whatever. They're just not here. They're somewhere else. Although when I was in middle school in high school, people started to identify me with what they saw on TV, there was one video, I think it was a Bobby Brown video, and there are some background dancers, but one of them was light skinned, and she had, you know, curly hair. And one of my younger brothers friends was over that day. And he looked at the TV, and he said, Sarah, you're on TV. And I was like, No way, am I? Of course I wasn't. And so I, you know, looked at the TV, and I saw this girl, and I was like, Huh, that's not me. But the wheels were turning, you know, again, from my perspective, I am the white kid, I'm the white girl looking at these cool images on TV and these fly girls, but then other people in my community are looking at that and seeing me.

DB Crema: 14:07

Okay, so you didn't see yourself in that girl, the fly girl in the music video?

Sarah: 14:15

I, it's, you know, I'll say I did. And I didn't because the thing is, as time went on, and you know, more of these videos are streaming into my home, like a light bulb went off, you know, looking back any adult would say, and probably kids too, like, how could you not have just connected those dots. But I will remind you about my family and my community situation where, you know, we were all so homogeneous, and I was included in that.

DB Crema: 14:46

Right, right.

Sarah: 14:48

But there was obviously like, it's almost as if I think we knew but we just couldn't talk about it. But I remember on my college application, I didn't Check white I checked other because I was sure at that time that that it wasn't that I couldn't say without question that I was white. But I couldn't say without question that I was black. So I just marked other. And then when I went to college, which I was still in Pittsburgh, but I was gradually moving outside of my community in the sphere of influence that my family and friends had. And so, of course, college was more diverse. And you know, there are groups of African American students rather than just three or four. And people started to perceive me or, you know, as one of them as someone who has mixed race, and I started to realize, okay, of more people from places around the country, even international students are seeing me this way, there must be something to it.

DB Crema: 15:53

So so let's take a step back, because you mentioned that you are mixed race, that you're black, but your entire family was white.

Sarah: 16:02

Yes.

DB Crema: 16:03

How is that?

Sarah: 16:06

So when I was growing up, it was just kind of out of the question that I would be racially different, because there was no one in my family who was different, no one in my immediate family who was black or who was from another ethnicity. And because race in general was a taboo subject, I knew that if I talked about it, that was a Pandora's box that I was not ready to open. So because there were no African American stories or individuals in my family, there, there was just no possibility that that was part of my heritage, if you mean fast forwarding today, to what that means. For me, as a black woman, I would say that, perhaps like someone who has been adopted by a white family, I have a sense of my own identity as a mixed race, and as a black woman, but who was socialized and grew up in a white family.

DB Crema: 17:11

What do you think it would have taken at that time to associate yourself more with with the images of mixed race people,

Sarah: 17:21

it would have taken a black mentor, or someone in my community, you know, someone who could maybe broach that conversation with me, who wasn't making a joke out of this? Because really, the point of no return for me in terms of okay, I have to go to my parents and question what my identity is, was in graduate school, so I was in my 20s, already, but it was because I had a black professor who brought up this idea of going to, you know, writing residencies for African American writers. And I thought, okay, if this black professor is looking at me, and telling me that this is a community I'm part of, I can't let that go. Because everyone else, you know, teachers, parents, guidance counselors, they were all white, and what's white people love to do? Avoid the subject of race. But when I was speaking with this black mentor, I couldn't say no, because I thought, if this person recognizes me, if he's seeing me, that's very different than a white person, mistaking me for black, which is what I had thought, when I was younger. And so that was what, you know, made it click for me, I was like, I can't, I can't go on with this kind of split understanding of who I was. To everyone outside my family. I was black, or mixed, or just ethnically ambiguous in some way. But to my family, even at that point, I was still white and there was no question about it. And living with that split, I would say from the time I was a kid was taking a kind of emotional toll on me that I didn't recognize at the time because I just repressed all of that confusion.

DB Crema: 19:11

So So you have all these puzzle pieces that aren't fitting together, and almost this this mounting pressure or tension. What what happened next?

Sarah: 19:26

What happened next was a a very difficult conversation with my mother, I remembered I was scared to even call her so I sent her an email. And even in a very roundabout way I asked you know, people always say this to me, they always assume I'm African American. Is there anyone in our family who is of African American descent? You know, kind of implying, is there anyone or anything I don't know about? You know, knowing that one is born from their mother, the question The more direct question would have been, do I have a black biological father, but I couldn't even ask that directly. Because it would mean, first of all, that the dad that I was very close to and grew up in a very loving relationship with wasn't my actual father. And that was something I were not biologically speaking, that was something I couldn't really wrap my head around emotionally, or even logically at that point, because I had all the photos of my parents bringing me home from the hospital, and then the story of my birth, and these things had been, you know, reinforced and told to me, and also my brothers, you know, over the years.

DB Crema: 20:40

So that was the way to enter into the conversation with your mom. How did she respond?

Sarah: 20:46

She started crying. She asked me first before explaining anything, do you think we always loved you? That was the first thing she said, before getting into any explanation. Nothing was spoken about very directly. But she made it clear that when she was in college, she was in a party, and she was either sexually assaulted or had, you know, a relation with someone who is African American, who she didn't know who she didn't remember, and that this person was my biological father. And that was kind of it. For the moment. That was as far as that conversation went. And I, you know, I hung up the phone and was just stunned, I didn't know what to make of any of it. And that began this very kind of confused first stage of me, coming to terms within kind of having to repeat to myself, Okay, on the one hand, this makes perfect sense, this finally makes me make sense. On the other hand, as it relates to my family, it doesn't make any sense at all. So I was faced with this contradiction, it was emotional. It was, you know, psychological. You know, what I saw in the mirror, I had always had to explain away as different but not black. And now I could, but that was also a difficult place to put myself because I realized I had internalized so much anti black racism, from growing up identifying as white and identifying black people as other. Now applying that definition to myself, was really difficult and really problematic in ways I couldn't even unpack.

DB Crema: 22:52

I imagine too you know, after so many years of living one reality and one story, I mean, it's just even the basic, the basics of having to remind yourself, oh, no, no doubt, and I have a new reality is, is takes a long time.

Sarah: 23:06

It does. And I became hyper aware of race, because I was, I was always aware that when people would, you know, approached me for the first time or when they would meet me, I already had the expectation that they would see me differently, they would see me differently than the way I defined myself. But now, you know, just doing the things that I would normally do, I would go to the library, I'd be getting coffee. But now I'd be going to the library and being black. I'd be going to the get coffee while I was black. And so that became a very conscious, almost like an activity. That was the only way I could really process it. At that time that being Black was like an active state. It wasn't something that I understood internally, it was. So again, that sounds so absurd. But at that point, it was almost the only way to start normalizing that idea. For myself.

DB Crema: 24:03

I envision you kind of like moving through the air being black and have this active practice of being black, although you hadn't even yet grasped what it means to be black in this world in this country.

Sarah: 24:18

Absolutely. And a layer on top of that, that I was mixed race. That was something I had no context for. It's like, well, if I thought I was other before now, I don't know what I am. Right? So I had to focus on internalizing blackness before I could say, Okay, now we combine these things. You know, it was almost like an alchemy. Like I'm pouring whiteness from one beaker, and I'm pouring, you know, blackness in from another test tube, and what bubbles out of the, you know, glass at the bottom is mixed race and so I had to, you know, do that experiment many times. Before I started to understand, okay, I had a white family, I identified as white for a long time, I am black, because my biological father is African American. And that means I have this special identity. That is also mixed race, which is something that many mixed race people experience in terms of being labeled as ethnically ambiguous or having their own identity mistaken for other things. And so that was a part that made the let's say, the mistakenness make sense Because growing up, people would say, I mean, all the time, oh, are you Indian? Are you Spanish? Are you Arab? So I always got a plethora of identities, you know, not just people asking me if, if I was black, but they would assume or ask if I was all of these other identities to. And that's a very common experience of people who are mixed race.

DB Crema: 25:59

I imagine also too kind of, you also had a lot of relational issues that you needed to work out, I guess, maybe part of figuring out your relationship with with yourself was connected to figuring out relationship stuff with your your family. And while finally having an answer must have been a relief. In some respects, it sounds like it probably raised a lot more questions than answers.

Sarah: 26:24

It did. And I have to say that my dad and I have two younger brothers, and they are the the biological children of my mom and my dad. And for them, they said right away, this doesn't change anything about our relationship. You know, we don't see you as a half sister, you know, we you're just our sister. And it was the same, I didn't see them. Now, as suddenly, not my brothers, they were just my brothers. And of course, I saw my dad as just my dad, you know, even though there was someone else who was biologically related to me, my dad was still my father, like, I didn't have a sense of any distancing. And that was very mutual. And they made that clear right away, the person that I had the biggest conflict with, you know, ruined my relationship with with my mom for quite a while. Was this, this overwhelming sense of betrayal? Why didn't you tell me? How could you not have told me? How could you have actively lied? And that was, I think, even more hurtful than keeping the ethnicity from me it was how could you keep something this big.. A secret, especially when it wasn't a secret to anyone else. It was this feeling of wow, I've been made a fool of. And that's, that's a really terrible and humiliating feeling.

DB Crema: 27:56

Yeah. That's, that's hard to grapple with, especially with someone so integral in your life. Why do you think that that that frustration, and that sense of betrayal was directed solely at your mom and not also your dad?

Sarah: 28:16

I think because I saw her as the person who gave birth to me as having had more agency in how I was identified, if that makes sense. And for the record, at that point, my dad when this was coming out, he said, Well, I didn't know. And I was like, you're an adult? How could you not know? What What do you mean, you didn't know? And my mom tried to pull that too? Oh, we didn't know No, of course, you knew. And, you know, when I processed all of this, in hindsight, it was this. This white innocence that they were trying to portray, like we see in society, often white people will say, Well, I, you know, I didn't know or I didn't realize that racism existed to this scale, people will claim their innocence of anything related to race or related to racism. And at this point, it was so absurd that my parents who had raised me from birth and who recognize that yes, my skin color was very different than that of my brothers and from theirs. Were saying, Oh, we didn't know the fact that that was where they started from was pretty unbelievable for me. And then it came out of course, that we didn't know and, or that they didn't know. And the thing my mom says was, well, when you when you were about two I realized like it was clear that you were racially different. But your dad never brought it up. And so I thought of he didn't bring it up. I'm not gonna bring it up. And that was just The party line, I guess, forever. And I, I have a feeling that if I had never asked at any point in my life they would have never mentioned. Yeah.

DB Crema: 30:14

Wow. Yeah, wow.

Sarah: 30:18

And you know, I had...while I was writing my book, and while I was trying to just process all of this for myself, I talked to some of the friends that my parents had from college, and one who was very good friends with my mother, and who had known my parents and had, you know, known me since I was born. I asked her, when did she realize that I was black? And she said, Oh, when your parents brought you home from the hospital, I knew.

DB Crema: 30:44

Really?

Sarah: 30:45

Yeah. And I said, Well, you know, why didn't you ever say anything? And her answer was that we had too much respect for your dad to bring that up. And so it was really in terms of, you know, let's, let's say the people who were part of my parents generation, and who really, were the ones who were persisting in, in telling this lie. It was about protecting my parents and not about protecting me.

DB Crema: 31:16

How did you, I'm interested in in hearing how you dealt with coming into being a black person and a person of color? You know, you talked about when you were young, seeing it as the experience. It was somebody else's experience, it was other people's is urban environments, far from where you were, it's, it's, it's something you could hold at arm's length, and all of a sudden, it now is you. And aside from, you know, getting a coffee, while black, at some point, a bit more nuance to development of what had been.

Sarah: 31:57

Yeah. So interestingly, what it meant for my experience to be raced was that I had to realize that experience of white people is a raced, a racialized experience. And that goes back to the idea that well, there are people of color, there are others, and then there are the normal people. And I had to realize, first that that's not true. That it isn't that people are other relative to white peoples that white people have a racialized experience. It's an experience of racial superiority. Because the way because of the way our country has historically formed around white privilege, it's a way of being socialized as a child and understanding your place as someone who is, who is in the center, the center of society, the center of culture, who is normalized, but that that is a racialized experience. So it wasn't as if Well, it's, it's my blackness, or my mixed identity, that means I have a race, it's that my white identity had a race all along. And I have to process what that is to synthesize all of the different racial experiences that I that I had in my life, and that I was going to have now as someone whose identity was now integrated. So as if I had these different sides of my own identity to... I had to consciously integrate them so that I could understand myself in my experience as, as a whole person, not just someone who was made of fragments, which was how I felt for a long time.

DB Crema: 33:41

Did it mean that you were all of a sudden losing your status as a white race, with the superiority that comes with that with the normalization with that, that comes with that the center of everything?

Sarah: 33:59

Yes, and that was something that was hard for me to admit at the time, but I did realize that I would miss my white privilege. I bet of course, I was someone who was privileged anyway, as someone who's highly educated and who came from a middle class family, and people of all backgrounds can be privileged in that way, but that now I would be seen as other you know, definitively so. But But yes, there was an aspect of my feeling like something I had gained something I had gained something very important, which was a new sense of self that I could be very proud of, because I didn't have to feel like some kind of aberration. The that I was always explaining aware that was always being explained away. But I was also losing something, which was that membership. I was you know, people talk about the playing the black card, I was losing my white card. And that was a card I didn't realize I was carrying and I think most white people we'll realize that's that that's a card that they're carrying.

DB Crema: 35:05

Yeah, you don't necessarily notice it until you lose it.

Sarah: 35:09

Right

DB Crema: 35:10

But did that really change externally in terms of how people saw you treated you reacted to you? It's like when you talk about cementing your identity for yourself, and gaining these other race and culture, did it change How...did it change the external reaction to you?

Sarah: 35:31

I'll tell you a terrible story.

DB Crema: 35:34

Oh, Please.

Sarah: 35:38

So I struggled with depression for a long time. This because this was just a really tough experience. And I was in grad school, and this was shortly after this at all come too late. And I was really struggling with these different, just everything, just like trying to process it in some way. And I've seen a therapist on campus. And, and she was of Indian descent. So she was, you know, someone who was brown skin, I just want to preface this comment with that. And I told her that, I found out that I was African American, that I had a black father. And she sat there and was quiet for a moment. And by kind of looking at me, with this fascinated Look at her face. And she said, You look so much darker to me now. As if I had changed before her eyes, because before, I had not said that I was black or mixed or that I hadn't brought it up. And now that it was a reality, some change apparently had taken place. It's like she said, the quiet thing out loud. You know, like, even if you think that...she said it.

DB Crema: 36:52

Also, she's your therapist...I mean, it's not exactly the moment

Sarah: 36:58

Right, that was...it was wrong on so many levels. And of course, I didn't go back. But it was it was this this moment that I realized, if I reveal that I'm black, or again, like you said, there's nothing about the way I looked that changed. But somehow ignored that acknowledgement changes the way people view you. And I will tell you why it was because I was always a very assimilated black person. So a black person that acts white and thinks they're white and doesn't say anything against white people doesn't bring out, bring up the subject of race, that person is fine and white people will not treat you differently. If you broach the subject of race, or blackness or racism, and then you become an aggressive or an angry black person, and white people will treat you differently. Because of that. And so the simple acknowledgement of of my being black and of kind of standing in that identity rather than just letting, letting racist jokes. I mean, my friends and I made racist jokes, or they may have had made racist jokes around me. And I hadn't said anything. And but now I did say something. And that made things awkward. And at this point, again, when when I am an adult in processing these things, in reckoning with my behavior, and my friends behavior, I lost some friends over this, because it was a big deal. And when racism is brought out into the open, that's something a lot of people or that some people just don't want to deal with.

DB Crema: 38:44

I imagine even just claiming your blackness is something that a lot of people wouldn't want to deal with either because it just just simply being black and representing who you are as black forces people to face it and to address it and think about what their relationship to it is.

Sarah: 39:10

And I should also say we're talking about black and white, but there are there's racism among all populations. And so I don't want the conversation to make it seem as if you know, we only have these these poles of black and white, but to acknowledge blackness is to put white people on the spot. Which sounds counterintuitive, but but that's what it is. So if you are going around thinking you're normal, and someone normalizes their own position as a person of color, that suddenly puts a white person in this in this place of otherness if people who are black or if blackness is centering itself like if white person is made to feel other, that is a space that is so uncomfortable that they will try to exit it in any way possible. And that's where that that denial or that pushback comes from.

DB Crema: 40:09

So recognizing that you developing your own relationship with being black, how have you...Or where have you found the space where you feel like you fit in, like, where's your space?

Sarah: 40:24

I would say, in the same way that that, that that Professor invited me into the space of writers of color, because that is a space where I can express myself or I can express the complexity of my experience, because, you know, not all black people or black circles of friends I've met except me, because I'm sure there will be people listening to this interview and saying, Well, you know, you're saying blackness, black woman, etc. But none of what you said sounds like black experience, you know, none of that has, you know, includes black culture, black family. If you talk to people, they will say, you know, what is black identity, it's the culture, it's the heritage that you have from generations of family members that have brought this to you. And I don't have that. And I don't think I'll ever have that. Because I still don't know who my biological father is. And there is a broad spectrum of black experience. Blackness is not a monolith. And the more we realize how nuanced it is, the more we can understand how society and individuals contribute their experience and knowledge to the world.

DB Crema: 41:40

Absolutely, it doesn't necessarily need to be the center. But the way to treat it is not is not by pretending it doesn't exist. It is part of the story. It's part of each of our story. And I have to say that is what I love about your book is that it does such an amazing job at peeling back layers of the of your emotional experience of going through with your family and with your community, learning about who you are and uncovering that truth. So and and there's so many different aspects of it that I would love to dive into with you. But what I would say is that everyone should read your book Sarah Valentine, When I Was White, a beautifully written story, but also such an amazing story of your life, Sara, and I appreciate that you joined us today. Thank you so much. And I can't wait for for everyone to read your book.

Sarah: 42:38

Thank you so much for having me.

DB Crema: 42:46

So many thanks to Sarah Valentine, for sharing her story with us. Go pick up Sarah's book, When I Was White, St. Martin's Press, 2019. Or you can get a signed copy of the book from United States of Race. That's right, we're doing a giveaway. So the first three people to rate and write a review for the show. We'll send you the book. This is all you have to do. Go to Apple podcasts or Spotify or Pod Chaser. Give us a rating and write a short review. Then email us a screenshot of that review at United States of race@gmail.com. And you'll be entered to win. It's that simple. I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for listening to United States of race. This podcast was produced by me DB crema. We'd love to hear from you. Send us a one minute Voice Memo with any reactions, questions or stories you'd like to share. You can use the app on your phone to record the voice memo and email it to UnitedStatesofrace@gmail.com. That's United States of race@gmail.com. It might even be included in the upcoming episode. And be sure to hit follow or subscribe on whichever podcast platform you're listening. That way you won't miss a single moment. Until next time