When you mix Mexican and El Salvadorian the phenotypic combinations are end less, but I only know three.
1. Pale skin and caramel-honey eyes. They say I look like my mother, but they don't see the difference between her olive undertone and my pink one. I burn, she doesn't.
2. Brown skin and raven wavy locks. Dark brown eyes that people say look angry-- and they are. She experiences things the first will never know.
3. 5'7'' and a voluptuous curly cut that she has been raised to tame and never enjoy. A mild tan that no one can place. She does not know where she falls.
Out of las tres hermanas (the three sisters) I, the first one, will always have to explain where I choose to belong and how I choose to identify. Latina. Woman of color. The scientists will never ask for my DNA because drive by racialization says I never knew and will never know what it's like to be stripped of a life you belong to. Or at least a life you thought you knew as your own. Because my phenotypes are wrong for what I am suppose to be. I know exactly how that feels.
Their eyes strip me of my ancestors. They place me in a home with pale parents in the middle of suburbia. Their eyes look at las tres hermanas and have the audacity to say you don't look like sisters.
The scientists think they know my story. They think I am one of them. The kind with privilege. The kind who write the algorithms and determine which arbitrary features count as beautiful. As valuable. As human.
They will never ask me for my DNA but they will always ask my sister for hers. They will interview her and beg for more answers to what it's like to look like her. And then ask why she is angry. I will never know anger as well as she does. I will never be able to sympathize and say I understand. To know women from the same mother will never see eye to eye makes me cringe.
Sam, this piece really resonated with me. I am much lighter than my mother, but our facial features are very similar—I look a lot like her. We have a running joke in my family that I’m a photocopy of my mother, but the photocopy machine was running out of ink, so I’m a less-inked, lighter version of her. I laugh about it. In fact, I’m usually the one who says it, but part of me cringes every time. I feel like I got the outline right, but the color has been stripped and I’m washed-out, blurry. I feel like I have to prove I belong to my heritage, my ancestors. I have to grasp for them as they are pulled away from me by those who assume they are not mine. I grasp at my heritage and my ancestors because they are a part of me, but sometimes I feel like they are a part I do not know. A part my mother never showed me because she wanted me to survive and thrive in the dominant world. In your post, you wrote, “I will never know anger as well as she does.” This line was so powerful for me. I will never know the anger my mother does. I will never be able to fully understand what she lives through every day. At the same time, she will never fully understand my experiences. Even though she’s my mother, she raised me, we can never completely belong in the same world. I have a privilege to cross between worlds, speaking and being heard in various places. Sometimes, however, I want a place to call home. I know my story is different from yours and I have veered off of what you were discussing in your post, but your words really resonated with certain parts of my story. They started an internal dialogue, and I guess I wanted to share it with you and explore it for myself. Thank you.
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