On Being Mixed and Brazilian

Picture courtesy of Beatriz Mello

So, I’m Brazilian. I was born and raised along the Emerald Coast of the Brazilian South, playing in the ocean and sand before I could even talk or walk. Think South American Moana. But my family tree is a little more…diverse. My dad grew up smack dab in the middle of all that land, in a state that used to be colonial Brazil’s sweetheart with the coffee and dairy farms and precious gem mines. Those farms were owned by Portuguese immigrants and the workers were enslaved Africans. My mom, on the other hand, was born in a small fisherman village, with mostly Italian and German immigrants and lived all her life in majority white and wealthy locations.

        The two of them met over the phone, the story says that she was extremely mad at a mistake he made at work and he drove down 10 hours to see what all of that was about, falling in love with her strong personality and green eyes.They got together and stayed together for 22 years. I absolutely adore my heritage. I’m the living and breathing heirloom of hard-working, determined and amazing people who came from all over the place and made themselves a legacy and family.

         However, being in America as an immigrant has me challenging some old-school thoughts about my family. Truth is, as a Brazilian it’s hard to say where I fit in. I am not white, but I’m white passing. I have an accent but it makes me feel “exotic” and not scary. My skin looks Italian in the winter, but Latina in the summer. My brown self is probably more “pure” German than most Americans claiming they’re Italian or Irish. 

I don’t know much about my dad’s side of the family, and they’re the ones I look like the most. It’s a mixture of a physical and emotional distance, and now both my grandparents are gone and those are stories I’m not getting back.

         That had never bothered me too much until I burst my bubble and came to the United States. That small action started a snowball that led me to change my political and religious views, career and romantic life. The worlds “mixed” “latina” “exotic” and my personal favorite “Mexican” were being used to describe me when they had never been used before. The color of my skin and the texture of my hair didn’t register with me too much, even though I spent most of my teenage years running away from the sun so my skin wouldn’t tan and straighten my hair. It never seemed to be a problem, but I wasn’t an immigrant, so I didn’t notice how I was the darkest person in most of my friend groups, jobs and classrooms.

        Realizing in the US that I was an immigrant made me aware of how racist my upbringing and biases were. It was painful, and it’s a can of worms that you can’t look away or close back once you open it. Nowadays, I work my hardest in order to figure out the missing pieces in my past, and in the process of self-knowledge I’ve been more active in trying and making the world a better, more fair place for everyone else. 

My parents talked about race with me, but not in a way that made me understand our job as a society was not done. We need to do better, and we need to do better now. So I invite you to try as well. Sit with your discomfort and think: how many people of color have been my bosses, my teachers, my best friends? Why is that? When I visit my favorite restaurant, what color are the people dining with me? How about the other customers? Finally, take a look at the servers and kitchen staff, what color are they?

Noticing those differences isn’t racism, it’s actually the first step in ending it. The only way to actively change the sick, flawed, unfair society we all live in is to challenge our privileges, to raise up voices of people who haven’t been heard in a long time. Want to know a very easy way to start? Register to vote. Even if you have been voting for the same person for years and it seems like they’re doing just fine I beg you, look into what they have done. What has been done with your money? Look at which companies are donating money to the campaign and ask yourself: why is this company donating to this politician? Even if we don’t agree politically, please make sure to know who you’re voting for and own up to it. You can’t blame the government when you’re the one who put them there. Recognizing your privilege, changing how you treat people of color in your everyday life and voting in a way that uplifts those voices is the best way to start changing the world for the better.