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I donât really know how to talk about this concisely. I guess the first thing I can say is that I feel heartbroken for just a lot of reasons. Iâll try my best to get my thoughts out. I donât even exactly know what Iâm trying to say.
I wish to issue a statement of support to BIPOC. I wish to condemn not only racism, but colorism. I want to share my experience as a non-black POC. I donât even know if Iâm allowed to call myself that as someone who is biracial. I do not wish to detract from the struggles of the Black community. Rather, I want to share my experiences with the understanding that I still have a lot of privilege, but I also have a desire to stand in solidarity. Maybe this will be informative and help others to understand the pervasive nature of racism, and how tiring and hurtful it is.
I will be discussing racism, internalized racism, police brutality, and abuse.
Iâm half Mexican. I havenât really told more than a couple of people on here that. Iâm white-passing by virtue of damaging myself. For decades I hated my skin. I thought I was ugly. Unsophisticated looking. I didnât look like my white family members. I didnât look like the white community around me. The only person who looked like me was my father and my eldest brother, who I had little social contact with. I have not gone into the sun for decades. I tried to bleach my skin. An endocrinologist told me that my vitamin D levels were on par with someone with severe malnutrition, and I had to be put on medication. Now I am pale in the way someone sick is pale. It mitigated some but not all racist comments.
I no longer live with my white mother. Thatâs a good thing. She had nothing but contempt for me on several levels. Thatâs weird, isnât it? I think she liked my father by virtue of how whitewashed he was made to be. In the 1950s his family lived in a U.S. Naval base in Peru, though they were of Mexican origin. His first language was Spanish. They moved to America in the 1960s. He was made to assimilate into white culture and stop speaking Spanish. He doesnât speak it anymore. My mother says itâs not a "pretty language.â
My father worked overseas for most of my childhood. I was raised by my white mother. My paternal grandfather died long before I was born, and my paternal grandmother died when I was young. We called her âGrandma Tina.â No one ever told me her real name. I found out it was Eutimia. I guess that was too âethnicâ for people to say. No one ever told me I was Mexican. I just looked different and I didnât know why. I hated everything about how I looked.
My father became chronically ill in the past decade. He requires daily medication or he will quite literally die. A few years ago, he was having a medical crisis and trying to get home. The police pulled him over and arrested him for driving under the influence, despite the fact that he was not intoxicated and had passed their breathalyzer test. He was taken into police custody. My mother took me in a panic down to the precinct to collect him or at the very least give him some of his medicine. It was midnight. We arrived and the police officer regarded my mother with a smug smile. We could not visit my father because visiting hours were over. We could not bail him out because of the time of night. He would not allow her to give him the medicine, and assured us there was a medical facility on location. My mother tried to yell at the cop. I had to pull her away. I was afraid of how things would escalate, and how she could have made things worse for my father. The medical staff did not tend to my father. When we bailed him out the following morning, he was nearly dead. Much longer and he would have gone into organ failure.
Yesterday, my mother made a bigoted facebook posts condemning the BLM protests with no self-awareness about the abuse of power that had nearly cost my father his life. I spoke out against her publicly. Iâve always been scared of her. Even though I no longer live with her. Sheâs more abusive emotionally and mentally than I feel like Iâve even letting on. I feel like I canât say she was truly abusive because she only beat me with a hairbrush once, and I feel like I deserved it. I am still closeted as gay and trans IRL out of fear from my family and the state I live in. I guess Iâve been closeted about my ethnicity in-game too. My character is pale, but my face claim is a white-passing man of Mexican descent. Maybe thatâs self-insert-y but I feel a connection to it. I donât know how to explain it. But I do know that I want to speak up.
I want to say this now. Even if it makes me uncomfortable. Even if it makes others uncomfortable. I feel like it needs to be said. I know that as someone who has the opportunity to pass as white, I have certain privileges and a duty to speak out against racism. Silence is Violence. I plead with the members of my community to do their best to hold compassion and openness for the BIPOC around them. I hope that people keep an open heart and a willingness to change behaviors that have been harmful to the BIPOC in their communities.Â
For the past three months Iâve been working 6 days a week with no end in sight due to COVID-19. I may not be completely available all the time, or completely in the loop about things. I am sorry that I have not spoken up sooner. I donât know if this enough, or if itâs appropriate. I just want to put it out there. If anyone wishes to speak, please feel free to message me.
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