I’m a Latina. But am I a person of color?
Growing up in the suburbs of Miami as a fair-skinned Cuban-American, I was surrounded by people who generally looked just like me. Much like everyone else, I was fluent in “Spanglish,” spent most family parties sharing chisme and dancing salsa, and celebrated every Noche Buena by spending hours getting dressed to never even leave the house. My school served pan con bistec for lunch, and Celia Cruz and Willy Chirino songs on Saturday mornings let me know it was time to clean the house. In my kitchen at home, there was always a cafetera, to make coffee that is abnormally strong, and Adobo, seasoning you can put on literally everything.
Before leaving Miami for college, I had never given a thought to how I identified racially. I absentmindedly checked the “white” and “Hispanic” boxes on my college applications and moved on.
When I left home to attend Georgetown University, I was suddenly faced with an overwhelming amount of questions about who I am and my identity. Surely, I was a Latina, but was I a person of color? Is it wrong for me to unequivocally claim I’m a person of color if I have light skin and pass for white? It was strange to suddenly experience my light skin and my Latinidad as conflicting categories, even though it forced me to reflect on my privilege as a person with fair skin.
In Miami, I never felt like I wasn’t “Latina enough,” but life at Georgetown constantly left me feeling that way. Because of my name and my skin tone, most people assumed I wasn’t Latina. I felt pressure to “perform” my Latinidad. I bought my first pair of hoop earrings, wore lots of red lipstick and stopped pronouncing Spanish words or names with an American accent. Even though I love my hoop earrings and my red lipstick, I only really started to wear them to try and prove to others that I was “Latina enough.”
It has since become clear to me that the source of my conflict was the American stereotype of Latinxs and Latinx culture. Latinxs are often treated as a monolithic group in American rhetoric. We’re told Latinxs look the same, eat the same food, act the same, and speak the same language. People are always surprised to hear that Cuban food isn’t spicy. Latinxs who don’t speak Spanish often share feelings of invalidation or shame. Latinxs don’t all experience oppression in the same ways.
My light skin and my American citizenship provide me with privilege not all Latinxs have. There are black, brown, AAPI and white Latinxs. We are disabled and able-bodied, queer and straight, documented and undocumented. All of us experience privilege and oppression in different, yet often intersecting ways. As a queer light-skinned Latina, I struggled to find community in a way that was authentic because of the lack of nuance in American understandings of Latinidad. Destabilizing the dominant stereotype not only facilitates Latinx community-building, it also allows us to think more critically about the needs and experiences of different groups of Latinxs. In celebrating the diversity of Latinidad, we honor the diversity of histories, cultures and struggles of Latinx people. We are more able to provide adequate resources and support to those who need it.
Reflecting on this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month, I hope people are inspired to think more critically about Latinxs before grouping all of us under a supposedly common characteristic. In politics and advocacy, in particular, developing a more nuanced perspective of the Latinx community will undoubtedly make our work more effective and our goals more attainable. It will encourage Latinx folks to come to the table and, hopefully, increase focus and resources for the most marginalized among us.
