About Me
As previously mentioned I created this blog to put my thoughts and interpretations into an online platform meant to be perceived and devoted to people like me who grew up without seeing themselves in media.
As a little girl I was introduced to the world of books and pop culture very early on. A few of my greatest memories are from my mom reading to me the stories of Aphrodite and Icarus. In grade school my friends and I made it a game to rack up the most Accelerated Reader points and I have fond memories of racing my student counterparts to the Magic Treehouse section of the library. A few of my most unfavorable memories are from my very early reflection of my identity inside the world. I was hyper-aware that the stories and characters that I loved and envied so dearly looked nothing like me. I was so enwrapped into the misconception that European beauty standards were the epitome of beauty and my longing for wanting to be accepted in the world I had grown to love was deprecating to my body and my relationship with myself.
Of course my infatuation with lightness was not completely constructed through my habit of collecting books. Lightness was designed for people to objectify. It was compared to heaven. In every house I stepped foot in I was immediately greeted with white Jesus and the perfect Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.
There was an unspoken rule about darkness. How it should be perceived, how it should be carried, who should carry it, how it should be presented, what are its limitations…. Darkness and lightness became objects to methodize. They were thick patches on your chest that instructed which direction you should follow.
My mom was driving me to school one day and she was yelling at me because I kept on getting into her makeup. She said, “Jordan you look like a ghost” and she had anger in her eyes and for the first time I questioned why trying to get myself to accomplish whiteness was not appreciated. My mother didn’t understand that to me, acceptance was a compromise. It was, “If I love my hispanic nose tomorrow, then I can hate my skin today.” In those instances, I was never completely whole. I laid my body on a map and sectored it into little pieces and I had hid them on opposite sides of the world. Negligence is a privilege. It’s a con man who will share half the truth in return for half of a person's dignity. I sacrificed half of who I am for someone that I could only be in my fantasies. I couldn’t tear apart my skin, but I could shed ounces of who I am for a girl that never existed.
I am aware that on a more international epidemic children are constantly being submerged into categories. And that the same schools that practice systemic racism are the ones with students who have internalized the thought that they only belong in one place.
I witnessed this with my older sister who was condemned for being “too Mexican” for the whites and “too white” for the Hispanics and Latinas.
I witnessed this in grade school when I only knew how to associate my brownness with my Socioeconomic status.
In the educational films they showed us in school they told us, “these kids are going through a hard time because they come from a bad environment”, but blindly I only saw that these kids were predominantly brown. I prolonged the thought that who I was, was identified first with where I came from. I was concerned with stereotypes, I wondered, is that how people see me? Before I thought of myself I was scared of other kids. What would they call me? How will my brownness be consumed? The bridge of my nose perceived? My completely dissolved accent absorbed?
I should have defied the laws of European standards and I should have forced myself to communicate with my body politely. I should have told myself that my body was not a political playground to be patronized, and that the social barricades are constructed not through the hands of the oppressor, but through the silence of the ignorant, and that I was being ignorant.
Yet, growing up my sense of the world and my interaction with others consisted of always hiding a part of myself and it took me 14 years to realize that if I tie the roots of my identity with a rope then it will suffocate me entirely.
My friends who told me I was “white enough” in that same breath should have reminded me that my brownness was equally as beautiful and strong. That my brownness was in fact the same color of soil that birthed flowers and the same color of many women and men who sculpted my America.
Colorism is perpetuated through the minds of the ignorant, the ones who glorify and encourage one ideal person, when there are seven billion human bodies with perfect while imperfect and distinct qualities. That is what makes us unique and sculpts our individuality.
I created this blog to express these exact thoughts and ideas. I am a college student, a daughter, a sister, I am hispanic and my favorite passing time is to read and to write. Writing is all I have ever loved to do and I want to thank you for taking the time to read this and to explore my very thoughts as they come alive on these pages.