What Culture Defines Me

The thing that defines me in an essential way is the color of my skin, my ethnicity, and my heritage. Women with privilege who want a temporary bronzed summer glow covet my skin, yet for me, it is the first thing that everyone sees and what people use to stereotype me. As a Mexican-American woman in Southeast Texas, I often face different types of prejudice, stereotypes, and racism. As a young girl, it was rather difficult to feel comfortable with who I was, even though my ethnicity was something I could not control. The demonization of immigrants through the media has a huge effect on how my community sees me. I live in a community where my culture is highly fetishized, yet no one seems to genuinely care about what is happening to Hispanics. Coming from a family of immigrants, and having family members who were previously illegal immigrants makes me much more of aware of the struggles my family had to go to get to this point. If anything, seeing how my family and other Hispanic members of my community fight to be accepted makes me work even harder towards my goals and what I want to do. As a Mexican-American woman, the odds are stacked against me to succeed. In 2015, only 19% of Latinas had obtained a college degree. …show more content…
It did not matter how hard I tried to succeed, what my GPA was, or how I carried myself. All she saw was the color of my skin, and how she could use a single word to degrade me.
The color of my skin will always define me. It will always be the first thing everyone sees. However, it defines me in a positive way. Rather than allowing the hatred to get to me, I turn negative experiences into motivation. My skin uplifts me and allows me to take the stereotypes and racism against me and prove anyone who thought less of me