White

There have been tiny moments in my life in which I have felt completely disoriented; when the world had transformed into this unrecognizable, uncategorizable roaming entity, hallow and stern, unmoved and still wavering. It happens that as I look into the faces of certain white people, I am overcome with this very feeling. I understand that I have met these people; people like these people before, many times, and in too many instances to even consider the afterthought of unfamiliarity associated with my senses. It happens, however, that I have no clue how these people are. I do not understand their culture. Their ways of speaking. The intricacies in their mannerisms, and I do not mean this in the way you can never really understand anybody at the depths to which your natural philosophical tendencies may sink you, I mean this in the way that in your attempt to understand these people, you will inevitably reach an end. A gap showcasing the other side of understanding that you may not have access to. I feel this when I talk to or work around white people. I wonder if this is because I have never had any real white friends. I have never even dated a white person. Maybe I have never allowed myself to become familiar with anybody who didn’t to a degree resemble me. Or perhaps the reason I never have was precisely because I had felt such isolation from them. For me, the disorientation seems inevitable. Even in their physical features, the white seems more delicate. More polished, as if god had taken the time to bestow upon them the colors of the clouds, and the skies. We, on the other hand, we Chicanos. We laborers. We wet backs and illegals and undocumented, and non-English speaking we, ironically, get the color of the earth, and its essential markings cast all around us in our beautiful pigmentation. I speak to the clouds, and I ask them questions. Inside, I feel inferior, and I can recognize it. I don’t know if that is common. I do not know if the rest of the undocumented migrants like me, share these sentiments. If they can look at white people and feel absolutely nothing. Or god, if they might feel equality. I remember an instance, in which I was working at a bar and a white man had sat down and was trying to start a conversation with me. I told my coworker, who looked much more ‘Mexican’ than me, that I felt intimidated. I remember him asking me, “Why? Cuz he’s white?” I said, “Nah no it’s not that.” I lied. It was completely because he was white, and had that air about him. That “I’m better than you air.” That, “I don’t need to know you to know what’s best for you” feel about him. He was pompous. He turned about to be a huge Trump supporter and a proud racist so I was right about him, but I often think back to the moment when my coworker asked why I felt intimidated. I almost wish I would not have lied, just to hear what he’d say. What advice he’d be able to give me, or what insight he could reveal, about the weakness of my character, and the internalized racism of my being. Most likely, he would have just told me that the white man was not any better than me. “He shits like you shit.” It’s true. However, I wonder how you get there. How you can look past all of their slights. How you can see past the fact that he was tall, handsome and the same skin color as a lot of the employers I’ve gotten rejected by. He probably ate the same meals that they ate, not the rice and beans and tortillas my mom would make me. He would have the same slang, that he learned from his father, which learned slang from his grandfather, both of which cultivated their way of speaking from the time spent evolving and growing up in this country. He would remind my employers of their fathers, perhaps their kids, perhaps themselves. They would feel a natural understanding of their similarities and be able to understand things about them and their words could never communicate. And that person never had to worry about a family member getting deported. He never had to worry about being laid off because they checked his ssn and turns out it was fake. He never had to think about who he was, reject parts of his culture, and accept others. He was never told the problems in his home emerging for financial reasons were because his people were not like the rest of the people. In many ways, he always knew he was the rest.