A glimpse of my privilege and dismissal as a fair-skinned Latinx woman in the U.S.

“You don’t look Hispanic.”

I’ve heard some version of that phrase more times than I can count.

As we near the end of Hispanic Heritage Month in the U.S. and I reflect on my own experiences as a first-generation American, I find myself caught between the “privilege” of not looking like what Americans expect a Hispanic or Latinx person to look like (and the benefits it provides) and having my experience as a first-generation American born to an immigrant and a refugee dismissed altogether because I don't “look Hispanic.”?

My mom, who is dark-skinned and speaks English with an accent, emigrated from Cuba with my aunt and grandmother when she was 14 years old.

The three arrived in Chicago as refugees eight years after my grandfather was executed in their home by the government. This was several years after my uncle came to the U.S. alone during Operación Pedro Pan, in which more than fourteen thousand Cuban youths arrived alone in the U.S.

My father, who is very fair-skinned with blue eyes and also speaks English with an accent, came to the U.S. at age 17 to live and study with an uncle in Chicago. My father was born in the ranching town of Tacuarembó, Uruguay, where my grandparents had a cattle ranch. He later lived in Montevideo, Uruguay, and then Honduras, where he was constantly made fun of for being so pale-skinned. My father was the only one of six children to come live in the U.S.; all of his siblings and my cousins continued living in Uruguay or moved to neighboring Argentina.

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Five years after my parents arrived in the U.S., I was born. I grew up in the cultures and traditions my parents (and grandmother) brought with them. We spoke Spanish at home until I started school, when my parents were discouraged from speaking Spanish to me and my younger brother because it was thought at the time that it would interfere with the ability to learn English.

We lived in South Florida, but in an area that did not have as many Latinx people as it does now. I had mostly non-Hispanic friends, apart from several Cuban families that lived in the area. But my home was Latinx. It was a bit like a popular show at the time, “Que Pasa USA,” a comedy series showcasing the lives of three generations of a Cuban family all living under the same roof. My dad worked in the Latin American division of Motorola and most of his coworkers were from Latin American countries. When we had parties or went to social events, they were mainly comprised of Spanish-speaking Latinx now living in the U.S.

When I went away to college, I immediately gravitated to the Latinx student groups and activities. I was in the Hispanic Student Association and won a Student Senate race with their support. Every weekend was spent salsa dancing and playing dominoes at the homes of other Latinx students and international students from Latin America. It felt like home to me. Graduate school at Texas A&M University was harder, but I managed to find a small group of mostly international students from Latin America and we formed a tight-knit community there.?

But despite those communities and my personal sense of belonging, there were many experiences that created a sense of “otherness” and exclusion because I didn’t fit others’ expectations of what I should look or sound like. On several occasions, people around me would say terrible or inappropriate things about me because they assumed that I didn't speak Spanish. Usually I would fire off right away, calling them out in Spanish to their shock, but one time I waited. After a full semester of listening to two guys talk about me and my body, thinking I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I let them know I understood every word. They were mortified.?

Now, most of the time I thought it was fun to surprise others with my Spanish-speaking skills and challenge their assumptions about me. But what I didn’t realize at that time was how much privilege came with how I looked.

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I still had cultural disadvantages in areas like vocabulary, standardized testing, and life experiences - especially in the early years because I was not exposed to the same things as most of my classmates. However, I had societal advantages that I did not fully appreciate until I got much older. And they became even more apparent when I was married to the father of my kids.?

As a dark-skinned Colombian refugee who speaks English with a significant accent, the difference in the way we were treated shocked me. We would always have to wait for him in airports because he was always chosen for “random security screening.” People would drive by our house, see him working in our yard, assume he was a hired worker, and ask him how much he charged for his work. I would notice the way people looked at us in areas that were predominantly white or how we would be followed more closely in a store while shopping. The experiences are too many to name and they were all new for me because I had never experienced those situations in my body and my skin. I saw how hard it was for him to get a job compared to others and that having an accent on his English made others think he was less capable despite his intelligence.?

Outside of the U.S., my experience is so vastly different. I have traveled to 15 Spanish-speaking countries, including Spain, for work and/or pleasure and I rarely get a reaction in which someone is surprised that I speak Spanish. They are usually busy trying to guess which Latin American country I am from, and they rarely guess that I am from the U.S. I usually get asked if I am from Spain, Argentina, Colombia, or Mexico depending on where I am, but here in the U.S. nearly everyone is surprised when I tell them that I am 100% Latinx.?

I feel grateful for my heritage and upbringing and very much love the culture. I have traveled to Cuba, Uruguay, and Argentina to visit family and I retain many of the food, dancing, art, and other aspects of the culture within me and within my home. I now live in New Mexico, about one hour away from the border to Ciudad Juarez, and have traveled to many cities in Mexico for work and for fun. (I have been to Mexico more times than any other Latin American country.) I have embraced the culture and food, which I consider to be one of the best of the 49 countries I have traveled to! My son went to a Mexican-oriented bilingual middle school and was in the Ballet Folklórico, where he learned to dance and performed many of the traditional dances from Mexico. I continue participating in tropical dancing (salsa, bachata, merengue) and have a group of friends here who enjoy doing the same, but I have also expanded my dancing repertoire to include cumbias from Mexico.?

I have always seen my Latinx background and language skills as an advantage in my career but didn't realize how much privilege I derived from how I look and from not having an accent on my English until I was further in my career. Once I became more aware of this, I noticed how others were dismissed, marginalized, or excluded simply due to their more apparent and visible connections to being seen and heard as being Latinx by others. I then made it a point to call it out, which didn't go over well in many circumstances. I hired people who didn't “look the part” but who were perfectly capable of the job, ruffling feathers and exposing the racism and discrimination that was underneath the entire time.?

You often don't see the racism in someone until something or someone brings it out in them. Over the years, I learned that racism and discrimination don't have to be blatant to be harmful and that if you don't push the envelope, you won't notice it. Being privileged in the way I look and speak blinded me to the reality of the world we live in as well as what it is like to have to overcome bias on a daily basis.

The way someone looks or speaks is in no way a reflection of someone’s intelligence, capability, or identity. We cannot continue making assumptions based on our own pre-conceived ideas of what being Latinx looks or sounds like, nor can we assume to know others’ experiences because of our perceived similarities. Don't assume. Get curious and ask questions. The Latinx community is a wonderful blend of color: we come in all shades, hair colors, and eye colors. We are in the U.S. under a variety of circumstances, situations, and reasons.

And only we get to define ourselves.