How White Am I?
Well, I mean, I have bought and used essential oils…
But all kidding aside, ethnically, I’m mixed: white from my mom’s side and Mexican from my dad’s. Lately, I’ve been wondering how much it matters and how much it should… let me explain.
My dad was born Rafael Macias Jr, named after his biological father, who was… not a good man. My dad and my grandma were both abused by him and literally had to run away from their home in the middle of the night to escape. The emotional scars still run deep. Ever since that night, my dad never saw his biological father again. My grandma remarried to an amazing man, the only man I know and cherish as my grandfather, and he legally adopted my dad, giving us the name Carmany, which of course became my name as well until I chose to take my husband’s name when I got married. I am proud of that name because it represents a grandfather who helped heal a family and father who cherished me, encouraged me, and made me brave and strong.
On top of that, I am pale. Like pale, pale. Like I use a lighter shade of foundation than my red-headed sister-in-law pale. I have light brown hair and round eyes and there’s no way around it… I just look white. My brother has nearly black hair and the olive skin of our Mexican heritage. But me? Well, I have my dad’s nose, which to be frank, is a pretty dead ringer for that classic Aztec profile, but it’s never been enough to casually identify my heritage. So, I recognize that I move through society being perceived as white, with all the privileges that garners me.
Our family history (or legend, because who knows how true it is) is that our Macias family originates from the Taru Mara tribe, but other than an anecdote to throw in at opportune times in conversation, what has that meant to me? Or again, when my advising professor found out that I had Mexican blood, she nearly leapt for joy because it would mean getting into the graduate schools we had been discussing easier… I kinda felt guilty. I had been so disconnected from that part of my culture, that it felt like a sham. Shouldn’t someone who was really Latinx get those spots and those scholarships? Shouldn’t someone who had actually faced the disadvantages of being Mexican be considered? Or then again, what did it mean to be really Latinx?
Whenever I casually mentioned that I was Mexican, my friends often remarked, “Oh yeah, I forget that you aren’t all white.” Or even weirder, try this on for size: I live in a community that is 50% white and 40% Latinx, so there’s a lot of people of color here. Once in a restaurant my mom turned to me and joked, “I feel like I’m surrounded by Mexicans. There’s no white people here!” I turned and joked back, “Guess what, mom? I’m Mexican and you married one too!” Our whiteness was so central to our family culture that my own mother forgot that her daughter was Mexican.
So am I white by experience, by circumstance, by appearance? What part of my Latina heritage do I have the right to claim? Is it my responsibility to pick it back up… and how?
About a year ago, I listened to the Stuff You Should Know podcast on quinceneras. I cried in my car because I just felt so far removed from something that I also felt I ought to be connected to. It’s not like it was a sentimental episode. It was just plain informative, like their episodes are. It’s not like I ever thought about quinceneras before for myself or really in any positive light. I’m not Catholic, so the church ceremony didn’t have much relevance to me. In my community, they tend to be rather garish affairs, with girls in VERY poofy princess dresses — not really my style. There’s one pretty spot in town that it seems EVERY quincenera assemblage goes to for the photo shoot before the party, and I happened to be walking through this park when not one, not two, but three limos with three different quincenera parties drove up — three sets of dresses, three sets of suits, three parties of teenage girls and chambelanes milling about. The defining feature was the number of teenagers already drunk and puking in the designated park trashcans. In modern times, to an outsider (for an outsider I must be) it seemed like an expensive party to show off with outdated gender roles. So, I didn’t really have a positive impression of this particular tradition — or at least what it has become in modern times and in my community.
Yet I found myself driving and crying as I heard a straightforward explanation of what it traditionally was: a whole community coming together to celebrate this young woman. Maybe it was the community part that was breaking my heart. Maybe it was this family that was out there somewhere, completely unconnected to me, complete strangers, that I was longing for.
Aside from my own abstracted and confusing grief, there’s a dark part to this reality too and I am not proud of it. I often used this factual detail of my existence to excuse myself from meaningful introspection about my own views of race and racism. I often busted it out like a party trick when convenient and went about my otherwise culturally white life as if it weren’t part of my history.
When a college friend (not white) once turned to me and said, “Well of course you’re racist, you’re white,” I was able to blast back, “First of all, I’m mixed race. Secondly, that’s a racist statement, so maybe you’re racist.” And now I really need to add: thirdly, maybe he was right. Maybe I should have taken the time to actually examine the way I acted and even the ways I have treated my own Mexican heritage.
Yet for anyone who is mixed race, there is a feeling of displacement. Feeling alienated by my own mother who offhandedly forgot her own daughter’s ethnicity. Feeling like I’m pressed against the glass, looking in on a Mexican culture that I’ll never really be able to participate in. Always being spoken to in English when I was hoping I could speak in Spanish, knowing that I can’t start talking in Spanish now because of how quickly it will be revealed that I’m not completely fluent… Yet still cherishing the memories of practicing Spanish from language learning tapes with my dad in the car and really feeling at home and somehow special. And feeling like family, because we were doing it together: learning about the thing we shared together. Or maybe feeling disconnected from my Mexican heritage is just another way that I feel disconnected from a father I love, but who I could never really get at, whose attention I could never really hold. Maybe going back to my deeper and deeper past is my own longing to connect with a father who would rather forget his and the belt marks on his back.
