I am working on a blog about race in Paganism, so I am posting this guest column by Elena Gutierrez. Elena is a mixed-race Latina, Tarascan (native Mexican), white young woman in the Midwest.
I am drowning in a sea of white. I am not at an actual sea with light colored sands and receding waves, but rather, the extravagant dining hall my grandparents eat at every night. I am ‘blessed’ with the opportunity to eat in the same dining hall when I go to visit them. The table cloths are of thick material and they are so white you would think they are brand new, straight from the package, rather than washed after each use from meal times. Maybe they are brand new. It would only make sense based on where they live. My grandparents, on my mother’s side, live in a retirement villa. They have to ask us in advance when we schedule a visit, if we would like to stay for dinner, if we respond yes, they have to hurry to make reservations. They are my white grandparents. I am drowning in a white sea that is made up of all the retired masters of their career fields. It is a white population who sit at their white tables with their white pearls hanging from their necks smiling with their expensive fake white teeth.
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