“Mexican? Good joke, you’re clearly white.”

Alfredo Holguin
Ann Arbor, MI
Understanding Race Project- University of Michigan

Shorty Summary: I decided to choose these 6 words as my race card because this is something that I have heard A LOT since living in the US for the last 10 years of my life. Every time that I tell people that I am Mexican, they never believe me simply because I’m also white; something that to me is not that uncommon at all. I’m a 6th generation Mexican, my whole family is born and raised in Mexico, I was born and grew up in Mexico until the age of 10, I speak fluent Spanish, and for some reason people always question me when I tell them that I’m from Mexico and a proud Latino. Then they ask me to speak Spanish, so I do, and then they assume that I must be from Spain then because, to them, since I’m not dark-skinned then I can’t be Mexican. This is something that always annoys me when I have to deal with it, but now I’m not as surprised by it as I used to be. Hopefully one day people will be able to learn that there are many different types of Hispanics that just because they aren’t white doesn’t mean they are any less Hispanic, AND any less proud of it.