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thoughtsonplots 's review for:
Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir
by Rebecca Carroll
Thank you to the @stackspodcast for putting this book on my radar. I read the book and then listened to the fantastic interview with the author, Rebeca Carroll. This memoir is about growing up as the biracial adopted child of white parents in a small rural town where she was the only Black child at her school and not taught about Black history or culture. Can you imagine not seeing yourself reflected in your family or community? I can’t – I have never had that experience. That’s why reading books like this are so eye-opening.
One glaring example of the racism Carroll had to navigate on her own: her middle school had a “slave day”! Boys bid on girls and girls bid on boys - you had be a slave for a day for the highest bidder.
Exploring how her proximity to whiteness impacted her life, she recognized the following: “Cocooned within a whiteness where my brown skin was mocha-colored, I spoke with an inflection similar to that of my white brother and sister, and my adult guardians were welcomed and centered wherever we went. I was being ushered through my life via the powerful passport of white privilege.” But her proximity to whiteness did not protect her from the racism she encountered in her daily life and her family didn’t help her understand her racial identity at all.
Carroll talks about the impact of white beauty standards on how she saw herself (especially with respect to her hair and her weight) and feeling like boys either didn’t find her attractive or fetishized her. “My body, I was learning, was a prop or toy at the hands of my white male peers. A brown body to explore, pass around, and violate, but never fall in love with or date.”
As Rebecca grew up and became a student of Black history, culture and critical race theory, she came to this powerful realization: “Being adopted into a white family that did nothing see or care or think about my blackness or my experience navigating a racist country had always felt lonely and isolating, endlessly confusing, but now it just felt cruel.”
One glaring example of the racism Carroll had to navigate on her own: her middle school had a “slave day”! Boys bid on girls and girls bid on boys - you had be a slave for a day for the highest bidder.
Exploring how her proximity to whiteness impacted her life, she recognized the following: “Cocooned within a whiteness where my brown skin was mocha-colored, I spoke with an inflection similar to that of my white brother and sister, and my adult guardians were welcomed and centered wherever we went. I was being ushered through my life via the powerful passport of white privilege.” But her proximity to whiteness did not protect her from the racism she encountered in her daily life and her family didn’t help her understand her racial identity at all.
Carroll talks about the impact of white beauty standards on how she saw herself (especially with respect to her hair and her weight) and feeling like boys either didn’t find her attractive or fetishized her. “My body, I was learning, was a prop or toy at the hands of my white male peers. A brown body to explore, pass around, and violate, but never fall in love with or date.”
As Rebecca grew up and became a student of Black history, culture and critical race theory, she came to this powerful realization: “Being adopted into a white family that did nothing see or care or think about my blackness or my experience navigating a racist country had always felt lonely and isolating, endlessly confusing, but now it just felt cruel.”