Ever since elementary school, I have been saddled with a backhanded compliment of sorts. I’ve always been told I “talk white” or I “act white” or I “do white things” or even more dangerous they told me that I’m “not even that brown.” I’m also not the only one who deals with this either. Many people of color are invalidated by their white friends. They put it out to be a compliment, as if they should be proud for acting “white.” Well, I think it’s time to let you all know it’s not okay, it’s not a compliment, and it ruined my culture for me when I was young.

Many will read that and think it’s dramatic, but when you are in a world where the people of color are put down and hurt, and then constantly tell someone that they are separate from those people of color, then that person will grow to hate the fact that they are of color. They will embrace culture far away from their own to seem “more white” so maybe they won’t have to feel that pain of discrimination. People will consistently compliment them on this, and that person feels validated for not being themselves. They’ll wear a shell that isn’t their own because people will tell them that they like it more. I know this for a fact because I was victim of this.

I shouldn’t have to explain why teaching a person to hate their own skin is dangerous but I’ll do it anyway. I was made to believe that being proper was being white and anything else was inhumane and savage. I was taught that white was the pristine way to be and that I should always shoot for that. So then I always felt flawed because I was not that, as much as I tried to be. But I’d always feel better when people told me that I did things “white.” I shot for white and I tried to be white, but I was not and would never be. I was told I was being white, but somehow I wasn't getting the benefits of being white. So I never truly fit in with them. Then my family always told me I was “acting like a white boy” so I didn’t truly fit in with them either. I was perpetually stuck in this loop of not fitting in anywhere and I hated the fact that I couldn’t just fit in anywhere. I felt uncomfortable with the color of my skin, and I felt that I was not correct because I was not the white person that people kept comparing me to.

I look back on this time with disgust. I see pictures of a boy who tried his best to be something he was not, and regret every second of it. I realized that I am not white and I learned to love me, my skin, and my culture. All that time I tried so long to be white I lost time of trying to embrace and relate to the culture I learned to love. It took very long to undo the things I was programmed into thinking but I was able to overcome it. I realized that if I said something proper, it was just that: proper. I learned that if I was a little pale in the winter time then that did not stop my ass from being Hispanic. I learned that I should have never turned against my own people. People still try to slap me with this “compliment” to this day and I will never understand why, but this brown boy woke and I never fail to let them know how I feel about them seeing me as white: angry. I tell them to not ever try to take my culture away from me, I lost it already and I’ll be damned if I’m tricked into doing it again, and I encourage everyone who deals with this to do the same. Stand up and let it be known that you are not going to be stripped away from who you are by some misleading words meant to be taken nicely. You are not white. You will never be white, and that’s perfectly fine.