An Encounter with Anti-Latino Racism

CNN.com has a great article up today titled, “My Encounter with anti-Latino Racism“. The author, Nick Valencia, shares one specific racist experience he had at a concert and how that caused him to think through his own identity. He has great insights into the “in-betweenness” that bi-cultural Americans experience:

Like many Americans whose grandparents or parents came here from somewhere else, I live at the intersection of my two cultures. I eat tacos, but I love cheeseburgers. I go salsa dancing, and listen to rock n’ roll. I speak Spanish and English, and depending on the crowd, sometimes Spanglish. I love my country and my cultural community. My duality is my reality, just like the 50 million other Latinos in the United States.

Nick Valencia’s personal story is particularly powerful when thinking through the positives and negatives that come with a bi-cultural identity:

My Mexican friends remind me that I am American first, Mexican second and that my English is better than my Spanish.

“Yes,” I tell them. “But I can never walk into a room and be white.”

For many minorities their experience in the U.S. can be that of feeling like a foreigner in their own country. I pray that Destino and the Church will not be places that perpetuate that feeling for Latinos. I want when they walk into the room that Destino feels like coming Home.

Read the entire article here: My Encounter with anti-Latino Racism

photo courtesy: mvjantzen