Imagine you\u2019re invisible. But you\u2019re not invisible. You\u2019re a vessel that fills with whatever the person looking at you imagines. Your true self lies in the eye of the beholder. It is no longer you who defines you but the observations of others. But you know that they\u2019ll never see past your white exterior. They\u2019ll never believe that you\u2019re you, because to them, you\u2019re white.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re from around here. Your parents are from around here. Your grandparents are from around here. Your mom is Mexican. Your mom is American. Your dad is European.<\/span><\/p>\n Where are you from?<\/span><\/p>\n You go to a family reunion. Your cousins are not white. Your cousins were raised with the culture from which they are from. They weren\u2019t taught to change, but you were. They call your family the \u201cwhite\u201d family. They\u2019re your relatives, but you don\u2019t belong. You never did belong. <\/span><\/p>\n Where do you belong?<\/span><\/p>\n You belong in America. You are white, and people see you as white. But you\u2019re mixed, and because it\u2019s not reflected on the outside, they don\u2019t believe you. Nobody believes you. You are racist for claiming your identity because you have white skin, not brown.<\/span><\/p>\n But your cousins don\u2019t have that problem. People believe they are who they say they are. You believe they are who they say they are. But you stopped believing you are who you think you are. Because everyone sees you as different. <\/span><\/p>\n Why are you different?<\/span><\/p>\n First Generation<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n You were born in Texas. You grew up in Texas. But your parents came from further South and all of a sudden every word that came out of your mouth was an insult, making you the victim of an angry white blur. But you don\u2019t know what you said other than \u201c\u00bfComo est\u00e1s?\u201d Maybe they just didn\u2019t want to admit how they were feeling. <\/span><\/p>\n But the memory of fists leave thick white scars across your brain, a wound you wouldn\u2019t dare inflict on anyone else. A wound that was justified based on the color of your vessel that people fill with words of hate and intolerance. Because they are scared of the unknown and you are an unknown, unbeknownst to them. <\/span><\/p>\n Because your name was ethnic. Because they were asleep, the unconscious harmony when the job you worked so hard to get rejected in the name of <\/span>John Anslinger<\/span><\/i> though you work longer and harder with less pay. <\/span><\/p>\n You name your kids Karen. And Shirley and Marilyn and Tom. Because Cecilia\u2019s accent isn\u2019t white enough. Because Roberto looks better as a Robert.<\/span><\/p>\n And as you leave them to enter the world, escorting a white woman, escorted by a white man, you lean back and think you\u2019ve done it. You\u2019ve beat your culture at it\u2019s own game. You helped paint the vessels of your children white with the hope that with generations to come it will remain permanent.<\/span><\/p>\n Third Generation<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n It has remained permanent. In the color of the vessel that renders you invisible. Your ancestors have succeeded in making you invisible. A part of the crowd. White.<\/span><\/p>\n So you dress up like the walking dead, celebrating the dead, <\/span>Dia de los Muertos<\/span><\/i>, to prove you\u2019re alive. But you get torn down for cultural appropriation, bone white of your skeleton. Because they don\u2019t know you. They refuse to get to know you. They haven\u2019t woken up yet. Not like you have. <\/span><\/p>\n Or that\u2019s what you want to believe. They don\u2019t know what they\u2019re saying because they can\u2019t control what they\u2019re saying. Because you don\u2019t want to believe that they know how it feels and they want to hurt you. And the fists that cut scars in your grandparents so long ago, the scars that opened up the desire to be white, have reopened brown, caramel, whatever color you should be if you want to be Mexican.<\/span><\/p>\n You don\u2019t struggle to fit in. You\u2019re accepted as white. But you know that\u2019s not all you are. And though it\u2019s easier to stitch up the scars, to cover them up and pretend that side of you doesn\u2019t exist, you don\u2019t. Because you\u2019re proud of your heritage. You want to remember where you are from. <\/span><\/p>\n But the obstacles to acceptance threaten to become insurmountable. A wall erupts in your soul, tearing through your identity as you watch your family become victims of hate while you watch from the sidelines. You refuse to stand idly by because of the half of you that is torn apart by the other half of you. You know that all white people aren\u2019t bad but they don\u2019t. The rest of your family, the ones raised with caramel coated bones don\u2019t bleed white like you did. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Middle Names<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n But there is a clear connection between the outside you and your culture. It lies just barely above the surface in your middle name. But nobody cares about middle names.<\/span><\/p>\n Nobody believes you when you tell them your middle name. Because when it comes to social reality, the person you think you are doesn\u2019t matter. Only the person other people think you are.<\/span><\/p>\n And you realize it isn\u2019t just your middle name that didn\u2019t matter. You could have the most ethnic, Mexican name in the world and your skin color would still be the only thing that defined you.<\/span><\/p>\n Multicolored A part of us is always asleep. When we\u2019re asleep, we\u2019re not in control. But we are in control. By the part of us<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-131","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","one-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Screen-Shot-2019-02-14-at-5.26.42-PM-300x248.png\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"