Hi! I'm Maltese and I'm also white. Since Pete Buttigieg's recent tweet about his father's "unique brown skin," there's been a whole lot of interest in how we talk about Malta.

I want to share a few things because a lot of people don't seem to understand what Malta is... at all.

(1) MALTA IS NOT ITALY.

Malta is an island nation that has been colonized over, and over, and over again. Which means, yes, there is Arab ancestry for most Maltese folks. Our language is a semitic language. That STILL doesn't make Maltese folks people of color.

Maltese people... are Maltese. The history there is unique and complex because of how many times it's been occupied. So it's untrue to say that Maltese people are "basically Italian" and it's also untrue to assume that Maltese folks are people of color because of ancestry.

Malta, as it is now, is a heavily Catholicized country that is part of the European Union. Culturally, it's like most islands though, in that it still maintains a lot of different elements from the many colonizers that overtook it.

(2) XENOPHOBIA =/= RACISM IN EVERY INSTANCE.

So there are plenty of Maltese folks who move to the United States who do experience some "get outta here" bullshit, especially because our language often resembles Arabic.

But that's not racism.

Nor is it racism when a white person who is "ethnically ambiguous" experiences something racially charged because they've been misidentified.

I'll give you an example.

My brother is misidentified constantly. But when he gets pulled aside at the airport? He finds it funny. When someone suggests he isn't white? It's not threatening to him.

Because he does not have an ancestral history of racist violence and trauma.

There are Maltese folks who, yes, are very "ethnically ambiguous." But are they connected to a history of racist violence? Do they experience systemic oppression as part of that legacy? Are they connected to a collective trauma that shaped their identities?

Most aren't.

Which is why, (3) RACE ISN'T ABOUT YOUR DNA TEST.

If I took a DNA test, you absolutely would find some very trace connection to the Middle East and North Africa because of how many times Malta has been colonized and how people have moved around.

But I'm still white.

I'm still white because I don't experience systemic oppression on the basis of race. I benefit from white supremacy. I do not have a connection to historical, inherited trauma due to racist violence.

Would it be fair for Pete to say he's observed xenophobia? Absolutely. Is being Maltese in the US a bit complicated because of colonization? Sure.

But to talk about someone with ""olive"" skin as though color is a specific source of pain? That's appropriative.

Another example, because I think it helps. Content note for islamophobia/racism.

I once told someone that I was Maltese, and she replied, "Oh, Maltese! That's so funny. Maltese people look Italian but they talk like terrorists."

Was that a racist statement? YES. It's suggesting that semitic languages are spoken by terrorists. The implication here is that folks with some proximity to the Middle East are terrorists. It's super fucked.

But was that a racist statement against ME, specifically? No.

It's not because I don't move through the world carrying the full implications of that statement. Even though someone is saying something terrible about the language I grew up hearing, I don't actually have a connection to the historical pain and violent context it's situated in.

When white folks are misidentified / experience some kind of microaggression because of racism, that doesn't change their whiteness. A cis person who is mistaken for trans is not experiencing transphobia when they're asked to leave the bathroom, even if it's wildly uncomfortable.

For lack of a better phrase... being a victim of "friendly fire" does not mean you were the target. And when we're talking about structural oppression, we're specifically talking about who is targeted, not who is occasionally caught in the net by mistake.

Whiteness has been an amorphous thing. The goal posts have changed historically, so yes, it can be complex.

But when we're talking about someone like me or someone like Pete, I would HOPE it would be abundantly obvious that we have white privilege no matter what a DNA test says.

Pete can have complex feels about xenophobia and colonization. He can struggle with relating to a culture that has been muddled over the centuries because of repeated occupation. He can struggle to navigate those liminal spaces.

And? He's still white.

He's still white, and I'm still white, because as we navigate those spaces, we don't have to do so fearfully. We can do so with curiosity and with the knowledge that to explore those parts of ourselves, we are not also carrying the burden of systemic violence.

So no, Malta isn't Italy. It's not an island of Italy. It is distinct, and erasure of that fact is a product of colonization. Maltese people are Maltese.

But no, being Maltese doesn't make you a person of color. It doesn't mean you've experienced racism.

And while I've got you here, did you know that Malta has some of the oldest ancient ruins in the ENTIRE WORLD? Like older than Stonehenge? We go way back.

So just because you haven't heard of Malta until today, it doesn't mean we haven't been around, okay?

The more you know.

tl;dr Malta is a COUNTRY. Some folks living in Malta will be white and some won't. Which is true of... every single country ever.

Being Maltese is just that: being Maltese. And appropriating ancestry to imply an experience you don't have is... well, pretty damn white.