Member-only story
When Privilege Doesn’t Prevail
I have a huge problem — I wasn’t born white enough.
Not on the outside. And as far as I can tell, not on the inner, either.
On the interior, it’s all 2PAC’s Greatest Hits, Juice, and Juicy.
If you know, you know.
On the outside, I appear so Latino that full-blooded Puerto-Ricans, Mexicans, and even Columbians look at me and think, maybe?
Wonderful people of all major eighteen plus countries and territories where Spanish is the first language of, have come up to me on the street and asked “hablas Espanol?”. That’s how not white enough I am.
To their disappointment and sometimes befuddlement, I’ve always had to reply I do not speak Spanish, in English or worse — broken Spanish. I’m just a part Irish, part Native American who tans easily and really enjoys Taco Bell.
That and being able to understand what I’m being asked, when I’m asked if I speak Spanish, in Spanish — is about where my official Latino ties start and end.
Unless you count having friends named Juan and Julio as “having Latino ties”. In which case, I have two more ties to the Latino community, off the top of my head.
Now that I think about it, the police probably consider having friends named Juan and Julio as having Latino…
