(London Guardian) A few months after I moved to New York, a magical conversation happened that would radically shift my psyche forever. I was telling my friend that I had gone to his favorite shop and he asked: “Who served you? Was it the tall white guy?”
I frowned and replied, “Are the rest of the staff not white?” to which my friend replied “Huh? What do you mean? No. I was just describing him.”
While he wandered off to get a beer, I stood dumbfounded. This was the first time I had heard a white person’s race used as a casual descriptor, a simple point of differentiation in what I perceive to be a white world.
As a Brit, I grew up in a country that was 86% white, so “white” was the norm. That kid you were imagining in books like Roald Dahl’s was white, unless