Sticking Out in America
Originally published, September 2004
A few years ago I spent the summer in Mexico. For six weeks I studied the Spanish language and Mexican culture at a school in Cuernavaca while living with a Mexican family. Along with a group of other students from my university I explored the ruins of great ancient empires in places like Teotihuacan, Tepotzlan and Zihuatanejo. In my free time, I spent lots of time in the Zocalos, or town squares, of villages around the state of Morelos observing the rhythm of life and trying not to stick out like a sore thumb amidst all the indigenous people. I'm over six feet tall, blond, with blue eyes. So I towered among most, and because of my light features was usually being stared at by passersby, forced to participate, unable to be an unidentified observer.
I was just as interested in watching folks on the street as they were in watching me, but I had an entire population to diffuse my glare, so faces blended together, became one. Meanwhile, I felt every individual stare. All around me were these short-statured chaparritos, with brown skin, dark eyes, and black hair; their culture was a mystery to me. Everything I'd known before about Mexicans had come from the small communities of apple pickers, the ones I'd visited with my Presbyterian youth group in the outskirts of Winchester, Virginia, in the mid-1980s, a full decade or more before the so-called Latin Invasion of the 90s. I remembered a shy, disoriented people. But here, on the streets of Cuernavaca, I was seeing a confident people, at home with their environment, standing tall and putting me on the spot.
From the time I was a child, I enjoyed anonymity. I was often ignored, blending into crowds. So at first being watched annoyed me. I quickly realized that my presence was always known, and sometimes I would meet someone late in the evening who had observed me earlier that day - buying fruit, sitting by the fountain, or taking shelter under the great stone arches of the governmental palace during a passing storm. Here, I felt totally conspicuous.
In small towns throughout the United States where "The Browning of America" is only now being noticed, I imagine many brown-skinned Mexican immigrants experience the same sense of sticking out I felt in their native country as they begin to live, work and shop in traditionally Anglo areas. In Hanover, Pennsylvania, where I attended an all-white high school for two and a half of my four and a half years of secondary education (go ahead, do the math), I become acutely aware of this.
One afternoon a year or so ago I was out shopping with my mom. We ended up at Wal Mart, as one usually does when in Hanover, and there I saw a small group of Mexicans. I was almost shocked as I saw them congregating before towering shelves of American products trying to select from an overwhelming variety of products. After all, my graduating class, and the graduating classes of all the surrounding high schools, had nothing but white kids.
I'd been away for a few years, living in Miami where the majority is "Latino" (with relatively few Mexicans - they stick to southern Dade County around Florida City and Homestead). So I hadn't gotten used to this new demographic shift in Pennsylvania the way my mother had. She was almost eager to point out the novelty to me since she knows such things pique my interest. They were speaking Spanish, and I eavesdropped a bit to let my mom in on some of a conversation that probably just sounded like gibberish to her.
These Mexicans were sticking out as they were adjusting to life here in my country just as I had stuck out while I was living in theirs. Still, even I couldn't help but stare as locals became distracted from their shopping to watch with wonder as a stout but diminutive woman with jet-black hair down to the small of her back carried a super-duper-jumbo pack of paper towels, almost as big as she was, down the aisle to the checkout line.
Later reflecting on the incident, I began to think of how futurists' predictions - they're calling for a stark rise in the number of immigrants over the next twenty years - might not only mute our perception of them as being different, but may also diffuse our image of our traditionally Anglo-dominated culture making it progressively less recognizable to ourselves.
Will they assimilate? Or will we just adapt? And I wonder who, if anyone, will look conspicuous then?
*Originally posted in the summer of 2004.
A few years ago I spent the summer in Mexico. For six weeks I studied the Spanish language and Mexican culture at a school in Cuernavaca while living with a Mexican family. Along with a group of other students from my university I explored the ruins of great ancient empires in places like Teotihuacan, Tepotzlan and Zihuatanejo. In my free time, I spent lots of time in the Zocalos, or town squares, of villages around the state of Morelos observing the rhythm of life and trying not to stick out like a sore thumb amidst all the indigenous people. I'm over six feet tall, blond, with blue eyes. So I towered among most, and because of my light features was usually being stared at by passersby, forced to participate, unable to be an unidentified observer.
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| My host family - mi primo y mi mamá mexicana - Mexico, summer 1998 |
From the time I was a child, I enjoyed anonymity. I was often ignored, blending into crowds. So at first being watched annoyed me. I quickly realized that my presence was always known, and sometimes I would meet someone late in the evening who had observed me earlier that day - buying fruit, sitting by the fountain, or taking shelter under the great stone arches of the governmental palace during a passing storm. Here, I felt totally conspicuous.
In small towns throughout the United States where "The Browning of America" is only now being noticed, I imagine many brown-skinned Mexican immigrants experience the same sense of sticking out I felt in their native country as they begin to live, work and shop in traditionally Anglo areas. In Hanover, Pennsylvania, where I attended an all-white high school for two and a half of my four and a half years of secondary education (go ahead, do the math), I become acutely aware of this.
One afternoon a year or so ago I was out shopping with my mom. We ended up at Wal Mart, as one usually does when in Hanover, and there I saw a small group of Mexicans. I was almost shocked as I saw them congregating before towering shelves of American products trying to select from an overwhelming variety of products. After all, my graduating class, and the graduating classes of all the surrounding high schools, had nothing but white kids.
I'd been away for a few years, living in Miami where the majority is "Latino" (with relatively few Mexicans - they stick to southern Dade County around Florida City and Homestead). So I hadn't gotten used to this new demographic shift in Pennsylvania the way my mother had. She was almost eager to point out the novelty to me since she knows such things pique my interest. They were speaking Spanish, and I eavesdropped a bit to let my mom in on some of a conversation that probably just sounded like gibberish to her.
These Mexicans were sticking out as they were adjusting to life here in my country just as I had stuck out while I was living in theirs. Still, even I couldn't help but stare as locals became distracted from their shopping to watch with wonder as a stout but diminutive woman with jet-black hair down to the small of her back carried a super-duper-jumbo pack of paper towels, almost as big as she was, down the aisle to the checkout line.
Later reflecting on the incident, I began to think of how futurists' predictions - they're calling for a stark rise in the number of immigrants over the next twenty years - might not only mute our perception of them as being different, but may also diffuse our image of our traditionally Anglo-dominated culture making it progressively less recognizable to ourselves.
Will they assimilate? Or will we just adapt? And I wonder who, if anyone, will look conspicuous then?
*Originally posted in the summer of 2004.
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