હું અમેરિકન છું. (I am American.)

I know the first thing so many see is my brown skin, and thus, I don’t look American. I was reminded of this last week in my neighborhood in Northern California.

A neighbor had passed away on our street and the family was holding a yard sale. With my two year old in tow, I went over to give my condolences and share with my son the idea of a yard sale. The family was busy selling their late mother’s possessions. They were also selling some beautiful birds that my son was drawn to. I began to engage my son and talk to him about the birds. He told me they were walking on a “balance beam.” One of the family members heard me speaking to my son — he turned to me and said, “Your English is very good.”

“Your English is very good.”

I looked at him dumbfounded and shocked. It took me a minute to respond, and as I often have, I wanted to make this a teaching moment. I responded, “I’d sure hope so — I was born in the Midwest and raised in California — I am as American as can be.” And I went on to befriend them — they offered to sell us their mother’s home.

This moment was enlightening for me because to so many people, I appear not American, if for no other reason than my skin color. But I am American, and proud of it, every single day. So how can we change the narrative so that I too can appear to belong to the beautiful country I call my own?

“So how can we change the narrative so that I can appear to belong to the beautiful country I call my own?”

This past week, an Article III judge, who is an American, was similarly questioned by the Republican Presidential Nominee as “a member of a club or society very strongly pro-Mexican” and thus, cannot be impartial with a presidential candidate proposing a border wall. (Would Trump feel the same about an Irish American judge?)

It is positions and comments like these that continue to push the narrative that a Mexican American is somehow less American than a Trump supporter or more pro-Mexican than he is American. It is that same narrative that unconsciously allows someone in my neighborhood to see me as not American, and makes the person comfortable enough to comment on my English language skills.

And this narrative is not carried by just a few of us. We all carry these biases — sadly, I do too. If I see someone in a sari at a theme park, I make assumptions. But these assumptions (including my own) are dangerous for us all.

We have to do better — we owe it to our children and the coming generations of Americans.