{"id":1315556,"date":"2019-10-11T23:48:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T05:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/cepeda-column-white-people-should-all-read-my-time-among-the-whites\/"},"modified":"2019-10-11T23:48:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T05:48:00","slug":"cepeda-column-white-people-should-all-read-my-time-among-the-whites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/cepeda-column-white-people-should-all-read-my-time-among-the-whites\/","title":{"rendered":"Cepeda column: White people should all read \u2018My Time Among the Whites\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CHICAGO \u2014 When you grow up surrounded by white people, you become, in many important ways, white.<\/p>\n

Your neighbors next door, your teachers at school \u2014 everyone from the person behind the counter at the bakery to the mail carrier. If they\u2019re white and they treat you with respect and affection, part of you becomes white, too.<\/p>\n

This is my story, but it\u2019s definitely not what happened to Jennine Cap\u00f3 Crucet, author of the newly released book \u201cMy Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cap\u00f3 Crucet\u2019s story reminded me of the context Michelle Obama laid out in her memoir \u201cBecoming.\u201d Both women of color lived solidly in the middle class, grew up in single-family homes that belonged to their parents, attended schools with students who looked just like them, in communities where everyone \u2014 including doctors, lawyers and other professional role models \u2014 shared their race and ethnicity.<\/p>\n

Both women showed up at elite universities as fish out of water and learned, quickly and painfully, what it\u2019s like to try to live in spaces where white people were not always used to having people like them around.<\/p>\n

It takes a tremendous level of skill, personal insight and love for your fellow humans to be able to write about such matters as being \u201cwith the whites\u201d without alienating readers, like me, who happen to adore \u201cthe whites.\u201d I was raised among them and, like Cap\u00f3 Crucet, married a white man.<\/p>\n

As such, I have two reactions to this beautiful and heartbreaking book.<\/p>\n

The first is that any nonwhite person who grew up in the U.S. was trained to read \u2014 and internalize, identify with and enjoy, even love \u2014 stories by and about the white experience. This isn\u2019t a criticism, per se, but a statement of fact.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to read the observations and experiences of a U.S.-born Cuban American is a gift. This is not just because the author shares the demographic category of Hispanic, but because she\u2019s not Mexican.<\/p>\n

No shade to the Mexicans of the world (I\u2019m a halfsie, on my mom\u2019s side), but theirs is the narrative that\u2019s usually centered in literature, mostly because we share so much culture and the U.S. is so jam-packed with Mexicans. The Ecuadorian side of me adored reading someone whose viewpoint is Latinx but not Mexican.<\/p>\n

My second reaction is that \u2014 though it would be wonderful if every Hispanic\/Latino\/Latinx or other person of color read this book \u2014 the world would be a significantly better place if every white person who thinks they are politically progressive or an ally of people of color read \u201cMy Time Among the Whites.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s plenty here to chew on for Latinx readers, including what kind of privilege we carry around depending on our parents\u2019 wealth and education, the color of our skin, the whiteness of our names and even the opportunity to have a university experience.<\/p>\n

But Cap\u00f3 Crucet illustrates what it\u2019s like when the people around her take a look at her name, listen hard for an accent and then decide it\u2019s OK to truly be themselves around her. It isn\u2019t always pretty \u2014 declarations of love and support for President Trump, complaints about \u201call the Mexicans\u201d taking white people\u2019s livelihood and grousing about the customs, practices or cuisines of other people of color.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just the baseline stuff. There\u2019s a stunning story Cap\u00f3 Crucet tells at the end of her book about a white college student reacting negatively to a speech the author is giving \u201cat a predominantly white college in the American South.\u201d The student declares that the author\u2019s ideas for diversifying the faculty are racist, then she bursts into tears at the mere thought of passing over white candidates in favor of nonwhites.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it uncomfortable, reading all this?\u201d Cap\u00f3 Crucet writes. \u201cDoes your answer depend on your race, on whether or not you consider yourself white? Are you feeling like that white girl in the crowd who wanted to tell me about reverse racism? If you do consider yourself white and don\u2019t feel like that girl, are you not yet uncomfortable because, despite this being about your people, you don\u2019t think it\u2019s about your people? Because, as a white person, you\u2019ve gotten to be just you your whole life?\u201d<\/p>\n

Answer these questions honestly, white readers. The fate of our next election and the future of our society largely balance on whether whites will be able to reckon with people like Cap\u00f3 Crucet being their neighbors, their peers and their teachers.<\/p>\n

Esther Cepeda\u2019s email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com<\/a>, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 When you grow up surrounded by white people, you become, in many important ways, white. Your neighbors next door, your teachers at school \u2014 everyone from the person behind the counter at the bakery to the mail carrier. If they\u2019re white and they treat you with respect and affection, part of you becomes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 19:15:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}