ABSTRACT
I was in junior high school when I first heard my mother explain that money whitens. As a Chinese-American growing up in Mississippi during the 1940s and 1950s, my mother’s social experiences were shaped by the black and white discourse on race. My mother explained that as her parents, grocery store owners, became more economically successful the whites in the town were “friendlier” to them. Most significantly, my mother recalls that there were social advantages, including attending white schools, which came with being whitened. For Chinese-Americans in the Mississippi Delta, the process of being whitened simultaneously involved being de-blackened. Although my mother recognizes that she experienced significant privileges as someone who was whitened, she has always pointed out that she and other Chinese-Americans were never viewed as being actually white. In Tuan’s (1998) language, Chinese-Americans in the Mississippi Delta achieved the status of “honorary whites.” As “honorary whites,” Chinese-Americans were always subject to the scrutiny of whites. My mother’s tenuous status as a whitened Chinese-American was driven home when her high school principal denied her the right to make the graduation speech, a right she had earned as the salutatorian of her graduating class.
