#but we're still valid. and our interactions and understands are still valuable and important

[bookwyrminspiration]

ohhh boy the culture thing is real… it’s different for me bc im white but i also get the wanting to know more about my heritage but not feeling “enough” of it because I wasn’t born there and not all of my ancestry is in that culture… like im of cajun descent and I love learning about the culture of my family members and ancestors and I love learning little tidbits of my heritage from my dad and mon-mon and cousins but it’s not the same.

And the what-ifs are real too. What if my family never moved away from Louisiana? What if the government never discouraged learning Cajun French and therefore my dad was able to keep in touch with that vital part of his heritage? What if the Acadians were never expelled in the first place?? it’s weird.

And to be perfectly clear I’m not trying to compare my situation with yours, I’m white and there’s some things I will simply never understand, it’s just… I felt like you might understand.

You're okay, being white doesn't make this experience any less valid or lesser than what we were talking about--you lost culture, language, connections to your heritage, too. Your thoughts, opinions, feelings, and heritage are just as much a part of the broader conversation

And yeah! It's never quite the same, learning it for yourself vs feeling like you are it, if that makes sense. It's like there's this distance between you and it, no matter what you do. No matter how hard I study Spanish, it'll never have accompanied me through my childhood, that's something I'll never have.

There's also, at least for me, this guilt sometimes? Or frustration? With how I have to learn things. My mother, non-hispanic, will talk about family in Mexico I've never met but who she has when she visited with my dad and I just. Get so jealous that she can tell stories about staying in the family home there, about visiting the family shop, about being there and I can't when I'm the one with the Mexican heritage. I feel sometimes like it should be the other way around; I should be the one who knows and can tell others. I'm being taught what should be as natural as breathing, and it sucks sometimes! I don't want to hold it against my mom, because she has absolutely no ill will and she didn't do anything, but it's an irrational feeling of loss and grief and pain and frustration

I love learning my heritage! The history, the culture, the food, ancestry, etc. But you're right, it's never the same, and because you can feel how its off you just wonder. What if it didn't come with this ache. What if I wasn't in-between and what if I was content with it all. What if I didn't have to wonder and just was. But then would you even be you?

It's so complicated, and then there's another part for some people that I think might apply to you and me. Which is being white and having these experiences and wondering whether you even have the right to think about it and hurt when you're also so privileged. For me, being Mexican/hispanic/latine, those are words that people use and understand as non-white. But they can also be white--though Mexicans being thought of us as white was a specific campaign made by Mexicans in the past to be treated better, so it used to be thought of as non-white in its own right. Which is a whole other layer of complicated. So where on earth does that leave us, white and a poc at the same time? When someone says white people need to listen to voices of color, are you including me as a white person who needs to listen or as a Mexican American to be listened to (though of course I do need to listen to other groups and voices as a hispanic person too, not trying to say I'm exempt from reflection and learning by being marginalized). For the time being I consider myself mixed and consider being hispanic/latine as part of my racial identity, even though it's officially considered an ethnicity--which is not something I'm alone in. There's several studies on how hispanic/latino people are frustrated by race questions because we don't have a good fit.

Now of course you're not Mexican (that I know of), but I thought you might understand the being white and having lost culture/heritage and the confusing balance that comes with that. Trying to figure out how to properly acknowledge your pain and experience while not overstepping.

It's especially harrowing because race and ethnicity have such a weighted, important role in our world and society. So it's both confusing, painful, and has significant ramifications. But! We are trying our best and have good intentions, which I think counts for something. I'm rambling at this point, but hopefully some of this resonated and you don't feel alone in it :)