Born as Hispanic and White, I’m stuck in the middle of what seems to be what many would call a Tejano. With mixtures of Mexican, Spaniard, Polish, German, which are not common mixings into one person. Everyone living in this world isn’t defined by race, but the ethnicities and nationalities they have by blood.
To society, I’m neither Hispanic or White. To Hispanics, I am too light to be considered Hispanic, with my lack of not being able to speak Spanish. To Whites, I am too dark to be considered white, and stereotyped to be a native Spanish speaker.
It becomes a problem when it feels like I don’t belong along with fellow Hispanics and whites. I’ve never bothered to learn Spanish, though I can understand if I can read it. My mother’s side of the family is Hispanic, but aside from Mexican foods, they don’t celebrate any Hispanic traditions. Same with my dad’s side of the family which is European-based. They eat food based from Poland and Germany, but other than that, they don’t celebrate any traditions.
As a kid, I’d never been too interested in my heritage and the bloodline passed down from my ancestors. Slowly as I grew up, I longed to know what my family practiced, worshiped and believed, and I was curious to learn everything about both sides of my Hispanic and white family’s lifestyles.
We’ve moved past a point in history where segregation is not permitted, but racism is. If people still think it’s okay to stereotype and hate a race for who they are, what’s the point in erasing the past oppressions? Even to this day, I’ve been called slander about my ethnicities, “spic,” “cracker,” etc.
These are the struggles I deal with involving race and ethnicities, because I don’t seem to fall anywhere but in the middle. I can say I’m Hispanic in one moment, and then say I’m white in the next. There is no definite identity for me to claim myself as, because it’s the society of today that makes me struggle to identify as a person of a mixed heritage.
Looking at myself, I look like an average person. If I didn’t know myself, I wouldn’t know what my ethnicity was, that attributes to the fact of my skin. Deep down, I know who I am, I am a proud Hispanic and a proud European descendant of my ancestors. As people, we are who we are, and our bloodlines are the foundations.
