Telling My Story

| Telling My Story | Race/Racism &Nationality and Ethnicity | | Christina Vazquez | |

The Latino Experience in the U.S. |

LAT150/SOC620

On my birth certificate it says that I was born in Queens, New York in the United States of America, but in my heart and what is written throughout my ancestry is Puerto Rican and Cuban. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, in a neighborhood that wasn’t the safest. My mother and father on the other hand was born and raised in Puerto Rico for most of their lives. They eventually came to the states when they were children. They raised me with strong Puerto Rican traditions with American cultural influences. They themselves transitioned from living on an island where they spoke a different language and had different traditions than those that they adapted to when they arrived in the United States.
My Puerto Rican culture has influenced everything from the food I eat, the way I dance. I was raised in a house where they played Bingo every Saturday. When I was younger, all I heard were number and letters being shouted. I still remember as a child my family would play musical chairs and bingo for gifts during Christmas. If it was anybodies birthday, graduation or baptism, there was always a party in the backyard. I was raised in a Spanish speaking home. I heard mostly Spanish and the little English that I heard was through the television or at school. This affected the woman I am today because I am mixture of cultures. It affects the way I carry myself as a Latina. In New York City, there are various amounts of cultures and being able to be bilingual was always a great tool in my upbringing and a great device of communication as an adult.
The island of Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States and Puerto Ricans are United States citizens, yet when my parents arrived in the United States, they weren’t treated like U.S. citizens but more like immigrants. If you were to look at my mother and father, they look like two different types of Puerto Ricans. My mother is more fair skinned and my father is darker skinned. When they arrived in the United States, they lived in the most run down apartments and smallest houses possible. They were very poor, sleeping in the same room with their brothers and sisters. Their experiences taught me a lot about the difference between my upbringing and how difficult it was for them. My mother told me one story in particular that made me think a lot. When she arrived in the New York, she had started going to school yet she was not put into an ESL class but rather into a regular English speaking class and was given a pencil for whenever she needed to use the restroom. The teacher was so fed up with my mom that he ignored her raising her pencil to allow her to use the restroom and therefore grew tired and broke her pencil. This broke my heart hearing this story because my mother was treated unfairly and all because she didn’t know English. It’s sad to hear this because she was a little girl with no clue of what was going on. I am thankful that when I was little that I didn’t have to experience that. That happening to my mother taught me that there are people in this country that will treat you differently because you speak a different language or that you come from a different place.
Public school is difficult to go through in general. Kids have bullies, grades, major test to face. I also had to experience racism in addition to all those things once in elementary school. It was not as bad as my mom and dad’s time in school but it made me see things differently. In the fifth grade, I had a teacher who was African American. She would penalize for everything. The other children would pick on me and she never helped me, she just watched. I remember being young and saying that I disliked her for how she treated me and then I was labeled a racist by the other children that bullied me. I remember being a little girl and having no clue what a racist was. I went home and told my mom, she was infuriated. I remember my mom going to the school and requested to speak to the teacher and the principal. She wanted to know why this teacher allowed these children to tease me and call me a racist in her classroom. I remember that from that point forward, the teacher stopped isolating me and curbed her attitude. It didn’t change the views of my peers. I now see differently as an adult how children of such a young age knowing about racism and not being taught properly. Their families had their own interpretation. It made me learn that even when you think that there isn’t ignorance in the world, there is. I also learned that people will not cease to surprise you with ignorance. It could’ve been because they didn’t know any better or they could be extremely stubborn. When I look back, I realize to not act ignorant and let how maybe others could be falsely informed affect the way you see yourself. New York City grew me to be who I am today and being raised in this city made me have a very rigid view on life. I have seen various amounts of things in half of my lifetime that probably others that grew up in other places haven’t. I believe that growing up in a neighborhood that isn’t so safe made me more cautious and always think quickly. One example I have in mind is my best friend from High school. She was raised in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Park Slope is filled with brownstone houses and mostly Caucasian families. There’s not a lot of violence that happens a lot in this part of Brooklyn. She didn’t experience what most kids from the hood see like cars blowing up near her window and houses getting raided by cops. She knew her neighbors well and she would give her neighbors the keys to her house. She trusts her neighbors like they were any other family member. My best friend is of Russian, Irish descent, she has very fair skin, blonde hair and bright blue eyes. My best friend was also raised differently than I was. Puerto Ricans aren’t really trusting of everyone, especially my family. We wouldn’t even give the keys of our house to our cousins. My best friend and I may be raised in the same city but our Ethnicities and our upbringings have a difference affect to who we are today as adults.
Nuyorican is what anyone would call me. This name is something I treasure to me because it makes me feel proud to say that I am a Puerto Rican that is raised in the New York. I do also feel that with all that still with all that pride that being Puerto Rican, you sometimes don’t get the full respect of being a part of a Latino culture but sometimes treated as the pet of the United States. I remember being a teenager and meeting people and them asking me where my family’s from and I would say that I am Puerto Rican. They would respond back to me saying “Oh” and give a look. Whenever I got this look, I hated myself. I would be compare to stereotypes and even when I met new people they would always mention the stereotypes of being loud and so on. I would find them offensive, so I just stopped telling people that I was Puerto Rican. Sometimes to this day, I still feel intimidated to tell people where my family’s from. I work in retail and there are times when I’m talking to Spanish to Hispanic customers they ask me where my families from and I catch myself mumbling “Puerto Rico.” I simply don’t want to see the same looks on their face like I saw before. It’s a shame to me that amongst Latino cultures that we could be racist to one another. Now that I am older, I learning to accept my Ethnic background and not seeing it as any less than any other Latino culture.
Racism may come from other Latino races or anyone in general but racism is also taught within families. The way my family taught me about racism changed my outlook on life. My mother had a very liberal way of thinking. She always told me that she’s happy with whoever I feel in love with. She didn’t care for their color of their skin or where their family came from but by how they treated me. My father on the other hand would beg to differ. On his side, they would tell me to not to date outside my race and to only see interest in Hispanic men. If I were to have a Black or white boyfriend, my family would be disappointed of me. My father side is nothing but a mixture of Puerto Rican and Dominicans. My aunts and uncles did not step outside the Latino playground. My choices in friends rub my family the wrong way. My best friend is white and yet she has only met someone from my family once. I don’t bring her around because my family is very fast to judge. I chose to not care for what they think because something I learned is that to let people be ignorant because there’s no point in fighting someone that is too stuck in their ways.
One example that I am currently in is my relationship with my boyfriend. My boyfriend is West Indian and although we are both from the Caribbean, it took almost over a year to tell my father that my boyfriend was black. I had to tell them he was from the Caribbean. I do remember when I was seventeen and I had a Puerto Rican boyfriend, my father’s side loved him. They would have the longest conversations and talk to him about everything but when I brought my recent boyfriend around my grandmother didn’t even say hello to him. She just nodded her head. I realized that even in my father’s side there might be a mixture of pigments in the skin; they prefer me to be with Hispanic men. I have grown really defensive of my boyfriend, whenever anyone has a racist comment; I’m the first to respond. Racism is all around all us. For me, it’s based on ignorance and this ideal image. It’s taught from a young age to children.
The woman that I am today is because of the city that was raised in and the influence of my ethnic background. Since I was born in the United States, I’m bilingual and I carry the language of my ethnic background and I also carry the English language. I have experience different forms of racism based on my ethnicity. It could have been from other Latinos or different races in general. It taught to rise about it and not to give power to what others think or say. They could’ve just been informed incorrectly or they just refuse to care. I once use to hate being Puerto Rican and being stereotyped and now I’m proud and I could care less for any stereotype. I am who I am and I’m proud to say that.