What the Hilaria Baldwin story tells us about racism and why it hurts

Like many others I’ve been someone obsessed with the Hilaria Baldwin scandal, where the wife of Alec Baldwin pretended to be from Spain. Many people have written this off as a wacky story or perhaps cancel culture gone too far as she was, as they describe it, impersonating a white European and not a person of colour.

This is an oversimplification, because she clearly takes on the subject of her race in this video on her instagram and she co-opts the role of a lighter skinned person of colour talking to her white passing child.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs5xCIRFMC4/?igshid=lmr7q8hermqn

It’s easy to laugh this off if you come at it from the point of being white, but being a lighter skinned person of colour is not something you can just pretend to be. It comes with specific challenges and she blunders through these like, well, a white person who doesn’t actually have to deal with them.

Her actions have hurt people. This has been a racist thing to do, specifically because of how she has spoken about her race.