So… I wish I could explain why, but recently, I’ve found myself thinking quite a lot about my identity. Or maybe my ethnicity would be more… specific? God, see? I’m already confused. I guess I kind of feel like maybe if I try writing, I can sort out my thoughts, so…
Yep, another unnecessarily long text post full of stupidity! Let’s just tuck this away…
Honestly, this is never anything I really thought about before, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad one. All I know is that, right now, it occupies a lot of room in my mind, and every time I think I’m getting near an answer, it slips away. It makes me anxious, to tell the truth… I like to analyze myself, to think about why I feel certain ways, to understand where my thoughts and actions come from. When I don’t know myself, I get frustrated. There is a shit-ton of things in this world that I don’t understand, and can never hope to, but my own mind shouldn’t be one of them.
The question that I can’t answer is… what am I? What race, what ethnicity am I? I keep thinking about it, and I just… I just don’t know what to call myself. And I really, really want to know. To be able to say with some kind of certainty that I am “X”, and feel in my heart that I’m right.
My dad is Irish. My mom is Puerto Rican. Both of them were born here, lived in New YorK City, got married… and had me. So what does that make me?
Today, I identify as Hispanic, but when I was a kid, I called myself white. No one ever told me I was, but… it was assumed. My hometown is more than 95% white, and tiny. Growing up, there were only ever a few kids who weren’t that ubiquitous NE mix of European bloodlines, and you couldn’t miss them. They stood out. But I didn’t.
I was pale, at least when I stayed indoors. My name didn’t sound particularly hispanic. I couldn’t speak Spanish. Everyone around me was white, and no one told me I wasn’t, and so I was white.
Except… as time went by, and as I started to grow up… I began to feel like maybe I wasn’t white enough. It was always little things that would just… catch me off guard. Moments that made me realize that as much as I wanted to be, I wasn’t quite the same as everyone else.
I’d tell someone my favorite meal was rice and beans, and they’d just stare at me. They’d never heard of it. Or maybe I’d have to explain what chicharones were, or plantains, or arroz con pollo, even though they were normal to me. Tiny things like that would poke me gently and remind me that I didn’t have all the same experiences as everyone else.
And as I grew up, I started to notice it more and more with the way I looked, compared to the other girls around me. They stayed pale when I tanned. Their hair was straight and thin and light, and mine was curly and thick and dark. Their faces were ‘classic’, mine was round and fat. I couldn’t help but notice the differences, could only long to look more like them and less like my mother.
Then there was what people’d say. It was… never overt. Never really aimed at me. Just… thing’s I’d overhear, that’d be said in front of me. How Hispanic people were lazy. How they shouldn’t speak Spanish in public. Racist jokes. Faked accents. Stereotypes. It hurt. It just… really hurt.
I still remember the first time I asked my mom, nervously, if I could check off the box marked Hispanic. If it was okay to call myself that. She told me I could if I wanted to, and so I did. I started to identify myself, explaining that I was half-Puerto Rican when people listed off the mix of European countries that made up their bloodlines.
I got a lot of people who were surprised. I still don’t know what my response to “Really!?” should be.
But here’s where I start to falter. I still don’t… always think of myself as Hispanic. Maybe because I’ve called myself white for so many years, or maybe I… don’t really have a right to the term.
How do I know? Am I really Puerto Rican enough to identify myself as such? I’ve never even visited the island, I can’t speak a word of Spanish. I know almost nothing about the culture beyond what my mom’s family tells me. Is it enough? Does the whiteness of my hometown make me white? Is there a list, somewhere, that I can check, that I can hold myself to? Am I just am ignorant privileged girl clinging to an identity she has no claim to?
I want to be Hispanic. I want to be proud of my mother’s side. Her family is closer than my dad’s, and so we’ve spent much more time with them. I know them better, feel more comfortable around them. They tell me about life in Puerto Rico, and share my grandfather’s old recipes, and show my photos of my great-grandparents, and play Spanish music. They’re proud of who they are, and how much they’ve accomplished, and share it with me. I want to be proud, too.
My dad’s family… I know we’re… Irish, but… but there’s so little I know about them. There’s just… so little for me to identify with. They’re distant. Even when we visit for holidays… it feels like such a different world. I love them, but I can tell there’s a gap.
…I’ve written a lot, but I still don’t feel like I have anything approaching an answer. I still don’t know what words to use to describe myself. My only accomplishment from this embarrassing exercise has been wasting a massive amount of time and producing far too long a post.
How humiliating.