"Funny, You Don't Look It"
Well, another Hispanic (or Latin) Heritage Month is done and gone by, and now Halloween. (I hope to have this published by Thanksgiving.) Personally, I have spent the last month really thinking about who I am, about the historical figures that have made an influence on me, from Cesar Chaves, Che Gueverra, and Dolores Huerta, and also the pride that I have about who I am as a person. Who am I? Or maybe, what am I? Then it brought to terms used with my ancestry, well, specifically, on my mother’s side. Those terms are Hispanic and Latino, Latina, or to be all gender-inclusive, Latinx. Let’s talk about “Hispanic”, well that is a term derived by the United States Census Bureau to describe people from Spanish-speaking countries. So, technically, you could argue this includes the Philippines and Guam. (Look it up if you don’t believe me.) Then there is the term Latino/Latina/Latinx to describe a more inclusive (or maybe exclusive?) category for anyone with Latin American ancestry either by birth or parent, in my case through my mother. But you all should know that Latin is the root language of Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. And throughout Latin America at least three of those four European/Colonizer languages are spoken in what we refer to as Latin America. (And just for the record, my Spanish, which is the main language in Panama, sucks. I will try though…). What am I telling you all? That regardless of which term we use, we are either excluding other non-Spanish speaking Latin American countries or we are excluding former non-Spanish colonies, but we are definitely excluding our indigenous populations and ancestry with either term.
These terms are strange now that I am thinking about them. Funny that we still would still choose to identify by white/European standards.
Anyway, I usually use Latina me, when speaking. For example, “I am half Latina and half White American” (or sometimes I say “Irish/Scot” instead of White, it just seems cooler that way). And on paper, I check off “Hispanic” for the ethnic group and “White” for the race for my sons and me. I tell you all this just in case you were wondering. But even better, I use nationality references by saying, “I am half Panamanian, and a half (White) American.”
To deny or reject any part of me is to deny or reject all of me.
This leads me to a Sociology 101 lesson for you all. Ethnicity is different from race. Here, let me give you the definition of both, so you understand and can keep up.
Ethnicity- A category of people who share a cultural background, such as language, location, and/or religion.
(Hispanic=Spanish language and Latinx=Latin America location, wait, so Latinx is better because if we go by a geographical location we might be including the indigenous groups in this, let me think on this some more.)
Race- A socially created and subpar categorization of people into groups on the basis of real or perceived physical characteristics.
So you see the difference? You can be an ethnic group made up of different races or a mixture of those races. Or a race that shares a common history can be considered eventually an ethnicity. And nationality? Well, you can be a mixture of both ethnicities and races, such as our nation, the United States, is made. Yes? Are you all with me on this? Well, that’s the end of that lesson. This writing is really about me and my family (mi familia), not you all unless you are my family. Well, honestly this writing is mostly about me and the ignorance of some people, which might include some extended family members and friends.
Now the above has set a foundation for what is really on my mind. I was born in 1971 to James, a White American boy from Indiana, and to Silka, a Brown Panamanian girl from Panama City. Wait, let me back up, just a bit. My mother met my father in Panama. My father was in the Army, and after serving his tour in Vietnam, the Army decided to send my father to Panama, where the President (Dictator) Omar Torrijos was considered causing “problems” for the United States regarding the Panama Canal. Plus, since the building of the canal the United States considered it theirs and had a commercial and military presence there anyway, but like any leader standing up to United States aggression, he became someone they needed to deal with as a “threat to US interest in Panama.” So, that is why my father was there and met my mother. Then in 1969, my mother left Panama with her American husband and their twin daughters, Micaela and Mima (her real name is Vilma, after my maternal abuela). I was born in 1971, then my brother, AJ, and my sister, Brenda. We were all young when my parents divorced. But that is not what this writing is about. This is about who I am.
My Mom (with my oldest sister) in 1969 leaving Panama for the US
My Dad in the US Military (Army) circa 1966 or 67
Anyway, I was born in Indiana. We for the most part grew up in Indiana, by Monticello and Rensselaer. The area we grew up in wasn’t very diverse in the 1970s and 1980s. We dealt with bullying and being called racial/ethnic slurs, sometimes the wrong ones. Not all people were like that, but enough to torture us. Then we were working class and were called classist slurs too. We couldn’t win, sometimes, but we adapted. We all were pretty good in school for the most part, so it seemed to ease a little. Except for my 6th-grade teacher, Mr. Johnson, who seemed to bully me a great deal about how I looked and one time did not believe I was one of the few students in the class that received straight A’s. Who knows the basis of this grown man’s need to bully a 12-year-old girl. But I digress. All I know, for me, the desire to want to blend in was there, I was reminded by my White father not to forget we were half Panamanian when it got hard or the school bus ride was especially difficult that day.
When I was a baby, my mother was often accused of kidnapping me or asked if she was the babysitter by the White people. Recently, asking her about this, I could hear the anger and disgust in her voice fifty years later. Actually, the story goes that when I was born, they tried to give me to the wrong woman. For in 1971, the nurses felt there was no way this brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking woman gave birth to a blue-eyed, pale baby, then my father walked in. He asked, “What the hell are you doing with my baby?”
Late in 6th grade, I moved to Kankakee, IL where my mother was living. Kankakee was a little more diverse than Indiana, so that was the good news. (Still bullied until 9th grade, but by stupid boys, though they were all white boys, it just has occurred to me the race of the boys that usually tortured me were all the same.) In the late 1980s, there weren’t a great deal of Hispanic/Latin kids at Kankakee High School. But by then, I had embraced who I was, a White/Hispanic punk girl who loved Prince and went to House parties. My Mom knew and was friends with a lot of Mexican immigrant women. My mother is bilingual and often served as an interpreter for a lot of Spanish-speaking immigrants, especially the women. Most of the women were Mestizos, so when my mom would introduce me as her daughter, they found it hard to believe. She would get defensive and yell at them, correcting them that I was in fact her hija. The women would apologize or shrug. A few of those women I have held close to my heart, the ironic thing is that they both were named Maria, but one was nicknamed Chela. Chela made the best homemade tortillas and would laugh at my punk hair. I adored her. That aside, I think it hurt my mother more when members of her own community did not believe that I was her daughter. Silka had to deal with it from the White and the Hispanic communities. I guess ignorance knows no boundaries. Though my experience was different as a teenager and young adult than hers.
This is about the time I started to get asked the question, “What are you?” One classmate stated, “She doesn’t know what she is.” To my regret, I didn’t respond to her because I was too shocked that she even said that. And when I went away to Illinois State, I was constantly being asked about my race and ethnicity. I know what you’re thinking, but my hair was naturally dark brown and some people just picked up on something that was different about me. It did wear on me to be asked this constantly. It got to the point where I would answer, “Human,” or “Whatever you want me to be.” It was tiring sometimes.
So life moved on, ignorant White people assuming I was completely White would say their ignorant and bigoted things and then would look embarrassed once I told them about my mother. Some would apologize. Once when my family owned a bar with a mostly Hispanic/Latin clientele, I was working at the bar, when a customer yelled, “Oye, gringa!” I scowled and said, “I am not a gringa!” Little did they know that my Panamanian mother was sitting at the end of the bar and heard this conversation. She got up and yelled at him, “No es gringa, es mi hija!” He apologized and then proceeded to call me, “weda”. I laughed and moved on.
And right when after so many years of being proud of who I am, I find myself starting over with this again. Again with White and younger Hispanic/Latinx communities. I am not sure, but members of both communities have told me that I “don’t look it,” when I have stated that I was half Latin. And I couldn’t believe that I was going through this again. What was really hurtful was that the “woke” liberal white people were telling me this. I guess they weren’t happy that I wouldn’t be able to, in their eyes, fill a quota by not “looking” it.
And the younger Latinx community members looked at me as if I were a liar. I am not sure if I have the energy for anyone’s stupidity and ignorance anymore from any community. First, I am of mixed heritage in all senses of the word. I am proud of that, I am proud that I still stand for who I am. But the Latin community is selling itself short by insisting that we all look alike. We can look like our African ancestors, our colonizing European ancestors, or our indigenous peoples. Most of us can look like a creole or mixture of all the above. I have met Argentinians with German last names and lighter features than me. In the 1990s, the President of Peru had a Japanese last name. I know I carry my White American father’s last name, my Spanish sucks, and I “don’t look it,” but I know who and what I am. My worry is that for my Afro-Latin siblings, what happens when they proudly say their heritage? My lord. Does some idiot say, “You don’t look at it?” or “Well, you look Black?” Much like I get, “You look White, so you don’t count.” My point is that we are an ethnicity, and by that definition alone we come in all colors. The more we include the better for all of us. You all don’t have to listen to your Spanglish-speaking, half-sibling, with the last name Wood, because what do I know? Actually, I know a lot.
Or better yet, being of mixed heritage, I should give up on generalizations when describing myself. I need to stick to nationality, instead, I will say, “I am half Panamanian and all American.” That’s funny to me. But the point is, no one can really argue that I don’t “look it,” simply for the fact they most likely haven’t seen someone like me. So how would they know?
I mean, seriously, I take it as an insult toward my mother more than anything. You all take a genetics class? I didn’t think so.
