My Journey with Learned Racism
Because Of My Skin, I’ll Never Be Like You.
I would like to think that I’m like you. I would like to believe that I have lived some of the same or similar experiences as you, received some of the same education, attended some of the same summer camps, and participated in some of the same activities, as you did. But time and time again, I’m reminded that because of my skin, I’ll never actually be like you.
For the past two weeks, I have sat on this article about my experience with racial hate. I have written it and rewritten it. I have reworded phrases, paragraphs, and whole pages. Yet, it still didn’t seem like something I was ready to share.
But I’m reminded that Brown voices are just as valid as any other voice, and it might do some good to remind people that racism comes in more than only one form.
I would like to point out that many Brown voices are often referred to as “illegal.” Still, it doesn’t matter if you come to this country legally, have obtained a green card, are a naturalized U.S. Citizen, or were adopted — the hatred and the generalizations still come.
In my particular case, I’m here legally. Adopted back in the ’90s and naturalized as a U.S. Citizen by the time I was two years old. But that hasn’t given me a shield to hide behind — nor does it bring any sort of protection when it comes to racist folk.
They don’t care.
All they see is the color.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve had a White upbringing, that I received a White education, or had White experiences. If you see color in a negative way, you have been taught to see color negatively, and you will view it as such.
Because of this, I’m reminded how no matter what I do, I’ll never be seen like you.
Not every person with brown skin is “Mexican.”
One of the comments I get a lot is the sweeping generalization that I am somehow “Mexican.” I have been called “Mexican” more times than I have body parts for. I’m not Mexican. (Not every brown person is, either.) I’m South American. Ironically, according to my DNA test, I’m actually 43% European, but you’d never guess that.
Because to you, I’m not White.
I’ve been told that I look exotic. That I look Indian. That I look Brazilian. That I look Polynesian or even Hawaiian. If I have ever fit into a particular skin-fantasy in a person’s mind, I’ve been told that I look like that nationality. People can get genuinely frustrated when they can’t figure out which category or “label” I must belong to.
To me, that doesn’t matter. I know who I am, so I have come to shrug it off. It’s nothing new. It’s probably something you’ve subconsciously wondered about when you’ve viewed a person who is not like you.
It’s not that you do it intentionally.
It’s just something you do because somewhere along the way, you were taught to generalize and compartmentalize everyone you see.
The first time I remember racism…
My experience with learned racism started when I was very young. I was six or seven when my mother had to reassure me that I wasn’t “dirty.” Those words came about my skin when I started a new school. I was one of three or four persons of color in a class of twenty-some, and I was made aware that I was different.
I don’t think it occurred to me to view myself as different until that point, because kids aren’t really wired to think about skin tone.
That an adult thing — a learned behavior.
I just thought I was like everyone else. I laughed at the same jokes, read the same books, liked the same T.V. shows, and had many of the same toys. I was just a regular kid. Or so I thought.
But that day, in school, I was asked why I was “dirty.” Why my skin “wasn’t like the others,” and for the first time, I felt out of place.
Why was my skin darker, particularly in the summer?
Why were my eyebrows thicker than everyone else’s?
I became acutely aware that I just somehow didn’t fit in, not with the other kids in my class and not with my own White family.
It was around that time I started questioning my adoption.
I knew I had been adopted. I was told that from an early age so that a mean bully-child wouldn’t get to dump the news upon me first. I knew that meant that I had come from another country. That I wasn’t from America. But I didn’t realize that it meant that I was ethnically different.
My mother had to sit down with me and explain that where I came from, children had Brown skin. That that skin wasn’t dirty, it was just different. I wasn’t going to look like my parents because I wasn’t biologically theirs. Though it didn’t mean they loved me differently.
I was just never going to have soft brown hair, hazel eyes, and white skin like my mother. Nor was I ever going to have my dad’s grey-black hair, blue-gray eyes, or white skin either. I was stuck with my brown eyes, brown skin, and jet-black hair, which was OKAY. I was “born to be different.”
But that is a tough concept to explain to a child.
It’s harder still to explain that a kid asking me if I was “dirty” meant that I was experiencing a hint of learned racism for the first time.
Someone was questioning me as to why I wasn’t “like them.” Why I wasn’t White.
Learned. Racism.
No one is born a racist.
For my skin to be “dirty” and not White like the other kids, it meant that they had an understanding that I was “different” to them. At a very young age, they understood that their Whiteness, their ability to look alike, meant that they were somehow superior to me. That knowledge is taught or witnessed. It’s not something a child knows.
I became an outcast quite frequently.
I was excluded from certain games during recess because my hair wasn’t blonde, I didn’t have blue or green eyes, and because I was different. If I was allowed to play, and we were playing a game of “House,” I was always the caregiver or given unpleasant tasks.
These children already knew, from watching their parents’ behavior, that those with Brown skin did the clean-up chores or the unpleasant tasks that the other adults simply did not want to do.
*At this point, I would love to sit here and tell you that we would’ve been good friends if you had given me a chance. I was a happy child, regardless of the classroom hate, and just wanted to be friends with everyone. I would like to think that we would’ve shared the same crayons, colored in the same coloring books, owned the same train sets (Thomas the Tank Engine, anyone?), and grew up watching the same T.V. shows. Because we likely did. I would like to think that my skin had no factor in my friendships or otherwise, but that’s just not the case.
It didn’t get better at boarding school, either.
When I transferred schools, to a boarding school in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains, I was again picked on for being of color. This time it was because I am, in part, Native American (41.4%).
“What are you, an Indian?” I remember one person saying to me, sarcastically, when I was explaining to someone else how I felt connected and at peace when I was surrounded by nature.
Where I was, at the time — farm life was a big deal. So, I was also made fun of for thanking the chickens for their eggs, or speaking to the baby goats as though they could understand full English. These were “very Indian things to do,” and I was “fitting the stereotype” that these other children had formulated in their heads based on their knowledge of Native American History. (Which — taught in elementary schools — is neither complete nor always historically accurate).
I was well into high school (at an all-girls boarding school) when someone made the remark that I deserved to get beaten up because if I didn’t do anything to cause the commotion, then it was because I didn’t “fit in.” The woman implying this waved at my general existence.
I was, at the time, the only Brown girl in that dorm hall. The adult in question was the Dorm Hall Monitor, and she was responding to a bullying incident, where twelve girls had ganged up on me, teasing and taunting me and telling me that I was worthless. (Girls can really be cruel to one another.) With a horsewhip in hand, one of them used that device to leave welts on my upper thighs, as a “lesson.”
I was an animal to them. I wasn’t human. I was subpar, not just because I wasn’t a horseback rider, not only because I wasn’t one of the popular kids, no, according to my Dorm Hall Monitor, it was because I would never fit in with the rest of them.
I was reminded then, by a bunch of White girls, that I was not, no matter what I did, no matter the grades I got, no matter the clubs I joined, was just not going to be like them.
*I’d like to say that we still would’ve been friends in high school. I was becoming jaded towards people (and with good reasons), but I still tried to be friendly. I even asked one of the bully-girls why she was crying when I caught her alone on the steps of a stairwell leading down to the classrooms. I didn’t have to stop and ask her. In fact, in my mind, I wanted to step right over her and continue on my way, but I guess I’m just too nice for that. (Remarkably, it was also the only time I’d ever get an apology out of a bully.)
Racism, amongst adults…
In college, things got worse. The college town where the campus is located is not very color-friendly. It’s better than some of the towns up the mountain, but there are still many close-minded thinkers.
Some believe women of color should only work retail and service jobs. Some believe that women of Brown color are meant to be maids and clean up after White people’s messes. Then there are those who believe that Brown people are out to steal or deal drugs (…which is ironic as most of the drug dealers in this town are quite White, but okay.)
Here, I fall within their “stereotype” of being Brown. To a majority of the racist folk here, I’m very clearly “Mexican,” which means that I must work in food-service, and better yet, I must respond to a snapping of one’s fingers.
This, of course, is not how I operate in the slightest.
I was at Panera one day, eating my lunch, minding my business when an older couple came in and sat diagonally from me. I thought nothing of it, they were clearly there for lunch too, and I had more important things to be concerned about.
At the end of my meal, I got up to put my tray away, and as I was walking back to my seat, to collect my belongings, the older woman flipped her fork off of the table, looked at me dead in the eye, snapped her fingers and said: “you can pick that up.” I calmly stated that I didn’t work there, and as I proceeded back towards my chair, she got visibly angry.
She called me a “crow” and told me that she would get the manager if I didn’t pick up the fork. Trying to keep my temper in check, I stated again that I did not work there, and she could call the manager all she wanted, but she would find that…I did not work there. Indeed, the manager was called to the table, and to the woman’s disgust, was told that I was definitely not one of their employees.
She had been wrong. I had been right (duh).
Something that clearly irritated this woman to no end.
The whole transaction was a disgusting display of behavior. I should not have been snapped at for attention. I should not have had a fork flipped onto the floor in front of me with the expectation to pick it up, and I should not have had to deal with racist bullshit during my lunchtime meal.
But thus, here we were, in a town that continually reminds me that I’m the outcast here.
*Here I’d like to say we could be friends, but I’m much more reserved now. I don’t say much, and I don’t go out often. I’m tired. I am tired of the color of my skin being a factor in conversations with strangers. Tired of people’s stares as they try to figure out what or who I am. I’m just tired now.
Traveling hasn’t been much better.
Out of all the interactions that I have had with learned racism, I think the most shocking moment for me came from a time when I was in Orlando, Florida. I was with an old classmate, and we were in the state for their new job. While they were in a meeting, I sat outside at one of the park picnic tables reading a book and minding my business. Quietly to myself.
A woman approached the table, and in very slow, deliberate English said, “May…I…sit…here?” I paused my reading, looked up, and nodded, wondering why she was talking so slow.
She proceeded to sit down and stare at me. Eventually, she got up the courage to ask me one of THE most annoying questions on the planet “Do you…speak English?” I tried in vain to not roll my eyes. “Yes,” I responded. “I speak English.”
“Oh, good!” came the response. As though she was relieved she wasn’t sitting at a foreigner’s table.
She made polite conversation for a little bit. Then she fell quiet. I resumed my reading.
After a while, I felt the eyes on me. So, I looked up to see her staring at me, yet again. This time she was quicker with her question. “What are you here for?” I told her that I was there waiting for a friend to get out of a meeting and that they were going to be a part of a college program. The woman looked stunned. Eying me up and down, she asked, “Did you go to college?”
“Yes,” I responded.
Then she said something that just blew my mind. “I didn’t know your kind could afford education.” She said it so matter-of-fact that it was my turn to stare.
My kind.
My kind.
My kind.
She didn’t know “my kind” could afford education…I just. What???
I’m not a separate species.
I’m a human being.
I belong in with the rest of you. I have the same wants, needs, desires, like most people; I need food, clothing, water, love, and shelter.
This doesn’t make me different from you.
I can read. I can write. I can speak. It may not be the same language as you, but I can do those things, same as you. I have dreams just like you do. I have the same capabilities as you do, regardless of look/ethnicity or race.
My kind.
Unbelievable.
After that, her posture seemed to be both somewhat threatened and threatening, like she was trying to assert her dominance, even though she now knew that I was an intellectual equal.
Whatever she said afterward, just went in one ear and out the other. What I wanted to know was how could someone, a grown woman, who appeared to be well-traveled, be so ignorant to the fact that there are plenty of people who look like me, who put themselves in debt, so they can go to school, to get a degree — be the first in their family to do so (as often is the case) and better themselves?
How do you miss that entire chunk of the population that is doing so under your nose at your local college campus? It amazes me how blind people are to the world around them. It further amazes me that people are so willing to say such strange and harsh things to people they’ve never met before.
The color of my skin shouldn’t dictate how someone acts towards me.
But in this society, it does.
It’s everything.
And that is just a highlight reel of things I’ve personally dealt with. I’ve had people lunge at me, scream at me, try to get me kicked out of establishments, I’ve had police tailgate my car and more.
I’m tired.
I know I’m not the only tired person.
I’m aware that there are people who have had it MUCH worse than I have, and who are much more scarred by the things that happened to them than I am. But that doesn’t eliminate the issues I’ve experienced. That doesn’t diminish the fact that I have been made to feel inferior time and time again. Or that I’m now incredibly wary of people. My issues aren’t as severe as others out there, but they are just as loud, and they are just as valid.
I am a human being.
I am like the rest of you.
But because of my skin, I’ll never be like you.
Josefina is a recent graduate of Penn State University and is a holder of two Bachelor of Arts degrees-Psychology and Vocal Performance. She is sometimes a celebrity, fashion and portrait photographer. Feel free to visit her website, follow her on Twitter, on Facebook or on Instagram.
