It is very clear I am not white. I know this because men insist on talking to me about their Asian wives, of which I don’t really want to know about. (Please stop telling me about how you love lumpia; that’s not how I want my culture to be appreciated after nearly 400 years of colonization.)
It’s also obvious that I am a journalist by trade and by profession. I considered many avenues — including being a tech reporter so I could stay in the Bay Area after college; good Lord what a mistake that would’ve been for me — before I landed on the area I wasn’t really sure about, which is baseball. Eventually, I realized I was good at it.
But being good at it wasn’t enough for baseball media. I wasn’t a quirky white girl who was bubbly enough with a generic personality. I wasn’t a white girl who failed upward. I wasn’t a white girl who figured out her way to power. After all, I’m not a girl, either. That’s not something an industry where women often valued for their image is used to.
The whiteness and proximity to whiteness is the biggest weapon I’ve seen women journalists use in media. We’re seeing it everywhere with how much Olivia Nuzzi got away with before things maybe started getting reckoned with (I don’t believe she’ll actually face all the repercussions she deserves, but she’s at least facing scrutiny).
You realize the concept of the “American Dream” is a lie when you study hard enough to get A’s and do so in English, journalism, and economics, but when your proximity to whiteness is low and you went to a tiny liberal arts women’s college where you and your friends openly disparaged white people constantly, well. That’s not exactly the vibe that corporate journalism wanted.
Journalism is a weird place. I’m sorry to keep constantly referencing Nuzzi but unfortunately she is relevant in media right now. I went to USC for grad school and if you had a semblance of critical thinking skills at Annenberg, you could tell that there was a specific genre of white girl that broadcasting attracted, where more often than not, they were also part of a sorority. (Ask me how many times a USC sorority white girl was transphobic to me!) I battled Joan Didion LARPers at my undergrad women’s college who thought they were so much better than others because they LARPed instead of trying to create their own voices. I constantly wondered why women became my enemies more, or people I had to stand up to more often than not.
It is, like everything else, a proximity to whiteness that white women will never give up. They love to use their femininity to girl boss, but will never be a willing accomplice to the cause. Rah rah womanhood is all they’ve got, and they don’t want to acknowledge that their positionality with their race still puts them ahead. It’s a shame when there is no solidarity, when that’s really the concept that means everyone wins. Looks could get you far, but look at Nuzzi, fumbling the bag for a man whose brain resembles dirt cake. Bari Weiss failed upwards to CBS. Terrible, terrible white women constantly find their way up when individualism wins out.