Trains And White Privilege
I remember the exact place where I swore off long-haul train rides for as long as I lived. It was in the middle of my 2002-2003 winter break, which I had planned entirely around the idea of using trains to travel between Rochester, Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. What a novel concept in our jet-set age!
I knew my uncle Hank had a particular fondness for trains, often taking cross-country Amtrak trips from Chicago or New York to Los Angeles. How I imagined his romantic journeys across the American West! Bathing in the glow of sunsets over amber plains of grain, the thrill of weaving between purple mountain majesties up on high.
The Northeastern Seaboard, however, does not provide such stunning vistas, and it was somewhere in the middle of Connecticut that I looked at the time. Two hours after we left Boston’s South Station. I was headed for Washington’s Union Station. Two hours’ journey…and we were still in Connecticut? I looked out the window and saw abandoned, rusted warehouses poorly hidden behind naked trees, all beneath an oppressive gray sky.
No more long train trips for me, I decided.
So when the Matara deaf cricket team told me about the annual meeting of the Sri Lanka Deaf Cricket Association (SLDCA) in Moratuwa, about 20 km south of Colombo, I met their plan to take the train with some trepidation. Three and a half hours bordered on the line between short-haul and long-haul.
However, recognizing that I was not taking an Amtrak train through industrial wasteland, I grew excited about the idea. A train to the city!
So we all boarded the train at 5:00 in the morning–six deaf men and myself. There were supposed to be others, but they apparently overslept, and I start wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring vibrating alarm clocks to distribute among them? But most of them have mobile phones with alarm clock functions anyway.
It’s still dark, but the sky slowly turns blue around Mirissa and by the time we arrive in Galle, all is bright. Two other deaf people hopped on at Weligama, and soon our group is chattering in sign, with bystanders staring at us. I know they’re struck dumb by a group of men flapping their hands wildly, but what astonishes them even more is that there’s a white person among them, also flapping his hands with equal fervor.
The staring. It gets to me. It doesn’t matter where I go or who I’m with–I am stared at. Actually, if I’m with a group of deaf people, others really stare. A white person among deaf people? It doesn’t strike them until later that this white person might also be deaf, too, because why should deaf people–or indeed, any disabilities–exist in the World Of White People where all is magically curable?
I have days where I stride along the roads, confident in my otherness even as heads turn to follow my path, but there are equally as many days where their eyes burn into my skin as harshly as the tropical sun.
But surrounding yourselves with dark-skinned Sri Lankans for months gives you funny ideas. So when I take photographs like this
and look at the camera’s display screen, I am taken aback by this apparition of a ghost. Who is that white guy next to Mahesh and Manjula? Then I realize it’s me.
Often, I’ll be signing with the kids and my eyes will catch a glimpse of my hands and I am briefly astonished that they’re white. Not dark like everybody else, and it’s a reminder that I’m different.
After five months in Sri Lanka, I don’t want to be white anymore. I imagine that I would revel in the home comfort of a Dravidian skin tone–I could stop sticking out of photographs and finally blend in with my school children and friends. However, No matter how many afternoons I spend out on the sea, I’m never going to get a tan half as dark as a light-skinned Sinhalese, so fantasies of waking up and gazing into the mirror and into a dark-skinned face remain just that–fantasies.
White privilege is funny. It’s something to be decried back home in the name of racial equality, but in Sri Lanka, it’s an institution. People delight in perpetuating white privilege, making sure I always have a seat or a lunch plate with twice as much food as anybody else.
It’s simultaneously embarrassing and gratifying–embarrassing because I don’t want special treatment because, well, I’m not special, and gratifying because it is rather nice to get special treatment.
But it’s horrifying to see Rohana children pick up my arm, fondle it gently, and say, “beautiful. me brown skin bad. me want white skin same you.” To them, white people are beautiful–their fair skin; their tresses of blonde, brown, or red; their irises shining all the colors of the rainbow. To see them say that evokes images of millions of children huddled in the dark corners of bedrooms, all of them weeping as they mire in the self-loathing of their skin tones.
In America, we buy tanning lotion so we can look just a little less ghastly. In Sri Lanka, they buy fairness creams which purportedly makes them a little more light-skinned although I am dubious if they actually work. Sinhalese and Tamil teledramas feature people so fair I wonder if they aren’t actually dubbed-over Mexican soap operas pirated from Univision’s satellite feed.
I tell them, “no! you beautiful! me want brown skin same you. me white skin bad, bad!” and we grin at each other in recognition of our identical desires.
When a new white person comes onto the scene, I suddenly find myself in the shoes of a Sinhalese child, equally awestruck as them by the white person’s resplendent beauty.
The team of volunteers at the Rohana Special School has grown to two with the addition of Ginette, a New Zealander who worked at a deaf school (Oak Lodge–the same school as Anne East mentioned several blogs ago) in London for two years and is thus well-versed with the concepts of deafness and sign language. She’s bubbly and picking up the local sign with blazing speed, and it’s weird to suddenly share my life, home, work, and three-wheeler drivers with someone else, but I am gratified by the shot-in-the-arm she has provided in the form of new ideas and fresh energy.
But sometimes I can’t help but stare at her. Not because she’s pretty, which she is, but because she’s white. Her blonde hair, her sunburnt flesh, and her green-brown eyes are so exotic that I simply must study her and drink in all of her external otherness, just like any other kid at the school.
And I knock myself for thinking this way. Silly Adam, you’re white, too, just like her. As I said, spending five months in Sri Lanka does strange things to your self-identity. And so when I arrive at the SLDCA meeting a few hours later in Moratuwa, everyone suddenly goes quiet and all eyes turn toward me. But our common deafness is a quality that trumps everything else and ties us all together, and everybody relaxes and we begin sharing our stories.
This common thread, however, does not prevent the new SLDCA president from repeatedly vilifying my temporary hometown–”Matara bad!” turned into the meeting’s mantra as the executive board condemned some of our team member’s constant questioning of their decisions. Some things about meetings never change.
On the return trip, the train is packed to the seams, but I am given a seat right away next to three mothers/grandmothers/aunts and what feels like a dozen children, all in unison crying, napping, and squirming between legs and arms. I am exhilarated by the wide-open windows; the smells of Lanka–oceans, perpetually blooming bushes, burning piles of leaves, outhouses by the sides of the tracks–swim into the railcar By the time we stop at Galle again, everyone in my group has seats. Many of us get a hot cup of Nescafe.
Many get off here at Galle, and others at Weligama. Some of us, myself included, jump off in Walgama when the train briefly stops for no reason in the middle of the tracks, as trains often do, ending a grand journey, and I walk back on the dusty roads–it is the dry season now–back to the school. It is almost dark, so my skin, set off by my black shirt, shines even more brightly against the subdued surroundings, and curious eyes follow me all the way home.
Do skin whitening creams work?
Once, in Taiwan, the pharmacist gave me some when I was looking for something to soothe my monstrous mosquito bites. I only realised our apparent communication breakdown when I got home and read the package carefully. The main medical ingredient was menthol, so that you can rub the cream on and “feel” like your skin is turning a lovely, tingling white.
Another time, at a local spa in Thailand, getting a facial, a woman tried to sell me whitening cream and even did a demonstration, putting it on one hand and then telling me to compare it to my other hand. It’s true, the cream did make the one hand more white. How do they do it, you ask? Well, a large number of surface skin cells had been rubbed off of my hand by whatever chemicals were in the cream. I read an article in a Sri Lankan beauty magazine in which a girl wrote in wanting to know if she could get skin grafts in order to change her skin white. SKIN GRAFTS!
The damage done by the domination of white in the minds of many goes beyond taking off a few layers of skin and when I meet it as you described, Adam, out here in the world, when beautiful children (and there are many) tell me they hate their skin, I just want to cry. Because in some ways, in some places, they are right. People get married and jobs are won and lost because of the judgements people are making about skin color.
Grrrr… just wanted to share that moment of rage with you…
(Loved the pictures. Miss you guys and the smiles)
Adam, you’ve written such lovely postings and you most certainly write beautifully… I just want to tell you this particular posting just simply left me breathless, wanting more. The way you wrote this… your feeling of being white in a sea of dark skinned people, of wanting to cry because the beautiful children hate their skin, hate themselves… makes me want to cry, too.
I can just almost see/feel/smell it all as you write in wonderful detail, the children, the weather, the scents…
Is there a way I can go to where you are and volunteer, too? Perhaps one month or two this summer? True biz! Just a short time, I know… short notice, but your blog really draws to me and I’m always happy to see that you’ve posted something new.
Do please contact me at www.deafread.com. You can click on my name at the top right side and your message will go to my inbox. Many thanks in advance and hope to hear from you sooner than soon.
I just had to chuckle at your blog. During my time in Kenya teaching at Lambwe Valley School for the Deaf, I went through the same experience of being one of only two whites in the entire village.
After a while I got used to getting all the attention especially from children who would run and scream “Mzungu! Mzungu!” with their fingers pointing. What I disliked the most is priviledges they would force upon me such as special seat atop their matatus (minivans) or insisting on carrying my heavy baggage for me. Many Kenyans seem to think that whites are weak and incapable of hard physical labor. What I hated the most is having children coming up to me and saying that they want my skin, soft hair like mine and so on. I keep on telling them they are beautiful the way they are and they should be proud of who they are.
I had a similar experience in Washington, DC as a practicum student working with inner city Deaf young adults. Many weeks would pass before I saw another white face, and when I did, the thought would shock me: too white! Then another shock: I am white, too!!! Such is humanity. Agree that people wish for different color than they have…I wished to be more tan, some of my clients wished for lighter skin. People are beautiful each in their own way, and skin color should be considered beautiful in all its hues.
Hello Adam! First of all, I miss you!
Second of all, you definitely put this into perspective. White privilege is pretty dominating and much more apparent in other parts of the world. Yet here in America, our whiteness isn’t good enough. Makes me think back to the girls’ passionate chatter in my workout class over tanning lotions because winter was making them look washed-out. Only if your message was LOUDER!
Very, very interesting read — thanks. Although, while I do see your point about that photo, it did strike me that it was exactly the sort of photo I’d see on a blog captioned by, “Here’s me, Mahesh, and Manjula at the local Denny’s after the USC game! Go Trojans! W00t!” Living in LA warps (or un-warps) one’s brain regards race and skin color sometimes …
Adam,
A well-written posting. I had a similar experience while living in Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking territory within the United States.
It gave me a perspective that I had never seen nor experienced while living on the mainland.
Thank you for sharing.
Regards,
Karl
We went through the same thing when we went to Japan. people marvelled at our whiteness, at our blue eyes, but it was sad. it wasn’t “oh you are so beautiful”, it felt more like they were jealous that we fit some image of perfection - some false idea of beauty. we were better because of something we couldn’t compare. it was strange for me in particular because when i was at that vulnerable age of 10-13, i was picked on for being too white. too pale. too ghostly. there it was clear that they were only admiring our whiteness because of some social messages that came with it, just as young women crave thinness here..
that being said, there’s also often something beautiful about being an other. Nano once said he often liked the ‘white’ girls at school, just because they didn’t look like the other girls; much like some of us here might marvel at the girl who looks like no one else because she’s from India.
im curious as to whether part of the treatment although undoubtably linked to whiteness may also be related to how obviously foreign you are and thus a guest. my mother was treated wonderfully in cuba (people even waved at her in cars, etc, like royalty) because Americans don’t go to cuba, and so they knew that if she was in cuba then she must be great. some people might have the same idea about you in sri lanka, especially since you are not “vacationing” on some beach.
I have a similar experience with dark-skinned individuals domestically and overseas over years. Handful of those people usually come to me - “I love white bread like yours” I gulped and reminded them that the consumption of white bread was not really good for us. They persisted - “I crave white guys!”
That is surely a distrubing issue on many levels for the nowaday’s global stage where the whitneness is a symbol of purity and human superiority.
Look forward to more of your Sri Lanka adventures and misadventures (too). Aha! Thanks a zillion times for sharing your personal journey with all of us in Sri Lanka.
Everyone is beautiful regardless of ethnicity, upbringing and physical features!
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
Ginny,
Julie and Nadia here. Missing you heaps and heaps and heaps. Nice to hear that your making a good impression on your collegues, and that your skills are being put to good use.
Hope everything was cool after you left, we were extremely worried bout you, hope you’ve managed to sort everyhting out, but by the sounds of it, you didn’t let it get in the way of having fun and learning all the new signs and stuff. Good on ya mate!
Hows Rohana hostel. Tell the kids Oaklodge hostel say a big hi. We hope to see lots of photos of you and them soon.
All the kids were so excited about your e-mail and can’t stop talking about your new bike cinderella. She sounds beautiful. ha ha.
Steve say’s hi and hope your soaking up the sun while we all get drenched in the rain.
Well we hope to hear from you soon girl. Keep in touch.
All our love hugs and kisses
Julie and Nadia
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adam,
i’m pining for home… lanka and india.. too far away.
thank you for this BEAUTIFUL post.
- sasha