My mom is Chicana and my dad is White, making my sister and I biracial and lighter than the rest of our family. My sister and I were raised as being Mexican, always surrounded by my mom's side.It wasn't until I started high school that I realized that my sister and I look like we don't belong in our own family.
I'm taller than everyone in my family. Except for two uncles and my dad, I tower over every single one of my aunts, cousins, and my grandparents. When my sister and I walk with my mom in public people have to take a second look at us because it doesn't even look like we're her daughters. Where my mom is short, we are tall. Where she is brown, we are white. It hurts sometimes when I know that my cousins can pass for her daughters, instead of us.
In family photos, people can see a mass of "brown" people, then they see my sister and I and we get confused looks. One of my uncles used to call me "white girl" because, well, I looked white; he still calls me that until this day. I know he's just joking, but it still hurts knowing that my own uncle overlooks half of my genetic makeup. When my family talks about what it's like to be Mexican-American, those stories don't apply to me because I don't look Mexican. And if I act Mexican, I receive strange looks because I don't look the part.
It feels weird sometimes knowing that I look like I don't belong in my own family. There's even a rift between my closest cousins and I because I know they don't see me as equal to them; they think that I'm white and privileged. So, even within my own family I feel the judgement of not even being full white, but being half. I know they still love me, no matter what, but sometimes it becomes too much knowing that my own family puts me in one box, instead seeing all of the labels that create me.
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