An Exercise in Being (How to be White/Black)
Archival box, printed text, mixed media on ID cards, digital prints on paper,
2014
Excerpt of text:
HOW TO BE WHITE:
1. Carry out high fashion trends as if you were white. (For example the messy bun look. You will find it doesn’t work as your hair is already considered messy, this is not an advantage away from hours of teasing or hairspray – it’s a complete invisibility of you enacting the style)
1.1 Nude lipstick will also not work.
1.2 Things that are seen as edgy on white girls aren’t on you.
1.3 You have to first achieve femininity to carry out these fashions – and western ideas of femininity depend on whiteness.
2. Distance self from blackness.
2.1 Don’t consider any conversation about blackness to be concerned with you or speaking to you.
2.2 Play into respectability politics ‘it’s all about how you act’ – which really reads as act out whiteness so people are not suspicious off you’ – I as a teenager in a predominantly black school thought this of black kids who complained about how much they got stopped and search.
2.3 Use slangs less – the type you used is associated with blackness and ‘rude girls’.
3. See things to do with whiteness in general as accessible to you, applying to you, about you, even if you secretly don’t relate to them or hold your experiences. You can’t be the geeky girl who turns into the swan in an American movie (see 1.3)