A world that expects me to identify with a spectrum of six tones and color my “like” thumb accordingly feels far from inclusive—assuming anyone cares more than I do whether it’s deemed “better” or “worse” based on inclusivity, or whether the word “inclusive” itself feels less nauseating to others than it does to me.
I catch myself forced to assign a numeric value from six options, wondering if my “type” is average enough to be distilled into a median hue. Yet mathematically, the median of six isn’t a whole number—I’d be rounded toward yellow or black, though I see myself as neither.
I note that Asians aren’t actually yellow, yet they now represent the global majority. Part of me wants to blend into their ranks, like aligning with the largest voting bloc in a democracy for belonging’s sake—while still craving distinction. But choosing yellow over pink feels grotesquely racist, since yellow aligns with Europe’s centuries-old racial stereotypes of Asians.
Should I force myself toward the pinkest shade instead? Yet I’d feel equally stereotyped if perceived as matching the “European” image imagined by non-Europeans. This catapults me into absurd calculations about my murky ancestry: a mix of Longobards, Franks, Goths, Latins, Arabs, and Etruscans, none of whose genetic promiscuity strikes me as progress toward some admirable hybrid.
I ponder why these yellow or black thumbs lack gendered traits, despite their color coding. If we distinguish skin tones, why not gender? That anyone cares whether my “like” comes from a white or Black thumb—but not a male or female one—feels simultaneously racist and sexist. Or perhaps I’m the bigot for not understanding why either distinction matters.
In this so-called peacetime (itself a fragile concept), such distinctions feel tragically incoherent. Yet even wars—femincide included, which one might grimly classify as a war by body count—have been fought by men convinced their skin tone differed microscopically from their enemy’s. This fact remains, even if unrelated to thumb-color choices.
What to do? We might reject all calls to take sides unless survival is at stake—though many would die for racial, sexual, or moral causes, especially when the risk is abstract. It’s different if you’ve truly faced desperation: only then do you grasp the luxury of being offended by thumb colors.
Rather than hyper-sensitivity to difference, we need education in coexistence—perhaps even apathy. Or exodus: surprisingly, moving to less crowded territories remains advisable.
So I’ll choose—as always—a deliberately improbable color. None of the six match me, but I prefer being unmistakably not-black, not-yellow, not-pink, yet ambiguously all three, over the arrogant certainty of being definitively “white” or “other.” At least this way, I’m undeniably on the wrong side—whichever side that is.