Quiet for Poc: The Power of Introverts of Colour in a World That Can’t Stop Pointing out Your Race

Oliver Luke Taylor

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Apr 26, 2019

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When I reflect on school, neighbourhood or work experiences focusing on race with another person of colour we’ll almost always share and highlight the classic statistical experience of usually being one of only a handful of other minorities out of the whole school or workplace. I spoke with a black bi-racial woman whom I met on Reddit after I posted the question ‘feel like imploding’ in the r/mixedrace subreddit. She said he ‘hs literally had 30 black people.’ Initially, I thought wow that’s a lot because I was one of four black people in my whole high school of 600 students, but of 30 you’re still a minority, still as Zora Neale Hurston wrote, ‘I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.’

These experiences are for the most part negative until eventually, we can have a sense of humour about it because the more it happens, the more ridiculous it becomes. Despite laughing though, it still leaves me feeling isolated, alone, angry, stressed, exhausted and marginalised.

As people of colour, with the rise in popularity of books about race, class and belonging it seems we’re increasingly trying to reflect on our experiences in Britain and on what it means to be (to use Afua Hirsch’s book title) ‘Brit(ish)’. I think this mass creative reflection in the form of fiction and non-fiction is allowing us to just ‘be’, it’s giving us space to vent, and it’s enabling us to develop a stronger group identity/voice.

I say reflection is helpful because William Cross a psychologist (who developed a theory for racial identity development called Nigrescence) discovered through his work on ethnic identity that, ‘racial identity has more to do with how people reflect on their experience rather than the experience per se.’ (1)

I don’t live by personality tests nor do I think my Myers Brigg personality type is my defining self and new middle name at social groups, i.e. Oliver INFJ Taylor. However, Extroversion one of the big five personality types makes sense to me. Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking was particularly insightful. Her book has been out for a few years now, but if you haven’t read it, it highlights how western culture is not designed for introverts while it heavily favours extroverts, which leads to, as Susan writes in her book, ‘a colossal waste of talent, energy and happiness.’

I mention introversion because I think it can be a helpful lens through which to understand minority ethnic alienation in white spaces. Extroverted society overlooks and undervalues introverts, and white society also overlooks and undervalues people of colour so if you’re an introverted person of colour you’re even more likely to experience being overlooked and undervalued.

This probably isn’t surprising if minority stress theory (I mention this in a previous post about working in white spaces) is a phenomenon too. I think what we describe as isolating, marginalising and alienating as an ethnic minority also interlinks with our personalities the more introverted we are.

If you’re an introvert, like me, you prefer quiet, less stimulating environments while you tend to avoid large social stimulating situations can drain the life out of us. Similarly being the only person of colour in whites spaces is often an exhausting experience, right?

Going to an overwhelmingly white social event (every event I go to) as a black introvert can lead to lower functioning due to both the disproportionate whiteness and high activity which can then cause us to withdraw quicker.

Being an introvert in social spaces is a drain, being an introverted person of colour (IPOC) in predominantly white social spaces is a double drain. To say the least. How to cope?

For me, it was seeking advice from some other supportive people of colour about. I heard that burning burn some bridges (and the toll booth and the road lol), i.e. cutting people off was commonplace and the most liberating feeling ever.

It is early days, however finding a supportive group online (Biracial Conversations and Support Group) and later disengaging from white social groups and events predominantly I used to attend has liberated me. That’s the important part, whether you do it all at once or gradually, is to find connections with other PoC.

Do you feel the need to burn some (not all) bridges with white friends and public white spaces? Perhaps, where you’ve felt exoticised or criminalised, i.e. alienated?

Putting your psychological wellbeing first makes a huge difference.

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrozyvu26Ko