Please stop being racist.

Just stop.

I know you think my skin’s just dark enough to look like I tan well, but I’m not white, and I don’t think it’s hard to figure that out. My name, for one, should be a fucking clue. Do you people honestly think that just because my skin’s not too brown for you that means I’ll happily eat up your racist bullshit? Because that’s how it seems to be. Hell knows I have no real idea what’s going on in your heads, because ya’ll seem to be stupid, even those of you who should know better.

I’m not from Mexico. I was born in Utah. I don’t speak Spanish. My grandfather was from Guatemala, that country in Central America that apparently doesn’t exist, because everything south of Texas is fucking Mexico to you.

But my name is a Spanish one. My hair and skin are brown. I have the short stature and figure of a Latin American mestizo, because that’s what I am and where I come from. I’m not tall and thin like an anglo girl; I have the short, thick bones and wide hips of the Mayan women my grandfather came from on one side, the other being the European, yes, European despite their language, conquistadores who gave me my name.

And, despite being raised in the white Mormon cultural vacuum that is Utah, I’m aware of it. You want to know why?

You are the people who can’t remember my last name, unable to spell it correctly even when I tell you how to your damn face, substituting my surname for whatever generic Spanish name comes to mind at the time.

You are the people who put me in the lowest academic classes when I transferred to school in Colorado, apparently assuming from my name that I was one of the many ESL students without even bothering to look at my fucking transcript, because if you had you would have seen that I was supposed to be in the advanced classes. And then you did it to my little sister when she went to middle school, too — making the same mistake two years in a row, which took a total of months of everyone’s life to resolve, again and again and again.

You are the people who assume I don’t speak English, or that I’m uneducated or incapable of being educated, that I’m less than human and unworthy of respect because my last name didn’t come from English or German or whatever other European languages seem more acceptable to you. And if I’m not subhuman I’m a demographic, oh, glee.

And you know what?

You may think that you’re only talking about undocumented Mexican workers when you say racist shit to my face, but you’re the same people who think that we’re all one homogenous group. Hell, you could at least pretend to be concerned about illegal immigration in general, since Mexico isn’t the only place that people come from — so when you only talk about “those people” with brown skin from further South than makes you comfortable, it’s pretty obvious you don’t actually care about the immigration issue. It’s just an excuse, because you’re fucking racist.

When you talk about those “Hispanics” taking all the jobs, it’s pretty fucking obvious this isn’t about immigration — it’s about language and culture and surnames and that which allows you to identify them without knowing anything more, skin. It’s about skin. Because you assume that an entire continent and a half is all Mexico, all immigrants, all illegal. Even those of us who are born here, even those who have lived here for generations longer than your families.

So when you say all these things, it seems pretty clear to me…that you’re talking about me, and forgive me if I find that pretty fucking offensive. Forgive me if that makes me defensive.

When you say that Mexicans are subhuman (and, literally, some of you have actually said this to my fucking face), you’re hurting me. When you talk about how “those people” are taking over and “ruining” “your” country, you’re hurting me. When you say that illegal immigrants deserve no legal rights or protections whatsoever, by extension, you include anyone Latino, you include anyone with a Spanish last name, even those of us here legally, even those of us born here, even those of us with skin pale enough to please you — because you don’t know us. You don’t know who we are, or how or why we’re here, and you all use rudimentary and, frankly, stupid measures to identify us.

So what reaction do you think you’re going to get from me? Why does it surprise you when my feelings are hurt and when it makes me angry? I’m not from Mexico and I’m a US citizen and I don’t speak Spanish — but I’m still going to be fucking personally offended when you say that shit, because people see my name and they automatically lump me into those categories. All. The. Damn. Time. I don’t care if you don’t realize it. I don’t care if you don’t think that about me, personally. I don’t care if I’m white enough that it doesn’t register in your egocentric anglo mind that my feelings as a mutt are going to be hurt. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.

This is still who I am, and I’m acutely aware of it. It’s your privilege not to have to think. It’s your privilege to plead ignorance, or to claim that’s not what you meant, or that you’re not including me because I’m somehow special and worthy of being elevated to “human” status.

America is a nation of mutts and immigrants and their children. You white people don’t get off talking about how those immigrants are ruining “your” country, because it wasn’t “yours” until you took it, and I think the ruining thing was pretty much all your fault to begin with. (And I’ve got colonial invaders from all over the world in my past, Spanish America, British India and Africa, and who knows where else — but I kind of accept that my ancestors were responsible for that and that I benefit from it.) Your families all came here from somewhere else, and apparently that’s all fine and dandy for you because your names aren’t Spanish and you don’t have indigenous Latin American blood to darken your skin. Why is it different for us? Why don’t we get the benefit of the doubt in the land of opportunity?

I’m not a good little queer, who shuts up and doesn’t trouble you with my existence. I’m not a complacent little bitch who puts up and puts out and takes being treated as anything less than a man would be. I’m not a baby-making machine or a sex object, and I’m not a heterosexual man’s pornographic bisexual fantasy. Given that, I’m not going to be a nice little mestizo, a quiet little mutt, a properly hidden and assimilated Latina to make myself palatable to you, either.

Love, Julie

PS: And you know what else?

My grandmother on the other side was a Mexican immigrant who never became a US citizen. And. She was Anglo. She was from Utah Mormons, from English nobility and German ancestry, totally, completely, thoroughly white. You see, in order for Utah to become a state they had to outlaw polygamy, so my great-great-grandfather and his three or four wives packed up and moved to a Mormon colony in Chihuahua where it was still against the law but no one cared, and they stayed there for generations until they ran out of nice anglo boys to marry their daughters off to.

I’ll bet that blows your narrow little mind. This is what happens when you define a whole country, a whole continent, a plethora of cultures and languages and racial backgrounds, as one homogenous being.

This is what happens: things don’t fit. Reality doesn’t conform to expectation.

Do you like irony as much as I do?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 16th, 2006 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Immigration, Open Letters, Race, Rants and Rages.