I Am a Brown Mexican American Female: Part I

I am a brown Mexican American female. It is important to point this out because having brown skin identifies how I move through life in other people’s realities — whether conscious or unconscious — and a part of how I claim my power. Though there were times I scrubbed my skin so hard I left it raw, I grew to realize I was only trying to wash away my coco colored skin due to the harmful ignorance of white supremacy. As a child hurt by racism, I developed a misplaced loyalty that served to comfort the poor white ignorant man/woman. I refer to “poor” as not rich in soul. I refer to man and woman and not children — though children wielded a lot of racism at me — because kids learn these ideas from the adults in their lives, not on their own.

The years went on. I stopped scrubbing and dove inward. I bathed deeply in my coco colored, sometimes ashy skin, loving every moment — and what do you know? My heart began to glow.

I now look with sympathy to the folks that denied my family and I service at restaurants because of the color of our skin, at the cops that often pulled me over for obvious reasons — after all, I grew up in majority white Orange County — at the kids that didn’t want to touch me while playing because they didn’t want to “get dirty”, at the head dean of Mater Dei Highschool who zoned in on me and never took her eyes off until she reached her goal of kicking me out (this was over 15 years ago and a whole other story on its own about her racial bias), and many more.

Empathy. That was, that is, my ticket to freedom.

Love of self. That was, that is, my ticket to unstopabble power.

I am a brown Mexican American female and I am Love.

-Angela Christina Christy Ruiz

Photo: Me (the child at the center) with my sister, cousins, and Abuelita