Me.

I don’t feel like I have ever experienced direct acts of racial profiling or discrimination based on my ethnicity. I do realize that could be due to my physical characteristics. If I had darker skin and dark eyes maybe my experience with racial profiling or discrimination would be different. Nevertheless, I have been witness to multiple microaggressions in my lifetime. I will use this blog post to share my stories regarding experiences of racial profiling and discrimination.

Dress Shopping:

                During my senior year of high School a group of friends and I had gone out to the mall and were going in and out of stores. We all Latinas except for one who is African American. We were not necessarily looking for anything, just browsing. We happened to go into a Windsor dress store. From the moment we walked in a lady began to follow us all over the store. She would pretend to be folding clothes, or fixing a display but would constantly glance over to us. My friend and I decided that we did not want anything from the store and would wait for the rest of the group outside of the store. As we stood outside we watched in disbelief as the lady continued to follow my two friends that were taking items to try on. We didn’t know what to do and felt very uncomfortable. When my friend came out and we asked them what the lady’s deal was, she just replied that she’s used to that kind of treatment.

Driving:

                It was late at night and I was driving through what is considered a “bad neighborhood” of Chicago. A group of friends and I were going to go out to a party, but needed to pick up a friend that lived in this neighborhood. He had mentioned to pick him up through the back door that went through the ally. As I searched up and down the alley looking for his house I did not realize that a cop in a non-police car had been following us for some time. He waited until I made a left turn at a light to stop me. He used the excuse that I had forgotten to signal the turn to stop me. I had forgotten my driving license and only had my ID but that did not seem to preoccupy him. He was just looking for a drug bust. He immediately accused me of looking for my “drug dealer” and that I was obviously driving up and down the alley to score some pot. I continued to assure him that I was only looking for my friend’s house and not drugs. He turned his attention to my male cousin that was on the passenger seat that had taken out his phone. He immediately told him to put his phone away, and asked him what did he think he was doing? My cousin confused asked him why should he put his phone away, he was not doing anything illegal. The officer took this as a chance to search him taking his response a form of defiance. He made my cousin get out of the car and searched him to make sure he didn’t have anything on him. He went ahead to accuse him of contacting “our drug dealer” to give him a heads up that we were with a cop. By this point we were not sure what to do. We were being made to feel like criminals and just wanted to prove to the officer that we were not doing anything illegal. We decided to tell the officer that he could go through my cousin’s phone and contact our friend to verify that we were not in search of drugs. He went ahead and called our friend and began the conversation by telling him that he had busted us, and asked him if he was a drug dealer. He continued to say that if he was a rat, because we were looking for his house through the alley. Our friend told him that he did not know what he was talking about and would have his mom drop him off where we had been stopped. By this point the officer’s attitude changed realizing that he had made a mistake. After hanging up he told us that he was just doing his job. He said that we were in a tough neighborhood where this kind of things happened all the time, and asked us if we wanted him to wait with us until our friend got to us. He left by warning us to not be so suspicious driving up and down alleys next time. We were made to feel like criminals because of the environment we were in. Thinking back to this experience there are so many rights that the officer violated.  We were all around 17 and 18 years old and had been our first bad experience with police enforcement.

Growing up:

                Growing up I was always told that I was so lucky to have been born with blue eyes and light skin and hair (my hair has gotten darker as I have gotten older).  When I was younger I didn’t really understand what that meant, or why it was so valued in my family. I remember stories that my mom has told me of relatives giving her some ridiculous recipes and what not to make sure that my eye color would remain blue and not turn brown. My mom would always tell them that they were crazy that whatever happened would happened.  My siblings would always tease me that I was adopted because of my blue eyes and had the lightest skin compered to them. Of course being younger I would always tell them to “shut up” and would continue to tell them that they were adopted after all both of my grandfathers had blue eyes, my mom has green eyes and my dad hazel so they were the oddballs.

                It was during my junior year of high school when I took a Latin American class that I came to understand why I was so “lucky”. Our teacher that year had us looked at racism Latin America. Up until them I had inly thought of racism as being in the United States and only pertaining to Whites and Blacks. It was a very broad general idea.  We started to see who the famous actors that stared in telenovelas were. We noted the people that were portrayed in the media, beauty magazines and who and what was considered beautiful. It became obvious that people that looked European were beautiful and successful as opposed to individuals that were dark skinned and had indigenous features were characteristics that people did not want. After that I saw it everywhere. When I would watch a telenovela the rich people and bosses had fair skin, light hair, etc. while the servants, thieves, and so on were typically darker skinned people. It is cleared that these valued characteristics are a result of oppression and discrimination of otherness when the one thing that is valued is “whiteness”

                These notions are part of the culture, and in recent years I have seen campaigns in Latin America that are trying to change the idea that one has to be light skinned and faired skin to be successful. There has also been a movement to stop the use of the phrases such as, “no seas india” which is telling someone not to be so indigenous.

                Finally, there are many campaigns out that promote different kinds of beauty. I wonder if in 20 or 30 years these campaigns will have an impact on what is valued.