I grew up with two anthropology parents who both happen to be Latino/Hispanic/etc. So Identity has always been a topic in my life that has permeated every aspect of my experiences. I’ve spent the greater part of my life moving and often times being surrounded by either Salvadoran/Latinos or white intellectuals due to my parent’s ties to the universities. It’s given me many memories which cultivated the way I see myself and this can be frustrating.
As a little girl I remember wishing my parents would come to my school for the sole purpose of showing the other latino kids that I was actually latina and not making it up. I remember one girl in particular used to make fun of me until she saw my dad one day in the office dropping off my lunch that I had forgotten. After that she never teased me but ignored me…which was the better of the two options if I couldn’t ever be her friend.
And those kind of sentiments are still present even today. I feel as though I walk a fine line between being “white” and being latina in the way people interact with me. A few weeks ago I was riding my bike to longs and this latino guy sided up next to me and struck up a converstation. Questions like : are you a student?, why are you still in santa cruz (since I’m not a local), are you latina?, can you speak spanish?, and then his conclusion of who I am…you should get out of your bubble. Within the short span of meeting this person I felt like he had sized me up and I spent the rest of the day irratated because I’ve dealt with that for so long and I still don’t know how to respond.
My spanish isn’t so great and everyone seems to want to tell me that I should learn. Well thanks for that suggestion but the thing is that I forget the language being that I don’t know anyone here who speaks it. And it’s not even that I forget, I just get rusty. But everyone seems to think I’m ashamed. What I fail to understand is that I’ve known many latinos whose grammer was horrible but because they ‘looked’ more latino no one said anything. They’d correct them but it wouldn’t be a huge deal. What bothers me even more is when non-latinos precede to tell me how they know way better spanish and that I have a limited vocabulary. But now I’m going on a tangent.
The point being is that I never seem latina enough so people treat me accordingly…either I’m ashamed or trying to be white or (in the views of non-latinos) I’ve forgotten my culture. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m rather light-skinned and everyone assumes that to be latina I must be dark or at least ‘chola’ looking..that I have to listen to salsa and reggaeton. But I listen to EBM/Industrial…which for anyone who wants to know has a Mexican group called Hocico which I love…but right there again..I’m justifying an aspect of my latino connection by stating that group. ::sigh::
I suppose most people look for key cultural indicators when they meet people and I just seem so ambiguous that they take it out on me or act a bit racist or hurtful. I know logically I should brush it off and not waste my time thinking about these kinds of attitudes. But I can’t because I feel as if I’m failing to resist and thus becoming another blank face in the U.S. There’s “a bit of a crowbar” space as Eddie Izzard would say when it comes to where my identity falls.
Anyway, I suppose I should end this post because my other thoughts seem disconnected. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want a pat on the back or someone to tell me ‘you define yourself and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise’. I mean those things make me feel better but it doesn’t make it easier to deal with in the future. I’m still going to be shunned by latinos that don’t know me who think I’m white-washed and thus an outsider….or I’ll get strange looks from non-latinos who can’t figure out what I am. So this ends my post and I really hope if anyone reads this they don’t think I’m all sad. Really I’m just thinking and hope to share my experience as a human hodgepodge.
