"...so this is my contribution to the conversation. The cause of racism in white feminists is their bizarre oppression (and suppression). This, I contend, is what lies beneath the surface. This pathological condition is what they have to admit and deal with, and what we should start to consider and act on. Too often we discuss their economic freedom while ignoring other aspects of life. We sometimes dwell at length on their color, forgetting that they are mutated as a result."

Doris Davenport
"The Pathology of Racism: A Conversation with Third World Wimmin."
This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.
89. 

In responding to this text I am challenged. My emotional reaction ( to be wounded at a representation of myself as damaged, distorted, and possibly ruined beyond recall) contends with my desire to respond to this statement's potential power. What does it do to my representation of myself as a being, (wife, friend, colleague, woman, feminist) if I start by examining the nature of my transformation into a white woman?  In what new ways does this allow me to speak? If this transformation is brought about by all the events in my life, then are my interracial experiences absorbed by the pathology, the disease of my whiteness, or are these relationships mutations of another, more positive kind?

How is this text, in which I discuss the nature of movement and change, altered if the movement is considered in the light of a pathological mutation? I am held responsible for my own construction of whiteness but I am also challenged to examine (perhaps re-frame) my race in ways that are less "pathological." I am unsure of how to do this.

On the one hand it may be naive to tell my little stories and ask others to read and care about my experiences. It is certainly naive to think that I can say anything definitive about being "white" or "female" or any of the other ways of being I experience and perform.

On the other hand perhaps it is necessary to pull out these stories and examine the complexity of experience which results in my pathology...my whiteness. Like Doris Davenport I can only see this as a beginning.