Originally posted: May 20, 2008
Chicago Tribune
Becoming Hispanic by way of a T-shirt
This essay is about T-shirts. But it isn’t your typical T-shirt controversy story. There’s a wrinkle and I'll back up a bit. We Americans often ascribe race based on how a person looks. This is one reason why Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama defines himself as African American, even though his mother was a white Kansan and his father, a black Kenyan. Obama looks like a black man. Jennifer Companik is a Latina, but she says people often see her light skin and dark hair and believe she's an exotic-looking Italian. That was the case in her small northwest Chicago suburb until a year ago when she started wearing a set of colorful South American T-shirts that her husband bought her. On a few other occasions she also noted the reactions of residents when she spoke Spanish. It was an enlightening experience. This is Jennifer Companik's essay:
I'm Latina. If you need a continent: South America. If you want to push pins in a map: my father was a Euro-mutt (Italy and Spain) via Buenos Aires, Argentina; and my mother was born in Medellin, Colombia with Spanish ancestry as far back as anyone knows. But my mom has a white pelt. She doesn't have a Spanish accent. Nobody can tell that she's from South America.
I was born in New York and am fluent in English and Spanish.
My dad was openly racist (think television's Archie Bunker with a Spanish accent), which embarrassed me. My mom was subtler about it. They sent me to private schools to keep me from dating black boys. What that did mostly was keep me from bringing my black boyfriends home.
I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in South Florida where Hispanic politicians held some degree of power. My community was filled with like-skinned, like-minded Latinos. My peers and I learned Spanish in order to communicate with our grandparents who had come to this country well into adulthood.
While in high school, I read the literature of African-American authors Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. When I was about to go to college, my counselors instructed me to check the “Hispanic” box on applications because my minority status, along with my good grades, might help me get into a good university. I was shocked. I thought: ‘I’m not oppressed. No one ever stopped me for driving while being black or brown. I was never followed around in a store.’ My ambiguous pedigree had given me a currency others weren't afforded.
When I was old enough to vote, I voted blue. It was all I asked of myself.
In 2002, my husband and I moved to our small, northwest suburb. I have neighbors of varying accents and complexions, some who are also from Florida. This, I told my Caucasian-American husband, is good. Our future children would know people come in different hues.
Just before we moved into our home, I learned that I too was "the other." I don't think of myself that way, but to some people, I am.
As we walked through our home one last time before buying it, I said something in Spanish to my husband, who understands a few key phrases. One of the builders, a grandfatherly sort, said to me offhandedly, "So, you speak Mexican?" I dismissed it as generational ignorance.
Then last year I was homesick for my culture and my husband gave me a couple of colorful and embroidered soccer T-shirts from Argentina and Colombia. So began my unintentional social experiment.
The ladies at the check-out registers at my neighborhood Target had always been cordial to me. But on the day I wore my yellow Colombian T-shirt, one cashier suddenly turned cold. Initially I shook it off. I thought: Anyone can have a bad day. But she wasn't just having a bad day. Moments before, she'd chatted amiably with the customers ahead of me. But, to me, she glowered. I couldn't help but wonder: Had my T-shirt identified me in a way that wasn't ordinarily possible? You'll think I'm paranoid, so read on:
On another day, I wore my Argentina T-shirt into a local guitar and music store my toddler and I frequented. My son liked playing the instruments and we had always been welcomed warmly. But not this time. The young man at the front register asked me to leave my purse at the front register "It's kind of store policy," he said.
Thinking perhaps it was a new policy, I extracted my wallet and keys and handed the blond teen my purse. On the way out, I noticed that no such policy was posted anywhere. Upset, I asked the young man: "Does this shirt make me look more like a thief? No one has ever asked me to check my bag before." He said: "Yep, it's the shirt." I couldn't believe he actually admitted it.
This was around the time of the large immigration reform rallies, during which marchers were wearing exotic T-shirts with the colors of their countries, along with draping themselves in their flags. Anti-immigrant resentment was running high. So perhaps, when people looked at me now dressed in my T-shirts, they believed they were seeing an "illegal immigrant."
Around Christmastime last year my son and I were in the children's section of our local bookstore. By this time I'd given up wearing the soccer T-shirts unless I was feeling especially imperturbable. This was not such a day.
My son was playing with a train set. There was scads of room on the floor for other players; and ample space for other parents to sit down on adjoining benches. A white lady and her little boy came by. Her son eyed the train with toddler delight. I said to my son, in Spanish, "Now, son, make sure you share the train pieces with this boy. He looks like he wants to play." Upon hearing me speak Spanish, the lady said to her son: "Come on Johnny, we're going. We'll come back when it's less crowded."
I'd excused the old man for his age. And it was easy enough to slough off the surliness of an underpaid cashier and a power-drunk teenager. But the idea that I'd evoked the hostility of a woman from my own class through the simple act of speaking Spanish made my heart sputter.
Speaking Spanish or being of Spanish descent is that hate-worthy?
The schools are good in my small suburb. The air is clean. My community is quaint and safe. But what I didn't realize until I relayed my T-shirt experience to my neighbors with the accents and the different complexions is that you're more likely to be stopped by the police in my quaint suburb if your skin is darker. You're more likely to be followed around in a store. For people who can’t simply decide to leave their T-shirts folded in their drawers or speak without any hint of their native tongue, it’s a much more confining life.
It is a shame that she did not post images of her T-shirts. They must be real hum-dingers!
Without any real images, my mind conjures up a picture of Ché Guevara holding an AK-47 over his head, and the emblazoned words, "Kill All The Gringos!"
It is a shame that she did not post images of her T-shirts. They must be real hum-dingers!
Without any real images, my mind conjures up a picture of Ché Guevara holding an AK-47 over his head, and the emblazoned words, "Kill All The Gringos!"
Joined: 30 May 2008 {Posts: 15 } Location: This Universe
Posted: Sun 01 Jun 2008 20:05 Post subject:
anonymouse wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
It is a shame that she did not post images of her T-shirts. They must be real hum-dingers!
Without any real images, my mind conjures up a picture of Ché Guevara holding an AK-47 over his head, and the emblazoned words, "Kill All The Gringos!"
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