My Racial Identity

Being from a Latin and Hispanic background, it’s hard for me to pick what race I am. If you look at my mom, you would think she’s a white European, even though she is from Argentina. On the other hand, my dad has darker skin, he looks more Mexican, but these are not races. When people ask me what race I am, I usually say I’m White Hispanic. I grew up being told I was white, and have experienced white privilege, so I do not consider myself a person of color. This has a lot to do of where I grew up. The north suburbs of Dallas, Texas are a prominently white area, my neighborhood specifically was a very white upper-middle class neighborhood. My friends in elementary school were all white, but middle school was when I first encountered people like me. I remember being told by a Hispanic boy that I was, “Too white to be friends with them.” That experience really shaped my racial identity, because if I was “too white” for people like me, I assumed I was white. My high school was a very diverse school, and people did not really pay attention to race. It was never an issue that had to be brought up in my friend group, or school community. I was

Race just hadn’t played a huge role in my schooling or work life. I have never been asked if I speak English, or if I’m immigrant. When I worked at Chick-Fil-A in high school, I remember more people thinking I spoke Spanish. To clarify, I speak very basic Spanish. This one time, this man came up to the counter and started to speak to me in Spanish. I replied to him, in the typical Chick-Fil-A positive manner, that I didn’t speak Spanish. He then proceeded to grill me on why I didn’t speak it, and made me try to answer in Spanish. In my very broken Spanglish I told him that I didn’t speak Spanish at home, and I took American Sign Language in school. It takes a lot for me to get angry, so I just laughed it off. I normally tell this story as a story to break the ice with