Shopping While Brown

XXVI.
People sometimes look puzzled when I talk about discrimination, and I can see why. My skin color could easily pass for a healthy tan (especially living in California), I don't have an accent (hell, to my chagrin I don't even speak any other languages), and I wasn't really raised with any Mexican culture.

Nothing really awful ever happened to me; mostly, it was well-meaning people asking Dear, where are your parents from? to which I would answer innocently, My mom is from the Midwest and my dad is from California and then they would have to keep asking until I made them admit that what they actually wanted was a racial category. That and a few stupid comments from people. You know, nothing serious.

The most serious thing was more funny than anything. In high school my best friend was Enrique, who was from a very well-educated upper middle-class family. And happened to be Puerto Rican and somewhat more obviously ethnic than myself. Sometimes we spoke to each other in Spanish (he fluent, me floundering), mostly because it was like speaking in semi-private code.

So we'd go to the mall and hang out, because that's what you do in the suburbs. Two high school kids, honors students, well-dressed and quiet, that just happened to be a little more tan than the store's employees. I guess that was enough to arouse suspicion, because we noticed that store security guards started following us around stores and May I help you-ing, with pronounced stares.

Honestly, it's not like we were planning on buying anything. But neither would we even think of shoplifting. So when the security guards started harrassing us, Enrique would say, loudly, WHAT, DO YOU THINK THAT ALL HISPANIC PEOPLE SHOPLIFT? and I would chime in with I GUESS THEY DON'T WANT OUR MONEY, and then walk out triumphantly.

Some days we'd volunteer to babysit my nephews, and then the effect was magnified: suddenly we were illegal aliens, teenaged parents, and high school dropouts, all at once. We were escorted out of stores. People held our currency up to the light with great scrutiny. There was only one thing to do in response: Enrique would say dramatically, I'M NOT THE FATHER, and we'd let them all draw their own conclusions.

Wednesday 20 February, 04:00 PM