But first, a disclaimer!
My experiences will always be different than someone else’s experiences because of a wonderful thing called circumstances.
I grew up mostly in one small country town, and while that little country town is in America, it is obviously not all of America, for example.
Had I grown up somewhere else, perhaps my experiences would be different, but I didn’t. I grew up where I did and my experiences are what they are and I know I am not alone. That being said, please don’t comment with “not everyone” or “not everywhere” because that is not the point at all and you are in a way discrediting me and my experiences and I won’t respond kindly to that.
The purpose of this post is not to challenge each others experiences to see who had it worse or better.
There are two reasons I am writing this post.
The first reason is Donald Trump.
He has garnered a lot of hatred towards Mexicans over the last year and people responded in a big way. There’s a lot of hate in the US right now.
The thing is, when we talk about Mexicans, we are generalizing. As we do with refugees and immigrants in general. Whether positive or negative, we group them all together. “Mexican’s aren’t bad people” or “Mexican’s are bad people”, so I want to write a piece about what it’s like to be one of those people. What it’s like to be hated on the news every night, to have protests against you and your people. What it is actually like to be nationally hated.
The second reason I’m writing this post is because I now have a daughter, who through both Moi and I, is mixed race and will have to grow up as such. I want her to know that she isn’t alone. Even if her experience is much different here in Europe.
So this is my story.
First off, I don’t like to refer to myself as Mexican. See half of my family is Mexican, and the other half is white. I grew up with the white side of my family. I do not speak Spanish and I have never been to Mexico. I am not from Mexico.
However, the brown in me is Native from Mexico, Purépecha and Chiricahua Apache. I, like many other Mexicans, am choosing to identify with my native heritage as there has been an agenda to wipe us out. I don’t want to give too much of a history lesson here, but, and I say this a lot, being from Mexico doesn’t make you any specific kind of race just as being from America doesn’t make you a certain race. Mexico is a place not a race. Before a line divided Mexico and America, before settlers came to the Americas, it was one land occupied by indigenous peoples of various cultures and languages. When Donald Trump is spewing his hatred of Mexicans, he’s not talking about the Louis C.Ks (A white Mexican, AKA a Caucasian from Mexico) he’s talking about the brown ones. You know it, I know it, there’s no sense in denying it. When you here “Border” and “Mexican” and “Illegal alien”, it’s not white people that pop in your head. Those people you see are natives. Mexico was unfortunately very successful in wiping out native identity. Being native is seen as a bad thing to this day.
So I don’t call myself Mexican because I’m not personally from there, I am native. I am Purépecha and Apache and I am doing what I can to reclaim my identity.
Now the reason I hate the words Hispanic and Latino are because they further the agenda to erase the native. They are blanket words used to describe anyone from Central or South America. Any race from Central or South America is latino or Hispanic, they take away the identity of the native. So please don’t call me latino or Hispanic, if you absolutely have to call me anything, call me native. Because that is what I am.
The last thing I’ll say about that is Spanish is from Spain. Spanish people are from Spain. Spanish-Spain. Spain is a European country. It’s right next to France. Spanish people are white. White settlers from Spain came to the Americas (modern day Mexico) and completely decimated the people living there, forcing their language and religion on the indigenous people. That is why catholicism is so big in Mexico, that is also why most Mexicans speak Spanish. Now because of this, it was good to be white in Mexico. That’s why a lot of Mexicans claim Spanish ancestry when they are clearly not white.
There’s a lot of confusion in the USA about Spain. A lot of Americans think Spain is either in South America or it is a non-white county in Europe. They hear the Spanish language and see native Mexicans in their head, therefore Spain must be non-white. Which is why you can sometimes hear white people tanning boldly claim their skin barely burns because they’ve got Spanish blood.
OK moving on, this post is getting longer than intended but there’s a whole lot of misinformed people out there.
In the summer of 1989 (I’ve always wanted to write that), I was born to a Mexican father and a white mother in Portland Oregon.
My parents were never married and I lived with my mom.
I don’t have a lot of memories from living in Portland as I was very young, but we moved around a bit before eventually settling in a little town called Dallas, Oregon.
I remember very young getting compliments on my skin colour from the adults around me. My mom’s co-workers and teachers. Which was obviously nice, I liked my skin colour too.
One day I was walking with my mom in the park when a Mexican looking man jogged past us. I asked my mom “Is it true we used to hate Mexicans?”
My mom explained to me that it was true and how it was wrong. I remember looking at the jogger and saying “Well I still hate them.”
I didn’t know why, I still don’t know why I said it, but I know I felt it.
That’s a memory that has never left me.
I remember at school I was hearing a lot of jokes. Jokes towards woman, gay people, black people, Mexicans, jokes at my expense. So I think that was probably it. I think I was about 6 at the time. Jokes turned into hate and I was having preconceived thoughts about people I had never met because of the colour of their skin.
We eventually moved to that small town, Dallas.
I lived in Dallas with my mom, stepdad, and little brother. My little brother and I spent a lot of time together, but we looked very different.
It was at this point I realized I was different from other people. I continued to get compliments on my skin colour, and other kids moms wouldn’t put sunscreen on me when we’d go swimming since I was already brown, things like that. People who cut my hair noted how thick and impossible it was to deal with. They weren’t negative comments, but you start to realize you’re not like the other kids.
In school people started to ask me if my mom was my real mom. After a while you start to get annoyed and I got a little nasty when the question would come up.
Dallas, Oregon is not a diverse town at all, especially when I was a kid. 2010 census shows it at 92.6% “only white”.
I got into a lot of trouble in school, in and out of detention or suspension constantly. Known by most of the teachers and faculty as a trouble maker.
The problem was I got into so much trouble that I ended up just getting targeted for things I didn’t do regardless. The vice principal told me that I had the record for the most referrals in a single year in the history of the school, breaking the previous record holder which was his daughter. He was a cool guy actually.
The whole thing came to a point where I was in the office after I got sick in the gym. My teacher, who had just assumed I was there for being in trouble again, decided it was a good time to have a talk with me.
She kneeled down and said in a really quiet voice “You know you are labeled as a troublemaker and people will see you that way for the rest of your life.” and then she just walked away. I was so stunned I never told anyone, but it always stuck with me.
So as I got older, the racist jokes really started to fly in. From about 10-13 I sat through endless jokes. Mostly people just attached “but you’re Mexican” to the end of things. Like “I’d ask you to hand me that but you’re Mexican”. It doesn’t even really make sense, but people mostly just constantly reminded me that I “was Mexican”. AKA different.
Or accusing me of stealing because I am Mexican.
Around this time I really started to like being native/Mexican. I spent a good amount of time with my Grandpa who would take me to the Mexican flea markets. It was him who taught me about the racist words we get and what they mean.
So I was ok with being made fun of for a while, I didn’t particularly like it but it was manageable. At least I knew I had someone who had gone through it as well, my grandpa and my dad, who told me in school he was referred to as “Big Indian”.
High school is when everything really changed.
There were groups that people hung out in in middle school but it didn’t really feel separate, that separation came in high school and I had naturally gravitated to the few other Mexicans in my school. We started to hang out a lot, and that’s when the heavy racism really set in.
We’d walk around and people would call us beaners or wetbacks or bean n****** under their breath. There was a lot of confrontation, mostly just yelling insults back and forth but it would sometimes escalate to fighting. I felt completely alienated. The jokes hurt now. People were threatening me, people I didn’t even know. It wasn’t funny, I couldn’t play along like I tried to before. It was very clear, I am in this town and I am different than most people, and some people hate me for that. One time the cops came and got me because one of the students called and said that there was a short Mexican kid running around that didn’t belong. I was really short at that time, I was that short Mexican kid and they came and got me. I had to show them my school ID to prove I really belonged. They let me go and told me to watch it even though I hadn’t done anything. Another time I was walking home with my sister when a few of the racist people at my school started following us in their car, jokingly revving their engine and driving like they were preparing to run me over. They shouted racist slurs from their window, and when I stopped walking and stared at them, they stopped their car and made like they were going to get out and come after us so I told my sister to run and we booked it.
After that I started hearing rumors that people were coming after me and my friends, they were “hunting Mexicans”. I got scared, started to feel really unsafe. I didn’t tell anyone though, I don’t know why. I just felt very scared and alone. So I brought a knife to school because I didn’t want to walk home without it anymore. I was afraid of being followed home again. I had thought about burying the knife next to a rock so I could get it on my way home but then got scared they’d get me before I reached the rock. After about a week of carrying the knife I got caught and expelled from school. I didn’t tell anyone why I had the knife, I just told them I was joking around. I think I even said that I forgot I had it, just making stuff up.
I had to go to court and there I was told that they had caught, I think it was 16 other students with knifes that same day. Now I don’t know who they were, and I don’t know why they had knifes, but I do know that there was rumors that those racist students at my school were hunting Mexicans. They would pass us and whisper “we’re going to get you beaners” and things like that. It was really freaky.
I was banned from the school premises for 3 or 4 months, I can’t remember. During that time I went to live with my grandpa who was running a gym. He had a program for the youth in the area to come and learn to box for free to keep them off of the streets. I think all of the kids were Mexican which made it all seem even more inescapable. Like this is what we’re destined for, to be troubled.
I began to curse the way I looked. I asked the barbers to thin my hair, to which they noted “People usually come in here asking if we can make their hair thicker!”. I hated my skin colour because it made me stand out in a sea of white. I didn’t want people to look at me anymore, I was tired of it all. So when I was allowed to go back to school, I started to abandon myself. I didn’t want to be Mexican anymore, to be native, it was too hard. I slowly stopped hanging out with my old friends. When people would call me Mexican I would laugh and say “I’m not even Mexican.”
I never told this to my mom or to anyone. Not because I didn't think they would understand, but because I was just very lost and confused. I didn't understand how things could be the way they were and I wasn't sure if the things I felt were even real.
I eventually graduated, where I tried even harder to deny my identity. I was followed by the police a lot, drug searched, weapon searched, car searched. It got to the point that I just expected it. They’d stop me on the street constantly. Mexican people would speak Spanish to me, and I’d reply “I’m not Mexican”. I hated it, and eventually I hated them. I didn’t like seeing native people around. I hated that signs were in English and Spanish. I didn’t like to go to the flea markets with my grandpa anymore. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I turned my back on that side of myself completely. I even witnessed massive injustices. I was a landscaper at various times in my life. Some of the people I worked for would pick up Mexicans from the gas station and refuse to pay them at the end of the day because “They can’t do anything about it anyway”. I spoke English and got paid just fine. I still couldn’t escape the racism though, as one time I was working on a fence and the owner commented to me “must be weird building a fence instead of jumping a fence huh?”. I guess I was a cool self hating Mexican you can make those jokes to, even though I’d still deny being Mexican.
I really tried to live a life without hate, I hate that I hated people for no reason. Judged them by the colour of their skin as I tried to hide behind mine. I look back in absolute shame and sadness.
I then married Moi, who helped me regain who I was as a non judgmental person. I stopped judging and became a lot better with her help, even though I was nowhere near ready to accept that I wasn’t white.
Then my grandpa died and that really rocked my world. I loved my grandpa and almost all at once I realized that I had turned my back on that side of myself. I disowned it. I disowned everything he’s ever showed me about our culture. All the stories he’s told me, the racism he’s had to deal with in his life. I felt like I had let him down and it hurt. So with Moi’s help, I was able to regain my identity. It took about a year. I did a lot of research in that time, I found out as much as I could. I traced our family back and discovered the truth about the native Mexican. About us and our family.
So now here I am today, trying my hardest to embrace the thing I tried so hard to erase.
I am looking back and remembering a lot of the things my grandpa showed me and I’m so thankful that he did. I’m remembering the flea market and the gym and all the smiling faces, the wrestlers and the boxers, the characters and the people. The humans, and my friends.
I’m learning as much as I can about where we come from and about the languages and cultures of our people. I want to embrace that side of me as much as I can. I am no longer willing to let people’s racism change who I am. I don’t care if people like me, I don’t care if they hate me. I know a lot of people on my Facebook feed must be thinking that I’ve changed a lot over the past few years and maybe don’t like me as much, but I’m here to say that I am so much happier having rediscovered my identity.
I will continue to call out all the racism I see because I don’t want anyone to lose who they are from fear. I was in a position where I was able to sometimes pass as white, whereas a lot of people don’t have that privilege. Imagine if all your jokes and hatred did that to me, what can it do to someone else who isn’t able to change how they look or pass as white?
Now I look onto people like Donald Trump and his followers. It isn’t funny to hear about how he talks about Mexicans to me, it hurts. It isn’t funny to me when he says he wants to build a wall. A proper us and them. It hurts. Especially because people are listening, they’re coming out from all over and they’re loving it. They love the idea of America without me. Without natives. Without my family. I don’t laugh at stereotypes because that’s what killed a part of me, I don’t find any of it funny. People say you’ve got to learn to take a joke but you don’t have any idea just how many they’ve been taking.
Stop being assholes.
I walk around in Germany now and I see natives being used as mascots everywhere I go, I remember that it’s no different in America. I look down at the book with a sticker of a white kid wearing a headdress and remember what those headdresses meant to my ancestors, and what they still mean today and how our culture was intentionally ripped from us in an attempt to wipe us out. Wearing my culture as a costume is not honouring me or my family or my ancestors. It’s disrespectful and damaging.
I don’t want to hear you cry about how you’re not allowed to be racist anymore. I’m sick of it, because thanks to you I wasn’t allowed to be me and that’s bit more important.
As you can see at this point I’m basically stringing random points together, so I’ll wrap it up. That’s basically my story, feel free to ask any questions you have. I’m really a private person but felt I should share this in detail, so I’m not sure how much more detail I’m willing to provide regarding my own life but I’ll do my best to answer your questions.
I’m sick to death of the racism in this world and I’m not going to ever stand for it again, I implore you, no matter what colour your skin is, stand up for the injustices you see. I’m lucky all I lost was my identity.
