I was excited to read \u00a0\u201ctoo black to be Hispanic, too Hispanic to be black\u201d I really empathized with the author. I didn\u2019t think much about my own race or ethnicity until I was raised in the United States. I\u2019m from a small town in Brazil and we all just thought black, white, yellow, we\u2019re all Brazilian. Unlike other states where there are more cultures present. In S\u00e3o Paulo there are Chinese, Indian, and other foreign cultures present but not in little old pontezinha, Recife. I was shocked when I came to America and saw how many different people there were. It boggled me that all of them came from different places yet they all speak the same language. I was mesmerized. As I grew older I saw how people continuously questioned where I was from. I also experienced racism when white people that lived in my building continuously caused problems with me and even called the cops once claiming I was trying to break into my own apartment\u2026 Being that we live in New York the melting pot people from all over the world are here. No one really knows much about Brazil and most assume we\u2019re all white. Which is not the case. I\u2019m biracial. I have both Portuguese and Angola (Africa) descendants. Yet I\u2019ve been very much aware that I have a rather ethnic face. During the winter I become pale and I\u2019m often mistaken for Greek or Italian or if I wear my hair curly and I\u2019m tan it\u2019s assumed that I\u2019m Arab. I don\u2019t mind it but growing up it felt imperative for me to be as nationalist as I could. I wanted to represent my country and scream it from the top of my lungs. I was proud to be Brazilian. I wouldn\u2019t find many Brazilian people my age growing up and it saddened me. However, this allowed me to merge with many people of other cultures and learn new things. I was able to learn Spanish and speak it with many friends. I learned to see different perspectives other than just a \u201cChristian\u201d mindset when I became close friends with Buddhist and Muslims. It was great but I still never shut up about my country. I honestly never will. It\u2019s more than just nationalism. I love my country with my heart. Each of us are so different but our culture makes us into such passionate people. Always being confused as someone from somewhere else. Being discriminated because of how I looked. It was surreal for experiencing such a dislikeness to being different when I never understood it to matter. I never thought it could matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was excited to read \u00a0\u201ctoo black to be Hispanic, too Hispanic to be black\u201d I really empathized with the author. I didn\u2019t think much about my own race or ethnicity until I was raised in the United States. I\u2019m from a small town in Brazil and we all just thought black, white, yellow, we\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gws-100-0501-spring-22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}