I never felt connected to my heritage. I was never taught to speak spanish. I was never taught to see myself as Latino. I have always felt disconnected to my background and to my color and as I got older and stopped viewing myself as ‘white’ I can clearly remember my mixed-race mother claiming to just be a ‘white woman’. My father, when I was speaking about being Latino, came out with “Oh, so is that what you are going by now?” as if I was not born this color. My mixed race mother and my non-biological white father meant no disrespect in their statements towards me and it took me a while to understand why that did not sit right with me. It was that they clearly understood that it was easier for those who are perceived ‘white’ in American society as opposed to anyone any different. I have benefited from a systematically racist society due to being seen as no different from my white friends and classmates. As I grew up I decided that I should really embrace the beautiful heritage I was born into instead of trying to white-wash myself to play it safe.
I am Dominican and Puerto Rican proudly and have never been ashamed of that. Having lived in North Devon for the past three years, it is clear that there are not many people of color around and they face a lot of trauma and subtle racism towards them without consequence. I unfortunately have witnessed many racist statements go either unnoticed or without consequence and black families are pointed out as an anomaly. Now with the ongoing pandemic, I have heard many racial slurs directed at the asian community. This is not to say that these things do not happen anywhere else. It would just appear to me that people ignore these comments and pretend like they did not hear. There is a lack of people who speak up against direct and subtle racism and because of that it has merged with the culture.
I find that to be very sad to me and it is so encouraging to see many in this community stand by the Black Lives Matter movement and start to really call out racism in this part of England.
This story is from a series of interviews by Kadeem Yarde, who spoke to people at a Black Lives Matter protest in North Devon. To see the original blog post use this URL: https://www.kadeemyarde.com/post/racism-in-north-devon