My Roommate Is Racist, Stop Convincing Me Otherwise

by Abolish Raid Alarms

TW: body image, body shaming, eating disorder

I, ever had was about possibly buying a couch. Prior to this, we knew nothing of each other. Soon enough, our conversations were about music, cleaning and her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend. We lived together for a semester before she dropped out. I held her as she broke up with her boyfriend and I went to my most friends. I didn’t know much about her but I knew how I felt. It was instantaneous much like her assumption of my culture which more often than not was boiled down to hot yoga for white thin Instagram models.

She was a walking beacon of colonial beauty standards. She felt it her responsibility to be its foremost disciple. She, of course, was attractive in every sense of the word conventional. Her and her great ass. She was white and she was thin. She was so deeply insecure that she felt the need to analyze the girls in our year, quick with her comments about their faces or bodies. It would be accompanied by her standing in front of our G mirror calling herself fat or weighing her every meal.

It wasn’t even her alarm that sounded like a raid in Nazi Germany or her refusal to change it after I told her how anxiety-inducing it is or her complete lack of understanding of my boundaries, it was the insistence that she could not possibly be racist. She so often boldly handed me the task of explaining the very nuances of colonialism and how she could be simultaneously white and not guilty. If I were to protest this she’d level with me that I didn’t know much about her culture either almost as if to say we were equally at fault and in the same breath, she’d say, “Isn’t namaste thank you in yoga language?”

That was what it was, completely and for ADHD meds during exam season or spewing ableist shit in a Voltaire classroom. I didn’t know what to do but I realized how I’d never want to be perceived by her and to be afwas the most terrifying feeling of all. Everything I hated about myself would be somehow correct because I wasn’t white or looked anything like the girls she thought were beautiful. I don’t think I ever felt quite as disgusted with my appearance as that October standing in front of Wall one crying.

So stop telling me she was just unaware, or that she didn’t have the right upbringing, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been shut down with this bullshit. Stop fucking handing people of color the fucking responsibility to be the sole source of information and change. Stop with your fucking crocodile tears. I cannot deal with another white person asking me about what they should order when they go to an Indian restaurant. Don’try every day or about the bullshit you’ve heard about people drinking cow piss. Look it up on the fucking internet. I am so emotionally burnt out from dealing with white guilt.

Do the work, god knows I have been asked to.

As always, things arrive sooner than expected. We have reached our last edition of the year, campus will be empty in a couple of weeks, and you will all be traveling to various points across the globe. Some of you will be returning here, and some of you will not.

A few months ago, when back in Italy with my family, I mentioned something about when I would “go back home” to UCU. My mother’s eyes widened, almost comically. “But your home is here!” she said, “With us!” I laughed and agreed with her. Family will always be my home. But does that mean you can only have one? These years have changed me. I have been tossed into an arena of strangers and have emerged with the closest of friends. I have learned that I can have many homes, and my hope for you all, is that you will too. May you jump through hoops, turn the corners and turn the pages in this long mess of growing up, take some steps with ease, and others with challenges. And at every fork in the road or every moment you can simply sit still and serene, may you be surrounded by people who love you.

To the second years: things tend to work themselves out. You face the strangeness of being in the middle, not the babies anymore but unsure whether you are ready for what’s to come. No one ever is, but trust me, you’ll get through it anyway.

To the third years who, like me, are turning that next corner, turning that next page: good luck.

To the Boomerang board: Nina, Monse, Noor, Avantika, Mats, Jana, thank you for all you have done and I hope wherever you go, you will continue to spread your incredible talents. You are the reason I love doing this. I’ll miss you.

We leave the Boomerang in Avantika’s excellent hands, and I want to give my warmest welcome to Isa, Pablo, Kitty, and Ida, who I know will do a fantastic job next year of continuing our work.

Now enough of me being a sappy graduate. Have fun this summer, Lord knows you deserve it.

Giulia Martinez-Brenner Editor-in-Chief