When I was in elementary school, there was a test the whole school had to take every year. On the back of the answer sheet, you had to list your name, with your surname first and given name last, write your date of birth, and bubble in one of the given answers for your race.
My mother is Mexican, and my father is White. I have my father’s very European surname, his blue eyes, his light hair and light skin. I don’t resemble my mother at all. I look entirely White at first glance.
Every year it was the same thing- I’d ask my teacher what to select for race- White, or Mexican. They’d tell me I was “just White.” They knew my parents- it was a small school. And not one teacher ever told me to say I was Mexican. I don’t remember if Mixed Race was an option. If it was, I never selected it.
The school was predominantly Asian, and the two other mixed kids I knew looked either entirely Asian, or they looked like they were mixed. Every teacher I had from kindergarten to fifth grade was white.
I have a very different perspective on race than most people I’ve seen. I still get white privilege, so I “don’t experience racism,” but my identity is constantly denied, even by people who know I’m not fully white.
I know that darker skinned people have it a lot harder than I do, and I don’t want to compare my struggles to theirs, but I do think this is a valid thing to point out as genuinely harmful. I don’t want to have to live my whole life with people actively choosing to ignore a part of my identity in order to sanitize their mental image of me for their own comfort.
