I Am an Angry, White Woman

There it is. I am playing the colour card. Not something I’ve ever felt the need to do. 

For many years I was, in whichever country I happened to be living, involved with supporting women of any ethnicity on their nomadic adventures. Whether as an accompanying spouse and mother, a corporate woman, a single woman with the courage to take a leap into the unknown, or a woman native to whichever country was my home at that particular time.

I am angry because of the nonsense being written about ‘angry black women’. Why is there a need to qualify an angry woman? Does it make her anger any more potent if it is black rather than white? We can be strident or shrill, but angry is still angry, regardless of colour. Why are angry men not so defined?

And as I’m writing about an angry white woman, let me give an example of something that does really anger me. The word ‘expatriate’ used incorrectly to denote privileged white people swanning around the world on a corporate expense account. The word is believed by some to be archaic. Maughamesque, perhaps. 

Used correctly, ‘expatriate’ means to live outside one’s native country. Regardless of one’s colour. Now there’s another taboo word – native. But first ‘expatriate’. According to Mawuna Remarque Koutonin, in a blog first published on SiliconAfrica.com and picked up The Guardian in Britain, ‘expatriate’ is the word which “exclusively applies to white people”. Mr Koutonin goes on to say, “In the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word ‘expat’.” His diatribe continues with the suggestion that Arabs, Asians, Africans are all considered immigrants but that Europeans are always considered expatriate because, “they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’.” The blog ends with a call to arms, “If you see those “expats” in Africa, call them immigrants like everyone else. If that hurts their white superiority, they can jump in the air and stay there. The political deconstruction of this outdated worldview must continue.”

Perhaps if Mr Koutonin had bothered to look further than Wikipedia for a definition, he would have a greater understanding of both the word and the differing terms used, and changed, as status changes. For example, when I first relocated to America I was an expatriate from my birth country of Great Britain. Whilst still technically an expatriate because I live “outside my native country”, I am also now an immigrant, having decided to emigrate on a permanent basis. Following this reasoning, when I lived in Equatorial Guinea in West Africa, I was an expatriate on a short-term visa. I never had any intention of either emigrating or immigrating – both leading to a permanent residence outside said birth country.

A native-born, black, British citizen asked to relocate for work to an African country would be considered an expatriate by the corporation or NGO sponsoring such a move. He or she would only become an immigrant if the decision was made to change visa status and become a citizen of that country.

And so I come to ‘native’.

I am, again technically, a native of one country, England, that of my paternal Anglo-Norman heritage. I do though have a loyalty to Australia because it was my mother’s native land, though she was not of Aboriginal descent, and also the country in which I was educated. I swore an allegiance to the United States when I became a citizen. And before anyone shouts I should have foresworn all other fealties when I took the oath, might I just point out the proliferation of societies, and ethnic affiliations, to which many belong in these still great United States, despite many never having set foot in their ‘other’ so-called country of loyalty? But for those of us with a different birth country, or who may have lived in many countries, as I have, it is difficult to give up those slices of our heart that have been left in each place called home. We carry a little of their soil in our souls, forever.

Like any word in the English language, and maybe others, it rather depends on the context in which the word is used as to whether or not it is offensive. Neither ‘expatriate’ nor ‘native’ are derogatory words. Neither should ‘black’ or ‘white’ be considered such. 

Yet here I am, an angry white woman. Made angrier by the farrago that was the US Open Tennis Women’s Final. What double standards! What a shame, for both Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka. One a great champion, one a nascent champion. Think of John McEnroe, Nick Kyrgioss, Jimmy Connors, Ile Nastase – none of whom could be called gentlemen players on court. Did ever a chair umpire have so little respect for them? And as Ms Williams continues to be called ‘an angry black woman’, what I wonder would Ms Osaka be called, should she be the one to lose her cool in a tense match? Would a woman of Japanese Haitian ethnicity also be called an angry black woman? Why can’t we just be angry women?

My list of personal adjectives grows longer. I am an angry, English native, expatriate, immigrant woman and proud to be one! Does it matter what colour I am?