Being born in this country is not enough to be considered American. My entire life I’ve been reminded that I’m a certain kind of American: a “hyphen-American.” My nationalistic descriptor is the juxtaposition of unrelated ideas. This wouldn’t be a problem, honestly, if everyone was classified in such a way. But the disturbing truth is that people of color are in fact “things” to be classified.
When you think of the typical American, what images pop into your head? DO you imagine amber waves of grain? Do you think of a hot apple pie sitting on the windowsill cooling off? Maybe you think of baseball. Perhaps you imagine a factory where sweat-covered men hardened by their laborious work toil day in and day out. A house with a white picket fence, a dog, a tire swing, and two children might be what you think of.
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But what about the people? Most likely the people you thought of lacked color. Why is that? Why is the “typical” American a white person? The answer is very simple: the people in power are almost exclusively white. This means that everyone who does not fit that description will lack political representation, they will be under-represented in mainstream media, and they will be inherently viewed as the “other.”
Who decides who gets to be just an “American”? Those who have served to protect this country in the armed forces are still capable of being deported. Those who have been brought to this country as infants must come to terms with the fact that the only country they have ever known and lived in is not their home. People who are fleeing violence, unbridled crime, and even war, face bureaucratic red tape even if this country has helped create the circumstances that is destroying their home.
The most amazing thing is that when you’re a “hyphen-American,” you’re also an outsider in your “other” country. I have parents from Mexico and Honduras. When I go there, despite speaking fluent Spanish with dialectical idioms, eating the same food, understanding political and historical events of both countries, and being able to walk down the street as if I had lived there all my life, to them, I’m an American. Here in the U.S. I’m a Latin-American, Hispanic-American, Hispanic, or Latino. For some reason American is not the first descriptor that pops into people’s minds.
Gloria Anzaldua famously wrote a piece on this phenomenon entitled “To Live in the Borderlands” where she outlined the creation of a new people who were caught in between a racial and political binary. You didn’t fully fit in in either place. You were a half-breed, an unfortunate and unwanted being who struggled to embody both cultures, both essences simultaneously.
That’s exactly what it is. Being a “hyphen-American” is a never-ending struggle trying to reconcile two distinct cultures. You can never fully be either. I will never be “American” enough because my skin color, my diet, my preference in music, my political ideology, my beliefs about disciplining children, my superstitions, and a list longer than the Trail of Tears would never fall in line with the American paradigm. Yet I can never be fully Mexican or Honduran for the same exact reasons. I am relegated to being a social experiment. I am the barometer by which contrasting cultures measure each other.
Being a “hyphen-American” isn’t easy. You bear the burden of your familial ancestry pressuring you to keep the old ways alive while also assimilating to an American society that seemingly only fully accepts those who have melanin deficiencies. But it’s also an advantage. You have a unique vantage point from which you can analyze multiple cultures with significant objectivity. You are involved enough in either to understand them, but detached enough from both to be a spectator.
The Borderlands can be hostile. They’re the cultural DMZ. Those of us who inhabit it wander the cultural continuum cautiously. They are social constructs, but have tangible consequences. The Borderlands are our home, and we take pride in surviving in them.
