The journey to finding a positive racial self-identification has been and continues to be a tiresome struggle. In my experience, I have had to find ways to navigate around the ideas about race from the adults and peers in my life. This voyage is one that started from young and until present day, is ever changing with each life event. According to Tatum, “Adolescents are searching for identity; … And particularly for adolescents of color, these questions cannot be answered without also asking: Who am I ethnically? Who am I racially? and What meaning does this have for how people view me and interact with me?” (O’Neil 1997). For me, this search for identity has certainly brought about many questions. At times the answers were given in forceful,
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I wasn’t forewarned that other Black children could negatively impact my image of being Black. Many of my first racial epithets came from other Black children, and were usually geared towards my complexion and the way that I spoke. There were many encounters that jarred my racial identity. There were instances where children found it entertaining to call me names, “that’s why you’re a tar-baby” and “shut up blackie” came in conjunction with other insults like, “you have HBO”, standing for Haitian body odor. The fact that I chose to speak in Mainstream Academic English, instead of in Black Vernacular English made me a target for being called a “Valley Girl” or an “Oreo”. All of my differences were highlighted in a negative way, my appearance, my speech, and my existence. Simultaneously, I also received the first push back about my Latina identity. Children would say, “you can’t be Puerto Rican, you’re not light skinned, plus you don’t speak Spanish”. Just like that my peers stripped me of a heritage I had always known. Their resistance to my identity was a polar opposite to the way even my extended family viewed me. In the eyes of my mother’s family, my mixed heritage was acknowledged, it stood as the reason why my hair was so dissimilar to theirs and difficult to manage. To them, being mixed was the precise …show more content…
As I have progressed from a sales associate, to a supervisor and now to a manager of my store, I have begun to see the institution of racism manifest itself in the ugliest of ways. Now that I am a manager, I am called over to diffuse difficult situations with customers. The neighborhood that I work in is an affluent one; a majority of the customer base is White. In situations that call for my help I have had people look me over as if they are trying to figure me out before they allow me to correct the situation. I am often made to feel unqualified or insignificant because people will voice their doubts about my ability to aid them with their problem. When someone realizes that I am the only person who has the power to fix his or her issue at hand, I am given a chance to “prove myself”. Mixed feelings of pride and disgust fill my body when someone responds to my ability to do my job well with a reaction of surprise. Customers have said, “You are so well spoken, where did you grow up?” or “You seem to know what you are taking about, I hope they pay you well here”. Statements like these leave me wondering what their racial theoretical framework looks like, and why they find it necessary to ask these kinds of questions and voice their opinions of me. When I am at work I feel disempowered. My position as a manager is sometimes simply overlooked.
I wasn’t forewarned that other Black children could negatively impact my image of being Black. Many of my first racial epithets came from other Black children, and were usually geared towards my complexion and the way that I spoke. There were many encounters that jarred my racial identity. There were instances where children found it entertaining to call me names, “that’s why you’re a tar-baby” and “shut up blackie” came in conjunction with other insults like, “you have HBO”, standing for Haitian body odor. The fact that I chose to speak in Mainstream Academic English, instead of in Black Vernacular English made me a target for being called a “Valley Girl” or an “Oreo”. All of my differences were highlighted in a negative way, my appearance, my speech, and my existence. Simultaneously, I also received the first push back about my Latina identity. Children would say, “you can’t be Puerto Rican, you’re not light skinned, plus you don’t speak Spanish”. Just like that my peers stripped me of a heritage I had always known. Their resistance to my identity was a polar opposite to the way even my extended family viewed me. In the eyes of my mother’s family, my mixed heritage was acknowledged, it stood as the reason why my hair was so dissimilar to theirs and difficult to manage. To them, being mixed was the precise …show more content…
As I have progressed from a sales associate, to a supervisor and now to a manager of my store, I have begun to see the institution of racism manifest itself in the ugliest of ways. Now that I am a manager, I am called over to diffuse difficult situations with customers. The neighborhood that I work in is an affluent one; a majority of the customer base is White. In situations that call for my help I have had people look me over as if they are trying to figure me out before they allow me to correct the situation. I am often made to feel unqualified or insignificant because people will voice their doubts about my ability to aid them with their problem. When someone realizes that I am the only person who has the power to fix his or her issue at hand, I am given a chance to “prove myself”. Mixed feelings of pride and disgust fill my body when someone responds to my ability to do my job well with a reaction of surprise. Customers have said, “You are so well spoken, where did you grow up?” or “You seem to know what you are taking about, I hope they pay you well here”. Statements like these leave me wondering what their racial theoretical framework looks like, and why they find it necessary to ask these kinds of questions and voice their opinions of me. When I am at work I feel disempowered. My position as a manager is sometimes simply overlooked.