bad-dominicana:

sooo

in the last year i have gotten 67767889799 messages from white-lookin POC from all over the world, even europe,

who do not want to claim whiteness

but feel forced into it. they know where they come from and theyre super proud and whatever they look like is just luck…

Soooo this is actually my life.

Claiming whiteness has been *super* crucial IN THAT I know I need to acknowledge my privilege. It’s how to do it. Yes, I surround myself with folks who check me on my shit, just like I check them on their shit. That doesn’t mean that my whiteness suddenly disappears. It doesn’t mean that when we’re side by side fighting on some social justice issue that we’ve suddenly lived the same struggle. It’s different. And it’s crucial for me, and the integrity of my life, to acknowledge that difference.

I have my various intersections of my identity that make my whiteness feel different. Poor. Survivor. Queer. I’m a fourth generation Mexican who has only recently learned that it’s okay to claim Latina outside the walls of my birth home. I needed to leave the border town I was raised in to know how being Chicana is in my blood. And in my bones.

And then what happens when you don’t have language. My papa never taught my dad Spanish. I had to learn it in school, where I was one of the few white girls (thank god for my latino last name). Then I went across the country to a super elite university on a Gates Scholarship, and I saw that I wasn’t that kind of white. All the Latin@ students were wealthy and had native tongues. And I wasn’t that kind of Latina either.

So, just like being queer, I try to define how I’m Latina. But it’s also different, because I have white privilege. It took time. It took WOC referring to me as a WOC. It took folks in the social justice movement in my city to call me Latina out loud, and let it be okay for me to try and claim too. It took seeing white, middle class folks struggle with their own identification. It took seeing white poor folks struggle through conversations with white, middle class folks. My conflict, I know, is largely in my head and how I self identify.

So I enter a space vulnerable, eyes ears and heart opened up wide. I look to the strong leaders. I look to the elders. I look to the women of color, the mamas, the transfolks of color, the queers, the poor. I revel in the fierce youth in these movements for justice, the queer, of color, undocumented. I seek a multiracial movement. From being queer, I have learned that spectra are beautiful and loving, and we are all responsible for one another.

I haven’t worked it out perfectly. I’m open to an exchange of ideas. Having white skin impacts the way I live in this universe, and it’s just as foolish to ignore that as it is for folks to claim they are “color blind.”

For other white looking/passing folks: Do your best. Don’t stop listening. Don’t stop talking about it. Enrich and diversify your life. Live along the spectrum.