Invisibility

This wonderful painting is by a talented illustrator and designer named Cristal Gutierrez. Amazingly she

does not identify as a painter and I think this was her first painting. Exhibited in the art show The Politics of Womanhood", Crystal wrote "I wanted to illustrate what it feels like to be a woman of color in today's society and political climate. There is so much that is thrown in our direction from Eurocentric Beauty standards to misogynistic politicians. And it all feels like they're trying to knock us down and keep our voices silent, but despite all we persist, we take their "arrows "and crush them. Also, the monarch butterflies are in representation of our immigrant community".

I was bowled over by this painting when I first saw it. It is actually one of few artworks I select to hang on my bulletin board or on my walls other than my own. (A girl only has so much blank spaces! ) I did not need to read her meaning behind the painting to get exactly what was represented. I have felt this way all my life. Being a US citizen, of immigrant parents, and living in brown skin, I've been pierced by those same arrows.

I was fetishized as a spicy Latina off and on through to my late 40s. Of course that stereotype ended once I reached a "mature age", where women become asexual in the general public's eye. The exotic, dark lip, big hoop wearing, sexy attire trope was one I exploited at different times of my life. But I learned that embracing this stereotype was not helpful. It gave me fleeting, shallow validation and erased my real womanhood and experiences.

So, I learned to live in my own skin and present to the world, my own interpretation of my femininity race and culture. I am a brown skinned Latina with textured hair, full lips and nose, who grew up in the South being called "nigger" by neighbors, school children, even the father of one of the men I dated. My family and I suffered blatant discrimination, racism and even violence because we were seen as non-white.

I was constantly denied my Latina culture and conveniently considered Mulatta (black/white). White culture in the South knew I was not one of them, but they remained too ignorant to learn where to place me so I became "mixed" (black/white) in their eyes. They erased my immigrant Peruvian culture, my Spanish language and my US Latina experiences with racism. 

I do not experience these harsh realities on a personal level as much today. (On a societal level, I, along with all people of color in this country, are facing second-class citizenship with the rise of the far right. But back to the personal.) This is because I surround myself with considerate, politically progressive, intelligent people. But interpersonal micro and macro aggressions still crop up and the healing from the past traumas is an ongoing process. 

So it is surprising and painful when I am occasionally confronted with a friend's racist erasure of my identity. I have had white friends tell me, since I was a child, that they see me as white. That for them, they don't consider me "hispanic, like Mexicans". I know this is done in their hearts as a way to push aside, any bigoted feelings they have and make me feel accepted, but it actually isolated me further. 

What bothers me more is when other people of color, usually blacks, assign me as white or if they see me as an ethnic "Hispanic'" they sanitize and depoliticize what the Latino experience in the US has been. They often do not see Latinos as having experienced racism much. We are an ethnic "lite". Kind of like modern US Italians or Greeks.

This post was inspired by a conversation I had yesterday with a dear friend of 22 years. He is a 65+ year old black man from the South and knows intimately the racism in the US toward black men. In the past 22 years I have educated him that I am a person of color and I have at one point had a discussion about what that meant to me. He has read this blog and has even commented about my parents Peruvian lives and passages I have written describing racist aggressions against me and my family growing up. He knows.

So, imagine my surprise when he laughingly remarked several times how he "always forgets" that I am Latina. It came on the heels of me describing my niece's Guatemalan wedding plans and how some of my nieces and nephews are both Guatemalan and Peruvian. His amazement that yes, South American blood runs through my family's veins was such a slap in the face. I guess because I am educated, speak English without a Spanish accent and am lighter in comparison to his black skin, he keeps returning to his default setting that views me as white.

I was angered after the initial gut punch. But I know he meant no harm. I was having a hard reaction but decided to just sit with it and finish the discussion until I could sort it out. I am just very frustrated. This has happened before with other black acquaintances/friends. I think I understand why but it's still not acceptable. The history of black slavery was so heinous and the assault on blacks remains so prevalent, that many Black people have difficulty looking past their own experiences to fully comprehend the reality that US racism oppressed/es all people of color in deplorable ways. From the initial genocide of Native Americans to the stealing of Mexican land and subsequent oppression of all Latinos. Not to mention camps and enforced labor (slavery by different names) for other racial groups, forced sterilizations for women of color ... and the list goes on.  We need to see and understand each other's realities. And be allies and united in order to affect any progressive change. We cannot invalidate each other's experiences.

But one can only remain ignorant for so long. Once informed and educated, not growing in your understanding becomes a choice. As far as my dear friend and I, I continued the discussion and decided to  revisit it over the weekend. I needed time for a fresh perspective. Today I'm more saddened than I am angry. Aside from writing this post, I am not going to talk to him about it. I already have several times in the past. He may read it on his own and hopefully ask to talk about it with me.

I am at a point in my life that if I educate someone on my racial/cultural identity twice and they do not readjust their thinking with this new information, I will probably just leave it. God knows, this erasure has also happened many more times with white acquaintances/supposed friends. When it comes to my racial/cultural erasure, I feel sad for them. Because they are losing the richness of my experiences, my culture in their world. It is their loss. But sadly, it does pose some alienation within the relationship for me, but I am not going to spin my wheels on this.

It took me decades to learn that I can only do so much to affect beliefs and actions of others. What I need to spend my time on are my beliefs and actions. That leads to a more peaceful life.

PS: I refer to my Latino racial and cultural identity throughout this post. This may confuse many readers because most Latinos in the US are assigned white at birth and seen only as a cultural ethnic group.  This racial whitewash comes as a result of white culture's ignorance of Latinos. Latinos are a mixed race people. We have a racial composition of indigenous and European ancestry. This is the result of colonization.

I no longer check the white box on questionnaires that ask my race because I embrace my indigenous heritage. I reclaim my indigenous roots and since my experience in the US has been clearly as a non-white person I will not label myself as white but rather as mixed race. Not the mulatto mixed race that classified me as black and white. But the mixed race of my Andean indigenous blood mix with the conquerors European 

I once did the ancestry.com type of DNA profile. When I saw that I was a majority 'native' of South America (indigenous) and then European Iberian Peninsula, (ie Spain), I cried. l literally saw on paper the rapes of the indigenous women in my bloodline. Scientific evidence of the MFing European conquerors premeditated campaign to breed out the 'ignorant savages' they were trying to erase. They failed and I am here as testament.

PSS This picture of me was taken about eight years ago when I had fuller, semi straightened hair, but you can still see my ethnicity clearly. Other times of my life, with sun and natural hair... you can imagine.