I Am White :(

I am…,” I am struggling for words, even though I am not sure why. I know the answer to this question.

“I am white,” I say tragically, and the woman from New Zealand marvels at this.

The other day I was using Google Translate with a Chinese couple who were trying to have a conversation with me, but they chose to translate Chinese into Spanish, not English.

No hablo Espanol, I had to type into their phone, watching the words translate into beautiful Chinese calligraphy.

The sweet little man looked at me confused, and I looked back at him, also confused.

This happens a lot with Chinese and Koreans. They all assume I speak Spanish.

“It is the tan,” Alan, my coworker, will say.

Persian people will excitedly drop into all our interactions.

“Are you Persian?”

“No,” I have to tell them, and they look at me quizzically, waiting for me to explain.

An Italian dad was eyeing me before triumphantly initiating a conversation in Italian with me like I was his long-lost ancestor, and I smiled, unsure.

“I do have Italian in me!” I told him, in English.

“I knew it!” he exclaimed happily, and then carried on in Italian.

“I do not have that much of it in me,” I have to explain.

When I was a teenager, I remember telling my mom, “I have just started agreeing with people when they assume my ethnicity out of nowhere.”

“Jennifer, that is lying,” she would protest.

“I hate being white,” I complained, and she, at a loss, responded, “You have Dads olive skin color.”

“Tan is not an ethnicity!”

“You are American,” she would conclude, and my dad, from wherever he had been, would suddenly appear and begin a lengthy tale of our family ancestry that dated back to an Indian tribe who resided in the dusty Sierra Mountains before traveling north.

He would get up to retrieve some books from his nightstand, and my mom and I would flee, disappearing.

I brought this memory up recently to my mom, who, in present-day times, now agrees with teenage me.

“I hate being white too,” she says. “It is bumming me out.”

My brother has brown hair and blue eyes and is very pale, mainly because he never goes outside.

“Tim would be golden if he ever saw the sun,” my mom confidently believes, and I know she is praying for that day to come, when Tim emerges from indoors and sunlight touches his skin.

My brother and I favor each other too, but for some reason I came out so crazy.

No one ever asks Tim what he is. It is just a fact, clear as day. There is white Tim.

Now, in the international terminal of the airport, my physical ambiguity is turning into a bit of a superpower.

Everyone thinks I belong to them.

That is until I have to tell them I am white and we become separated again.

After How tall are you?, What are you? is the question I get asked almost daily now.

Like short people, who you would never approach and say, “How short are you?! Four feet?! My God!” to ask a tiny, frail Chinese man out of nowhere, “Are you Chinese?!” seems socially uncouth, but for some reason, with me people feel the question is justified.

Explain!

This is where I would love for my dad to suddenly appear and begin his tale from the Sierra Mountains where the Donahue tribe was first brought into existence.

“Lets all guess each others ethnicity!” Quincy, an adorable, happy-go-lucky, pure-hearted twenty-five-year-old, giggles while a group of us walk from the bus back to the East Lot one night.

“You are African American,” I guess, deadpan.

“Period,” Quincy replies.

“This game, I am not sure is good in 2026,” Fahrid says begrudgingly.

“No one can ever guess mine,” Alan says.

Alan has big brown eyes, brown hair, and a very sweet, gentle nature. He, unfortunately, looks white.

“I am Mexican,” he says.

“Do you speak Spanish?” I ask him. “I need to call you when the Chinese and Korean flights come in the store.”

“It is because you are tan,” he says.

Watching cultures collide at the store is absolutely fascinating.

My coworker Jung, a sweet older woman, and twenty-five-year-old handsome Kenneth often get into spats due to getting lost in translation.

Kenneth will lose patience and Jung will exclaim, “You are a rude boy,” setting Kenneth off, and they will move to opposite sides of the store and stew in silence.

I, who also sometimes struggle with the language barriers, like when Jung asked me if I lift weights.

“Your shoulders big,” she told me, putting her hands out far apart to indicate wideness.

Kenneth shook his head like, the nerve of this woman!

But I became too absorbed in watching Jung, who was raising her tiny arms above her head, imitating lifting weights in her all-black outfit and neck scarf. She looked so freaking adorable.

“No, no,” I tell her, and she responds, “Ohhh, genes.”

I nodded, making a mental note to ask my Dad next time we talk if the Indians needed wide shoulders to hunt, survive, and travel north.

I never get asked if I am Asian. That seems to be the one geographic location everyone assumes confidently that I cannot possibly be from.

Kenneth, who was already all jazzed up, is now twisting Jungs words into an insult on my behalf, and I gesture to him that it is okay, it is okay.

Then I try to lighten the mood.

“Jung, what is your favorite movie?” I ask, and she thinks.

“Final Analysis,” she tells me.

I have not seen it, so I pull it up on my phone and a steamy movie poster of Kim Basinger and Richard Gere appears.

“Erotic film noir,” I read aloud. “Someone was seduced, someone was set up, and before it was all over… someone was dead.”

Jung nods.

“The end I did not expect,” she tells me.

“I will add this to my list of movies to watch,” I tell her.

Kenneth is still stewing, even after Jung bravely exposed her movie taste, as we are interrupted by a stoic couple who enter the store.

“Hello, welcome!” I greet them warmly, and they stare at me in silence, their faces stern and expressionless.

“Where are you traveling to?” I continue, not discouraged, determined to connect.

They stare at me, unsmiling, and we stand together while “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls plays overhead on the stores speakers.

Jung inserts herself and begins to speak Chinese, and they smile and converse with her while I loom nearby, clueless and smiling.

Kenneth has picked out a trench coat in the womans size and he presents it to her gently.

She is stoic at first, but with the help of Jungs conversation, she tries it on.

I smile at her.

“It fits beautifully,” I tell her, and she looks at me, afraid.

“Uh…” I am trying to figure out how to relay the message without the help of Google Translate, so I put my hand to my chest and bow slightly, smiling.

“It is good,” I say, motioning to her in the coat.

The serious frown breaks and her face changes into the warmest, friendliest smile.

I smile too, fulfilled.

The heart is universal. If you put your hand to it, it is an offering of peace that everyone understands, no matter where we came from.

The truth is we all belong to each other, even if we have experienced drastically different versions of the world, have different ways of living, or we cannot communicate to one another with words.

Like in my case, I simply cannot speak these languages.

I am just tan.