A thing that bothers me sometimes
I’m Hispanic. About a fourth, maybe a little more, maybe a little less (my family hasn’t kept very good track). My maternal grandfather, who I never knew, came over from Spain with his parents when he was a child. My grandfather was a race car driver who knocked up my grandma when she was really no more than a little girl, stuck around to knock her up again, then pretty much high-tailed it. He obviously wasn’t much the sharing type, so I don’t know much more than that. My mother and aunt met him as adults, which seems to have been important for them, but it doesn’t sound like they got much more than a little puzzle piece filled in – here is what my dad looks like, here is what my dad sounds like, my dad has hair like mine. There’s not much more we all know than that, and his name is no help — it’s so common that it roughly translates as “from them thar hills,” the Spanish equivalent of “Johnson” or “Jones.”
I never really knew I was Hispanic. Does that sound stupid? It pretty much is. I mean, my mother had the Spanish last name, and she tanned pretty easy, but I never looked at my mother and thought “Hispanic.” She was just my mom. Part of that was just the normal way kids act, but part of that, I think, was white privilege. White was already my default, so I didn’t assume my mother was anything but.
I was raised with my dad, one of those doughy white Midwestern types. He had a whole lot of racist and sexist going on, along with a hefty dose of hating his ex-wife, which was a lot of the same thing (imagine an angry doughy snake eating its head). So he just basically tried to pretend we didn’t have a mom, or a maternal side of the family.
When I was in junior high, a school program called the Minority Encouragement Program sent out form letters to everybody who was checked something other than “white” on their school forms. I brought the letter home to my dad and joked about how stupid the school was, sending a minority letter to a white girl. “You are a minority,” he told me, which shocked my socks off. “You’re Hispanic. On your mother’s side. A quarter, or half. I didn’t want to put you down that way on your forms, but your mother insisted.” He held up his hands with a sneer. “Don’t fuckin’ ask me why.”
My dad refused to let me join the Minority Encouragement Program, because that minority stuff was “bullshit,” and they were going to try to make me a victim. So, being thirteen, I forged his signature and joined anyway. And then promptly dropped out. It was the boringest shit ever — building forts out of paper cups to learn about perseverance, talking to Black Man Who Is A Lawyer, who told us to stay off drugs, etc. At the time I just thought my dad was right, that all minority programs were bullshit. Years later, I realized just what had been so goddamn boring: for the first time in my life, I wasn’t being treated like I was white. I was getting a small taste of what it was like to be a non-white student in the public education system. Luckily, I had the option of opting-out of that treatment, dropping out of the program, and going back to my regular classes, where nobody fake-fawned over me for having the immense skill and talent to draw a picture on a paper plate, or spell my name correctly. I had the option of opting-out because I was lucky enough to pass for completely 100% white.
A few years ago, I was at a bus stop when this old black dude started chatting with me. He was pretty blotto, but wasn’t being slobbery or gross or creepy — just obviously drunk and happy to chat up a young girl. He had a friend that was getting more and more agitated, and I very much got the sense that he was pissed that his friend was fawning all over this white girl like she was the best thing that was. And I sympathized with that, because even though his drunk friend was kind of charming in his drunk way, he definitely was making a complete ass of himself, and I wasn’t sure if he would have made such an ass of himself to anybody but a white girl. Eventually his friend stated something to that degree — “You just all up on her because she’s white!” — and the drunk dude admonished him for making assumptions that somebody who looked white was white. Well, okay, fair point — but really, what he was saying was “You just all up on her because you think she’s white!”
The drunk dude attempted to prove his point by asking me about my ethnic heritage, and I admitted that I was in fact Hispanic. “See? See?” he said to his friend, who was shaking his head. “She’s a minority!” I was about to speak up and say, no, not really, when his friend cut in, addressing me directly, “Anybody ever look at you and think you’re Hispanic?” “No,” I said. “I look white, I was raised white. I’m just Hispanic on paper, at this point. I’m white.” He nodded triumphantly and turned away, but his drunk friend kept trying to reassure me, “Nah, you’re a minority. Yeah, just like me. It’s all right. You’re not white.”
I remember a conversation on race in a class I took about Black Feminisms (yeah, it’s plural, motherfuckers!). We were talking about terminology, and its appropriateness for different people and different situations. We were discussing Hispanic vs. Latina or Latino vs. Mexican vs. Spanish. There was one very outspoken woman in class who talked about using the word Latina to describe herself, specifically in the Midwest, because it was a very outspoken term, she thought. There was no mistaking what it meant — it meant “other.” I countered that I tended to use the word “Hispanic” for myself. To my thinking, I look white, I was raised white, and Hispanic is a much “softer” word for “other,” especially in the Midwest, so I felt it was more appropriate for me. I felt “Hispanic” better expressed not what my actual ethnic background was, but what I functionally was — not-quite not-white. Basically, I didn’t want to disrespect the people who had weathered the storm of American racism by pretending my functionally 100% white background in any way gave me a shared background or experience. I felt like I might was well put on a daishiki and go around telling everybody I understood black people now because I read Native Son.
The woman who identified as Latina got pissed at my use of the word Hispanic, though I wasn’t fully sure why. At the time, I thought I hadn’t really clarified my position, that I hadn’t really made it clear that I called myself Hispanic because I felt it would be disrespectful of me to identify myself with an oppressed minority group when I so clearly wasn’t oppressed. But as the years go on, I wonder if she understood me perfectly, and was actually expressing her anger at my choice to opt-out. And as the years go by, I wonder if that’s not maybe something I really need to change.
These days, we have a word for people who do not share in the negative effects of oppression, but share an obligation to change it, and denounce the benefits they reap from it. We call them allies. And to be an ally means you shed that privilege, consciously and actively. If you don’t really know what that functionally means, try any of the following:
1. For men: tell your casual acquaintance you would really prefer he not use the word “bitch,” even in a non-insulting manner, because you think it’s disrespectful to women.
2. For women: stop shaving your pits and/or legs and/or stop wearing make-up
3. For white people: tell your friends, family, and employer that you believe public schools should require courses in African-American studies, and/or an African-American history curriculum should replace the current history curriculum.
4. For straight men: casually mention that you would consider dating a man, if you met one you liked.
5. For straight women: confront the next man who gives you the bug-eye on the street. Tell him to fuck himself. Scream at him until he stops ogling your tits. Defend your actions to your friends or family as perfectly justifiable.
See who trusts you anymore.
That’s what being an ally is. An ally is a person who is willing to give up the privilege they accrue from the assumption that they are the majority class and/or enjoy the way the majority class runs things.
I haven’t really been an ally with this. I have sort of ignored my Hispanic heritage as if it’s unimportant or irrelevant. Which, in a lot of ways, it is. Really, I cannot deny that my life has been defined and uplifted by white privilege. I can tell everybody, “But I’m not really white!” until I’m blue in the face. And I can be an ally, abdicating my white privilege by making “radical” statements about race, which I can and do. But the fact that I can or do say “radical” things about race without being beaten for them, or losing jobs for them, is also due to my looking white. I cannot escape that.
I feel clumsy trying to express this, figure this out, but I feel like I’ve abdicated my obligation to a very real part of me, while at the same time I feel like calling it a “very real part of me” is a very white excitement over getting to horn in on minority territory. I feel like I ought to do something more to own and understand my ethnic heritage, and yet I feel like assuming I can learn to be Hispanic — especially when nobody could ever look at me and believe I am — is the most offensive, racist thing I could manage to want. Because I have to ask myself, why do I want it? Do I want to know this part of myself that is just completely absent? Do I feel guilty that I haven’t been ally enough? Or am I so white and privileged that I think I deserve membership in all exclusive clubs, even the not-white ones?
How do you become not-white? Is it possible? Is it relevant? Is it just another thing white people do? If I go on saying I’m an ally, but ignore my ethnic heritage, how much of an ally am I? If I look white, and have all the privileges associated with being white, and go around trying to convince everybody I’m not white, how much of an ally am I?
Or, here, let’s ask this question:
What is the whitest thing?
A blog post consisting of rhetorical questions, theoretical identity, and tortured navel-gazing, about the possibility that I might be too white.
My paternal grandfather, same thing. And while it’s true that to his white coworkers he was “a spic” the same as his Puerto Rican coworkers, he didn’t call himself Hispanic and I don’t call myself that either. In his case I think it was a mixture of racism (he came from Europe! and Europe is WHITE!) and coping mechanism–if he wasn’t Hispanic then he wasn’t a minority which meant he wasn’t a victim which meant he could overcome. Denial is not just a river, etc.
But why I don’t refer to myself as Hispanic is that I look at it like, wait–having ancestors from Spain means I’m descended from the same assholes who sowed destruction all over the so-called new world, and whether they spoke Spanish or English while doing it is largely irrelevant, whether my personal ancestors participated in that destruction directly is largely irrelevant, and so on.
Someone whose grandfather came from Guatemala or Mexico could say the same thing, that they’re descended from los conquistadores, except that person more likely has indigenous ancestors, too. So to me, it would seem right for that person to say “I’m Hispanic,” or “I’m Latin@,” because those identities convey something other than Spanish-from-Spain, Spanish-from-Europe, Spanish-Caucasian.
Really, it just gets weird when you get into whiteness that may not have always been read as white 50, 60 years ago. Are Italians white? What if they’re Sicilian Italian? Does my grandfather having been blue-eyed factor into my not feeling comfortable with “Hispanic?” Is this the whitest fucking comment or what?
Awkward segue: I love your blog wholeheartedly.
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Awkward identity. Is there any other kind?
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Hum. Disclaimer: I’m pretty darn white. Also have not taken a whole lot of classes that discuss race and such, but one of them in particular was taught by a Mexican man (I lived in AZ as a kid, and don’t remember this at all, maybe because I lived in a poorer neighborhood, but I have a friend who lives there now and says “Mexican” is meant to be derogatory now, wtf) – he identified that way. He was also ok with Latino or Chicano, but would not describe himself as Hispanic because it means, more or less, “of Spain,” and he didn’t think of himself that way. It might have been similar to a Native American person describing themselves as English… Course your grandfather was actually from Spain, so maybe it would be perfectly appropriate for you. I dunno!
Also, I’ve lived in either AZ or CA since I was 3, and NYC before that, so I have no idea how things are different in the midwest. Never been outside of an airport there. This used to be part of Mexico, and where you are wasn’t, so I expect pretty different.
Also, please forgive this, but I always thought of Spaniards as white. Am I wrong? *feels dumb*
And I have nothing to say about invisible minority status. I’m a bisexual woman in a (usually) monogamous, overtly heterosexual (my husband is genderqueer, but he doesn’t tell everyone, and the people he doesn’t tell wouldn’t even think of the possibility) and I get bothered by the assumptions people make about me, but here I am just covered in privilege and don’t feel like I can really complain for myself. But sure hate it when someone sidles up to me to be all conspiratorially homophobic.
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There’s a missing marriage up there ^. Just insert it when you get to where it belongs.
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I don’t want to speak for the woman in your college class and say why she, in particular, was upset, and I most certainly don’t want to tell you how you should identify yourself and through which terms. But here’s some background, which may or may not be useful, in an attempt to explain how some people understand these terms and, perhaps, why some people are upset by the term “Hispanic.”
“Hispanic” came into widespread use in the US when it was introduced on the 1970 census forms. Before then, common terms included “Spanish” to refer to people who spoke Spanish or had a Spanish name regardless of what languages they knew, or where they or their ancestors were from; “Mexican,” used not only to refer to people from Mexico but often to refer to people originally from elsewhere, as well as people with Mexican ancestry who were not immigrants themselves; in specific parts of the country, other geographical markers might be common as well, like “Puerto Rican” in New York or “Cuban” in Miami; and of course, any number of slurs and insults. Some people intended to be identified by the census term accepted it; many people resented or rejected it. As Ann Marie and ilyka point out, etymologically it indicates an origin in Spain, not Latin America. It was accepted by some people with origins in Spain, though as ilyka notes, rejected by many others who refused an alternate racial identifier since they were from Europe and, by the late 20th century, Americans had decided that all Europeans were white. “Hispanic” was frequently though far from universally accepted by older generations of people with origins in Latin America, too (say, born before 1950). It was also pretty widely accepted by white America, at least those willing to adopt terms other than the ones listed above, insulting or otherwise. However, many other people with Latin American origins found the invented word that they had never before used to describe themselves to be insulting, because of its etymology, or because it its bureaucratic origin, or for any number of other reasons, including the fact that Latin America, like the United States, is populated by people of many races, with indigenous communities, immigrants (both forced and voluntary) from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America, and any number of multiracial combinations [hence the various census/racial categories that have since arisen like "Black (not Hispanic)."] There’s no similar term for being from an American nation-state that was formerly colonized by the English, but if there was, telling you that I am from the region of US/Canada/areas-of-the-Caribbean-&-Central-&-South-America doesn’t tell you anything about my race.
So, summing up, one might then reject the term “Hispanic” because it is meaningless, or because it’s imposed from the outside (i.e., by white people), or because it’s connected to a history of colonization. Sadly, it must be noted that one also might reject the term out of white privilege, since a person who has grown up in, say, Venezuela, thinking of hirself as white because hir ancestors were (all or primarily) from Europe, and said person did not identify as a member of an indigenous Venezuela community, or as Afro-Venezuelan, or as Lebanese-Venezuelan… but then said person arrives in the US and is told sie is not white at all, sie is Hispanic. Said person might embrace said identity, but said person might resist: “I am TOO white! Can’t you see that I am not like THOSE OTHER not-whites? I demand my white privilege!”
Because a variation on African American or Asian American, something like Latin American or South American, say, doesn’t work, since those terms already exist in English and describe the people in a region or on a continent outside of the US, not people living in the US, the most common solution to avoid the term “Hispanic” has been to use “Latino” (masculine or, in theory, universal), “Latina” (feminine), or “Latin@,” (gender-neutral). This only solves the etymology problem (it can mean “Latin,” which includes people from Europe, but is widely understood to me “latinoamericano,” from Latin America) and the invented-bureaucratic-term problem, not the geography-does-not-equal-race problem. Still, many people of Latin American origin consider it better than “Hispanic.” The same group of white Americans who think English should be the only language ever spoken in the US, dammit, and that Sonia Sotomayor should say her name So-toe-MAY-er rather than So-toe-my-OR, dammit, think that “Latino” is a foreign word and Hispanic is English, dammit. I don’t know, but I’m wondering if the fact that the word “Hispanic” is an English word contributes to your sense that it sounds “softer” than “Latino,” which seems to make certain white people upset because of its foreign-ness.
In general, I think it’s probably fair to say people who are (a) of Latin American origin and (b) politically involved in issues related to said origin are somewhat more likely to identify as “Latino/a/@” if they’re more politically left-leaning and as “Hispanic” if they’re more politically right-leaning, though this is not a hard and fast rule by any stretch, and people have all kinds of very individual and idiosyncratic reasons for preferring one term over the other. For whatever it’s worth and whatever this signifies to you, “Latino/a/@” is much more common these days in academia in the US, but it is also almost exclusively used to refer to people with Latin American heritage. Many Spanish programs use “Hispanic” to refer to people/cultures/histories of both Spain and Latin America (and sometimes people/cultures/histories of people with Latin American heritage living in the US, and sometimes not). As I mentioned above, “Latino” can mean roughly the equivalent of “Latin” in English (i.e., “Latin Lover”), which at its broadest can refer to peoples/cultures/histories of pretty much anywhere in Europe or the Americas where Romance languages are spoken, though it is sometimes modified to exclude Romanian, or French, or…
So, again, I’m not trying to label you or speak for anyone else, just trying to offer some ideas on the multiple political and cultural connotations of the words.
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Oops. I sort of trailed off in that 2nd-to-last paragraph above. I meant to say that while Latin@ *can* be very broadly applied to mean a translation of “Latin,” which can mean anyone who comes from a country where the speak a Romance language (though I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used to apply to said countries in Africa and Asia?), more frequently within the US context “Latin@” is understood to refer only to people of Latin American origi.
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Dude! That was so so awesome, and I really appreciate the rundown. Thanks!
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