"The Tannest White Girl I Know": Life In The Passing Lane.
Because of my ambiguous skin tone, I am often taken for races other than Latin; I've been called everything from black to Korean to Hawaiian. This amuses me now, but in years past I considered it vital, a survival mechanism. My mother was obsessed with the idea that I needed to "pass" in white society by any means necessary to ensure my future social/financial/academic success. Sunscreen wasn't yet in vogue, so I spent a lot of time in long sleeves and under umbrellas in the sunshine in accordance with her wishes. So, by and large, I "passed" despite my very common Latino surname and kept my head down and ignored a lot of things I should never have stood by and accepted.
When I think back to all the racist remarks and jokes I heard and did not object to over the years, it makes me sick. Growing up as one of few minority faces in a mostly-white private school, I wanted so badly to fit in, to be like everyone else, to pass, that I never objected to jokes about the gardeners who kept the school's acres of greenery pristine, about students' own housekeepers and gardeners, about people like me. I never said anything when I heard words like wetback or beaner or spic. I began to feel like I might actually be invisible, for how could my classmates be saying such words otherwise, in full sight and earshot of me?
Once my father casually mentioned that the son of one of his acquaintances worked at my school as a janitor; for weeks afterward, I trembled when I saw janitors in the halls, for fear that one of them would address me. I felt doubly stigmatized for being poor; racism and classism were (and, I'm sure, still are) both rampant in the part of Texas where I lived. Being poor meant you were dirty, lazy, quite possibly a thief; being Mexican meant you were dirty, lazy, and most definitely a thief. And, as my folks never spent much time teaching me or my siblings about our own heritage, I never learned what there was to be proud of about where I came from--so I just bought into a lot of those stereotypes. I tried my hardest to communicate silently with the world around me: I'm not like the rest of those people. I'm different, see? I won't cause any trouble.
I still remember the day I decided I was done with that mindset. I was 17, in my first year of college, sitting with a group of girls in a dorm room; Susie, a sweet, moon-faced blonde from a rural town, was reading out loud a letter from her BFF back home. Susie's friend, she told us, was just so funny! She read to us an amusing paragraph or two, and then continued with the line, "So how are you doing out there with all the spics?"
I must have made some sign, an intake of breath, a cough, I don't remember what, but Susie looked up and our eyes locked over the letter. She stammered out an apology and I smiled and said, of course, no offense taken, then left the room and went back to my own room to cry over it a little. Ever since then, I've tried to speak up when I hear a racist remark, although I am by no means as good about it as I wish I were; there are still some people who intimidate me enough that I won't say anything.
I'm not so concerned any more with passing, although old habits die hard. I still cringe whenever I see Latinos acting the fool, still have that old thought: no, you idiot! You're ruining it for the rest of us! It saddens and angers me that my kids don't see anyone on television who looks like them (unless you count Dora the Explorer.) I want my kids to identify as Latinos; I never want them to worry about passing (they're half-white, though, so that throws a whole other set of variables into the mix.) I'm trying to show them we can be proud of who we are, that we can succeed, but there are so few examples to point to!
My roommate that first year of college said I was "the tannest white girl" she knew. I still don't know if that was an insult.
When I think back to all the racist remarks and jokes I heard and did not object to over the years, it makes me sick. Growing up as one of few minority faces in a mostly-white private school, I wanted so badly to fit in, to be like everyone else, to pass, that I never objected to jokes about the gardeners who kept the school's acres of greenery pristine, about students' own housekeepers and gardeners, about people like me. I never said anything when I heard words like wetback or beaner or spic. I began to feel like I might actually be invisible, for how could my classmates be saying such words otherwise, in full sight and earshot of me?
Once my father casually mentioned that the son of one of his acquaintances worked at my school as a janitor; for weeks afterward, I trembled when I saw janitors in the halls, for fear that one of them would address me. I felt doubly stigmatized for being poor; racism and classism were (and, I'm sure, still are) both rampant in the part of Texas where I lived. Being poor meant you were dirty, lazy, quite possibly a thief; being Mexican meant you were dirty, lazy, and most definitely a thief. And, as my folks never spent much time teaching me or my siblings about our own heritage, I never learned what there was to be proud of about where I came from--so I just bought into a lot of those stereotypes. I tried my hardest to communicate silently with the world around me: I'm not like the rest of those people. I'm different, see? I won't cause any trouble.
I still remember the day I decided I was done with that mindset. I was 17, in my first year of college, sitting with a group of girls in a dorm room; Susie, a sweet, moon-faced blonde from a rural town, was reading out loud a letter from her BFF back home. Susie's friend, she told us, was just so funny! She read to us an amusing paragraph or two, and then continued with the line, "So how are you doing out there with all the spics?"
I must have made some sign, an intake of breath, a cough, I don't remember what, but Susie looked up and our eyes locked over the letter. She stammered out an apology and I smiled and said, of course, no offense taken, then left the room and went back to my own room to cry over it a little. Ever since then, I've tried to speak up when I hear a racist remark, although I am by no means as good about it as I wish I were; there are still some people who intimidate me enough that I won't say anything.
I'm not so concerned any more with passing, although old habits die hard. I still cringe whenever I see Latinos acting the fool, still have that old thought: no, you idiot! You're ruining it for the rest of us! It saddens and angers me that my kids don't see anyone on television who looks like them (unless you count Dora the Explorer.) I want my kids to identify as Latinos; I never want them to worry about passing (they're half-white, though, so that throws a whole other set of variables into the mix.) I'm trying to show them we can be proud of who we are, that we can succeed, but there are so few examples to point to!
My roommate that first year of college said I was "the tannest white girl" she knew. I still don't know if that was an insult.