I’m short; I have brown hair, olive skin, green eyes, and freckles. People would always ask me are you Asian? Are you Italian? What are you? Goodness, I am Mexican, Swedish, and German, or a mutt (that’s slang for a little bit of everything). In addition to the fact that I look a little bit different than everyone else my mom had to name me Bianca. At 22 years of age, I have grown to love my name, but growing up, it was the worst. Bianca wasn’t too common, so I just felt like I didn’t really fit in.
I am proud to be Mexican and I am proud to be Swedish and German; I am glad to have some substance and culture, to be different from everyone else. Even though I feel as though my race and culture plays a role in the type of person I am today, the traditions that I practice, I believe, have impacted me more than anything else.
Until the age of five, Spanish was my first language. Not even my mom knew how to speak to my brother and I because she didn’t know Spanish, but that quickly went away because my father refused to speak to us in Spanish or even use it around us. I always felt he was ashamed to be Mexican, but I only think he was that way because of my grandparents who came from Mexico and were still trying to fit in and meet society’s expectations as well as being true to themselves.
My father was an alcoholic, which he learned from his father. I hope that is not passed on to either my brother or myself. I was in the fourth grade rolled around when my mother decided that it was time for my father to go. At the tender age of ten I was faced with the issue of living with one parent and not having a father.
I felt that my mom who is white was angry with my father who is Mexican. I believed that because my father wasn’t the best person, she must have rubbed off on me. I disliked everything about him, even the fact that he was Mexican, and all I knew is that I didn’t want to be associated with anything that he stood for, even my race. Now it sounds ridiculous that I would go as far as to stay out of the sun, so that I wouldn’t get any darker than I already was. I was young, but I understood that my parents were getting a divorce and I knew that I wasn’t going to have a dad anymore, even though he was not too involved before he was gone.
I was happy that the man that had made our family so miserable for so long was gone, but I was also sad and embarrassed because I felt like I was the only kid in the world with one parent. I never had friends over; I didn’t have birthday parties, and didn’t even tell my mom about performances and activities I was in because I didn’t want people to know that my parents were divorced.
When my dad left, I thought that I was okay and that I didn’t need him. I thought I am a girl and why would I need a father; all a girl needed was a mom and in my eyes, my mom was a super woman. She held down the fort when my alcoholic dad was there, and she held it down when he wasn’t. The thing was and still is, my younger brother needed him; he started to cause trouble, went to juvenile hall and boot camp. My mom decided that it was time for a male in the house so in my junior year in high school, my father had moved back in with us. Even though he had been sober for almost six years, I was furious. We didn’t need him; I mean I hardly even knew the guy. In my senior year, I started to feel this void in my life ,but I couldn’t quite put my thumb on it. Now, I know exactly what was missing in my life and that was my relationship with my father. I went to a primarily “white” school and going to my “white” friend’s houses and seeing what great relationships they had with their dads. It made me sad because I wanted that. I wanted to be daddy’s little girl, and I had come to terms with the fact that I do need that father figure in my life, a man to show me that I am worth everything in the world, someone I can depend on no matter what, who’s going to keep me safe, and show me how a man is supposed to treat me.
My father and I now have a good relationship and I feel like I have two parents. Even though they aren’t together, I know that they love me, and I do not have resentment toward either one of them anymore. Instead, I understand them. My mother is white and comes from a white collar working class family and my father has 11 brothers and sisters and worked in the fields until he was 15. They are like day and night in the sense that they came from different backgrounds, traditions, and with a values. I am grateful for this; I am grateful when Christmas rolls around and I ask my mother if we are going to Tia Alice’s for tamales or grandma Carol’s for cookies and milk.
Sometimes, I get offended when people just say, “You are white, or you talk white,” or “You aren’t Mexican, you don’t look Mexican.” So, what does Mexican look like exactly? Because I have colored eyes, speak proper English, and have light skin people automatically assume I am rich and white, which is not true. I have had my water turned off; we don’t have cable, and I don’t even own a computer I know this sounds cliché but you really can’t judge a book by its cover.
It’s not someone’s race and culture that defines who they are, but their experiences in the past determine what they will be in the future. The fact that I am Mexican, Swedish, and German just describes me but my experiences define me and what type of person I am today.
Whether someone is African-American, Asian, Indian, mixed, or any other race really doesn’t matter, because we have all been through similar experiences and hardships. It’s important to not discriminate and instead have compassion and understanding for our neighbors. You have no idea what the person standing next to you is going through.
