A few weeks ago, I attended my friend's wedding. I had the honour of being a groomsman, even though I didn't know her that well. Both the bride and groom are Ivoirians so most of the attendees were francophone Africans. While I was hanging out with 2 other groomsmen (one on each side of me) waiting for the wedding to start, the following dialogue occurred between them:

GM 1 (white, 30-something): Isn't this great? It's such a cultural experience.
GM 2 (African kid): I get to live like this every day.
GM 1: Well, now you get to hang out with us white guys.
GM 2: And every time I die a little...

He was clearly referring to himself and me as white, since everyone else standing around us was African. Then after the ceremony, we had the reception in the church gym. Some guy came up to the head table (where the wedding party was seated) and took a picture of the whole table.

Photographer: Say cheese! (The white groomsman that sat beside me--not GM 1--and I turn towards the camera and look while everyone else continued their meal.)
GM 3: (Turns toward me.) Heh, only the white guys looked at the camera.
Me: Uh... yeah...

Sure, both of these groomsmen had noticed that I wasn't black, but their powers of distinguishing between people failed to produce more resolution than a black/white dichotomy. And with that, I was summarily determined to be white.

I have tried to quantify my whiteness before. Genetically, I'm not; culturally, perhaps there is a part of me that might accept that designation. But as to how white--and when I'd be willing to admit it--I've never had much success in determining. And with the inability to do so, I always conclude that I'm just me--perhaps influenced by my cultural heritage but not defined by it. The reason why I do things might coincide with the reasoning of others regardless of their cultural heritage profile. And my set of values and social expectations is a composite of the mores and norms extracted from cultures to which I've been exposed: Chinese-Canadian, Hong Kong Chinese, and Midwestern American. Race doesn't really enter into the equation.

Maybe the white groomsmen understood and acknowledged this. Maybe from their perspectives, given that they didn't know me that well, I was indistinguishable from the white archetype. And consequently, they were justified in calling me white, or in other words, like themselves. I'll never really know. But it feels rather uncomfortable to boil down and reduce my identity to the solitary description "white".

Race is such a funny thing. It's sad that we overlook the richness of personal diversity by attributing differences that lie between us to labels that are such poor descriptors--even of skin colour--and let this division along artificial lines overwhelm the commonalities we may share.