If you have parents of different racial backgrounds, then you are probably used to questions such as "Where are you from?" to the more irritating "Were you adopted?" to the even more offensive "What are you?" Besides being annoying and always having to explain your situation, it eventually starts to weigh on you. You start to think you yourself are different. When people ask you the "what" to your racial background, that's simply a less bad way of saying "Oh you're so exotic!" Oh great, now your nothing more than a colorful creature in a land of ethnically white European people.
What also hurts too is when other people or color or multi-racial people disregard your own unique experience. If you tell other Hispanic people you are Hispanic but know little Spanish, you are suddenly seen as less Hispanic. You almost become completely white in their eyes. "Wait, you're Hispanic but you don't speak Spanish?"
Nope! Sorry mi amigos, but I grew up in an all white family in a predominately white neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay area. So no, I did not grow up speaking Spanish. My entire family spoke only English- the only Spanish they knew was the first 10 numbers of the numerical values, "hello," and "goodbye." But who in California doesn't know how to say those in Spanish right? Growing up in a white family also means the loss of your Hispanic/Latino heritage. My mother had a half-black half-Puerto Rican boyfriend in her late teens. This relationship resulted in me and he is not in the picture. Without the presence of my Puerto Rican biological father, I grew up without the knowledge of what it meant to be Puerto Rican. All I knew about being Puerto Rican meant having a slighter darker complexion than other white Americans. And being asked the previous questions about being adopted or my perceived immigrant status, I began disliking my skin color, wishing I was lighter skinned like my mother.
But my mother helped me stop thinking this internalized racism. She told me one day, "Honey, your skin is beautiful. You're skin color is not bad. *I* want your skin color." That last comment also introduced me to the idea of race in America: people of color are pressured to have lighter skin, but then there's a large amount of white people wanting to get tan. My mother said that to me when I was 8 years old. I am now 24. I'm able to speak Spanish now, thanks to Spanish classes from high school. I hope American culture comes to a place where everyone is not divided into categories. A dark complexion doesn't make someone any less American than the white founding fathers. Even though I consider myself to be a proud Puerto Rican, I feel disconnected from the larger Puerto Rican American community. Having never been to the island, I only know about the beauty of the culture, the island, and the people from extensive Google searches and Wikipedia articles. I did not grow up having that immigrant-American experience nor did I know the history of Puerto Ricans in the US and their contributions. If I knew then what I know now, could I have turned out differently? Could I have learned Spanish at a larger age and become more progressively efficient then I am now? Who knows. But I do know this- my plane ticket to Puerto Rico finished printing.
