Racism and Sexuality
Mar. 10th, 2009 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lodessaI feel I have to start this post with a few disclaimers:
1) I am going to be talking pretty much exclusively about myself and race issues as they pertain to hispanic males in this post. This is not because it's the only race issue that exists, but merely a focused topic for this occasion to try and make a clear discussion possible.
2) I am not attempting, in any way, to get gold stars, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sophia_helix refers to them, from anything in this post.
3) Please forgive the indulgence of my memoir type narration, it is conveniently lj-cut for those of you who just want to see where I am going.
Now, to get to the topic at hand: I have increasingly realized that, at least for me, my most noticeable journey in race issues is tied heavily into issues of sexuality. I date the end of the halcyon era of my color blind childish state with my first big crush, which was on a boy who happened to be hispanic. This wasn't relevant to me at the time in any way, but I use it as a starting point because it's the last time that it wasn't. I was 9 or 10 at the time. Following this I was pulled out of the public school system into an extremely white private school until the age of 14, and by the time I was encountering diversity again, it was in a different town and the hispanic population of my school was for the most part segregated out. For those years, I had two main forms of exposure to hispanic males. The first I only now realize was relevant in that, the sole hispanic boy of my acquaintance was in some sense de-gendered in my (and I imagine others') minds. He was someone I liked well enough, but I never would have considered him as a romantic possibility, he was in some sense other. That, I think, speaks volumes. The second situation, was one that I thought about a good 6 years ago... being whistled and yelled at by random hispanic guys on the street (guys who were stationary, unlike the white boys who drove by and yelled and then were safely gone) or even followed. This situation is the one that most negatively effected my attempts at staying away from racial bias. But in 2003, during the spring of my Freshman year of college, something else happened that made me re-evaluate the whole situation... or rather really evaluate it for the first time. I met the two men who would dominate my emotions for my college career. Neither of them were of purely European decent, one being Mexican-American on both sides, and one being white-non hispanic on one side and latino on the other. The prior I had an problematic but important affair with for about 3 years and still talk to to this day. The latter I fell hopelessly in love with almost immediately and was heartbroken by when he drunkenly made out with three of my supposed friends, only to have him seek me about in late 2005 and find that although he perhaps felt just as strongly about me as I did him, he was too much of a mess to waste my life on(which I am going to blame on his white addict mother rather than his father, the parent of color).
Anyway, I am now happily in a much more healthy relationship with a man I expect to spend the rest of my life with. He is white as white can be, and sometimes I wonder whether it might not seen like cheating or disavowing, like I had these interesting relationships with men of color, but now I am going to retreat into my safe euro-centric cocoon. This feeds into larger issues I have about myself and career and academia and if maybe I am not domesticating myself too much. But then (on the race front) I think, is this not the same issue that my bi-sexual friends face? Is my committed relationship with a white man, not the same as their committed relationships... in that they don't stop being bi just because they are with a man or a woman indefinitely. My being with a white man, even if it is forever, doesn't mean I am now only into white dudes any more than it makes my married to a man friend not into women anymore. But then I wonder, am I just being overly defensive? Is there more to this than chance? Am I really retreating into the comfort of white privilege after all?
1) I am going to be talking pretty much exclusively about myself and race issues as they pertain to hispanic males in this post. This is not because it's the only race issue that exists, but merely a focused topic for this occasion to try and make a clear discussion possible.
2) I am not attempting, in any way, to get gold stars, as
sophia_helix refers to them, from anything in this post. 3) Please forgive the indulgence of my memoir type narration, it is conveniently lj-cut for those of you who just want to see where I am going.
Now, to get to the topic at hand: I have increasingly realized that, at least for me, my most noticeable journey in race issues is tied heavily into issues of sexuality. I date the end of the halcyon era of my color blind childish state with my first big crush, which was on a boy who happened to be hispanic. This wasn't relevant to me at the time in any way, but I use it as a starting point because it's the last time that it wasn't. I was 9 or 10 at the time. Following this I was pulled out of the public school system into an extremely white private school until the age of 14, and by the time I was encountering diversity again, it was in a different town and the hispanic population of my school was for the most part segregated out. For those years, I had two main forms of exposure to hispanic males. The first I only now realize was relevant in that, the sole hispanic boy of my acquaintance was in some sense de-gendered in my (and I imagine others') minds. He was someone I liked well enough, but I never would have considered him as a romantic possibility, he was in some sense other. That, I think, speaks volumes. The second situation, was one that I thought about a good 6 years ago... being whistled and yelled at by random hispanic guys on the street (guys who were stationary, unlike the white boys who drove by and yelled and then were safely gone) or even followed. This situation is the one that most negatively effected my attempts at staying away from racial bias. But in 2003, during the spring of my Freshman year of college, something else happened that made me re-evaluate the whole situation... or rather really evaluate it for the first time. I met the two men who would dominate my emotions for my college career. Neither of them were of purely European decent, one being Mexican-American on both sides, and one being white-non hispanic on one side and latino on the other. The prior I had an problematic but important affair with for about 3 years and still talk to to this day. The latter I fell hopelessly in love with almost immediately and was heartbroken by when he drunkenly made out with three of my supposed friends, only to have him seek me about in late 2005 and find that although he perhaps felt just as strongly about me as I did him, he was too much of a mess to waste my life on(which I am going to blame on his white addict mother rather than his father, the parent of color).
Anyway, I am now happily in a much more healthy relationship with a man I expect to spend the rest of my life with. He is white as white can be, and sometimes I wonder whether it might not seen like cheating or disavowing, like I had these interesting relationships with men of color, but now I am going to retreat into my safe euro-centric cocoon. This feeds into larger issues I have about myself and career and academia and if maybe I am not domesticating myself too much. But then (on the race front) I think, is this not the same issue that my bi-sexual friends face? Is my committed relationship with a white man, not the same as their committed relationships... in that they don't stop being bi just because they are with a man or a woman indefinitely. My being with a white man, even if it is forever, doesn't mean I am now only into white dudes any more than it makes my married to a man friend not into women anymore. But then I wonder, am I just being overly defensive? Is there more to this than chance? Am I really retreating into the comfort of white privilege after all?
