A taste of being a double-minority

I'm considered white by most people - Blonde haired, green-eyed, freckles, no accent when I talk. I'm Chicana, though, also. It's semi-annoying to have people tell me that, because I'm not black-haired with dark eyes and the "fresh-from-the-river" accent, I can't call myself Latina. However, when I start talking Spanish, they get this look like, "Holy crap, the white girl's not white!" on their faces.

Of course, I'm now the girl who walks down the hall and gets the "stupid beaner" comments", but at least I'm not the Cuban girl who denies her last name is "Spanish", but "French". She pronounced it "Pair-Ay" (Perez), and, when her mother came in asking to talk about (this girl) Pair-ez, the cat was out of the bag.

I think that all the "You can't claim this because you don't look it/don't have enough of it in you" is stupid. If you're Ojibwe, and you want to enroll (forgive me if that's not the correct word), then you should. I'm not 100% Chicana, but I still consider myself.'

America is built on the melting pot theory. Why, then, is it bad to be mixed race?

First regarding your blog. It is too bad that the tribe has not let you register. I have heard of people of 100% native American ancestry who because their ancestors were from many different tribes, did not have enough blood of any one tribe to be allowed to register. Talk about getting shafted!

At the other end of the spectrum you have the Cherokee. As the old joke goes, what do you call 64 white people at a Cherokee powwow? A full blood! I think that scumbag Ward Churchill pretended to be a Cherokee. They don't require a lot of Indian blood and I think 1/64th is enough.

My history is different from yours but somewhat interesting. My father is lily white (Scotch, English Irish). My mother's parents were both blond and blue-eyed. One was English and one German. My mother's father was an executive with Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon now) and they were stationed in Cuba when my mother was born (several years before Castro came on the scene). My mother was given Cuban citizenship as the result of her location of birth (reverse anchor baby). She also learned Spanish as her first language from her nannies. She made occasional trips to America and my Grandmother once told me that my Mom learned and forgot English 3 times before she was 5 years old. My Mom also has a distinctive Latina look with jet black hair and very dark brown eyes and olive skin. She doesn't look Indian, it is more the Penelope Cruz type of look. She could be Spanish, Italian, Greek, Mexican, Brazilian or Cuban. My Mom's features are puzzling because it is a genetic impossibility for two recessive trait-ed parents (blond blue eyes) to have a child with dominant features (dark hair, dark eyes). Did my grandmother stray with a Cuban gentleman and give birth to my Mom as a bastard? Did my grandparents buy or adopt a Cuban child? Infertile couples handled things differently back in those days and I'm sure that in Cuba such a thing would have been possible particularly with money which they obviously had. I really don't know. My Mom has her PHD from Harvard in anthropology and as such certainly has enough understanding of genetics to understand the inconsistency of her appearance vs her parents. I asked her once and the conversation did not go well. She mumbled something about the Argentinian Ambassador to Cuba. That would have been the kind of elite social circle my grandparents would have been hanging with. Any elite person from Argentina in those days would probably have been of almost pure Spanish descent and that would explain it.

In any case, my Mom was raised in Cuba until about 5 and then Argentina until about 12 and then the USA. She went to Wellesley and met my Dad at Harvard and I was raised in Wyoming in a 98% white town and it never occurred to me until about 19 years ago when my daughter was born that I was anything but white. I have a dark complexion but you would really have to use your imagination to see anything in me that was not European. But when my daughter was born, affirmative action was starting to be a horrible injustice with people being given benefits based on their skin color and ethnicity rather than any other merit or need. So on my daughter's birth certificate I checked Hispanic mostly as a protest.

My daughter is at Auburn University in Alabama now. I made sure she checked Hispanic on her application and told her that if they gave her any grief about being almost blond and not speaking Spanish beyond 2nd year high school level to express outrage at their racism and to explain emphatically that Cubans come in all colors from white to brown to black. Neither she or I have ever applied for financial aid and I fully expected to pay full out-of-state tuition. But when the tuition bills come each semester they show the full amount and then they have several mysterious credits for thousands of dollars on them that knock them down below in-state tuition. I am not complaining and I am afraid to even ask for an explanation of these credits. They could be some sort of merit scholarship based on my daughters 4.0 GPA which is really good for a pre-Vet. But she has never gotten any sort of letter except a bunch of invitations to join honor societies. Or maybe they are ethnicity related. I'm clueless. I might ask after they issue her diploma.

The entire affirmative action system is disgusting and racist. People should be given scholarships based on merit and/or need. Race and ethnictiy should not enter into it if it is public money (private charity can do as it pleases). I encourage everybody to make this system go away as soon as possible by making a mockery of it. Anybody who has the slightest claim to an ethnicity that gives them an advantage should be claiming it. And if they don't have such a claim they should make one up because the system is a gross injustice.

I’d also discovered that, even though my father is full-blooded Ojibwe, I’m not recognized as a Native person by the federal government. Blood quantum (blood counting) forbade me from enrolling in my tribe. Legally I am not ‘Native’ enough to be a whole person. I think I’m recognized as a little under a quarter.

How can you be anything less than 1/2 if your father is full-blood? That doesn't make sense.