Diversity in College

Like others in the class, the readings affected me because I could relate to several of the essays. I know how it feels to be singled out because of something you can’t control, like the color of your skin or where your family comes from. My mother lived in Mexico for the majority of her childhood and my father did as well, although their experiences were very different. My mom lived in Matamoros, Mexico and my dad lived in an expensive part of Monterrey. 

My dad (on the left) went to the American school and his friends came from a variety of cultures. His mother, my grandmother, was from Joplin, Missouri and went against her parents’ wishes in marrying my grandfather. Although she married a man of a different race, according to my father, she struggled with accepting my dad’s choice of girlfriends. My mom went to private all-girl schools for a good portion of her education and went to UT for graduate school. My mother’s experience at UT was less than pleasant; she recalls being treated unfairly by some faculty and students. What I've noticed is that because of the bad experiences she’s had, she too will occasionally come off as slightly racist towards ethnicities that have been racist toward her in the past. Luckily, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been treated poorly because I am Mexican. The first time was when I was 9, a girl who I’d gone to school with since I was 4 told me to “go back to Mexico where I belonged” after my team beat her in kickball. I was shocked. I wasn’t from Mexico, I thought, and even so why did I belong there? I was from Austin. I just couldn’t comprehend why someone I’d known for so long would say something so hurtful. When I told my mom she was furious and talked to me about racism. My dad told me to laugh it off because obviously the girl had no idea that I’d been born and raised in Austin, Texas. My parents’ experiences with racism were very different and affected the manner in which they explained racism to me. My father passed as white and always had an open mind to all cultures while my mother was treated differently often and felt she had to always protect herself. In fact, ironically enough my mother caught my father’s eye because she wouldn’t shut up about how much she disliked American girls. He found it funny and even hid it from her that his mom was one of those “American girls”.

Like Alessandro, I have felt like "I didn't quite fit in the Latino community that was supposed to be a support group for me" (240, Alessandro Melendez). For those who didn’t already know I was Mexican were surprised when they found out which didn’t sit well with me. Why did it matter what ethnicity I was? I will never understand. Some people from the Latino community in high school called me a “coconut” when I would try and talk with them in Spanish which infuriated me. Couldn’t I just be myself? I also felt pressure from my mother to prove myself as a strong Mexican girl, not an “American girl” like she calls me. Like Vincent, my mother “…made the classic emigrant mistake of assuming that [her] kids would retain all their "heritage," including language, even after [she] had decided to put us through a Western educational system." (248, Vincent Ng) I spoke only Spanish until pre-school when my mother enrolled me in University Methodist. There I was taught English and was told that I should only speak English at school so I wouldn’t get confused. Obviously I found that logic very confusing. Because I stopped speaking Spanish when I was young, my pronunciation now is poor, which upsets my mom.

I wish no one cared where you were from or where your parents were from because even though one’s ethnicity factors in to one’s identity I think if people stopped worrying about the implications behind a person’s ethnicity students would have a better chance at developing their own unique beliefs, free of racial pressures. My mother can’t help it that sometimes she has unfair thoughts towards people from other races that treated her badly, but she is smart enough to know that one person does not represent an entire ethnicity. I am too. Diversity is essential to create a good learning environment because due to the variety of cultures present at the University of Texas at Austin anyone can find their niche, whether it be with other students that share their ethnicity or not. I’m thankful that I was brought up by parent’s with very different experiences because I was able to see both sides of the spectrum. 

(Above is a picture of my abuelo on my mom's side. I called her parents Abuela and Abuelo and my dad's parents Grandma and Grandpa.)