JE #3

Not knowing how to define my culture at times, and having to choose between being “Mexican” or “American” is my cultural schizophrenia. I grew up in an immigrant family household. Everyone in my neighborhood looked like me, there weren’t that many white people living near my side of town. It wasn’t until I was enrolled into the local elementary school that I noticed that not everyone was like me, they didn’t all listen to the same music, didn’t look, dress or even talk the same way I did. I quickly noticed how the white children played amongst themselves and all the Latino and black kids plays together. This type of behavior only magnified as we grew older, and the “us and them” started becoming a problem. I never paid the “othering” too much attention, it wasn’t until I moved out of my neighborhood and into a predominately white area that I began to notice it’s severity. Within my first week of living in this neighborhood my father and I began experiencing racist remarks while walking our dogs around. It was at this moment that I realized all the stuff I was told in school, about being American, wasn’t true. I spent so much time trying to figure out why the Anglo children didn’t look or act like me, that I completely disregarded the notion that they were concerned with the same questions. I was a short, brown, dark eyed, brown haired young woman who did not pass the American stereotype. It was at this point that I completely detached myself from the title of “American”, I told myself that there was no benefit from being American anyway, it just brought confusion, so I went a head and embraced who I truly felt I was, Mexican.  I thought this way up until I was a junior in high school; at this point I was applying to colleges and I began to realize how many of my peers didn’t have this privilege. It was devastating to hear that some of them didn’t know they were undocumented. Their families had kept this truth from them. But by doing so it crushed their wishes of going to college, I had two dear friends who completely gave up the notion of college because they knew they could never afford to go without government aid.

It was at this time that I was appreciative to be American and in a way ashamed that I had for such a long time been denying a big part of my identify. I was taking advantage of my born rights by going to college and had to accept the fact that I had to identify as American. But once I got to UCLA, my cultural schizophrenia had developed into a full disorder. I craved the presence of Latinos, I was in search for anyone who spoke my native language; because at this point I was feeling like I did back when I was 12.