Feline Warrior

There’s something to be said for being Latina. Depending on the situation, I can fit into either the People of Color Group, or the White People Group. (Since we don’t have a huge Latino population in WV, there’s generally no “middle” for me.)

As a person of color: “Well, you know… I don’t have to tell you - you know how white people are!” Well, yes, indeed I do, because sometimes I am one!

As a white person: “You know, the night shift sleeps the whole time they’re supposed to be working – they’re all Black so I shouldn’t be surprised!” Well, yeah, but have you heard about how lazy the damned Mexicans are? Oy, vey!

Last semester, a classmate actually complained to ME about how all those Mexicans were invading Northern Virginia! It was weird and made me really mad! I looked at her, stunned, and just pointed to myself and said, “HELL-OW!” She didn’t get it. To her, I was not Mexican, because to her, Mexican is an all-encompassing term for people who speak Spanish, and then laborers, at that. Me, I’m a pretty woman with a Spanish background, like, oh, Salma Hayek, or better yet, Natalie Wood - Spanish-looking.

Being included in the White People Group means that I hear “jokes” that are not normally told in the presence of the browner folks. People are stunned when I protest, or, as my mother taught me to do, ask, “Could that person (Black, Polish, etc.) have been any other race (gender, etc.)?” Nobody ever likes that interruption, but it’s important to me to point that out - could the butt of this “joke” be anyone else? Why was that person chosen? It can be exhausting to put joke-tellers into this position, so I don’t do it as much as I once did.

When I’m included in the People of Color Group, I get to find out what is really going on, and I learn first-hand about the experiences that people are having. I wouldn’t ask a man if women are being treated better in the corporate world, nor would I ask a straight man if Gay men are being treated differently in the work place than their straight counterparts! I sometimes feel like a spy for the underdogs, because I can hear things that others might not be privy to. Of course, there’s still the question of what to do with the information I gather. So far, I just write and talk about it.

When, in summers past, I would get very brown, people would sometimes ask if I am “mixed.” Once, a few years ago, a nurse in a doctor’s office asked me about 120 questions, none of which made sense to me, so I finally asked her, ‘What is it that you really want to know?” It turned out that she didn’t know whether to test me for Sickle Cell Anemia - and she was afraid to ask me if I was Black! Earlier in life, my best friend was Black (and to this day, she’s still Black!), and we spent every waking moment together. When I was with her family, who ranged in skin tone from light-skinned to dark-skinned, people assumed that I was a member of the family.

Let it be said, however, that no matter how often people confuse me for being African American, or ”mixed,” or anything else, I am aware that I have the privileges of a white person. Being followed in stores every now and then is nothing compared with not having certain opportunities because of how I look - and how people assume I must be, based upon that look. I grew up with a certain expectation of life that, a level of confidence; there was nobody telling me that I wouldn’t be hired because I was ____. (That happened in terms of gender, certainly, but that’s next chapter!)

As a female, I believe that I understand prejudice fairly well, because those of us for who the “system” was not made tend to better understand its workings. We see it more clearly than do those for whose comfort and success the system was made (made for and by, even). Even so, when it comes down to racial versus gender prejudice, my guess is that it’s a crapshoot - each person’s experience depends upon the other players.

There is a tremendous book that I read back in 1985, Anne Wilson Schaef’s “Women’s Reality: An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society.” I read that book so many times that I had to replace my worn old copy. I was a much younger person, obviously, but that book opened my eyes to a society that was created by and for men - white men. The rest of us are just supposed to make do. (I will, no doubt, bring up this book again when discussing the next chapter.)

In any case, it’s interesting to me, especially here where there is no Latino community (of which I am aware, anyway), to be accepted into both groups, the White People Group and the People of Color Group. I appreciate gaining the insights from the People of Color Group, but even more than that, I feel more of a bond with that group. I don’t know if it’s because of how I look or that my mother grew up in a part of Los Angeles that had only Mexicans and some Armenians. Or maybe it’s because my grandmother, with her mother and siblings, came to the US from Mexico in 1910 and they worked their asses off to make it. Maybe it’s simply my cultural identity, and thus, an awareness of racism, of my own mother’s and grandmother’s experiences, that sets the bond for me.

My husband, who is a white guy, refers to me as a woman of color - a term I did not use for myself for years because I felt that it was reserved for people who suffered injustices constantly and blatantly at the hands of white people. But maybe I can be a woman of color - because I am.

It’s been a few years since anyone mistook me for “mixed” or Black, yet my ethnicity and my cultural background provide reason enough to accept the name. Am I really a member of both groups? It’s hard to say. I don’t feel a part of the White People Group, often because I would be ashamed to be considered a part of that group! Yet I benefit from the privileges of membership in the White People Group. I benefit, too, from the membership in the People of Color Group, but those benefits are more connected to soul, to growth, to expanding self, and to touching the rest of the universe.