White, Latina or Both?

‘I can’t believe I ever felt the need to justify myself’

One night when was walking towards Mel’s on Broadway, a guy I was walking with said to me “… because you’re not white”. I stopped abruptly in the middle of the street, shocked. I could not believe what I had just heard. Furious, I replied “what am I then, black?” he said “you’re Hispanic”.

I had never actually considered myself anything else but white. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. There I was, trying to explain to this guy, that my father was Italian and that my mother was Argentine (of German, Spanish and Italian descent) and that there was no way on earth I was anything other than Caucasian. Now I cannot believe I felt the need to justify myself.

It is after this episode that I realized how profoundly racist the place where I grew up was, the US was and to some extent how I was. First of all, I didn’t really understand why the guy said “you’re not white” out of the blue. I mean, seriously, what does that have to do with anything, most of all with going to a bar. Coming back to the US for college, after living eight years in Argentina, I was surprised by the fact that everybody was categorizing everybody. Suddenly, I found myself in a little shelf labelled Hispanic woman.

When I introduce myself to people I say “Hi, I’m Francesca”, I don’t actually say “Hi I’m Hispanic, and my name is Francesca”. I really didn’t understand the need in the US to categorize everyone by race, ethnicity and gender. Then I realized that I had actually been offended by his comment. Growing up in Argentina, where 86 per cent of the population is of European descent, it seemed inconceivable to be something other than white, because there actually were no non-white people other than what Americans consider “hispanic”, that in Argentina, would be considered “mestizos”.

The next few days I asked myself “Well then, who am I, where do I come from?”, it was Lit-Hum and the Odyssey all over again. Certainly, living in Argentina and having an Argentine mother has immersed me in Hispanic culture: I speak Spanish fluently, I read Borges and eat empanadas.

Yes, I am white and Hispanic but most of all, I am Francesca.

More
Columbia University