#I’m Mexican and grew up in SoCal and just assumed all the latine peers I had were Mexican unless I knew otherwise

[combustion-man]

One trope that super annoys me in a lot of tv shows (mostly) and movies (not as often) of the past idk decade or so is when some white character experiences an Accidentally Racist Moment and assumes the Latine* cast representative is Mexican, and is rudely corrected that “I’m not Mexican, I’m [insert any other LatAm ethnicity]” and the white person has to backtrack

I’m not mad bc of the correction or representation of other Latin American ethnicities. I think it’s really great and important to highlight different cultures from the whole Latin American region, there’s a HUGE range of diversity in culture and language and food and customs that most definitely need to be represented and explored in American media.

My problem is this happens to almost every nice, fun, personable, well rounded character. Which leaves the only Mexican representation to be cartel, coyotes, and undocumented migrants/domestic workers. Again, these stories can be super important to tell and represent (if done correctly which honestly I have seen very very few times, at least in more Hollywood/studio productions)

Also often the character correcting the white people are offended at the idea of being Mexican. It’s implying “how rude of you to just assume I’m Mexican, you racist!” Bruh if they’re racist against Mexicans they’re racist against you too, you just caught them off guard

Idk in general I just want this post to be calling for better Latine rep and especially Mexican rep. And like, Latines of all colors, we got light skinned folks and black folks. We have the range darling, it’s time we showed off

* Latine (LAH-teen-ey) is being used here rather than Latinx or Latin@ for:

1. Gender neutral language that also includes non-binary Latin American folks

2. Speakability for Spanish speakers; “Latinx” (or so I recall) was meant to be a figurative placeholder in writing until a better option was found (we found it!) and while in English it’s fairly easy to adapt to “Latinx” in speech, it does not work well for Spanish speakers, and has no way of translating into other gendered vocabulary or work as a usable word in speech. “X” as a letter is pronounced differently in Spanish, and simply just cannot lingually exist well at the end of a word to