#my dads side of the family is german my moms side is Mexican

[bitchfitch]

the big issue that is addressable in the moment is that I had the name Chancho picked out, but Chancho is newfoundland not a rottweiler

[nothernghostbat]

more love handel headcanons because I can't stop thinking of my girlfriends

FULL NAME AND BACKGROUNDS TIME

danny- Daniel Oliver Bell

American. like SUPER American. his dad is republican type of American. only child. you can tell because he has very few social graces

bobbi- Robert Miguel Garcia

Mexican-American. distant relative of the Garcia-Shapiros. like cousin of a cousin distant. big ass family, so he's got like five siblings. he's the youngest

sherman– Abigail Sherman "Swampy" Louise Malla

Nepali-German-American. his dad's side are Nepali immigrants and his mom's side are german. no reason for that I just like it. he has two little sisters and neither of them remember his deadname

[bysmerian]

So, for reasons I may talk about later, I was thinking about my grandma today. She passed away about half a year ago, having outlived two husbands.

At her funeral, there were gifts given: a spoon from her kitchen, and a copy of her macaroni and cheese recipe, codified properly for the first time. It's not a fancy recipe, nor is it complex, but she made it for decades at every family gathering until she couldn't anymore. She was suffering from dementia towards the end; my mom had mentioned it a couple times (though she and my dad divorced over twenty years ago, they're on good terms now and she's still an honorary member of that side of the family), as had my dad.

Thankfully, her kids were well-off enough to pay for at-home care; she lived a few hundred miles away and I regret that I only saw her once after she'd gone on palliative care.

But I did make the trip. I made sure people knew I was coming, and dropped in around lunch time because she was more likely to be awake and alert.

This was really not as successful as I would have liked. One of the first things she managed to get out was asking whether someone had picked up the boxes. She didn't know who brought them, where they came from, were they would have been kept, or who would have picked them up, but she was wondering regardless.

We ended up talking to the caretaker a fair bit. The topic of food came up (a subject I tend to get interested and passionate about), and she mentioned that while she was mexican, she had grown up with the kids descended from the german and czech enclaves and that was really her food. She mentioned sauerkraut, which set my grandmother off: GRANDMA: "I want sauerkraut!" M.A., THE CARETAKER: "I'm making it, grandma, but I don't have it here." G: "Well, go get me some!" M.A.: "I can't do that, grandma, it's at my house." G: "...well why can't I have sauerkraut?"

[repeat several times] M.A.: "I can't go get the sauerkraut because if I leave you alone your daughters will be very angry with me." My grandmother, a small and frail czech woman in her mid-nineties, seemed to accept this, hunkered down with her sandwich, chips, and root beer, and muttered with a soft certainty, "This is bullshit."

(I have related this story to her kids, and some of my cousins, and pretty much all of them just laugh. Grandma was a firecracker who had been actively censoring herself as long as she'd had grandkids to behave herself around, and that was not some cantankerous dementia speaking, it was entirely her.)

After a few hours, we got ready to go. I told her I was getting ready to head to Dallas, and she lit up, beaming. "I've got a son up there!" She said.

"I know." I had to respond. "That's my dad. Would you like me to say hi for you?"

"Oh, that would be lovely."

I wish I'd visited more. But I'm glad that I did at all.

[ratmans-notebooks]

the family lineage is so complicated too like .okay so allegedly id be mexican (on moms side) but then sometimes she will tell people we are spanish but when i ask shes like actually our oldest known great grandparents were new mexican and pueblo and also part of the family on her dads side i think are actually from the san juan valley but then shes like oh i just found out we might actually go all the way back to basque country. but the family records book says mexican all the way down. and last time we talked she said im mostly mexican + pueblo. so who even knows. and then thats not even mentioning MY dads side who are german. or czech. its confusing. something wrong with me

[queenofthursday6599-blog]

When I was little I didn't know that racism between white and black people was a thing

It's going to sound weird, but while I knew that racism existed when I was little, I didn't know that racism from white people against black people was a thing.

Because on both sides of my family I've got cousins (like second cousins and stuff, people from my parents generation) who married black spouses.

So I grew up with cousins who were black (step cousins? my mom's cousin adopted them when their parent married in, then there's their younger half siblings who I'm blood related to) and mixed on both sides of my family, but I was closer with the cousins on my maternal side, probably because there were more of them closer in age to me.

So the idea that there was a time in history where white people and black people weren't allowed to get married was shocking to me.

Racism against other kind of POC however I was far more familiar with, for various reasons.

Either by way of the vaguely racist jokes and slurs that would get tossed out by older relatives against asian, latino, and middle eastern people (very few of those in my family).

Or- OR various members of my family getting mistaken for being latino. Specifically my dad, older sister, aunt, and cousin (both from my dad's side of the family) who all have been mistaken for latino at one point or another.

But the person in my family that this happens to the most is my dad.

For being what I can only describe as a dark skinned white person.

Like literally.

My dad did one of those at home dna ancestry tests once, nothing but german, english, and french as far as the test could tell. Man should be pasty as far as the dna results say, but he stays 2 shades darker than the rest of us year round.

He gets mistaken for latino by actual latinos regularly, it's a whole thing. Especially if he ends up working a job with multiple latino co-workers.

Which is also hilarious because his dad (my grand dad) was technically legally mexican because he was born in mexico (even though my dad's grand parents on that side were born and raised in the USA, so I don't even know the story of about how my grand dad ended up being born in mexico), but that's a whole other thing.

Anyways there was a 2 or 3 year gap between me learning that racism as a concept exists (only so many times your mom can tell you not to repeat what your older relative says because it's racist before the idea clicks), and learning that white people being racist against black people specifically was a really big thing that existed, specifically in american history.

There really was a brief period of my life where I thought racism was a white people vs latinos vs asian vs middle eastern people thing.

Which is a different kind of horrible when you take into account that I have a younger cousin who's adopted from pakistan who I literally heard another older relative of mine call Sand N*gg*r when he was out of ear shot when he was like 5 years old.

SO yeah, I knew racism was alive and well, but the people I was around growing up tended to keep black people out of the conversation due to the multiple interracial marriages involving black people, along with like a half dozen mixed cousins in total, in my family.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Let's Agitate the Hell Out of This Snake!

I said to myself, "Self, you have never Tumblred effectively, and you exist only on the fringes of this culture. But you know if you engage negatively, it will will become a constant source of stress. And you know there are a lot of stressed-out people here who are being fed negative things across multiple platforms. Do not, DO NOT criticize left-leaning institutions around here until you have established some kind of cred as a well-meaning leftist yourself."

Yeah, well, but I read the news and I'm not ready to format the cites for an article about the woman we call "La Malinche." I wanted to say something on this other topic while it's still fresh in my mind.

So, first, if you're interested, here is the position from which I comment on Indigenous matters: My tribe didn't want me because my blood isn't pure enough. And if you don't wanna hear about that, that's fine. You don't hafta click.

Genealogically-speaking, no matter what ethno-cultural mix my great-grandfather had in his blood, he was in the tribe, so he counts as 100% by their standards. (I'm not gonna call them out by name. I've lost all connection with my family, I don't know who's on the Council now, and I don't know if they'd still reject me, but I'm not inclined to go back and beg. They're in Mexico and Arizona, and they have reservations and at least one casino, so there is a government-incentivized reason to split what they have as few ways as possible.)

My grandmother never bothered to get officially recognized and join the tribe. My tribe is not fond of Mexicans and her father married one, and she married one, and according to the stereotype she looks it (My tribe believes they are tall and Mexicans are short, I kid you not. My family on that side is a mix of tall and short and my dad got stonewalled trying to do genealogical research more than once because he got the short genes. Race-based caste systems are truly hilarious.) so I can relate. My aunt decided she wanted to join the tribe, and since she could point to her grandfather as 100%, she got in, adopted her kids from them, and got a seat on the Council. Her biological son was also eligible to join, although she married a Pacific Islander.

My dad, on the other had, did not bother to get recognized, and he married a Czech-German lady. When I was a young teenager, I asked my aunt what it would take for me to get in. She looked my fair-skinned ass up and down, shook her head and said, "It's too far." I only have a great-grandparent, with uncertain lineage, so I'm 12.5% or less. Maybe if my dad asked to be recognized first, I might have a chance, but my tribe isn't super fond of white people either, so that was a non-starter with my mom being who she was. My aunt smiled and said, "But you could marry in! We've got to get you a husband!"

At that age, with that level of security in my complex identity, I just laughed it off. OK, if they didn't want me, that was their right. A lot of places didn't want me. I didn't have much of the culture anyway. Although, had they been willing to accept me, I would've been willing to learn. After the attempted genocide, you'd think they'd be motivated to hand down those traditions to as many kids as possible, no matter how dislocated. The dislocation is a feature of the genocide, not my choice, nor is the genetic makeup of my parents, my height, or the colour of my skin.

Tribe used to be a matter of culture, not blood. You could take a new name and learn new traditions (sometimes against your will, but let's not get into that) and after a brief period of suspicion (or after your wounds healed up) you were in. Then European colonizers rolled up and said, "Hey, we've invented the concept of race and organized our whole society based on heritage and skin colour. You want some of that?" I have yet to stray across a tribe or Council who said, "Nah, we're gonna keep distributing our culture to whoever wants to learn." The tribe I can lay claim to by blood sure doesn't. They have so little left, they only want to share it with real Indigenous people. And they are defining "real" by the standards imposed upon them by a culture that tried to wipe them off the face of the planet.

What these colonizers have failed to do by forced marches, imprisonment and murder, they might manage to do by imposing an artificial scarcity of resources. If they can isolate each Indigenous society and coax them to hand their traditions down only to people who have been selectively bred to look how they think we ought to look, Indigenous people will never recover the rich cultural tapestry their ancestors enjoyed. Every generation, there will be fewer of them (they already lost me, so I can't say "us"), and they will grow more isolated, until they are gone.

That is the context which causes me to look at Indigenous cultures through a much more jaded lens than a lot of my peers, who only know enough to pity them.

So let's take a look at this opinion piece right here. You can read the whole thing if you want, but please forgive me for snipping a few quotes for the Tumblers. This post is gonna be long enough as it is.

Oh, dear god. "Mostly" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in that sentence! Right away. I know this person is privileged with an a identity less complex than mine, with most of their experiences in being excluded stemming from being Indigenous, period. I am super sure he never had his aunt smile at him and say his tribe didn't want him, but he might be acceptable as breeding stock. He doesn't have to consider the intersections, and he will have to do some more learning and growing before he realizes how silly it is to call Canada mostly a world leader in fairness and equality. I've barely been here a year and I already know that ain't so.

It should be obvious that Indigenous people are being fed a disproportionate amount of shit, and they deserve their land and autonomy back. But if we're talking about unfairness and inequality, that's just a few pixels of a huge image that this Indigenous law student isn't seeing. (Yet! I'm willing to give him time, but his views right now are a matter of public record and contributing to the public understanding, or lack thereof.)

And then, ah, we have a slight issue with fairness, equality, and legal representation edging into theocracy.

Okay. I gotta say, conflating laws of man with laws of gods and our forefathers does not get you a real good system of justice. We've seen this more than once, and I'm watching my home country slide into fundamentalist rule a little more each day, so - with all due respect to cultural preservation in the face of an attempted genocide - maybe it's better to write that stuff down and allow your society to evolve. Our ancestors didn't know everything, we don't know everything, and a Law revealed to one in an ecstatic religious state does not lend itself to reason, objection, or nuance.

Let's say, just spitballing here, your Council has set up a Powwow that doesn't allow Two-Spirits or other gender-diverse people to dress and dance as they choose. How do you construct a legal argument against a Council that chooses to cite, not just tradition, but the will of God and the spirits of your ancestors? "Uh... pretty sure my ancestors didn't say AMAB means you can't wear a ribbon skirt. I mean, I think the very concept is..." "WELL, WE ARE YOUR ELDERS AND WE SAY THEY DID." "Maybe they were wrong?" "STOP DISRESPECTING OUR CULTURE AND GET OUT." "Isn't it also my culture?" "NOT IF IT INCLUDES YOU WEARING A RIBBON SKIRT!"

The conservative impulse to regress to an imaginary past is not unique to Evangelical Christians. Tribal Councils, like most governments, skew conservative. If all their decisions can be attributed to unassailable spiritual revelations, there isn't going to be much progress. And these imposed gender roles and castes will be set in stone, just like they are in the colonizers' governments.

I just don't think it's a good idea. But, heh, what do I know? I'm not even allowed to call myself "Two-Spirit," because my blood's too impure.

(I will be posting Tumblr content on days beginning with T, if you care. Probably shorter content than this, but who knows?)

[miriam-heddy]

The Liminality of Whiteness and Writing About Mexican American Characters (in 911 or elsewhere).

Seeing some odd claims being made in 911 fandom about racism, children of immigrants, and passing.

If you’re interested in that, there’s a whole area of scholarship on the liminality of whiteness in America. And none of it means that you can’t be both subjected to racism and commit acts of racism at the same time! One way white people maintain power is by forcing people to assimilate into whiteness at the expense of their own culture (ie, It’s us or them) by taking sides with white supremacy without being granted full access to power.

My own connection to this comes from the perspective of looking at Jewish identity and media, and growing up in a Spanish, German, English speaking family.

These are just a couple of interesting reads, not a comprehensive bibliography.

Edited to Add: @chuuzmii asked for clarification. So I tl;dr’d some more, cause it’s the hiatus and it’s that or read buddie.

@chuuzmii There’s some good stuff out there in video form. There’s a good video here: https://youtu.be/CVxAlmAPHec that’s part of the National Museum of African America History and Culture that explains how racial categories shifted over time, from first identifying family group to the idea that skin color and/or birth nation mattered.

“Liminality�� just means something exists in a space between places we know. Liminal Space is called “Transitional” because people can move Through the Between to go Here or There. And now I sound like Dr Seuss (“I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do so like green eggs and ham!”)

Immigrants and children of immigrants (like Ryan Guzman) often find they live in multiple spaces. Ryan G said, “My mom is from Sacramento, California, and she's a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl. She's a whitey. Unfortunately, I don't look as Latin as I am.”

But how does Latin look?

To some, his skin tone makes him white. He has some white privilege. If he dresses up and speaks English, he probably won’t be followed around a store. But if he speaks Spanish and hangs out with other Mexican Americans (some with darker skin, like his dad), he might lose that. On TV crime shows, Latinx men together are often cast as bad guys.

Because he and his wife aren’t seen as 100% white, he wrongly thought they could use a mean word that’s been reclaimed by Black ppl yet is still used by some white ppl to mean “less than white/human/me.” That’s not okay. But ppl can learn. Being able to pass doesn’t mean you want to do so. And sometimes, people fck up and then grow, hopefully without hurting anyone too badly for them to forgive.

[angelpaperclip]

ooOoOoOo. Meta commentary, but. Because of her ping I expected Sunny to be Mexican. She might be a white Mexican. White Mexicans are mostly descendants from Spaniards. Tho in my family from my mom's side we're descendants from German immigrants. I have all this group of cousins who are blonde with green eyes, and then my dad's side of my family are both native Mexicans and immigrants from Cuba. So the skin tones in my family range from very dark to pale white. All Mexicans lmfao

[doberbutts]

Hypothetical white passing child of two mixed race Mexican parents

And, here's the thing. Colorist exists. Racism exists. Xenophobia exists. No where in this post did I say they don't, or that mixed race people don't frequently have a really complicated relationship with the various races that make up their identities.

A white-passing mixed race person certainly would be spared the brunt of overt, in-your-face, day-to-day racism that someone who is visibly of-color would face, true. A white-passing mixed race person who grew up mostly assimilating into whiteness may be overall divorced from the rest of their culture, also true.

(Also I would say that like all passing privilege, this is a highly conditional and contextual phenomenon and really, really depends. Being perceived as white means never once mentioning any amount of anything that challenges whiteness- speaking a different language too well, eating non-European dishes, not adhering to European beauty standards, having different cultural behaviors, all of these out you as non-white and that privilege is revoked. A friend of mine is Jewish and self-IDs as white, and has told me about how people zero in on her last name and her textured hair and her big nose and revoke whiteness instantly, let alone if she brings up eating Jewish food or asks off for a Jewish holiday or is caught wearing a Star of David necklace. It's a tightrope with no good options- she's experienced when her perceived whiteness has given her a boost and also has experienced what happens if she slips.)

But I also have watched quite a lot of Markiplier, and he is German and Korean, and he's talked about how much it hurt him that even though his Korean mom thought she was sparing him the racism she faced as a first generation immigrant to this country by having him live divorced from his Korean roots and solely as a white person, he was frequently bullied and even physically attacked at school for being Asian. So instead of having one or the other, a choice that was made for him by his parents, he had no one. I also think it's wild that he had to "come out" as Korean and a lot of his fans were shocked by that and reacted with disbelief, as if he and his brother are not very blatantly obviously visibly wasian. I don't really consider him white passing because he is very much not to me, but clearly to several millions of people who were surprised by this reveal years ago he is.

I think of my [other] sister's kids, who are very young and I will not be posting their photos on the internet thank you, who have an afronative and white mom, and a white dad, now living in a blended family with their very much so black step-dad and his very much so black kids. Her kids look white, it's true. But they're going to still grow up black despite this, and at some point they're going to have to reconcile their white-passing status with their blackness. They're a bit young for that right now, but it'll come probably by the time they're teens.

I'm pretty divorced from my Native roots despite having known in person many of the Natives in my family, on both sides. Similar to Markiplier, it was decided for me that it would be too difficult to be both Native and black, and I was not really allowed to engage with that part of my culture. Now, as an adult, I am having to reconcile the knowledge that I am more or less completely cut off from my Nation while also dealing with the antiblackness of the entire situation dating all the way back to slavery.

So when people say things like "well they're not raised in the culture" or "well they have it easier" it's 1: not always true and 2: whose fault is that??? No child has any control over the way their family chooses to raise them, and no child chooses their parents in the first place. I know a woman that's 100% Chinese that was adopted as a baby and raised by Italian Americans- are we debating *her* ability to feel sinophobia or discussing her inability to connect with Chinese culture like she's the one that chose to disconnect herself from it? The culture she feels the most connected to, surprise, is Italian and has nothing to do with China- is that not allowed because technically her blood percentage of Itanian is 0?

Anyway this is why I keep saying that people refuse to be normal about the idea of mixed race people and interracial relationships and communities happening and creating children.

I am black and black only until it is convenient to call me white. And it doesn't matter that I'm also native because I'm too black to be native anyway. I've talked about being multi-racial and having even further racial mixing in my extended family since I made this blog in 2014 but that doesn't matter if any of my racial mix can be used as a weapon against me.

Y'all complain about the stereotype of the tragic mulatto without understanding why that stereotype exists in the first place.

[theleftovertaco]

Champurrado

It’s winter and when you’re Latina/Mexican that means champurrado. It’s a form of spiced hot chocolate. While my mom’s side is British and German, my dad’s is Mexican and Salvadoran so i grew up with tamales, tacos, enchiladas, as well as conchas, champurrado, tres leches, arroz con leche, and flan. I rarely see content surrounding POC readers, but when I see any form of HP hispanic/latino content my heart swells just a little bit because I know there’s other people who might also want to see that. This is partially reflected in my personal experience with my families culture and history, so it may not reflect yours. If you want me to go further in depth or look upon a specific aspect of this I completely will. 

ONTO THE FIC

You really did miss home. Sure, Hogwarts was nice, you absolutely loved your friends. But there was nothing like visiting your abuelos and having them usher you into their home with comments about how you looked hungry, have you eaten today?

You missed the food too. Desperately.

The elves worked magic with their food, but they still did have to cater to mostly European students. 

British European students. 

And yeah, sure, fish and chips was good every once in a while and beef wellington and pasties were all fine, but since most of the food was British, that meant most of the food had little to no spice and very little flavoring. It was a lot of meat and potatoes. 

You were looking forward to going home for the holidays, but something had come up and your parents couldn’t have you back, no matter how much both you and your family wanted. 

So here you were, at 3 in the morning on Christmas break, having snuck in through the fruit bowl portrait, trying to frantically salvage some of the winter spirit that had been drained over time.

It was a spice induced extravaganza. About fifty tamales were steaming in a pot, pozole was simmering away in another, conchas were in the oven, and a wonderful smelling pot of champurrado was on the stove. 

“What the bloody hell happened here?”

You screamed and dropped the spoon you were holding to look at who had scared you, to find Fred and George had also snuck into the kitchens late at night, likely for a prank planning snack. 

“Don’t scare me like that!” “Sorry, love. Didn’t mean to.” Fred kissed you on the forehead and hugged you from behind.

“Smells nice in here, whatcha cookin?”

“A bunch of stuff. Can’t go home for the holidays and I was homesick for Mexican food so I came down here and next thing I know I’m making 4 dishes at once.”

George opened the lid on the tamale pot and sputtered when he was promptly assaulted with a face full of steam.

“Can we have some?”

“Sure, Jesus knows I made too much for one person.”

George used a pair of tongs to grab a few tamales, while Fred spooned out three bowls of pozole and you got three glasses for water. The three of you sat down and dug in. 

“Mm, this is good, your grandmother’s recipe?” Fred moaned and turned to you.

You nodded in response, your mouth too full to respond. “Great grandmothers, actually.” 

“What do you call that in Spanish? Great grandmother.” George asked

“Ah, mi bisabuela.”

They both hummed in response and there was little conversation for a few minutes while each of you ate your food.

“Oh, that was good. You have a knack for cooking.”

“And baking, hold on a sec, the conchas are coming out of the oven.” You grabbed an oven mitt to take the sweet bread out of the oven. Placing one on each plate and ladelling three cups of champurrado, you haphazardly carried them to the table in the middle.

Fred smelled the spiced cocoa and groaned.

“What’s in this, it smells amazing.”

“A mix of stuff. Cinnamon sticks, anise, piloncillo, that kind of stuff. My abuela sent me some of the things I would need cause you can’t find them in most of the UK.”

You teared off a piece of the bread and dipped it in the sweet drink, Fred and George followed suit.

“Why the hell doesn’t British food do this?” George asked staring at the bread in wonder.

“Because latinos know how to flavor their food.” Fred stuck out his tongue but stood up to get more conchas anyways. 

Idle chatter filled the room while the three of you ate. Grades, new prank ideas and WWW ideas.

“Ok, ok, ok, but hear me out on this? Sour candies that make you scream the second they hit your tongue:Screaming sour pops?”

“Ooh, I like that one, George, add that to the list.” George pulled out a notebook and scribbled it down in illegible handwriting. 

By the time you had finished your food, the sun was starting to come up. 

“Merlin, it’s breakfast already.” George got up while Fred was leaning over at the table.

“Can’t eat. Too full.” He turned to glare at you, “It’s your fault.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you and your amazing food. Screw you.” You laughed and pecked his cheek. The leftover food had already been put into storage containers so you could eat it later.

“Eh, it’s break, I think I’ll just head back to the dorms and sleep for the next nineteen hours.” You also headed towards the portrait exit. 

“I think we’ll do the same. Thank you for the food love.”

“Of course.” Fred leaned down to kiss you.

“Good night love, or, morning, I guess.”

Ok this made my heart happy. Please tell me if you enjoyed reading this bc I enjoyed writing it. 

[weathergirl8]

??????

Fam, I'm hurting. I can't post these words on Facebook where all my family can see. When in reality I should, but that would just add more turmoil and drama. The current state of affairs in America is enough to deal with. I'm astounded by the true colors that are shinning brightly in light of Wednesday's attack on Capitol Hill.

I 100% respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and they should be respected or at least handled with civility. However, when racism, fascism and down right bigotry are front and center that is another story. I'm am appaled...

How did we get here? Donald Trump obviously stoked this fire, but there's no way it just manifested overnight/the last 4 years.

To see my own so called friends and even family members say such hurtful and disgusting things has thrown me so far off my center of gravity that I'm at a loss.

How do you stomach these people ranting about your own race? Especially those on my mother's side of the family.

To understand the context here, my Mom is mostly white but deeply rooted is Native American, German, Irish, and English. On my Dad's side there is Mexican and Native American.

I am half Mexican and unsure of my exact Native American percentage.

The point?

A few family members on my Mom's side of the family have made racist comments about African Americans & Mexicans. Did they forget my Dad's side of the family? That by saying these deeply hurtful and despicable things, they are degrading my own skin color?

There are days where I am criticized at work by an upset customer solely because of my skin color. When someone doesn't get their way their first thing is to either call me an illegal and that I need to "go back to where I came from" or I stole their money because "thats what Mexicans do". First off, I was born and raised in America and I dont speak Spanish fluently at all (very little actually), second it is exhausting never knowing how many days this will happen. I AM A HUMAN BEING! I matter even if my skin tone is brown and I have black hair and brown eyes.

I can't even put into words how hurt I am right now and don't even know how to address this.....

I hope those who have supported Donald Trump are happy. Our country is falling apart and so are American families.

[kaijuno]

One time when I was like six a friend and I went over to some friends' house and we were talking to their mom about our ethnicities. I told her my family was originally from Germany and she straight up told me that that wasn't anything to be proud of because the Nazis were German.

This same family was also weird genetically. The boy and his mom both had blond hair and blue eyes and his sister was just straight up East Asian looking. I thought she was adopted for the longest time till one day I knocked on the door and their dad answered. Genetics is weird as hell.

My grandpa was like that. He was a Scottish immigrant but he had dark skin, black hair and thick eyebrows and a lot of my grandma’s side of the family refused to go to the wedding because they thought he was Mexican. They then had 3 ginger kids.

[boobachu]

I’m being melancholy on twitter about my ancestry and how both sides of my family are white despite mom’s side being mexican and the dad’s side being immigrants who came from europe around 1900

and someone told me that “The US isn’t a melting pot, it’s a tub of bleach” and like

aunno why that hit me so hard, like a harpoon.

It’s true tho, like the only Mexican things I know about are things that white Texans find cool like pinatas and coscarones... well I guess only Mexicans did midnight mass for christmas.

I know the world wars made Germans cringe and they abandoned the culture. Czech all I know is we make da kolache.

Commanches, well like the rest of the american indians were robbed of their land.

Like, I sorta really want to reclaim my ancestry but like, that feels so fake?

Like, culture is something that exists that you live in your whole life.

and it’s not like I was robbed, more like my ancestors were pressured to conform or suffer.

I dunno.

[charminglatina]

If you’re interested in watching a true story about a forbidden interracial love story, please watch this video. It’s a beautiful love story between an African-American nurse and a German POW from WWII.

This story hits a little close to home for me because of my parents and what they went through being an interracial couple growing up and being together during a time of racism and prejudice in America. My Dad and Mom were an interracial, intercultural and interclass couple. My Dad is a non-Hispanic White-American, born on Nov. 08, 1959 in Queens, New York City and he came from an upper middle class family. My Mom is an Hispanic Multiracial WOC, born on Jun. 25, 1960 in Detroit, Michigan and she came from a working class family. Physically, my parents couldn’t be more different, but that’s because racially and ethnically, they are total opposites. My Mom is half Cuban-American through her mother. My maternal grandmother is Afro-Cuban or Afro-Latina but racially, she is biracial/Mulatto-Cuban. My maternal grandmother is Cuban-American born to Cuban immigrant parents. My maternal great-grandmother (my maternal grandmother’s mother) was White Cuban of Lebanese, Iranian and Spanish descent and my maternal great-grandfather (my maternal grandmother’s father) was mostly Afro-Cuban (with Afro-Jamaican, Afro-Haitian, Indo-Jamaican, and Chinese-Cuban mixture). My maternal grandmother’s father (my great grandfather) was very dark-skinned and a very proud Black Cuban man. My grandmother told me that she has dark brown complexion, despite her mother being White Cuban, because her father was a very dark skinned Black Cuban. My Mom is half Mexican-American through her father. My maternal great-grandmother (my maternal grandfather’s mother) was Mexican-American of mixed Indigenous-Mexican, Afro-Mexican and African-American descent. My maternal great-grandfather (my maternal grandfather’s father) was Mexican-American of Indigenous-Mexican and Spanish descent. He was also distant Pardo-Brazilian heritage (Brazilian who is mixed with White, Black and Indigenous-Brazilian). Both of my maternal grandparents are darker-skinned and therefore, are visible POC. Both of my maternal grandparents faced tons of racism and racial discrimination from White people growing up and were frequently called racial and ethnic slurs. My Mom looks more Afro-Latina than anything because she takes more after her mother in physical appearance. She has very tightly curly, slightly frizzy black hair, brown eyes and medium brown complexion. My Dad, in contrast to my Mom, is very White. He is White-American of European mixture. My maternal grandmother is of French, Italian, Dutch, Scottish and Norwegian descent. My paternal grandfather was primarily Irish-American along with German, English, and Croatian heritage. In addition, my paternal grandfather was distantly Native American, being 1/8 Cherokee Native from his father’s side–this makes my Dad 1/16 Cherokee Native. Physically, my Dad has blond hair, very light blue-green eyes, and very pale complexion. My father is the embodiment of White in every way imaginable. My father and his family relocated to Detroit a few years after he was born. My parents met when they were only 4 and 5 years old, when they were just little kids. They had an instant bond and connection with each other from the moment they met. They became instant best friends and they were inseparable throughout childhood (both my Mom and Dad say that it was the Scorpio-Cancer compatibility and magic that made them instantly drawn to each other LOL). Both of my parents described it as “love at first sight” when they met each other. Unfortunately, my father’s parents (my paternal grandparents) were strongly racist and extremely bigoted against all POC. My grandfather was a racist and my great-grandfather was also a racist, so my Dad’s side of the family has a lineage or bloodline of racists. My father’s family didn’t associate with POC and they didn’t approve of my father associating with my Mom or POC in general. My parents have been in love with each other since they were kids, but they didn’t start officially dating until their early teen years. Things got really messy for them because my Mom’s parents didn’t approve of her relationship with my Dad because he wasn’t Hispanic and my Dad’s parents didn’t approve of his relationship with my Mom because she was both Hispanic and a WOC. They were met with opposition from both sides of their families and they struggled to be together. Even kids at school, mainly White people and even some POC, disapproved of my Mom and Dad being together because they were an interracial couple. After all, my parents grew up during a time (the 60′s and 70′s) where racism was strongly prevalent and interracial relationships were often frowned upon and seen as taboo within society. It was also a time when there was alot of racial injustices towards POC and when the Civil Rights movement was active and POC, primarily Blacks, were protesting and fighting for their rights as humans. My Mom was the target of much racism and racial discrimination from the time she was very little. White kids would bully her, pick on her and harass her at school because she was brown and a POC. My Dad, a White kid, was constantly defending my Mom from racist attacks from White kids who were bullying her because of her race. He had been doing this from the time they were little all the way into their teen and even adult years. My Dad disowned his racist family and his parents because he couldn’t stand how racist, bigoted and prejudice they were and that they couldn’t accept my Dad’s relationship with my Mom. For my Dad, it was either his love and relationship with my Mom or his family. My Dad chose my Mom without hesitation. As an act of rebellion, my parents got married when my Dad was only 17 and my Mom was only 16. They didn't care what their parents thought of their relationship because all that mattered was that they loved each other. My Mom and Dad have both said that they are each other’s soulmate and great love and that they will never love another person the way they loved each other, even though they are both currently married to someone else. The racism that my Mom had to go through and the disapproval towards my parent’s being an interracial relationship is why I’m so passionate about fighting against racism, bigotry, prejudice and White supremacy. True love knows no colour, race, religion, gender, or sexuality and I hope one day, people can accept each other no matter who we are. Love knows no bounds. 

#InterracialLoveIsBeautiful. ❤️

[chispas-and-broken-bindings]

When you get this you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, send this ask to 10 of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool).

Sorry this took me so long @joeyava! I'm bad at Tumblr.

1. my sense of humor

2. my eyes. They are a dark olive shade, and in a family of blue and brown eyes, I'm the only green eyed person.

3. That I chose my life partner well...maybe a strange thing to like about myself, but it's true. When my husband and I met, we both had radically different plans that would have taken us to opposite sides of the country, but we pretty quickly realized that wouldn't do. Despite having very different personalities and very different interests, we both decided we were 'all in' very soon after meeting, and we never looked back.

11 years in and I still think he's one of the most intelligent, attractive, and strange people I've ever met. Despite knowing him better than almost anyone, he still surprises me with the insights he has and he's one of the few people who is able to consistently change my mind in a debate, despite using far fewer words than I ever do. Anyway, that was long-winded, but he is one of my favorite things about myself.

4. My self-confidence. A friend once told me the word 'brazen' should go on my tombstone and it's one of the best compliments I've ever received.

5. That I'm mixed race. I've grappled with how to identify for as long as I can remember, having a white dad and a brown mom, especially with the way the two sides of my family differ socioeconomically. Being white 'passing' (I hate that term... this shit is hard to talk about) and being well-off, I often felt, especially when I was younger, like I couldn't identify as Mexican American, even as I watched second and third cousins who are technically less Mexican (again, a stupid and arbitrary way to think about it) proudly claim it because they look it.

I've even felt like my sister, who isn't white-passing could claim our heritage, but I couldn't.

Because my family immigrated to the U.S. the year my grandma was born, many of the stories and stereotypes about Mexican Americans and immigration just don't really fit my family. We have been here long enough that I have family that has immigrated back to Mexico and we visit that branch of the family every few years.

Still, I grew up in an extremely white area and never felt white enough for my dad's family of blue-eyed German/Dutch giants (seriously, everyone except my siblings is over six feet tall) or brown and poor enough for my mom's family (I definitely internalized racist ideas about poor Mexicans 😬).

I've finally mostly left those insecurities and generalizations behind. Living in a large city and meeting more multi-racial people in college and beyond helped, as well as discussing race and privilege extensively with my siblings has also helped.

I'm now at a point where I can feel proud of my heritage and comfortable with the fact that places where race and class and identity intersect are always going to complex and tricky to talk about and think about, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't. In fact, that's precisely why we should, even when we don't get it right the first time or second time or even ever come to a perfect explanation or understanding.

Looking at the trajectory of my family, from my Papa Uelo, who fled to the U.S. during conflict in Mexico and always intended to return (unfortunately he never did) to his daughter, my Tia Cashilda, who moved back to my family's home town in Michoacan as an adult, to my cousin who worked in the Obama administration, to my sister who is a freakin' professor, to my brother who is an international musician and lives in Mexico, I'm so proud of my family and how we exemplify the immigrant experience in all it's ups and downs.

My feelings on race and identity will continue to change and evolve, and I'm totally okay with that.

----

Phew, that turned into a book...and I wasn't expecting it to!

Thanks for the ask @joeyava

[8millionscorpions]

hey what regional accent would pronounce cupboard as cubbert. i get it from my family, i think from my moms side of the family (german and russian immigrant grandparents)

but my dads mex from texas 🤔 im 4th gen mexican and 3rd gen european so

btw i dont know how a lot of other people talk in different places