Race to the End

May 5th, 2008 in Featured Posts by John DeVore

According to this test, I’m a racist.

But I don’t need a biased, slightly Orwellian Internet-based quiz masquerading as a meaningful sociological mirror of the masses to tell me what I already knew even though I am fully (and at times gratefully) ignorant as to the academic nuances of racial theory.

I first realized I was racist during one of my first elementary school birthday parties. The other kids in suburban Washington D.C. had never seen a piñata. And when one of the children asked me if my mother was my maid, and if she’d get him some more orange soda, I responded “yes” to both inquiries.

At that moment, I realized that not every kid’s mother was Mexican-American. She became my maid at that moment because I didn’t have the words to express or explain why I was different. It’s a classic childhood conundrum – you want to be Spiderman and not who you are.

I am the happy byproduct of a biracial union — part Mexican-American and part Caucasian something or other from Louisiana. To my white friends, I’ve always joked that being half-Mexican meant I steal the hubcaps from my own pickup. To my Latino friends, I joke that I’m a chubby gringo who does his own dishes, even when eating out. I’m a redneck wetback — a wetneck, thank you — and proud of growing up being judged by two ethnicities.

I joked for years because I found it too difficult to reconcile being partially freed from the bunker-mentality of racial identity. I’m not Mexican. But I’m not white, even though I look it. My brothers are darker skinned than I am, and so I’ve sometimes felt incognito in certain circles.

Obama speaks to me on many ideological and intellectual levels, but I connected with the Senator on one visceral level – he understands what it’s like to grow up in post-civil rights America. He knows what it’s like to stroll around with a mother who is not the same skin color as he is. He knows that in America, racial prejudice is a social obstacle that corrupts the meritocracy.

To be human is to lazily prejudge people based on superficial details. But another uniquely human inclination is our ability to transcend our baser demons. In order to do this, however, we’ve got to know those demons names. We’re all racist, sorry Internet test. But to use a term coined by 80s afternoon cartoon, GI Joe, “knowing is half the battle.” In retrospect, that sunny, moralizing animated show about patriotic excess never seemed more vital. Go, Joe, indeed.

My worldview slowly changed over the years, and the first step was admitting to my mother the shame I carried for feeling neither totally white nor Mexican. Then I started meeting other people who were biracial – part Latino and part white, like me. Or part African-American and part German. Part Asian and part Latino. And on and on. I now live in Queens , one of the most diverse places on earth, and feel right at home. My racial identity is to respect whatever ethnic deli I’m in, and to do so happily.

Taking the simplistic test reminded me of how lamely binary the current discourse over race has become. On a slow day, the media loves the sizzle of race. But that the current campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination is a matter of race versus gender — to suggest that voters lie to pollsters by saying they won’t vote based on race and gender and then do — baffles me.

I believe that our identity is formed by our actions but we are defined by our skill with our talents and our strength of character is determined when those talents come into conflict with adversity. I reject, categorically, the identity of race. And by extension, the identity of tax brackets as well. That’s who I am.

Even if I can’t define myself simply by checking a box.

–John DeVore