Blog Post

I don't normally talk about race and class because when I meet someone those two things are not even near the top of the things I think of first. However, these readings allowed me the opportunity to look at what I think about race and how it may be different from other members of my community. I grew up and live in a southern community. I myself am a white Christian woman. I was educated in schools filled mostly with white kids and teachers. Throughout my life I have heard it all in regards to how as a white person I should feel and act towards a person of color. It ran the gamut of you are white so you should apologize for what your ancestors did and the benefits you receive from repressing people of color to the usual racist diatribe that populates conversations about race in a small southern community. As an adult, I continue to be white and Christian but with a few added changes. I am married to a Hispanic husband and became the first person in my family to graduate from college. I am in no way ashamed to be an educated white Christian woman. I refuse to carry the weight of men and women who made terrible choices simply because we happen to be the same color. I am responsible for myself. My husband is his own person and we are responsible for our kid until she is old enough to be responsible for herself. Maybe we are a different kind of family than that which fills the community we live in. It is your typical southern community full of southern charm and hospitality. However, I feel that hospitality is drastically different household to household. In my family, you are a person (unless you don’t show up to holidays and don’t straight away come if someone needs help—then you are in deep trouble with my grandmotherJ). I’m not saying we are some ridiculous tree-hugging-panda-loving-the-world-is-smells-like-peaches group—there are mistaken ideas in everyone. When my husband and I got married, my husband got the run of the mill jabs about building porch that come with being Hispanic. But neither of us went into a frenzy over the jabs. Maybe it’s this attitude of indifference that allows the public to continue making cracks about a person’s heritage or queerness, however I think that taking something too seriously is detrimental also. There is a difference between playful ribbing to get you to crack a smile and a full on assault on you and everything the color of your skin represents.

My husband, while he carries the truly Hispanic last name of “Martinez”, doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. His grandmother, the center of his family and one of my favorite people on earth, speaks Spanish fluently and makes the BEST Mexican rice known to man. When I read Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands I couldn’t help but envision what it must have been like to grown up as she did. Anzaldua writes on page 5 of the print-out: “In my culture, selfishness is condemned, especially in women; humility and selflessness, the absence of selfishness, is considered a virtue.” My Grandmother-in-law is the epitome of a Hispanic matriarch—she coddles all of us, worries about us, admonishes us if we act up, and loves us unconditionally—even the southern white girl her favorite grandson came home with. J She lived in Southern Texas with her family, and reading Anzaldua’s depiction of her Hispanic environment I imposed my Grandmother-in-law into the setting. Doing this allowed me even more of a connection with Anzaldua. To be a girl longing to be something more than a wife and victim of her culture and religion, Anzaldua spoke to the rebellious part of my own soul that cries out to lend her a hand. It is this desire to understand people, where they come from, what made them who they are, what they had to do to get to where they are, what they did not do to get where they are, and what they hope to accomplish in life that I am proud to say makes me a different white-adopted-Hispanic, Christian, heterosexual, married, maternal and educated woman. I do not carry the weight of my ancestors and the trappings of white privilege. I am what I am. I didn’t ask to be white and nor am I sorry or ashamed that I am. I am ME. I am a combination of all the choices I have made in life. If that is what makes me queer, then so be it.