Every school year, we fill out forms. Forms for classes, forms for clubs, forms we swear we’ve filled out 50 times already for registration but somehow keep coming back. (I’m looking at you, FAFSA.) Unfortunate bureaucracy aside, many forms give me an uneasy, angry hum in my chest. It always begins with one specific question.
Ethnicity: White, Hispanic, other.
For now, allow me to self-identify here, without regard for these neat little boxes. My name is Sara Samaniego (pronounced Sah-ra Summon-yay-go). I am Chicanx, queer, and I grew up in Colorado, an area that’s believed to be part of my ancestors’ mythical homeland: Aztlan. I am not white — although I was raised to seem as such. My parents and relatives speak our mother tongue, but I can’t string a sentence of Spanish together. My culture influences the way I think, act, and feel, but I do not know my Chicanx traditions. I identify with my ancestors, but I cannot call them by name. In the eyes of white people, I’m “ethnic,” but to my people, I’m “whitewashed.” In my eyes, I’m the product of generations of minorities who fought and continue to fight the definitions colonization has subjected us to: the neat little boxes they like to stuff us in.
Too White to Belong, Too Brown to Pass
I am considered part of the “no sabo” generation. Used as an insult, “no sabo” is the incorrect way to say “I don’t know,” a typical mistake made by Chicanx who weren’t taught Spanish. Despite the fact that I lost my culture to colonization and generational trauma, as a “no sabo,” I receive judgement from my people for not being Chicanx “enough.” My relatives balk each time they remember I’m not fluent, then promptly say I should learn, while failing to offer to teach. If I go into a Mexican restaurant, I get the familiar welcome of people who share the same culture — until I open my mouth and order in English. The warm greeting slips into an artificial customer service voice and I cringe as I struggle to correctly pronounce the foods I’ve eaten my whole life.
Though my own culture writes me off as too whitewashed to be Chicanx, I am somehow Chicanx “enough” to experience the same discrimination that my parents did. In elementary school, the last name on my forms and check mark under “Hispanic” landed me in an English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency test. After answering numerous questions so simple they made my eyes roll, the woman running the test stopped and asked, “Why are you being tested for ESL?” As a 9-year-old in a white suburban public school, I had no answer but a confused shrug.
Now, the picture is glaringly, painfully clear. Soon after the test, my mom stopped checking “Hispanic” on our school forms. When I asked my dad how I should fill out the dreaded ethnicity question while registering for FAFSA, he said, “Never put Hispanic.”
And when I asked if I had to identify as white, he pursed his lips and said, “Yes.”
Who defines what it means to be Chicanx?
Today, I attend the University of Northern Colorado, which recently became a Hispanic Serving Institution. That title requires the institution to uphold programs for Hispanic students and maintain a student population of at least 25% self-identified Hispanics and Latinos.
It sounds great on the surface, right? But let’s look at one important element required to receive that aid: You must self-identify.
That phrase in today’s world has implications far beyond how simple the government makes self-identifying sound. After all, I learned never to self-identify from parents who were taught that their identity was a target on their backs. Today, as the Supreme Court backs ICE detaining people based on their appearance, the target just got a whole lot more dehumanizing. Now, embracing my identity might actually help me reach that next rung of the ladder that’s always felt just out of reach — or it might drop me right into an incredibly dangerous situation.
When I look back on my experiences with my Chicanx identity, I can’t help but notice it has never truly been mine. It’s been defined and therefore owned by: parents who saw it as a vulnerability, relatives and Chicanos who gatekeep the language, and the government who classified us as a dirty word then made us write it on a form. Well, I’m tired of letting others define it, of squeezing myself into those little boxes.
My name is Sara Samaniego and I am Chicanx, and what that means is for me to decide.