Michelle Martinez
Tempe, AZ
As a mixed child of divorced parents, a White mom and Mexican dad, I overheard a lot of racist talk in my mother’s family. Even though I never heard her say anything, she never disagreed, either. She sat quietly through it, not promoting it, yet not speaking against it. I often wondered if she even noticed it was racist. I have white half sisters and am often excluded from their family events and gatherings. Is it because I am brown? Latina? Half-Mexican? I have always felt bad for what my mom must have gone through. What did people say to her to make her ashamed of her first marriage? Of me. I have tried to blame it on her generation, her upbringing, her racist father, anything to believe that it couldn’t be true. How do you ask your mother if she hates you? I never could. When I discussed it with a family member, I was asked if perhaps it was just in my head. This led me to counseling and then a decade earning graduate degrees, researching and writing about race and ethnicity in U.S. culture. I have tried to understand it, deconstruct it, to make sense of those six words: does my white mom hate me?
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