Latte Leftie – 303

Latte Leftie embraces a new, cappuccino-coloured racial identity!

Dear LL – Are you excited as me that, thanks to the pioneering efforts of blonde Montana farm girl turned cornrow-sporting Black History professor Rachel Dolezal (now known as Nkechi Amare Diallo), transracialism is officially a thing. I’ve always felt I was born in the wrong culture. But up until now, my efforts to pass myself off as kind of Aboriginal have been restricted to peppering my speech with phrases such as “your mob”, playing my didge ostentatiously in parks and insisting on conducting a welcome to country ceremony whenever anyone drops by my house. Following in the brave footsteps of Nkechi, I’ll now be adopting the name Archie Patella Freenamatjiragoolagong, subsisting solely on Witchetty grubs and writing a book (fingers crossed Jane Campion buys the film rights!) about my mystical connection with the land, veneration of the Rainbow Serpent and the endless microaggressions I’ve experienced as an Indigenous-identifying Anglo-Australian.

Archie, Land of the Eora People

LL replies: I believe it was the insightful political philosopher Ben Folds who observed, “Y’all don’t know what it’s like, being male, middle class and white!” Certainly, it’s been no picnic attempting to yammer on endlessly about white privilege as a whitey, then have some snarky, one-upping ethnic arriviste gleefully brand you an imperialist cultural appropriator if you so much as take a yoga class, order some nachos or don a beret. Now I’m transitioning to being a telegenic Egyptian Muslim public intellectual called Abdush Shahid Ben Abbes Aly, I’ll be delighted to leave those type of triggering events behind. Given how old hat it is to declare you’re man trapped in a woman’s body, or a dugong trapped in human’s physique, it’s high time we Caucasian Inner Westies were able to be acknowledged as the Kalahari bushmen, African-American gang members, Cornish peasants and Roma artisanal breadmakers we truly know ourselves to be.