But there are also some beautiful parts of your white heritage that are worth celebrating. I will leave aside global white culture because there is much to celebrate that I cannot properly lay claim to (David Bowie, Fry and Laurie, Kate Bush, Édith Piaf, the Enlightenment, Sex Pistols, and poutine), so I will constrain myself to the United States. And you are lucky, Olivia, that I am here to tell you about it because I was born in Massachusetts, birthplace of American caucasia, and there really is no mansplaining like white mansplaining.
There are some cultural institutions that most humans would agree are important or influential or inspiring or simply awesome—and in essence, undeniably white. Herewith, Olivia, a list off the top of my head based largely upon my own unique growing up and strange personal preferences. It’s selective, I realize, so forgive me. White people have been paid to make culture for a long time!
The entire run of Cheers; Fleetwood Mac; They Might Be Giants; the Allman Brothers Band; both the Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen versions of “Jersey Girl”; Charles and Ray Eames; Grey Gardens and all the work of the Maysles brothers; Metallica; Willie Nelson; E. B. White (it’s right there in the name!); The Simpsons; Stephen King; The Muppet Show; the stories of Raymond Carver; almost all public radio; Twin Peaks; Jonathan Coulton; McSweeney’s; basketball kind of (it was invented by a white dude in Springfield, MA!) but definitely curling; the band Devo; the band the Pixies; at least the one song “Brandy” by Looking Glass; David Rees, whose favorite song that is; George Plimpton; The Dick Cavett Show; Peanuts, and its depressive spiritual successor, “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” by the genius Edward Gorey; Moonrise Kingdom; Fargo; the criminally forgotten film Broadcast News; Renaissance fairs; and absurdist fake trivia books such as The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman.
Olivia, you are very smart, so I don’t need to explain to you why this list contains no white rappers or white jazz people, though there are geniuses in both camps.
I’d also set apart for special consideration the work of technically white but cultural, sexual, religious/ethnic outsiders like Andy Warhol; The Godfather; Divine; George Gershwin; almost every twentieth-century white American comedian; and on some level every white American woman. That’s why you may have noticed I saved mention of such heroes as Laurie Anderson, Dolly Parton, Rickie Lee Jones, Ursula K. Le Guin, Patsy Cline, Patti Smith, Elizabeth Gilbert, Merrill Garbus, Penelope Spheeris, Lois Lowry, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Lynda Barry, and so many others that I’m forgetting, I’m sure.
All women, to some degree, are excluded from the power and privilege grid that traditional “whiteness” connotes. Even Julia Child, who exuded a patrician kind of whiteness and lived in Cambridge, for god’s sake, was a kind of revolutionary: encouraging women (and dudes) to be more adventurous, fearless, and worldly even if just in the kitchen. She was tall and commanding, she forced her husband to draw pictures of cow’s stomachs for her, and she was a real-life spy. Damn.
Staying with public television for a moment, PBS of course deserves celebration for the early, radical diversity of Sesame Street. But let’s be blunt: It’s still pretty white, serving certainly in my childhood as the gateway to some of the finest and whitest world culture available, from Doctor Who to Monty Python. But, Olivia, you must know of the special feeling I have for Fred Rogers, a man who answered every joke about his status as perhaps the most clichéd white square dude with the kindest smile. Not only was Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood devoted to showing people of different color, ability, and background, it was also devoted to showing kids that we are all equally scared, elated, anxious, grateful, sad, and most of all capable of managing this emotional complexity in time. And his insistence upon approaching the world, both real and make-believe, with openness, humility, and a desire to learn more than to teach has always been for me a model of white privilege–checking before there was a phrase for it. If you ever want a good cry, Olivia, find someone you love and sing to them a song by Fred Rogers that we should all know by heart called “It’s You I Like.”*
In this way, I think Mister Rogers is the humblest and most humane expression of what white culture has been able to do at its best: use the luxury of its reach, power, and preapproval to expose and challenge injustice at a level that likely would have been automatically denied to nonwhite folks. There are the activists, of course, worth mentioning, too, when it comes to this type of social history, heroes like Gloria Steinem and Harvey Milk. Great political provocateurs like Pete Seeger and Lenny Bruce.
And then there are the nerds: Rod Serling, the epitome of your ’50s white dad with his suit and his smoke, who used creepy allegory to trick midcentury white TV owners to consider their complacency, xenophobia, and bigotry, as Gene Roddenberry would do on Star Trek, positing an empowered, multigender, multiracial workplace like no big deal. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created Superman, of course, the superimmigrant; Jack Kirby created the Hulk, the Thing, the X-Men, and a host more of Marvel’s tortured weirdos and outsiders, and Stan Lee helped him. These early comics were not diverse—though Kirby and Lee introduced the first African-American superhero, the Black Panther, in 1966—but they nonetheless were radical in American culture. They drew a blueprint not just for tolerance and inclusion of otherness, but for an empowered otherness that any young person could attach to, and which certainly did not exist in the rest of kids’ entertainment in the ’60s. And I’m glad to say that within the past five years or so, comics, embracing this legacy, have become perhaps the most diverse form of pop culture around.
And we can’t forget about the food of white culture, Olivia. What it suffers in blandness, white food makes up for in sheer salt and fat excess because we are immortal and do not give a fuck! Crème agnès sorel. Snowflake rolls lathered in butter. Creamed chipped beef on toast. Ten thousand varieties of mushroom-soupy Minnesota hot dishes, including the profoundly wrong tuna-noodle casserole. The noble, vinegary Taylor Pork Roll, and the coarse, menacing, truth-in-advertising pig-snout-and-cornmeal loaf called scrapple, the twin sausage totems of my mother’s German-Irish family of Philadelphia. And yes: mayonnaise.
While both my parents went to college and gave birth to me, an only-child weirdo who ran home from high school each day to listen to Fresh Air, my mom grew up in working-class Philadelphia, the oldest of seven siblings. As mentioned above, there are many different kinds of white people, and while I was never unloved, it was clear from the moment I was old enough to grow a ponytail and wear a Doctor Who scarf (eleven years old) that my grandparents did not know what to make of me.
When we would visit, the ritual was the same. My grandfather would put out a spread on the kitchen table: six or eight kinds of lunch meat, including Pennsylvania esoterics like Lebanon bologna and souse; white and rye bread; pickles; two mustards; and mayonnaise. We would all sit around that kitchen table and construct our sandwiches and then eat those sandwiches in silence, because that is how white people show affection.
No matter my relatives’ strangeness, I never felt more at home than at that table. I think of it frequently. And I still model my OCD methods of rewrapping lunch meat on my grandfather’s meticulous, waste-hating, near origami-perfect Saran method. I loved him.
Olivia, we do not choose our circumstances, the prejudices that we inherit, or our privilege or lack of it. It is my hope that for all the trouble and pain we have caused, it may be recognized that we are capable still of growth and amends. We are capable of expanding our table, our circle of love. It’s on us to do it.
I hope I can make a sandwich for you some day. I am glad you are part of my family.
Auntie Phoebe here. Thanks so much, John, for pinch-hitting for me. Totes preesh. Also, I’m still reeling from that trip you and Wyatt took for your private mayonnaise label. That is a sentence I never thought I would write. Anyway, you are a scholar, a gentleman, and a saint, and I’m looking forward to Olivia coming to New York so she can take you up on that sandwich offer! OK, Livvie
, I hope you enjoyed this crash-course in whiteness, and if you didn’t, it’s not my fault. Blame the white man. I’ve been doing that for years, and it only works like 6.3 percent of the time. But I’ll take it!
Love,
Auntie Phoebe
Letter #5: Use Your Vagina Powers for Good
Dear Olivia,
If you are reading this solo, you’re officially at the age where you’re discovering your sexuality, yet you’re probably uncomfortable when a grown-up like me uses the word vagina. I bet me writing the word vagina makes you want to roll your eyes so hard that they fall out your head and tumble into Lake Erie. And, to me, that is crazy! You’d rather be blind than see me use the word vagina? Coincidentally, some straight dudes would rather be blind than look at and go down on one. (If you’re not reading this solo, my apologies to your mom and dad, but I can’t sugarcoat the truth!) Anyway, the point is you might be grossed out by this whole vagina/vajayjay/vajeen talk, but we have to get into it because what you have going on down there is super powerful. And not because you can get pregnant and bring life into this world. Although creating a baby is pretty slick, your vajeen can do tons of other superhero things (refer back to “Dear Future Female President” essay and the whole “vagina changing color” thing), so you have to be mindful of what you’re walking around with.
Being a woman is a very lucky and special thing, and normally, I’d pull a People’s Court and present printouts and scanned documents pleading my case as to why you must use your vagina powers for good and not evil like breaking hearts or ensnaring world leaders in affairs that lead to war like—spoiler alert—Olivia Pope did in season four of Scandie. But that would end up being as long as this book, so I’m going to boil it down to one example of why you have to use your vagina powers for good and not waste it on BS, and that example is cribbed straight from the 2014 movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, starring my boo Colin Firth. Basically, I adore Colin because he always plays sensitive-ass dudes who would probably follow their ladies around 24/7 with a heating pad and go, “You OK, babe? You cramping, babe? You want some Häagen-Dazs, babe?” This may seem super lame to you right now because you’re a young’un, but as you start to get older, you really appreciate the little things like your bae having Midol on standby. Anyway, Colin Firth is a cutie and despite not knowing much about the movie Kingsmen, I was down to watch it.
In it, Firth plays a fancy-pants spy named Harry Hart who trains Eggsy, a young bloke from the wrong side of the tracks, to become a spy. Turns out that Eggsy’s dad was also a spy who worked alongside Harry and sacrificed his life to save H Squared and so Harry feels indebted. Except for the crazy stunts, violence, and double-crossing, the movie is mad chill until it nears the end. A bunch of leaders and dignitaries are being held captive because they didn’t want to go along with Valentine’s (Samuel L. Jackson) evil plan of committing mass genocide. One of these prisoners is the princess Tilde of Sweden (Hanna Alström), who gave us shades of badassness earlier in the film when she called out Valentine for his terrible scheme and refused to be bribed. Even though her prison conditions clearly weren’t that bad because her makeup and hair are as flawless as Elsa’s in Frozen, she cries out for Eggsy to save her once he arrives. His response? “Will you kiss me if I do?” Oh. Hell. No is what I’m thinking she’s going to say. I’m planning on her going full #YesAllWomen with an epic speech that is going to culminate in her doing the lady version of a mic drop—dropping a container of Yaz birth control pills—and telling him she would rather rot in that cell than feel like she “owed” him affection in exchange for saving her life.
Olivia, that is not what she did. Instead, she goes (and I swear to you on my stack of Phylicia Rashad Ebony magazine covers that Tilde says this): “If you save the world, we can do it in the asshole.” First of all, that is the weirdest way to let someone know you went to Catholic school. More important, how bad at negotiating is she that she reached the point in her young life where butt sex is the go-to bargaining chip? But that’s not even the strangest part, Liv.
The worst part is the ending. Eggsy has saved the day and returns to her cell with a bottle of Champs. What does she do? Does she go, “J/K about that,” the way my book club does when we all say we’re going to read a self-help book for our next meeting, but then none of us do because television? No, she does not. Princess Tilde lies down on a grimy mattress and positions her butt immediately like anal is the first thing they’re going to do. What the what? Even in a game of Double Dutch, people rock their bodies back and forth a few times to get into the rhythm of the swinging ropes before jumping in. This is insane, Olivia, and you are correct in assuming that after watching this scene, I logged onto GoDaddy.com and bought the website JesusBeAWigBecauseImAboutToSnatchWhoeverWroteThisMoviesWig.org. Livvie, remember the following: Butt sex is not an amuse-bouche. Sure, sex is fun, but there is an order to it. You gradually progress. You don’t start at the end with anal, then jump to the beginning with some foreplay, and then close on the middle like this is a Quentin Tarantino movie.
And I’m sorry, but out of everything—the blatant misogyny, the unrealistic sex proposition, the lack of attention to detail with the lube—what truly strains credibility here is that a grown woman of high status would willingly do it on a prison mattress that lacks any sort of lumbar support. Livvie, it may seem like I’m probably not picking my battles correctly, but I beg to differ. As a woman in her early thirties, my absolute bare minimum for hooking up with a dude is as follows: 1. He must have a job/be good-looking, 2. must treat me with respect, and 3. must have memory foam if he wants the dome. I hope that you use these criteria in your own life and start implementing them a decade earlier than I did.
OK, now that’s all cleared up, let’s get to why I singled out such an over-the-top example to prove a point. The point is that offering up sex to get a dude to do a thing he should already want to do is not using your vagina powers for good. That’s the result of the patriarchy spending all of their time, energy, and money telling you that your worth lies between your legs (or in the case of Kingsman, your backside). So when I ask you to use your vagina powers for good, I mean when you achieve success, help keep the door open for the next class of women. Take pride in everything that makes you a woman and be an example that helps normalize the presence of women in male-dominated arenas. Use the insight that you have gained as a biracial woman and apply this knowledge to invent something, change an art form, break down barriers in the fields of math and science, or simply to better the lives of those around you. Just, please, for the love of everything sacred, do not waste your goodies and your powers on anyone or anything unworthy.
Love,
Auntie Phoebe
Letter #6: You, Too, Can Do
Dear Olivia,
Hey. So, yeah. I can’t end this book on butt stuff. Don’t get me wrong. I was going to do it. I told myself, “I’m going to be different. Edgy. I’m going to be bold and own it. Yep, I wrote all these interesting things and then I’m ending it all on the booty.” But, Olivia. My parents—your grandparents—are black. You know this, but it is important to say it. And let me just further say, on average, because I don’t want to generalize even though I’m totally correct in generalizing here, black parents Do. Not. Play. That. Edgy. In. Front. Of. White. Folk. Shit. Or edgy in front of any folk shit for that matter. They are not Team Take-the-Summer-Off-after-College-and-Travel-the-World-and-Figure-Out-Money-Later. They are not Team You-Can-Live-at-Home-for-an-Undetermined-Amount-of-Time-While-You-Find-Yourself. They are not Team Just-Express-Yourself-and-I-Support-All-Your-Decisions-No-Matter-How-Dumb-They-Are. And most important, they are not Team You-Going-to-Have-My-Last-Name-and-End-Your-Book-on-Butt-Stuff-When-You-Know-Damn-Well-the-People-That-Are-Going-to-Read-Your-Book-Will-Forever-Look-at-Us-as-the-Parents-of-the-Girl-Who-Ends-Her-Book-with-Butt-Stuff. Octavia Velina Robinson and Phillip Martin Robinson Sr. do not play that. At all. Why? I have a theor
y.
Now, don’t get too excited. It’s not a theory based on substantiated facts or data or a tried-and-true formula. This is a theory based on being a black person who has black parents and being a black person who has seen other black people with their black parents. Black parents, for the most part, do not have that warm fuzzy place inside of them that some white parents have. That “it’s all a part of the journey” chill vibe is missing, and in its place is a sense of urgency. There’s no time to figure it out, make crazy mistakes, and have a laugh, because they know the playing field is not level. They know that at some point in life, their children will learn and keep relearning this fact, so there is no room for lollygagging or navel-gazing. And because there is this push from a lot of black parents for excellence, I believe that, deep down, the ultimate goal for black parents is that their child will end up on a Black History Month stamp. Sure, hardly anyone sends snail mail anymore, but the BHM stamp has a rarefied air. Like being awarded with a Kennedy Center Honor, or getting a Cronut before the local bakery sells out of them. But more important, the Black History Month stamp is indisputable. Only those who really changed the game, who were the first to achieve XYZ in their field, get to be on a stamp. And because there are still so many firsts yet to achieve, getting on a stamp, as uncommon as it is, still seems achievable. Difficult, but achievable. And if one is able to conquer this Herculean task, it is not only going to bring their family pride, but it lets other black boys and girls know that it’s possible, and most important, that efforts of all the black people that came before them were not in vain.
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