I’m a light skinned Mexican-American, but I get a good tan in about 5 minutes. When I was a little boy in the 80’s, my skin was darker from playing outside a lot, and for a brief time I was called racial slurs like ‘beaner’ and ‘little wetback’.
I didn’t know what those words meant at the time. I only knew they were mean, and they had to do with my skin color.
My parents told me to ignore the names, and I did, but that didn’t stop the name calling. The names just didn’t bother me anymore (“I’m rubber, you’re glue…”, and “sticks and stones…” were super helpful), or at least I thought they didn’t bother me.
But over the years growing up in a town of mostly whites and Latinos, I learned through experience that if I kept my skin lighter, and acted a certain way people didn’t call me those names anymore.
Instead people told me they were “colorblind” and welcomed me. Cool I guess. I was just a kid that wanted to fit in, I didn’t really care how. 🤷🏻♂️
I also noticed if I ever deviated from acting a certain way people (especially white people) weren’t so colorblind anymore, but by that point it was too late.
It felt good to be welcomed into their world, and I began to think colorblindness was the answer to America’s “declining” racism problem. I thought focusing on racism was only causing more racial division. 🤦🏻♂️
I took MLK’s words to heart, and I wanted to be judged on the content of my character, not the color of my skin, and by-golly my character was swell according to what the colorblind whites were telling me!
I started listening to other people of color on talk radio that had a similar mindset. In the ‘90s, Larry Elder was today’s Candace Owens, but it’s still the same B.S. 20 years later.
Then once I started working, I quickly got jobs and promotions not only because I was smart and hard working, but because I also fit into the nice nonthreatening mold of a fully assimilated whitewashed Latino.🧖🏻♂️👔 But in my eyes, I was just being an “American.”
That certainly helped with a career in Corporate America, but it also led to years of my own internalized self loathing and depression that I’m still working through today. If you’ve seen the movie Mi Familia, I was basically Memo, the coconut son. Fun times.
Eventually I realized that colorblindness is another, yet dangerously more subtle form of racism, but a whole lot of white people and whitewashed people of color still cling to it as the answer, and think other brown folk just need to get their shit together and stop focusing on old racist stuff from the past and move on.
If that still sounds like you - please stop with that bullshit and evolve your understanding of racism. You’re not helping anyone but yourself feel better about your own racial biases. And if you’re a person of color like me, maybe ask yourself if you’re a Memo too.
If you need me I’ll be outside in the sun getting dark AF.✌🏾