Because of the kind of life I’ve led I’ve often been in situations where I’m the minority. That’s not common for whites in North America, but that’s the way it’s been for much of my life. Now I am white, or at least I am most days. What people assume I am depends on context, on how dark my skin gets in the sun, on the clothes I wear, whether I wear my bling, my headscarf and whether my (very long) hair is braided.  I suppose in old-timey South Africa I’d technically be something other than white, but I am white really.

Ethnically I am of European descent, Even if it is low-class, outsider European, it is still European and for Native Americans here that equates to white-person. And since many of my family members are Native, that makes me white. Get it?

The reason I’m telling you this is because of something really fascinating that happened because I am white. I’ll tell you about that in just a minute, but first I want to say that in all the various situations/cultures that I’ve spent any time within, there is a separate women’s communication style that seems to have some pretty strong similarities no matter what culture the women call home.

For one thing there are kitchen table rules. In the core of the domestic world there are rules by which strangers or distant family are made a part of things. You may not be given a family name, but there will be something – a glance, a cup of coffee slid your way, a teasing joke – that will let you know you are part of the kitchen table group, even if its just for that moment. This inclusivity functions for women in a way that supports the often labour-intensive lives women sometimes need to share.

Anyway this whiteness of mine and my femaleness came together at the grocery store.

I was sitting by myself at a table outside the store waiting for my children to finish the shopping. It is a table for 4 and when 2 Asian women (one Japanese, one Korean) came out needing a table to re-arrange their groceries, they glanced at me enquiringly and of course I waved my hand, smiled and said “of course.”

They sat and started to talk about the groceries they just purchased. They were in their early 20s I think. They talked about how this particular store had better prices on meat and vegetables; they talked about where other things can be purchased for good prices. The Korean woman congratulated the Japanese woman on the carefulness of her selection. She said “you shop really well.” The Japanese woman ducked her head and politely demurred, discomfited by the compliment and, I think, feeling undeserving of such high praise. And of course efficiency and money savvy is high praise amongst women in this particular sphere of experience.

One thing that was of great interest to me in this time is that they carefully kept their bodies partially facing me and although they didn’t address me directly, each woman glanced at me out of the corner of her eye at least once. Partly this special politeness had to do with age. I’m 54 and definitely grey and I tend to trigger respect in younger women.

Then the Korean woman started saying that she wasn’t as good a shopper as her friend, and that (starting on another example of her weakness as a traditional woman in her cultural context) she liked to cook for just herself and, in a slightly louder voice and in a different tone she said, “I’m so white.”

They both did that corner-of-the-eye glance and lifted the muscles around their mouths. It was a praise statement meant to include me. The odd thing is that it was exactly the same kind of kitchen table inclusion that I have experienced in other cultural situations, including my family on the Reservation. Women’s talk.

In that moment I realized that for them, being “white” was a symbolic end-point in the scale of strong female behaviours. Becoming “white” for her contrasts to the group-ethic of her traditional role as a Korean woman. Becoming “white” means taking on (temporarily, and in the right context) the identity of an individualist, that of a woman on her own who knows how to take care of herself.  In a sense she was claiming bi-cultural status and skills. She was claiming kinship with me around our version of the kitchen table.

I nodded very slightly toward them. Smiled enough that they could see the lift beside my eyes.

I was surprised  though, because claiming “whiteness” (or accusing someone of “whiteness”) is not a positive thing in any Indian culture I know and that is where I have spent most of my cross-cultural time in the last decades. One time a niece was told I was white by a family member and she was so upset she came to me and wanted me to deny the charge. And it was a charge. I don’t think she could quite get her head around what she knew of my behaviour with what she knew of the symbolic content of whiteness.

Anyway, don’t you find that really interesting? One of the things I really liked about the encounter is the realization that people today are much more comfortable with multiple identities. She is really OK with being white sometimes and Korean other times, and that occurs regardless of what she looks like. I so love that this is true for her.