Identidad...

what's your identity?

we had an intereting discussion yesterday in my hispanic civilization class about caribbean identities. If you haven't heard of stuart hall, check him out (negotiating caribbean identities). what constitues an identity? it changes and shifts as you change as a person. do you look to your ancestors for your cultural identity, do you look to your current situation for that, or do you look to the future?

i never really thought of it before, but from what i've encountered, people in the united states tend to say things like "i'm italian, i'm german, i'm peruvian" etc even though they weren't born on those respective countries nor do they speak the language; they were born in the u.s.. in other countries, if your mother was from italy, and your father from mexico, but YOU were born in brazil, you're brazilian. yes, you recognize your ancestory, but you're not physically from there. it's something that i understand yet confuses me.

i also believe that people tend to pick their identity and ignore another, depending on not only what makes you feel more comfortable, but also whatever one you'll benefit from first.

my grandmother for a long time picked one identity and shunend another. my grandmother has a color complex. she looks like elizabeth taylor and she tends to identify in looks with her white ancestery (even though she married a black man - of course that was only because my great uncles agreed that he had good features so that excused his darker skin). now i can't fault her for that, i mean, she is white physically.

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a little background : my grandmother is part chippewa native american and african american (her mother) and french/irish and african american (father). she gets her color complex from her father who refused to recognize his african american heritage, yet married a woman who was half african american (she had money. of course!) okay, now you get the picture

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now she says she's black, but she tends to consider only those with white features to be pretty. that's not uncommon considering that she passed to get jobs and that's what she grew up knowing.

the funny thing is, my grandmother never considered me pretty. yeah, she said i was smart, and i would do well in life, but never pretty. then about 3 months ago my grandmother called me pretty. pretty. not only once either, numerous times. i'm still getting used to it. she has NEVERRRRRRR called me pretty. she even told people that i had low self esteem in high school because of my dark skin color. no one knows where she pulled that from because my skin color was the least of the reasons why i wasn't happy

i think this is turning point for both my grandmother and me in finding our identities. my grandmother has finally embraced her african-american identity along with her native american, french, and irish ancestory. and me... i'm able to embrace all of me because i realize that a person can't have just one identity. you have many. you need to embrace them all, maybe some more than others, but you need to welcome them.

nothing is concrete and it'll continue to change overtime. you just have to let it flow.

maybe this doesn't make any sense to anyone else, but for me, it's just great.