I get concerned whenever people start talking about “POC” vs “White”, and the amount of melanin in others skin.
My (very large) family is Mexican. Some of us are dark enough that we’ve been thought of as black, some of us are so light skinned we’ve been thought of as white. Does that mean the darker family members are POC while the lighter ones are not?
I’ve had similar conversations with an African American family that has the same “Melanin” issues.
Do people need to start carrying around DNA backgrounds or pictures of their parents to address the people who immediately raise these flags?
I’ve been hired at places that seems to hire only white people so they can show that they’re diverse (and, yes, I have been told that is exactly why I was hired).
I’ve also been denied jobs because they were looking to make their staff more “diverse” and I didn’t look “brown enough” (one told me that to my face, the other was whispered to me by a cousin who worked there).
Accepted by groups of white kids until they learned my name (except for the one group who thought I was Russian).
Rejected by groups of Latino kids until they learned my name (and was usually then treated as some kind of mascot with nicknames like “Snowball” or “Blanco”).
This was 30 years and more ago. I had hoped that this kind of knee-jerk judgment based on looks would have mellowed out with time, but it seems to have gotten worse.
I don’t like - and neither do my darker skinned family members - being accepted or rejected simply because of the melanin content of our skin. We want to be judged on who we are as people and the skill-set we bring to the table.
Peace out,
Gregorio Munoz III
The White Mexican
