Trans | Lesbian | 37 | Gamedev | Co-host of @sayitinred

 


 
Currently composing music for @desiderium and writing for Become Dirt


alyaza
@alyaza
This page's posts are visible only to users who are logged in.

curiousquail
@curiousquail

man I’m only half, but I’ve had almost this exact same experience. Growing up with both MTG and 40k, I was often the only person of any color whatsoever at events, and depending on how white I was (or wasn't) presenting at any given time, my experience would be dramatically lessened.

What white people (especially in the 90's in California) generally knew about “Mexicans” (using this as a broad brush because my mom's family has been in California pre-dating the Spanish colonization and it didn't matter if you were Ecuadorian, El Salvadorian, or even Brazilian and speaking Portuguese - you were all 'Mexican' to the white crowds) was “Yo Quiero Taco Bell”, Cheech Marin, and Speedy Gonzales.

I was at a Magic tournament during the Tempest block when I had just turned 14; things were going great, but some dude at a table over from me was making racist jokes about their “spic” gardener - a buddy of mine tried to tell them to shut up, that it wasn't cool; he could of stopped there, but instead he added the quantifier “His mom is Mexican!” thinking it would - I don't know, put them in their place? Well intentioned I guess.

I ended up leaving early because the harassment that followed was so bad - not just from the instigator, but others. I'm 14 and trying to concentrate and 'OOOH you better not lose to the wetback!' being shouted from other tables. Cheech voices everywhere.

For YEARS after I was mad at myself for not trying to be the bigger person - and then I realized there was no winning with these people. I was always going to be 'other' (and I should point out, when they thought I was white there was no problems at all) as long as the perception of me being non white was there.

It’s been almost 30 years and things really haven’t changed that much, so anyway if I'm ever un-apologetically gleeful about white people being upset by ”forced diversity“, you can probably guess why.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @curiousquail's post:

God, the "every outsider is mexican" part is so true. After all, it's way easier to hate different groups of people if you dehumanize than into an amalgamation and put a label for convenience.
Even for leftists, I think the USA "protagonism" made some serious damage on white people's perception of reality. Even HERE there are white people that are hostile to imigrants (although our country is the result of generations and generations of imigrants from different places) and thinks the US is the superior country (Similarities to nazism are not coincidences). Heck, bolsonaro (ex-president, now ineligible) would suck trump's balls at the first opportunity.
(btw, I have seen 2 instances of americans here on cohost forgeting that there are non-americans in this website)

I think I deviated from the subject, but I had to let this out. I'm really sorry that you had to experience that. I pretty sure that, even though I'm white as a paper, I would probably go through something similar sooner or later if I was at your position.

no I absolutely hear you. I've been really trying myself to not only decentralize the US in my head, but also the concept that the US ≠ "America".

There's SO much more in the western hemisphere that isn't these 50 states of majority white people and yet, and yet, and yet - you get it

It's so funny how "american" gets translated to "americana/o" or "norte-american*a/o" in spanish and portuguese even though semantically those words means "someone who lives in america" and "someone who lives in "north-america", respectively..
Some people (myself included) are trying to use "estadunidense" instead, at least

That mindset is so cemented. A work acquaintance once showed me a video of a cop harrassing some Palestinian protesters by shouting "go back to mexico" at them.

He was an older mexican man who was laughing at the absurdity of what the cop was saying, but also. It fucking sucks sometimes to hear them say it out loud. Sometimes it feels like POC don't exist as actually real people to them but just bogeyman archetypes they can fling around at anybody who looks dark enough.

one of my fav experiences of this was working at a Starbucks in a white neighborhood during the AB 60 law passing in 2013.

White people would come in, order their coffee and then lament to me about how the state's going to hell because "all the mexicans can get driver's licenses now" and sitting there like

O_o