Norwegian Girl Disappointed to Discover She’s ‘So White’

“White” has become an “all-purpose insult.” If something is too white, there’s something wrong.

Cornelia Grismo is a young Norwegian woman with about 202,000 subscribers on YouTube. She is a vegan and mostly talks about travel, fitness, and health. Recently, she posted a video called “How NORWEIGIAN Am I Really? DNA Test Results.” She begins by explaining that her relatives researched her family tree, and she is supposedly descended from royalty.

At 5:25, she reads the results, showing she’s mostly from Scandinavia, along with some Irish, Scottish, and Welsh blood. “I’m so white,” she says laughing, and rolling her eyes. “I couldn’t have been more white. No! I had hoped for Asian, African.” “I couldn’t have been more boring than that,” she adds.

Comments were overwhelmingly negative. Her fans were disgusted that she seemed ashamed to be white. There were about 8,600 dislikes compared to about 1,100 likes.

Miss Grimsmo, visibly shaken, responded on April 20 by “addressing the situation.” On the brink of tears, she said she had been receiving threats. She said she had just been was “trying to be funny” and hoped her DNA would show a “cool surprise.”

So it would be cool to discover that her ancestors miscegenated? Somehow, this doesn’t work for Hispanics or blacks. It’s not a “cool surprise” to discover they are whiter than they thought. It’s potentially career threatening.

Consider Jessica Alba. In 2007, the actress said “I’m American,” adding that she didn’t speak Spanish and claimed she “never felt connected to one particular race or heritage.” She took a lot of criticism for this, and by the next year, she had changed her mind. “I know I feel close to the Latin community, because that’s what I grew up with,” she said. She also said she wanted “my baby to be brown” and just had to “believe the dark gene is going to survive.”

In 2009, she appeared on George Lopez’s show with DNA results. After the comedian and his audience snickered about whites, Miss Alba predicted she would “probably be more native American.” Instead, she turned out be “87 percent European.” The audience gasped and hissed and Miss Alba looked crushed. After some more anti-white jokes, she tried to defend herself by asking if Spain “counted” as white. In 2010, she was one of the stars of Machete, which features Mexican illegals slaughtering vigilantes. Jessica Alba’s character was a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who betrays law enforcement to support her co-ethnic, the eponymous outlaw.

The popularity of DNA tests and public “reveals” shows that genetic heritage is important if it’s politically useful. When a “white supremacist” named Paul Craig Cobb supposedly found out he was 14 percent black, journalists celebrated his “black” identity. It was different for Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had claimed to be an American Indian for most of her career. A DNA test found very little Indian blood. Senator Warren apologized, and the New York Times reported that the DNA test “has also troubled advocates of racial equality and justice, who say her attempt to document ethnicity with a DNA test gave validity to the idea that race is determined by blood – a bedrock principle for white supremacists and others who believe in racial hierarchies.”

It’s also a “bedrock principle” for the federal government, which requires a “Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood” which shows your “blood quantum and tribal affiliation.” A DNA test you can order isn’t enough; each tribe has its own requirements, so you can’t simply “identify” as an American Indian and get the benefits of the American caste system.

America is reportedly built on “white privilege,” but many whites (most notoriously, Rachel Dolezal) don’t want to be considered white because they won’t get the legal, financial, and even social benefits non-whites do. Many Arabs, Israelis, and others currently considered “white” by the Census Bureau want an “Americans of Middle Eastern and North Africa descent (MENA)” category so they can get their own privileges.

To take another example, one Ralph Taylor used a DNA test that found he was four percent black to claim he was an African-American and thus eligible for a Minority Business Certificate so he could have access to billions in government contracts. Suddenly, as with with Rachel Dolezal, race became a biological reality instead of a social construct for blacks who don’t want whites horning in on affirmative action.

People change their minds about the white privilege. In 1996, near the beginning of her career, Charlize Theron said she left South Africa because “there was no future for a white South African.” In 2018, she was claiming her South African background was a benefit that made her “hyperaware of equality and human rights.” In 1996, she said “I just ran” from South Africa. In 2019, she claimed “I benefited” because she was white. Now with adopted black children, Miss Theron is “shockingly single” in her words, and says “somebody just needs to grow a pair and step up,” presumably to help the aging actress take care of those adopted black children.

Miss Grimsmo seems like a normal, nice person who is unaware of all the ridiculous racial double-standards and complicated politics. She stumbled into this controversy. She probably did get hostile email. Of course, if she had expressed pride in being white, she may have been banned and lost all the work that went into building her channel.

In her follow-up video, she said this: “I’m very happy with who I am. I was not disappointed in the fact that I’m white, I’m well aware that I’m white, I’ve been white my entire life, no surprise there, very happy about that.” “I would be very happy if I was something else as well,” she added, “I think everyone should be happy as they are.”

Self-hatred is poison. However, will Miss Grimsmo now take heat because she said she is “very happy” to be white? She may have stepped into controversy again and could be pressured to “address the situation” even more.

Miss Grimsmo’s travails show why whites are hesitant, even terrified, to talk about race. They don’t want to be associated with the “far-right” or get clobbered by a media frenzy. I agree with her when she says we live in a “crazy world.” The contradictions, absurdities, and abuse we are expected to take can drive people nuts or to despair. All I can say is the reason I do what I do is because we shouldn’t be forced to live this way. Another world is possible, and we’re entitled to it.