I started thinking about my upbringing when I heard Trump was debating whether to remove the Dreamer’s Act or not (which if you don’t know about, is a policy that allows children from other countries who came here when they were young the right to become citizens)
There was a period of time in my life, where I felt ashamed of my own mother. She didn’t do anything embarrassing, just her being there. Her skin, her accent, her words. I really hated it. Dropping me off at school I always told her to just do it quickly so no one could see her, I dreaded having her be seen by my classmates.
It’s because I thought she was dirty, unsophisticated, like I was dragging around an embarrassment. I didn’t want to associate myself with my Hispanic heritage at all, I straightened my hair everyday and felt proud of having pale skin. I didn’t like being called ‘Latina’ and I often lied about my parent’s ethnicity. I hated everything about the culture and the food my mother made for me so I could EAT and not pass out from hunger everyday, I threw it away because I felt so ashamed to be seen eating a goddamn taco.
One day when I came home from school, I found my mom was looking through a photo album with pictures of her family. I didn’t know a single person in there other than my grandma, who had passed away a few years before. I asked her who were they, she told me their names and started sharing memories of them. I didn’t know she had a cousin in Salvador who brought her water everyday for her and her siblings, I didn’t know she won beauty pageants in her village when she was around my age at the time, I didn’t know she was a real, breathing person with family and a life before me because I never asked.
But, where were they? Where did they go?
They didn’t go anywhere, they stayed right there in that village far away in Central America, my mother was the only one who left. She left her home country 17 years ago, leaving her family and friends behind, she left her OWN mother back there, in order to raise her family. This woman had a five year old boy clinging to her knee and expecting another child at the time, no husband in sight. Not one lick of English and only enough money to get by. A single mother in a new and big country where every single person despises her existence because of where she came from and what color she is.
She spent years working as a maid and taking minimum wage jobs in grocery stores, learning English and helping her now three children grow and learn. You know those 'jokes’ on TV where Latino men and women are portrayed as mowing lawns or cleaning houses? It’s real. It’s very real. I felt so embarrassed that my step dad and mother fit those stereotypes so perfectly, I didn’t even realize they were earning money so I could EAT. They’re not jokes, have you ever realized that those jobs don’t require having citizenship? That’s why so many immigrants take them, they’re just trying to earn money to help their families and then you have shit like the cleaning lady from Family Guy as a thing, it’s not funny. It makes me so upset to see people think it’s amusing. I bet half the people who think it’s a joke don’t know that these jobs are extremely abusive, they can be blackmailed by their bosses and are threatened to work for free or else they’ll expose them to police. It’s cruel. I don’t care if you think it’s 'lawful’ or 'just how it works’ it’s terrible and no one should ever be threatened like that, and have their entire life be ruined because someone wants to be racist.
My mother luckily had papers, she was a citizen. A lot of people aren’t so fortunate. Do not ever joke about exposing undocumented immigrants.
I felt so bad when she told me she left everything behind, she was taking a risk in coming here because she didn’t even KNOW if she would succeed. She seriously thought at one point that she would have to sell her body in order to support my brothers and I, I am so glad that didn’t happen, but it could have very well been a reality. She was recovering from grief and stressed in a new place, her brother had killed himself and her mother died from a heart attack afterwards. It was a fucked up time. I am so inspired when I hear she’s dealt with so much hatred from a nation that thinks bringing people down by their color of their skin is 'patriotic’ and all the obstacles of her life that I was never even aware about. She wanted the BEST for me, to grow up in a place where I could learn and go to school and one day SUCCEED and be HAPPY with a career and life. Her sacrifices mean so much to me.
It suddenly hit me that what I was doing was WRONG. I shouldn’t be hiding who I was, I felt truly disgusted when I found out what I had done to my family by basically disowning them for the sake of feeling 'American.’ I NEVER want to feel like that ever again, I pushed away my own mother and made her feel like her own daughter, that she sacrificed everything for, was ashamed of her. I don’t think anyone understands how heartbreaking and terrible that is, that I felt the need to completely erase everything about me to fit a standard. I was so ungrateful for everything she’s done for me, I’m never doing that again.
The children of immigrants have been shamed for years, they’re taught to hate their parents and where they came from. No one ever tells them that it’s OKAY to be yourself, that who they are is ALRIGHT. That family is important and no one should ever feel disgusting because of their heritage. There are five year olds I know who think speaking Spanish in front of their peers is 'gross’ and don’t even know WHY they feel it’s bad and don’t understand what they’re doing. Stop brainwashing our kids. It took me so long to understand that I didn’t need to pretend to be white.
What’s really sad is that I found my sister, who was 7 at the time, crying after coming home from school because another girl called her 'little indian’ because of her long black hair and dark skin. It took me a long time to tell her that there was nothing wrong with the way she looked, I had to convince a CHILD that she was beautiful just the way she was. I had to hold my sobbing little sister and tell her that it was okay to exist. It was the most heartbreaking thing to see someone who isn’t even 10 believe they’re ugly because of the way they were born.
When I say I want protagonists in movies, children’s toys, celebrities that aren’t white, it’s not because I’m 'racist.’ It’s because they’re teaching kids, taught ME, that they can never aspire to be anything and hate themselves.
So yeah, I’m gonna get upset seeing Netflix and other medias full of white actors because I’m apparently 'salty’ and not because I want equality for every single kid out there who thinks white is default, white is good, white is normal.
Stop teaching us we’re wrong, we’re important and strong and always will be. I live to see the day where everyone thinks every color is perfect and beautiful and don’t shame people for it.
