My final project is in 3 distinct installments. This is the first, and is largely a commentary on race and its implications for those of us whom may be racially mixed. In this inaugural piece, I engage the complexity of living as mestizo in America, while alluding to the fact that placing a political emphasis, such as denoting one’s self as “Chicano,” really does more to isolate those whom do so from those who do not–whether the latter consists of conflicted individuals or those deemed not the proper connotation of ethnic. My intention in contesting a political emphasis on race is not to undermine its political relevance, moreover, my intention is to speak candidly regarding how diversity undermines itself when those who are of ethnicity are incapable of public discourse regarding the social ramifications of politically aligning one’s self as a proponent of a specific race.

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For all of human history, we have believed—and still believe—that we are essentially different. You are not me, and I am not you. One is essentially white or of race. Put another way, one is essentially domestic or essentially foreign–which implies domestication in a pejorative way. Never clearer is this error in our way of thinking then when we conceive of race, as there is no such thing.

We are, essentially, the same. And I believe there is a trouble with invoking a politicized emphasis upon race worth talking about, rather than there being a trouble with racism worth talking about. To identify one’s self as Chicano means something more than to be a second generation Mexican American. But fundamentally, I found this difficult because at my whole I think of myself as distinctly American in the foremost way. Thishas created, for me, a duality not unlike the kind we have seen throughout Antonio’s assimilation in Bless Me, Ultima. A duality at odds with how Ben racially identifies himself in Their Dogs Came With Them and the parental indignation exhibited by Medea in The Hungry Woman.

Imagine you are applying for a scholarship. You are what is called “of race.” The application form, however, asks you to firmly conscript yourself as of a singular race a there is often no room for intermediates. The trouble, in my mind, is that all races are mixed.

Imagine the betrayal you feel to your father’s ancestral legacy when you must disown it in order to bet on what the university considers the greater good of “diversity.” So you ask yourself, if you don’t align yourself as ethnic, will your graduate life be sunk further then you ever thought into a void of student debt? Your integrity, after all, may cost you $30,000.

Worse yet than no intermediates to define you, you read in the fine print that one-drop of blood in the direction of non-white is enough to consider yourself contaminated and therefore in need of academic relief. After all, is that not what one drop really means?

Race exists only as cultural phenomena, one I have begun to regard as a political superstition. Not only is the conception of race troublesome because all forms of race are mixed, but because race, scientifically, does not exist. The fall out which results in the superstitious thinking of race is a historical one. Not historical in the Karl Marx sense that all conflict is that of class warfare, but historical in that if we think back far enough, our racial problems result from the geographical innovations which manifest themselves as an emphasis placed upon culture and race as if to speak in earnest honesty about either is to offend the delicacies of its vast relativity. To criticize culture and race honestly is to be racist, or supremacist. Is this, in the end, what results within the ideal of diversity we are told is good to strive for? One in which those of race may monopolize what is means to be of race and what being of race entails, with near cultural impunity?

In an America where the subject of race is only warranted to be spoken of by one who is black or when one who is white says a word that another who is not white says is not theirs: what does it really mean to talk about Trayvon Martin’s race, if we are never going to talk about George Zimmerman’s?

Once, men attempted to make a science of race, asking questions such as what made a person white, black, brown, or yellow? Among the traits that were emphasized were not only skin color, but facial shape, nose shape, hair color and form, and eye color. Once, the working scientific definition of race was a group of people living within a particular geographical region who share a collection of biological traits typically not shared with other groups. The trouble with race then–as it is now–was that typifying race was problematic, scientists could not come to consensus regarding which traits–if any–were significant.

We have 30,000 genes. Yet, we are on average 99.5% similar to each other genetically. Thinking that this it too trivial to account for all the differences between us would be a mistake, because the difference is not only within .5% margin, but found within our history.

What does it mean that some U.S. Americans of Latin American descent detest being called Hispanic? Or worse yet, Latino, as though imparted upon them was a burden of a culture not wholly their own. Some believe that Latino only implies the consequences following the expunging of an indigenous culture that was once theirs.

With many often preferring that they be called Chicano rather than Mexican American, has often put me at odds with my own cultural identity. Despite not being of wholly Nicaraguan descent, I wonder what the very mestizo fact of myself even means considering that the colonialization of New Spain has had much more to do with my cultural rearing than any political identity that may paint me anew. I am the son of an immigrant who fled from civil war because the Reagan Administration fought a proxy war far from the basement of the White House. My father came to America as a political refugee, he then set his sights upon the American Dream, yet Spanish was my first language and unlike many second generation sons and daughters, I have spent months at various points in my life in Central America. Yet, the fallout of patriotism that resulted after 9/11 still influences my sense of identity.

Many people of mixed race often live with a foot in the grand archway between two distinct realms, yet unlike them, I do not consider myself to be so defined as ethnic. What does that mean? Well, this is a question that has thematically interwoven itself throughout the entirety of our course. And one which I have addressed in my personal narratives by reflecting upon significant eras in my own life. I do not think I will ever solve the quandary of my race, but I believe we will all be better off, as controversial as it sounds, if we cease insisting upon its significance, politically. And to clarify, I am not saying that all talk of race is without truth value, and therefore meaningless. I am saying that until the indignation clouding our dialog of race is superceded, then we will never really be having a conversation.

At a predominately white private university, only so much of the ethnic demographic is composed of athletes. Yet blacks take to other blacks, Asians take to other Asians, is this the prize of diversity we’ve idealized?