Why study white culture?

This is a question that has been asked of me and that I have been asking of myself. In the moments when the books are stacked high on my desk and the work of an 18 credit quarter seems a bit much, it is easy to slip into rationalizing why this might be a waste of my time or an over exaggeration of a non-issue.

However, contrary to the above statements, I find great purpose to this study. As a person who is white (a term in much need of a definition) I must understand who I am, fulfilling an expectation that I hold of people from other races and ethnicities. In order to have a conversation about differences in culture, I must understand my own and not assume that it does not exist or its existence is irrelevant to the conversation. Understanding my white heritage, cultural upbringing, and status in society brings me to a place where I can analyze its strengths and weaknesses, confront its past sins, and enter into a solution based conversation with understanding of my own position.

As a Global and Urban Ministries minor at Seattle Pacific, I have found myself sitting in classes, such as Multi-Ethnic Ministries, perplexed about my role as a white female in a world that seems to not need me. I found myself devaluing my skills and passions with the sole reason being that I am white, a residue of past problems and a reminder of division in so many places. I found myself wondering what my role was in this conversation and where the merits of my voice fell. The conclusions that I eventually came to was that I was an ineffective summation of uninformed (and ignorant) opinions because I had not spent time to understand the culture that I have been seeped in for my entire life.

My purpose behind this study is not to conclusively put sentences or paragraphs on my race and my relationship to others. That is a journey that will morph through out the rest of my life, evolving through my relationships and education about others and myself. I do however want to devote time and thought to the reasons why I have been socialized to be white and what that means. I do not want to assume that my skin is invisible and I do not see the value in being colorblind. I want to be white, because it is what I am, but I also want to know what that means for my personal identity and for my role in society.