Being Biracial

Growing up as a biracial child is arguably harder than growing up being one race. When you're one race it's easy for people to make snap judgments about you and place certain stereotypes on you. Whether an individual is African American, white, Mexican, Cuban, Korean, etc. they face ignorance from individuals in other ethnic groups. However, when you're biracial you don't face prejudice from one group, you face it from both. Being biracial and looking racially ambiguous as a child I always got asked the question "what are you?", as must biracial children have. Other Children either assumed I was Mexican or White but never both. It's understandable that they wouldn't understand intersectionality and that my mom was white and my dad Mexican. However, I still got asked that question in High school and I still get asked about my race to this day. Even adults have asked me about my ethnicity. Every time I get asked if I'm Mexican or if I'm white I get upset because as soon as I tell someone that I'm Mexican-American, they usually find a way to put me in a box.


In high school a majority of my friend were Mexican, African and El Salvadorian. I only had one white friend and that was most likely because my High School was packed full of diversity. I assumed that since my school was filled with such diversity that everyone would be culturally conscious and accepting but that wasn't the case. Some of my closest friends refused to call me Mexican and told me that I wasn't Mexican because I didn't speak fluent Spanish and because I wasn't born in Mexico. I thought my other Mexican friends would accept me but they judged me constantly. They assumed that, because I grew up with a white mother and looked white, that I had acquired white privilege. They were always telling me about the struggles they'd faced as kids and growing up and the adversity they'd faced. They threw it in my face and I felt sad because my friends were supposed to accept me for who I was but they judged me because I was half white. They told me stories from their childhood and I listened to their struggles but I never told them mine, even though mine were just as bad. I didn't want them to have that information and try to use it against me. I never told them that when I was younger I got made fun of and picked on for my skin color.


My Mexican friends judged me and they didn't see me as such. They just saw me as a privileged white girl who hadn't faced as much adversity as they had. It's ironic, really, because white people never saw me as white. They always saw me as Latina. In fourth grade, when I was standing in line for the bus to take me to day care with my sisters, an older white girl pushed me out of the way and said "Move it, colored." When I was five at day care, a boy my age turned his nose up at me and said "I don't want to sit next to a brown girl." Judgements and comments like these just hampered my self-confidence as a child.

At the age of five I already had a problem with being biracial and being called colored and facing prejudice from other children didn't help me any. I thought going to a diverse high school would help me and it did a little. I learned about Mexican culture and it was something I had explored a little but no matter what, I still face opposition from either Mexican individuals or white individuals. If I interact with a Latino individual, they automatically assume that I'm white and when I interact with a White individual, they automatically assume that I'm Latina. People don't ask me "what are you?" because they genuinely want to know. They ask so they know which box to put me in. I know I'm not the only person who has dealt with this. It can be really frustrating, especially when you struggle with being biracial. People, often, fail to accept biracial people as being Mexican and White or Japanese and African American. They decide which race you 'act' most like and choose your identity for you.