Brown

I am reading Brown, Richard Rodriguez's book, and loving it. It has helped me understand and see some things about race that I had struggled with. Brown, the color of my skin, is just that, the outside of me. It is not that by having passed I am white, it is that on the inside there is no difference between Brown, Black, White, Yellow, Red. Yes, we have different cultural experiences that flavor our world view. But the human mind, thought, and emotion, are the same. I was raised in a white world. I was raised in white schools. People assumed I was white, dark white but white, and I learned to be part of the dominant culture.

My skin is brown, light brown, but clearly brown. Already my face and arms are tanning from the increased spring sunlight. My nose is large and defined, my cheekbones high. I am clearly not of northern European descent. It causes people to look twice, sometimes to guess, native American, Greek, Italian. They don’t often guess Mexican, they never guess mixed race.

What did it mean to grow up Mexican-Irish? The question is really difficult, because it was the only thing I knew. I don’t know how it was different from any white person who grew up in my suburb. I know the differences that were caused by my father’s alcoholism. I know there was verbal abuse and that my father in his sadistic loving way called my mother a wetback. I know that Mexican food was my cradle food: rice, beans, and tortillas, tacos, burritos, and tamales. I know how to eat a burrito without a fork and I know that you don’t put ground meat in tacos.

What else made me Mexican? I wanted to side with the underdog. I wanted to stand up for my Mother in that climate of abuse. I did not want to identify with the abuser and the drunk, so I claimed my Mexicanness and minimized my Irishness. I tried once or twice to hang out with the kids from the barrio, but I couldn’t change my personal culture that much. I couldn’t don the clothes and the attitude of the chollos. My barrio friends were the kids who were raised to achieve and get the hell out of there. My barrio friends were the ones who were taught to think and dress and move into white culture, who were taught that there is nothing different on the inside and that it is only the color of your skin and the food that you eat that is different and if you claim a place in the world, that place will be yours.