Let’s get this straight, I am Mexican I have been told numerous times that I am not Mexican when I am! My skin is white I don’t know what happened; I live in a nice area is that so wrong! I like shopping and eating out at restaurants does that make me white? I am Mexican-American I want to say that I have the best of both but there is always something around the corner pointing out that I’m not. This wasn’t always a problem I didn’t really think of it until a few years ago
If you recall the numerous protests around the nation over immigration laws, I remember it distinctively as I was in eighth grade and their was some scandal in the school that their was going to be a walk out. Just for the people that were being deported a couple of people that I knew back then were asking me if I was going to walk out and I said, “No” they saw it almost as an insult. I had no reason to walk out my family came as immigrants but the difference between my family and most Mexicans and Latin Americans is that they waited a long time to get their papers and documents processed the proper way. They wanted the American dream! My family took nothing they requested and are now proud American citizens why should I walk out? My family went through a lot to get here one at a time they fought damn hard to give our family a chance of a better life! I stayed behind and continued my day at school I was not going to throw that away (by the way every one that walked out was arrested)

It was on Easter and my family came over, when one of them asked me, “Why don’t you have a Mexican flag instead of an American flag”? I never felt more insulted by my own family. I knew than I was not Mexican enough I didn’t fit a certain stereo type on what a Mexican-American girl my age should be like or look like. I questioned my own life style and I shouldn’t of I was at school having lunch with some of my friends and they were poking fun at so many Mexican stereo types, like if your thirteen over their your pregnant, and how everyone drives since age five, twenty people crammed into one house, the way to get Mexican people’s attention is to yell, “la Migra!”
I am not a hypocrite. I will not wave a flag from which I don’t know a lot from I think its ridicules on how so many kids wave the Mexican flag on cinqo de mayo, I bet you none of them know why we celebrate it or who the president of Mexico is. If you want to tell me I am not Mexican, check your facts, I speak the language I can read it as well I know the issues and the history. I also can eat as many jalapeños as any other Mexican can! I can also say to most Mexicans that they are not Mexican enough because if you go to my school and visit my family you’ll find out that a good number of them are wanna’ be black. They are the ones telling me I’m not embracing my culture they’re the ones saying words like “n***a”. They are the ones copying another cultures life style. To all you Mexicans who follow this if you think that that wouldn’t make a black person mad with the slang think of a white dude saying “paisa” you would get mad to. I am me I don’t intend on being something else I don’t need to wave a flag in everyone else’s face to know who I am. Take me for what I am. If you want to be ignorant, judge me if you want to be civilized, take part in a better society get to know me.