I was scrolling through Facebook the other day when I happened upon a short video that was supposed to open up dialogue about the “Chicano identity.” The video was no more than a minute long and the text that flashed across the screen read, “Newer generations (of Mexican Americans) often don’t identify as Chicano and view (the term) as...
“You speak to your mom in Spanish?” my coworker inquired one day at the office when I answered a phone call from my mother. While I didn’t give the question a second thought, it puzzled me. Why was he surprised? I thought it was obvious; given that my coworker knows that I’m Latino, that I would speak to my...
“What are you?” These three words compose the single most-heard question I am asked by the people I meet. Despite hearing it so often, I am still slightly insulted time after time. Isn’t there a better way to ask me what my ethnicity is?
Understandably, I am aware that my face is quite racially ambiguous and rarely have people assumed...
Growing up as a kid, I always seemed to draw more attention than my peers. I didn't act terribly different than others. In elementary school, when everyone spoke in class, often I would join in. I was the sole student to draw the teacher’s scorn. In middle school, this scorn escalated. I often found myself sitting in the principal’s...
You know, I thought the #BlackLivesMatter versus #AllLivesMatter debate was over. I really did. But, then Beyonce’s Formation music video and Super Bowl performance happened and I found myself talking about it, because people are saying the same ignorant things they did when the hashtags first came out. I found myself wishing I really could be like the “Be...
Sometimes I thought of the other children in my kindergarten class as colors of the rainbow. Of course, I knew at the time that all of my classmates had their own distinct combination of hues, whether they be different shades of hair color, skin color or eye color. However, for the most part, all of my kindergarten peers were...
Social media is undeniably one of the most powerful resources at our disposal. One of the lesser known, though still quite popular, of these platforms is Tumblr. You can find fan fiction, references to all of your pop culture favorites and some of the funniest GIFs on the Internet.
I’ve been “tumbling” since 2011, which also happened to be...
As I write this, digging up my memories of him, recalling virtually almost every instance I had in his classes, I realize that even though I miss him, he had lived a full life. And I believe he was aware of this, as he stressed the importance of having us, the future generation, keep Shakespeare alive.
I remember the first...
In the second episode of the Netflix original comedy “Master of None,” the characters Dev and Brian realize that their parents experienced a lot of hardships as first-generation immigrants. To express their gratitude, they treat their parents out to dinner and listen to stories from their parents’ difficult childhoods. Dev even buys his father a guitar and a series...
Today, like every day for the last 18 years, I woke up white.
I sat through class today without being looked at as being the “positive” exception to my race, and was able to contribute effectively to classroom discussions without feeling like I was speaking on behalf of all white people. I walked back to my residence hall without being...