Are You Really About La Raza?

Itzel

La Gringa. The White Girl. It used to be my nickname growing up. My light hair and light eyes and thick tongue that struggled to formulate anything Spanish. As a 10th generation Mexican American, with parents who are proud Chicanos but very Americanized, I didn’t really stand a chance in my schools filled with first-generation kids who looked at me like I didn’t belong. So, I decided to do something about it. I dyed my hair black. I studied Spanish intensely, training my tongue to learn the nuances, the cadence. I only read books by Latine authors; I wore Frida Kahlo shirts and carried tote bags with Emiliano Zapata’s face plastered on the front. I only dated Latine. I only hung out with Latine. I was militant in my passion for Chicano pride and Chicano literature and placing Chicano/Latine issues at the forefront of my life. As I aged, grew older, more confident, maybe a little wiser, I chilled out a bit. I grew more sure of myself and my background and my history. I realized that I was essentially perpetuating a stereotype of what Chicano is supposed to be. There isn’t one way to be Chicano. I realized. But there was so much to prove, don’t you see? Intellectually, most people know that Mexicans come in all shades, but that doesn’t stop prejudice, ignorance, media imagery. There is a line from the movie One Night in Miami when Jim Brown tells Malcolm X, “I always find it kinda funny how you light skinned cats end up being so damn militant.”

Yes. When you feel like you have something to prove, you go bigger, harder, more intense than anyone else in the room.

By the time I met Luisa, I had shed the baggage of my early years and was fully confident in who I was.

Or so I thought.

I came to Cal State LA with high aspirations. After almost fifteen years of working the adjunct circuit, I was finally rewarded with a full-time teaching, tenure track position in the psychology department at the school I had always wanted to be at. Cal State LA has one the highest Latine student populations in the United States. I would be able to utilize all of my experience in both education and field work and use that to help my community. And, selfishly, it was one of the best psychology departments in the Cal State system. And, selfishly, I wanted to meet Luisa Perez. Academic writer, receiver of major grants, who was at the time doing research on the effects of environmental racism within Black and Brown neighborhoods. She was able to conduct that research because of the Nosotros grant. A $40,000 dollar grant that was given annually to a Latine academic conducting research that would improve conditions in our communities. I had applied for that grant for the past three years and failed, so I was determined to see the woman who got it on her first attempt.

On my first day, I walked into my office. I stood in the middle of the room, looking out the window that overlooked a patch of lawn, and some tables where students were working, eating, communing together. I breathed in deeply and took in the sunlight, thinking that I had finally found a home.

“Oye, chica, que paso?”

I turned and standing in the doorway was Luisa Perez.

What I’m about to say next is going to sound…bad. But this is my truth so here it goes:

Luisa looked like a white woman with a bad spray tan. It had been my first thought when I saw photos of her. But I quickly dismissed the thought, ashamed of myself for thinking that way about a fellow light-skinned Latina.

I looked at her now and smiled, “Luisa Perez. It is so nice to meet you.”

“Gurl,” she responded coming up to me and kissing me on both cheeks, “It is so nice to meet you. Serio. Like, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to get another Latina in the building. I need a comadre! Tu sabes?”

“Yes,” I responded, “It’s so nice not to be the only one. You’d think with a predominantly Latine student population, there’d be more of us.”

“Guuurrl,” she nearly screamed, throwing her head back and rolling her eyes, “Mira, we have SO much to talk about.”

The next thing I'm about to say is…also bad.

She spoke like…ok.

Have you ever seen that movie Hard Times? If you haven’t, don’t. But if you have, then you’ll remember Christian Bale. And how hard he tried to sound like he was from El Barrio. You know what I mean. That kind of speech that we associate with cholos and movies like Mi Familia and Blood in, Blood Out. Watching Christian Bale made my head hurt. It was so cringe. We can tell when something is forced. When it doesn’t belong. When it’s inauthentic.

Luisa sounded inauthentic.

But again, I let the thought go, ashamed for thinking this way about her. I was standing in front of a woman who was so respected in the academic community. In the Latine community.

So, I just smiled and nodded.

Part of being a tenure-track professor is doing research. Research that is specific to your field, that will help establish you as an important cog in the wheel of academia.

When I was younger, I loved to do theatre. I was involved throughout my middle-school and high school years. I probably would have majored in theatre if I hadn’t been determined to pursue psychology.

One of the ideas for my research was the symbiotic relationship between psychology and theatre. Theatre has always held up a mirror to society. It shows us our own humanity. It can show us our downfall. Our potential. Shakespeare shows us the power of theatre multiple times, but especially in Hamlet. Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father who tells him that he was murdered by his own brother, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius who now sits on the throne. In order to try and figure out if the ghost was telling the truth, Hamlet hires actors to recreate the supposed murder of his father. Claudius is so disturbed by the play that he flees in the middle of it.

Theatre has always been one of the most powerful tools, and I wanted to conduct research on how to use role-playing in therapy sessions. When I told this to Luisa over lunch, she scoffed,

“Aye mujer, do your research! It’s already been done.”

“Yes, but, what I’m proposing has never been done within the Latine community. It could be so beneficial to-

“Oh my,” she interrupted, “Mira que the way you talk. It’s just us.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Ay, come on,” she said, lightly hitting my arm, “You always talk so white. It’s just us, mujer. Let your hair down a bit.”

“Not all of us talk like we just stepped out of American Me, ok? I don’t need to speak a certain way to prove anything to you,” I immediately snapped.

Luisa’s eyes widened and her hands went up, “Ok, sorry! Sorry…I had no idea you were such a closeted gringa.”

She laughed and lightly hit my arm again to try and show that she was joking. She told me that she had work to do and excused herself; told me we should do lunch again. And I sat there seething. Old anger of being teased rushed back and filled my veins. I told myself to calm down. To just take it in stride. Luisa didn’t know me. Who was she to say those things? I decided to try and let it go.

A week later I found out that Luisa received another grant. An artist grant where she was doing research about the effects of role-playing in therapy sessions, specifically within the Latine community.

I never confronted her about it. I just started doing my own research. On her. I took my initial suspicions and ran with them. I casually talked to my colleagues about her. What they knew. Everything they knew. I gathered more and more information and started to see discrepancies. She had told someone that her father had been a construction worker, but she had told me that he had been a janitor. Someone said she was from the Bronx, but someone else said that they thought she had been raised in Crown Heights. And, of course, there were others who had their suspicions but no one wanted to make waves on such an academic super-star like Luisa.

I told myself that I did it because she stole my research. Because she was using grant money that should have gone to a Latine person. Because she literally stole money out of the hands of someone else. Out of mine.

But really?

Really, I knew I was going to out her the moment she called me gringa. The moment she made me remember all those years of ridicule.

I did it to get revenge.

Luisa

Rachel Dolezal.

That name brings up a lot of feelings to a lot of people.

If you don’t know, Rachel Dolezal is a “white woman” who claimed to be Black. She was the head of an NAACP chapter for a number of years until being outed that she was in fact white. Or, rather born to white parents.

In the documentary about her, she argues that because she self-identifies as Black, that she is. That because race technically doesn't exist, she can identify however she wants.

Now, I recognize that there are arguments about how a white person claiming to be a race they aren’t, is coopting an experience. A person of privilege, literally colonizing a culture and claiming it for their own.

But I didn’t do that.

So, what if my parents were "white"?

I spent the first five years of my life in Crown Heights surrounded by ethnic folks. It doesn’t matter that I moved to Vermont after. My formative years were in Crown Heights where I connected on a visceral level with Latine people.

My heart is Latine and has always been.

Yes, I used grant money, but I used that money to help communities.

And so what if I kept some for myself?

I deserved it.