The Other Minority Experience

I don't speak Spanish. I don't celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I don't like soccer. Yet, I'm Mexican. More specifically, a Mexican-American. If I say these things to people, as a Mexican-American, I'm told it's "sad". It's "weird".

"You've lost your culture."

"Your identity is gone."

That last one always gets my gears turning, because it's representative of a larger problem in this country. When people say I've lost my identity, my response is to ask exactly what semblance of my "identity" is gone. I'm a sixth or seventh generation Mexican-American. My present-day ties to my country of origin are as nonexistent as someone who's ancestors descended on the Americas in the Mayflower. Yet, I'm expected to maintain connections, maintain appearances. I am, for all intents and purposes, excluded from being an American.

In the US, only one group is allowed to be devoid of ancestral ethnic baggage, and it's comprised of anyone with white skin. Those in possession of a fairer epidermis can have roots anywhere from Russia, to italy, to England, yet it's normal for them to be devoid of the so-called qualities that would "qualify" them as a part of those ethnic groups. It's normal to not dance the Kalinka, or speak Italian, or eat cornish pastry when a person appears white. They haven't lost their identities. They're Americans.

I'm an American, too, but I play by different rules, apparently. I don't get to enjoy having a rich, long history with my country of birth. American culture is "white" culture, and I don't look white, so my membership is null and void. What's more, I'm not supposed to even want to be part of American culture, either. I'm Mexican, so I'm supposed to want to go to quinceaneras and listen to mariachi music, not watch baseball games or speak English. There are Mexican things to do, and then there are American things, and they are mutually exclusive.

Except they're not. When someone tells me that I've lost my identity by embracing being an American, what they don't realize is that statement is rife with contradiction. The American experience doesn't have a face, doesn't have a race. America is the melting pot. I can be indifferent to luchadors just as much as a person with French heritage can ignore escargot. That's not a loss of identity, because it's impossible to lose what a person never had. I was born in America and I'm an American. My ancestors came from Mexico, but that's a matter of trivia, not obligation.

I'm proud of my roots. There are bits and pieces of Mexico I choose to embrace, which is to say I enjoy the cuisine (on a side note, I get a kick out of Hormel's Rev Wraps, which are just burritos bastardized to sound and look more appealing to a wider audience). That's what being an American is all about, though; choice. I choose to be part of this incredible tapestry. I choose not to segregate myself into the pocket of the Mexico-focused experience that many Mexican-Americans partake in. I respect that it's something some people might want, but it's not me, and I shouldn't have to feel wrong about that.

So, no, I don't like telenovelas and I don't celebrate Dia de los Muertos. Not because I've lost my identity, but because it's not my identity. I watch The Mentalist. I listen to the A's on the radio. I write about video games. I live my life not beholden to the confining indexing of ethnicity that so many people archaically cling to. I'm an American, in the truest sense. So stop asking me about what I'm not and ask me about what I am. Which is also a quarter Italian-not that anyone would know that just from looking at me.