What is white?

Is it like a blank piece of paper waiting for color so that it has purpose and use?   I don’t feel like I’m that blank. 

Yet, I’ve been a part of discussion groups enough to know that many cultural foundations are built on white understandings—a sort of assumed starting point.  A tabula rasa, so to speak.  One way that I began to realize this inherent white understanding is when I noticed that no one, when describing me, would include my race.  They’d say my height and gender and age, but didn’t bother with “white.”  That was assumed.

I wonder what else is assumed.

A lot of assumptions are being challenged in this day and age.  If I’m being honest, I can admit that makes me nervous.  I don’t want some of the assumptions that I like to go away.  And yet, if I’m being honest, I can also admit that some of these assumptions hinder me; that they keep me in a box that I spend a good deal of time protecting.  I’m really not sure where to go with all of this.

A prayer:

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being:  We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen. 

(BCP, p100)