system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Passing as white is the same thing as being white.

This is something I've heard a few times, sometimes form people I've followed for years whom it always seemed obvious that they were 'white.' Now I've never understood how whiteness is something you could 'pass' as. Here's my thinking and tell me why it's wrong.

1. There is no scientific difference between 'races.' (Of humans obviously.)
2. That means there is no biological difference between a black man or a white man. I mean of course they are different people, but there is nothing genetic which separates them into two different categories of humans.
3. Therefore 'race' is really just perceptive. Black people are black and white people are white because people see them as white or black.
4. That means a person's race is based in other people's perception of them.
5. If a person 'passes as white' then that means that other people perceive them as white. But since your race is literally what people perceive you as, being perceived as white means that you are white.
6. Therefore, passing as white is equivalent to being white.

Now I've asked, and some people have told me that it's a cultural difference, but I don't understand why that can be true. I'm a white Ukrainian - Canadian, but if I were to move to a predominantly black or Hispanic nation, and whole hardheartedly immersed myself in the language and the culture, I would still be a white guy who speaks Spanish (for example) and partakes of that nation's culture.

Heck even if I my white parents went and lived in the same country - Let's say it's Spain -, raised me there, and furthermore did not teach me Ukrainian or English but Spanish as my mother tongue, and I was raised practicing the same cultural events of other Spanish people, I would still be a white guy Spanish guy, not a Hispanic person, correct?

For the exact same reasons it can't be geographical. White person born in an African country is still just a white person born and raised in said country, and same with a black person born in a traditionally white country like any European country.

Also if anything other than how people perceive you determines whether or not you are white, then what is it that is distinct about whiteness besides the light skin tone? What makes white 'white' or black 'black?' What is different from me and someone who merely passes as white? Because language, geography, culture, and religion don't seem to cut it.

If you asked most people how they judge race the immediate answer would be 'the persons' skin color.' Now there a white people who are paler and darker then me. So if a person has skin which is light enough to be perceived as white, then it's just white. That's how color works. If someone told me 'This painting is yellow and red mixed together' they would be correct, but I would also be correct if I said 'That color is orange.'
gpt
Passing as white is a conditional state. It means you're safe until someone decides to take white identity too seriously. 


Think about how many arabs in America passed as and thought of themselves as white until we collectively decided that being or looking Muslim was a politically relevant distinction.