Choosing Sides
My mom is a Mexican Immigrant. My dad is a fervent Trump supporter. Fervent. Imagine all the normal drama and awkwardness of a Thanksgiving get together and then imagine that happening when one side of the kitchen is full of brown people speaking rapid fire Spanish and the other consists of bible belt Republicans. Let’s just say it takes a lot of alcohol to make it work and our city’s police probably tell stories in the office about household.
Because of this bad sitcom life, one of the things that really resonated with me while reading Erasure was Monk’s inability to relate to either side of the color spectrum (as he doesn’t believe in race). It’s the feeling of “not being white or <insert color/race> enough”, and as a white passing person, it’s something I’ve struggled with all my life. First there’s the guilt that my much darker and more recognizably Mexican brothers (my two younger brothers, the brother from above is older and no longer lives with us) and mother have gone through much more in their personal and professional lives encountering racism or ignorance than I have. Things I can choose not to go through. Then, there’s the bisected friend groups. Who do I want to hang out with today? Invite over my white friends for dinner and be the token ethnic person who can make them real Mexican food and make them feel woke just by being friends with me? Or my Mexican friends and cousins who make fun of my Spanish for sounding stilted (because I was forbidden to speak it around my dad and therefore avoid speaking it at all) and distinguish themselves as “real” Mexicans.
I know what you’re thinking: get new friends. But it’s not as blatant as my summary makes it seem. In fact, I don’t even think they realize that they’re doing it, and each little incident is so minor, to call it out in the moment might seem reactionary and overly sensitive on my part. However it’s the constant build up over the years of small comments, expressions, and actions that lead to these feelings. I guess that’s what you’d call microaggressions.
Okay Linda, common biracial sob story, but what does it have to do with the class as a whole? Well aside from the issues of representation and identity present in Erasure… What I’m frequently bringing up here is the idea that I am whitewashed, which presents to us issues discussed in our racecraft reading. Race based division is so baked into our culture through insistent implementation of it that I feel the need to pick a race or call myself biracial, which in and of itself relies on the acceptance of the idea that races are well defined. The social pressure to categorize oneself (What are you? A person? Okay but what kind? Where are you really from?) as well as the institutionalization of this categorization (check one boxes on government forms requiring you to disclose your race or ethnicity) is an example of racecraft in action. My distress as a result of being able to racially categorize myself, to the point of feeling the need to write about it here is an example of how we (yes I’m part of the problem) perpetuate the idea of the importance of race as a fact and label even though race is something we created.
Then of course there’s the fact that “Mexican” isn’t a race, it’s a nationality, and the more accurate term for what I’m describing would probably be Latina — again not a race but an ethnicity. Technically Mexicans, Latina/o’s, Hispanic people, etc. can be any race, and their label just depends on their geographic roots. But these are terms that have become increasingly racialized, especially in the Trump era. Consider his supporters’ infuriating dehumanization of anyone south of the border as not just a different race, a different species, treated as not even human while their children are locked in cages. We’ve crafted race into nationality. As someone frequently forced to sit through Fox news cycles in my dad’s household during the 2016 election, they never complained about white immigrants, or most immigrants from European countries. The white rapper Iggy Azalea’s still here. She entered the country illegally (from Australia), and only got a visa later. Alternatively black rapper 21 Savage was recently arrested by ICE for having overstayed his Visa despite entering legally (from England).
In addition to racecraft, there’s the neoliberalist angle. Neoliberalism has caused people to be able to define their worth by their personal brand, cultural capital, and definition of identity. The problem is I don’t feel like I belong to a mainstream group or identity, I can’t sell my brand based on my culture or color to either side, white or brown. So do I have any worth as a person in this society? Do my words on the whole mean less without a solid brand to back them up?
Logically I suppose the answer is no because everyone has worth and we’re all special and yada yada. But emotionally and on a day to day basis, I feel obligated to simply present a single way and eliminate any other identity, and I almost always choose white. Maybe it’s internalized racism from years of being half raised by a racist dad, maybe it’s because it’s easier than doing the emotional labor of accepting both sides of myself, or maybe it’s because I’m a coward who doesn’t want to give up privilege. I also just in general feel like an impostor telling people I’m Mexican since unlike my mom and brothers, I’m pretty white passing and I admit to my whitewashing. When I was young my dad raised me while my mom worked to support us. When my brothers were eventually born my mom finally had enough of my dad’s asshatery, stayed home, and raised them more steeped in… my? Her? Their? Our culture.
But it’s not all negativity. I get to celebrate Halloween and Día de Muertos, eat Pozole and Turkey on thanksgiving. If I can get over my personal hangups one day I might be able to join the community of other mixed kids that wear their duality with pride. I also get comfort from other communities (not to say that they are more or less “good” or “important” of course, every community has their ups and downs). I bond with my brothers over our love of movies and video games, I meet up with my D&D party and our campaign lets us all be someone else for a while, various fandoms allow me to connect with people on a level so much easier for me to reach. So maybe I can’t say whether I’m white or Mexican or both or neither, and I never know what race/ethnicity box to fill out on forms that say choose one. But friends and family can come from many other places. Cultural capital can be gained from communities one enters by choice as well. It doesn’t solve the problem that people do that whole “too white to be Mexican, too Mexican to be white” thing, or that this is even a thing at all. But it’s still a comfort, and it really helps.
