Mixed Heritages and Mestiza Consciousness
How my ethnic diversity gave me the ability to see both sides of cultural issues
I come from a multicultural background. I identify with many people, and understand the struggles that come with belonging to multiple cultures. However, all of my cultures are never unified. While I can use all of my heritages’ to think about the world with new eyes, it is still difficult for me to step back from each culture and use them as a whole, which I believe is partially due to never celebrating my cultures together. When I am with my dad’s mother’s family we celebrate our Hawaiianess, and then we give time to our Pourtagesness. When I am with my dad’s dad’s family we celebrate our Mexicanness. When I am with my mother’s mother’s family I am white and I celebrate my Europeanness. When I am with my mother’s dad’s family we celebrate our Mexican, Native American, and Spanishness. While it is difficult to feel that I completely fit into each of my cultural backgrounds, when I am with a certain section of my family I feel I am united with that culture and lose my other cultures for the time being. I am proud to come from each of my cultures, but I do feel conflict from it, much like Gloria Anzaldúa experiences when she explains Mestiza Consciousness.
Mestiza Consciousness is a survival strategy, where multicultural people have a clear opportunity to embrace the ambiguities and contradictions presented from both of their cultures. In her paper Anzaldúa says that she is proud of her heritage but she feels pulled by them all at the same time. She is Mexican, but every Mexican has Native American and Spanish in them because of the Spanish Conquistadors who laid waste to the indigenous people in the region that is now known as Mexico. The cultures that she identifies with and has insider of her are there because one people conquered the other and destroyed everything that they held dear. They destroyed their people, their land, everything. I feel this same way when I think about all of my cultures together; as if there are parts of me that are waging war with the other due to the guilt and hurt that each suffered at the hands of the other. My Native American self was raped by my Spanish self and created my Mexican self that does not understand why my Native American self hates me even though I am still a part of her, which leads me to resent my Spanish self who in this day understands that what their ancestors did was horrible. My hawaiian self hates my European self because they forced me to stop speaking my native tongue, and to abandon my people in order to become one with the people who destroyed us for our “savagery”. This is not to mention the wars waged inside me from my European cultures who conquered each other such as the what my English self did to my Irish and Scottish self.
Anzaldúa believes that we can use these diversities within ourselves to tap into our Mestiza Consciousness, which she also believes is already inside everyone, and that we can use this to eliminate cultural barriers and prejudices. I also believe this is possible, but I think in order for this to happen more cultures will need to crossbreed, and then we need more time to pass for us to settle these wars within ourselves. I believe I feel this cultural war waged inside myself because society has trained me to do so. Cultures still fight over things that no one alive committed and they cannot move past what our ancestors did to each other. However, we are getting past these times and soon no one will be of “pure” heritage (which no one is in the first place today, but we will let the “white hierarchy” think they are). In a few more years everyone will begin to have the same features, and there is already an idolizing of mixed children, which can be seen on Instagram. After time has passed and we have accepted our contradictions no one will look at another person and think of their race and their differences, but instead see their similarities.
Technically there is no race. We should not have these divisions between us that cause us to degrade each other because of any of our differences. There is no normal, and there is no abnormal. Every person is a human being, which makes everyone unique, and when everyone is unique no one is, so nothing matters. We are all just people and we will all have the same fate which is death. My cultures have shaped my views of the world, and although it is sometimes difficult, I do have a mestiza conscientious view of the world that allows me to see past the surface of people and into their characters. I can take the contradictions of my cultures and choose what to believe and practice from each.
