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What are You?
"It seems strange to me that people have the need to categorize others into certain genres, just to have the security of knowing what they are."
By Karime Blanco
I’ve been light skinned all my life, light skinned enough for people that don’t know me to mistake me as white, but not light enough to be mistaken for white by a white person.
When I first meet a Latino person, they’ll be cool too and sometimes they’ll think that I’m Latina, but I look too white to actually speak Spanish. Then when I actually start speaking it they look stunned and even after they’ll ask, “Wait, what you are?”
What am I? Hmmm, I’m a teen, a young lady, I’m a female, a person, an individual, but that’s not what people want to hear. They want to hear what race I am, just so they can go along and categorize me, so that when they talk to other people they can say, “you know, that Mexican one.”
It seems strange to me that people have the need to categorize others into certain genres, just to have the security of knowing what they are. So, is Mexican what I am? Well, that would be fine with me if people’s definition of Mexican was the same as mine.
If their definition had anything to do with my beautiful Aztec Kings and Queens, with my fearless ancestors that lived in a prosperous land, surrounded by pyramids and their agrarian, natural way of life, rather than a lazy teen that never goes to school who’s failing every subject and goes out every night and does God knows what with her gansta home boys.
Well, for their information, I have a 3.5. GPA and I do attend school, and at night I go tutor little kids. If people would acknowledge that in their definition, then I’d be fine. Recently, I went to a meeting about college for Latinos and I was stunned to see so much information about how to bring up your grades, what programs were great for failing students, and how you could still go to college even without good grades and no extracurricular activities.
So what if I did have good grades and what if I’ve had a list of extracurricular activities since eighth grade, where does that fit into the Latino community? You should not have to fall into the cracks to be true to your race.
You shouldn’t have to be quiet in the back of the class listening to a CD player watching the white people discussing events at the front of the class. So tell me, how can we overcome other peoples stereotypes when we can’t even overcome out own?
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