Racial Ambiguity

This is my first post of the new year, and let's be honest, likely to be my last (I'm no good at writing). I will forego the hamburger style essay and just dive in.

Welcome to the pool that is my brain.

Naivete

• n. lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment

Sometimes I feel stupid. It's true. I do. Why? Because I've allowed myself to form this bubble of what I like to call "Liz's Theology," in which I assume that all people think like me. And if they think like me, then by default they act like me. This mode of thinking I attribute to my naivete (term defined above).  So. When people don't act as I would have acted, I get disillusioned.

In my incessant need for everything to be fair, I have crossed a line between reason and...whatever is on the opposite side of reason; and, as a result I have oft taken justice into my own hands. And wrongly so, might I add.

Once I gave away my own teddy bear thinking it was my sister's, because of course she obviously didn't deserve to be happy. For whatever INSANE reason (in retrospect), she just didn't. deserve. that. bear.

Justice scenario #2. My brother liked to "borrow" my toys, to which I always responded with the same act of kindness + one step further...take one of his favorite toys, hang it over the balcony, and threaten to let it go if he didn't return whatever it was he had "borrowed."

I know what you're thinking. What a violent child. I think, however, the term you're looking for is vindictive. Which in some people's mind (including my own) is used interchangeably with justice. But the point to this rant is not about my psychological instability.

It's about being fair.

After much self-reflection, I have come to two truths.

1) I'm not white.
2) I am, however, white-washed.

Let's define "white-washed" shall we?

If I take a brown shirt, soak it in bleach, and I decide to wear my bleached shirt to a party (let's assume I have friends that invite me to parties), would you say I was wearing a brown shirt or a white one? Neither. I'm wearing a ruined shirt.

Sometimes I catch myself living in this delusion, that no one can see that I'm a ruined shirt. My racial ambiguity, my nearly perfect English (I speak it better than most natives, let's be honest), and perhaps my mannerisms allow me to pass by unnoticed. I'm basically avant garde; walking around in a nearly white, nearly brown, shirt. I'm skipping along, happy with life's uncertainties, until some square with nothing better to do, points out that I bleached a brown shirt.

I would be lying if I said that I was 100% secure with my avant-garde-ness, and so of course, my whole world comes crashing down. I don't feel dumb for bleaching my shirt. I feel dumb for thinking no one would notice.

And so goes with discrimination. Do I wish I had blue, green, or hazel eyes? Sure. Brown gets boring sometimes. Do I like having black hair? That's like asking if I enjoy having a body that produces normal amounts of pigment. I do. I like speaking Spanish, I like having a spanish last name (origins still under scrutiny). Point is, I don't care about being visibly ethnic. It's me. I do care, however, when I'm told that although I grew up on Kraft American cheese, apple pie, and The Beach Boys, that I have no understanding of what it's like to be, well, American.

Truth be told, I know more about American culture than Mexican culture. Something I've also struggled with (see Chapter 2 of Self Loathing). I know that sometimes, we ethnic people, tend to get offended with ease. We overreact. It's true. But I can also say, with all honesty, that in the bubble that I have created for myself in my 22 years of living, I have only truly felt discriminated against, or judged because of my ethnicity, twice in my life. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and along with my oblivious nature, I think the number is accurate...

Anywho, each of those two times it cam like a blow to the stomach.

Remorsefully, the first thing that pops into my head is, "ARE YOU DEAF?" As if by the way I speak I will be given a hall pass in life that says, "white: don't worry, she's clean."

I hate that bleach is permanent.

But I don't hate bleach.

And so, I conclude my rant. I don't know why people can't just be as oblivious as I am when it comes to race and taking offense. And in an ideal world...well, we're not in an ideal world.

My bubble has been burst.