I am seven letters sewn together by ideas and concepts. I am a last name that will never match a face. And they look at me, they puzzle it together and they laugh. They snicker. Because in their mind, I don’t fit. I don’t qualify.
RAMIREZ is a name that belongs to someone with a brown face and black hair. Someone with an accent and broken English. They have one singular idea of what my last name must mean. But they don’t think about the culture, the language, the history behind it.
I spent years feeling like an impostor; I spent years feeling like I was merely wearing a last name that belonged to someone else. A name that must not, cannot, will never belong to me. And they made me feel that way.
I spent years with a language on my tongue that people assume I’ve stolen. In my own family, I look like an outsider.
And sometimes I just want to scream because it is my name. I belong to it and it belongs to me. I am proud and I have always been proud. Proud to be Mexican, proud to be RAMIREZ.
I was eleven years old the first time my ethnicity made me dumb. I was eleven years old the first time the words “stupid Mexican” flew so carelessly from his mouth, as if the phrase was not one of the most revolting things you could say. Since then, I feel as if the words have been tattooed on to my soul.
After that, I saw it. I saw that every time a Hispanic person was on the TV, they played a maid, a janitor, or some other insignificant character.
I saw that brown skin made you dumb, small, ugly. Insignificant.
And I saw that white skin made you beautiful, smart, important.
And I got it.
I got why I couldn’t carry my last name the same way they carried theirs. I got why they questioned me when I stated my race.
A Mexican can’t be educated, can’t be beautiful, can’t maintain a 4.8 GPA and be number four in a class of hundreds.
When people look at me, they assume I’m white, and when they find out otherwise they are shocked, stunned, because to them I simply can’t be. And they forget, they forget so often who I am because I don’t match their idea of what a Latina should be.
They use my pale skin to reassure themselves, and they try and bury my last name. Bury my identity.
Bury me.
Wash away what they don’t like,
and leave only
white.
People have always told me, “you don’t look/act/talk Mexican; therefore, you are not.”
And I want to scream; I want to laugh
at their ignorance.
We, as a people, are not the same, but white people see us as the same, they don’t bother to differentiate. The gringos act as if we are not diverse, but they are offended when we do the same to them.
Once, a girl told me that I am not Mexican because the white half of me is dominate.
And everywhere we go, it’s thrown in our face,
white means pure,
white means pristine,
white means heaven,
white means innocence.
Brown means dirt.
Brown means stain. Brown means disgusting. Brown means ugly.
Brown means beaner, brown means slave, brown means terrorist.
Because we are all the same to them.
And in their eyes
Brown means one thing:
Brown means
Inferior.
Yet somehow, even after they killed us, raped us, destroyed us and then desecrated our graves,
white means beautiful.
wlwmoods