The White Myth

Have you ever noticed how Americans are really into the idea that whiter = cleaner = better? Brown eggs have all but disappeared from the grocery stores. We bleach substances that we shouldn't, such as flour and sugar. Some research has shown that the bleach used to make tampons white harms women, yet I challenge you to find an unbleached cotton tampon. Why are we so into having everything around us be white?

One might argue that it's a human thing, and not an American thing, but I have proof positive that not all humans believe in the white equation above. In Ghana, I buy and bath with brown soap. I'm talking mud brown soap- and I'm not the only one. Brown soap is so popular here that you can buy several different types of brown soap, and you can find them in almost every store. Someone told me that it's brown because it contains sulfur in it. I don't know if that's true or not... All I know is that, unlike the white-colored perfumed soaps, this soap doesn't make me break out in hives. It also leaves my skin the softest it's ever been.

So to re-cap, let's lose all the bleach and bring on the brown soap! I promise you, life will never be the same.

I'm Not in Kansas Anymore...

You know you're a racial minority (at least numerically) when people don't even know what to call you...

Yesterday I went to the doctor, and this technician was filling out a form for me on the computer. One of the field he had to fill in was "RACE." Obviously, to save time, the electronic form had been set to automatically select "BLACK" as the patient's race. The technician looked at me and realized I wasn't black, so he went to change the field. There was a whole list of races from which he could choose, but try as he might, he couldn't find "WHITE" on the list. He kept looking and looking, and finally he turned to me and said, "Excuse me, what is your race?"

"Caucasian," I told him. From where I sat, I could clearly see the word "CAUCASIAN" at the top of the list.

On the form, my race is listed as "ASIAN."