I Ain’t White: Confessions of a Mixed-Race Xicana

Xicana, Not Mexican-American, Latina, or Hispanic

I am Xicana. If you press me, I will admit I am a mixed-race Xicana, but I am Xicana. It’s taken me forty-four years to be able to say that and unapologetically claim my identity, because for too long my identity was labeled for me by peers, family members, and teachers. My teachers saw me as another brown kid; there was no nuance or mixed-race identity acknowledged by my teachers. I was brown. My peers also saw me as a Mexican-American peer until they found out I didn’t speak Spanish. At the time, I did not understand that my monolingualism was the result of the pressure my Mexican-American grandfather felt to assimilate during a time in which it was illegal to speak Spanish in school.

I knew I had a Mexican dad and a white mom. Notice the difference in adjectives there? Mexican dad. White mom. That’s important in my story and how I claim my identity. It’s also important for the first definition I had of my identity. As a child, when I introduced myself as Mexican-American, I thought I was conveying my mixed-raceness: “Hi! I’m Tracy Castro, and I’m Mexican (brown)-American (white).” I had internalized that being white means being American, and I can directly link that to what I learned in school about influential “Americans.” All of them except Martin Luther King Jr. were white. I never learned about influential Mexican-Americans. Not once. Not even Cesar Chavez, and I grew up in Los Angeles.

When I became a teenager, I learned of the term Chicano — which I understood means a person of indigenous Mexican ancestry who is neither Mexican nor American. We are the people who were crossed by the border. Chicanos, now Xicanx, have existed in the southwestern region of North America in various forms, first as indigenous people, then as colonized Mexicans, and now as a political group of people with indigenous ancestry who reject our European roots. When people hear the word “indigenous” or Native American, they often think of the original people of what we now call the United States, but Mexico is part of North America, and America includes South America. There were people in these places before Europeans arrived. The only difference between Native American and Native Mexican is an arbitrary border placed by Europeans who stole land from the first people here. “Stole” is a generous term; lynching, torture, and genocide are more appropriate. We can also just use “colonized.”

Xicanx is a counter-narrative to the attempted genocide and colonization of our indigenous ancestors. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, a descendant of ancestors with roots in indigenous Mexico. I have never been accepted as “American” because of these facts. For example, I go back to the fact that I never learned about the influence of Mexican people and Mexican-Americans in Southern California. We learned about Spanish missions but not about indigenous Mexicans and how Mexican-Americans came to be. Xicanxs are invisible in the textbooks in California, which indicates to Mexican-American students that we are not part of the American story; we are brown — “other.” Xicanx is an identity that fits my experiences living between two worlds, both of which reject me because of my mixed-race heritage and because of geography; I am not American, because that is reserved for white people, and I am not Mexican because I was not born on the other side of the border.

For a time, I was sucked into the term Latina, but I now reject that unless we’re talking about solidarity with Central and Southern American people and Caribbean people who also identify as Latinx, because Latinx is used to refer to people from Latin America. Xicana is a very specific term that more accurately reflects the sociopolitical realities of being a Mexican-American who was born in the United States and pressured to assimilate into whiteness. Using Xicana to define myself is an act of resistance because I am reclaiming the heritage and ancestry that was stolen from me by European colonizers.

In recent news about anti-Mexican hate crimes, you will see the use of Hispanic to identify Mexican, Xicanx, and Latinx people. I hate Hispanic. My first husband was a white man, and he would introduce me to his family as Hispanic. This was before I knew what the term means (any person from a place that predominantly speaks Spanish), but even without this information, it was obvious to me that, because it sounded like the word Spain, it was an attempt to white-wash and Europeanize me. I rejected that early on in determining my identity. I am not Spanish. I am Xicana. In the current political climate that demonizes Mexican and Mexican-Americans, using Hispanic minimizes the violence against us. It is a tool to place us in closer proximity to whiteness to diminish the white supremacy that drives these hate crimes.

Not ¼ or ½: Rejecting Blood Quantum

Here’s where we can talk about blood quantum. This term has deep history in eugenics and systemic racial oppression. The “one-drop rule” was used to discriminate against any person who was known to have at least one drop of African blood, regardless of how they presented phenotypically. Most recently, the phrase “blood quantum” entered popular discussion after Elizabeth Warren claimed — and tried to prove — Native American ancestry with DNA test results. She has since apologized after many Native American people pointed out the racism in her actions and the idea of blood quantum in general. In this specific case of using blood quantum, Native Americans pointed out that, as sovereign nations, only they have the authority to say who is a member of their respective tribes and who is not. Warren, a white woman claiming membership in a sovereign tribe in which she never engaged or supported, is the epitome of white entitlement. It’s colonization all over again.

I used to say I was “half Mexican” or “one-quarter Mexican” because my dad is also mixed-race. In fact, most Mexicans are mixed-race, or mestizos. Colonization and the institution of slavery in North America means that Mexicans are a mix of indigenous American, European/Spanish, and African ancestry. Some of us have more of one or two than the other. Some of us may have no African ancestry or no indigenous ancestry. That’s why Xicanx and Latnix people, more broadly, have skin colors ranging from very pale to very dark. Rejecting blood quantum means acknowledging there is no “pure race” and claiming the identity you most closely identify with because of your life experiences. Warren didn’t experience being a Native American. I experience being Xicana.

Problematizing “Mixed Race”

I wasn’t allowed to claim my white identity because I was always perceived as not-white by teachers and peers, and I had no access to it. My mother is generically white. The story goes that she’s Dutch from her mother’s side and German from her father’s side, but that meant absolutely zero to me growing up. We didn’t know any words in German or Dutch. We didn’t eat traditional German or Dutch food. My white ancestors had relinquished their ethnic identities and traditions to benefit from whiteness.

My Mexican side, however, had stories and piñatas and tacos and tamales. My great-grandmother lived in central California on a dairy farm in the middle of almond orchards. My dad worked on a dairy farm in Santa Fe Springs when I was very young and had ties to the migrant farmworkers of our ancestors. My Mexican side had a name that I wore: Castro. My surname was mirrored in my community with my peers; I had peers with the names Castro and Chavez, my paternal great-grandmother’s name. When I looked at my Mexican-American community I saw myself, and whatever I was missing at home was there in my peers, neighbors, and school.

Mixed-race identity is hard, and it’s underrepresented in scholarly literature on race and identity. It’s especially absent from textbooks and classroom discussions. Students are often forced to check a box — literally and figuratively — that defines them. Mixed-race people are often told we should acknowledge we have privileges because of our mixed-raceness, but I reject that. We may have privilege if one of our parents is white and was present during our upbringing, but what about mixed-race people who have no white in the mix? What about mixed-race people who were raised by their single Black or brown parent? I own that I have light-skin privilege, but being mixed-race alone has not afforded me any privilege and has complicated how people perceive and react to me and how I navigate a racialized world.

Once, a white person told me I needed to accept the fact that I have white privilege because she looked at my Facebook profile picture and determined I am white-looking. One thing I have learned from living in a predominantly Mexican-American community then moving to a mostly white Seattle is that “white-passing” is largely determined by the white gaze. I was never seen as anything other than brown in my hometown, and even here in Seattle, other people of color know I’m not white, even if they consider me ambiguous. “White passing” also connotes a purposeful effort to not be seen as a person of color. For these reasons I reject the term “white passing” to describe light-skinned and/or mixed-race people.

Identity Is an Ethical Stance

I serve as the ethnic studies program manager for the school district I work in, and one of the central themes of the curriculum is identity. Doing this work has given me more reason to consider who I am and how I identify. To better understand my ancestry, I did a 23andMe DNA test. I know, I know. Many racial justice advocates poo-poo DNA tests, and for good reasons. I also know many people who have found it to be a valuable tool in understanding their heritage. For me it was a way to fill in missing puzzle pieces about my ancestors and where they came from. The results were mostly unsurprising except for the fact I have West African ancestors from Nigeria and Senegambia. I know that previously I mentioned mestizos are European, indigenous, and African, but there was never any discussion of this African ancestry in my family. It affirmed for me the anti-Blackness that permeates every psyche in our country, and it was a new piece of the puzzle in my identity as a mixed-race person. I am even more mixed than I knew!

Does this mean I will begin to claim Blackness as my identity? No. I go back to the idea that experiences shape our racial and ethnic identities more than blood quantum. I love knowing about this part of my ancestry, and I plan to learn more about Nigerian and Senegambian people and culture, but I didn’t know I had African ancestors until about two years ago. I did not grow up in a Black community or experience Black culture and mores. More importantly, I do not experience anti-Blackness and claiming Blackness because of DNA test results is anti-Blackness.

There is a woman in my district’s community who openly claims white identity and she’s a racist. When people call her a racist, though, she suddenly has an abuela, so that makes her “one-quarter Mexican,” and if anyone tries to point out the racism in her use of blood quantum, she cries reverse racism. Her actions and those of Elizabeth Warren’s perpetuate further harm and violence on communities of color who don’t have the privilege of toggling between identities when it’s convenient. I believe education and educators have a responsibility to teach people like the woman in my community about how powerful identity is and how it has been, and continues to be, used as a weapon.

While mixed-race people don’t have to justify our identities and existence to anyone, I do believe we carry the responsibility to accurately represent our communities and fight against the injustices they experience. That means not claiming those parts of our heritage we don’t experience. I did not experience Blackness, and I do not experience whiteness. I’m not Mexican and I’m not American. I am Xicana.

Tracy Castro-Gill is an award-winning educator in Seattle Public Schools who currently leads the development of a new, K-12, interdisciplinary ethnic studies program. She’s part of a group organizing in the State of Washington for a statewide ethnic studies and educational justice movement that can be followed at www.WAEthnicStudies.com. In her spare time, she’s a doctoral student and has begun to meet the needs of her lifelong wanderlust by traveling to new places!