NATALIA LUDIVIER

Most people want to fit into a group, and they will join the closest group; however, for myself, I really do not worry about that. My mixed background has always influenced how I see groups. My motivation has become to discover how I can represent my evolving sense of “my culture.”  People who are pure blood in their ethnic identity have no idea how hard it is for a person who is multi-racial to forge an identity. On the street, people seem to have their identities taken away. All White Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans have been victimized by racial slurs. New immigrants are called “aliens,” which is a term with outerspace connotations. For people like myself who are multi-racial, we have to live with sometimes being called “Mutts.” People on the street refer to us with a term used to describe a canine creature of mixed breeding. I am only one person, but it hurts.

 

I am not of one pure race, belonging to one prescribed culture. My blood is mixed. On good days, I think I hear ancestral echoes of Spanish kings, African warriors, and Native American braves. What better way to describe me than special for being multi-racial? But on most days, I cannot help but feel the putdowns from all around me, which brings difficulty in acknowledging how multi-racial is not a clear identity, with a specific community, that embraces all of who I am.

 

There are times when I feel like being really different and just saying that I am American: “I am an American citizen.” But I do not want to call myself something that was created from a genocide. Yes, North America, as we know it, developed out of a genocide. My people were the targets of a genocide, just as my people were kept in slavery, and my people were targets for corporate colonialism after the Monroe Doctrine. Europeans first came to this new land to extend their population, practice new religion, and settle here to make a new society. It was always supposed to be about freedom. But they refused to realize that they were taking over a land that was already founded by nations of Native Americans. The local people were forced off their lands; their women raped; their young ravaged by diseases against which they had no immune capacity. Do you even hear about the Native Americans any more? No! People do not care about the Native Americans. They were moved onto reservations to put them out of sight. That was exactly the purpose then and now. The first settlers wanted to wipe out the Native Americans from existence. Freedom is only for some. Now when you hear the name, “Native American,” people think of fighters with bows and arrows, dancers circling around a fire, and hunters chasing buffalo. These remote images are the remains of a lost culture, and I am filled with regret to think how my identity takes shape in part from what is no more.

 

Having an identity represents a core realization that a person should develop, realizing how an individual evolves mentally, emotionally, and spiritually from a communal heritage. An identity is the influence a person feels when around family, friends, and community who share that heritage. There are many times when I stop to think if I truly have an identity because I am multi-racial. Being in college invites me to become a thinker, and contemplating identity drives my mind to many conclusions. I find myself thinking I am just another one of many people, who are mixed with two or more cultures. We share an identity through not having a recognized identity. That starts me wondering how I should label myself into a combination of black (or African), Boricuan (or Puerto Rican), and Indian (or Native American). I cannot help but feel that a part of me will forever be incomplete because of not knowing where to find a culture of many others exactly like myself to which I can comfortably belong.

 

When I was in the first grade, at Dr. E Alma Flagg Elementary School, the secretary from the office stopped by class one day. She needed me to give her information on my ethnic background to update the school records. When she asked me, “What are you?”, I hesitated. At a young age, I did not know what she meant by that. She asked me what my mother’s ethnicity was, and I just did not know. Then she asked me what my father’s ethnicity was, and again I did not know. Looking back now, I can tell how naïve and innocent I was in the first grade. Asking me these questions, I did not know what she was talking about. I thought I was just Natalia, and that this would allow acceptance. I thought it was all right to be young, to be female, and to have caramel-colored skin.

 

The secretary decided to put on my school record that I was black. She told me that the child is usually labeled what the father is, but I distinctly remember never having told her that my father is black. She told me; she needed to fill in a form.

 

That same day, after school, I asked my grandmother if I was black. She said, “Yes.” She explained my makeup for me: I am Puerto Rican on my mother’s side, and I am African-American and Native American on my father’s side. That was when I found out that I am not of one ethnicity, but of many. Back then, I thought to myself that I do not have pure blood; it’s a mix that flows through my veins. Even to this day, I feel perplexity and think back to my grandmother first helping me to accept what I have never understood, whenever I encounter a legal or school form that inquires, “What is your nationality? Check one.” I check “other.” I have yet to see a form that says African/Boricuan/Native American heritage. “Other” is as close as it gets to multi- racial.

 

Because my personality tends toward outgoing, sometimes goofy, and mainly loyal and caring, there are times when I believe that the reason I make so many friends is because I am mixed. The extroverted person that I am connects with friends of all nationalities. There are the black group, the Spanish group, the Indian group, and other ethnic friends that are part of my world. I can easily blend with all people of color because of facial features and complexion. But there are times when I make too many friends and all the groups do not readily blend together. The assorted cultures do not always mix together smoothly like the blood flowing through the veins of a multi-racial person. To be with one group in which friends make demands, I miss my other friends. It is the same thing over and over again, as not all peoples of color interact to learn about each other. I sometimes end up being in the middle of two groups, being divided.

           

My blood is the same color as every other person in this world. But then differences take over: my blood type is “O,” and my blood combines three continents of ancestry. Being multi-racial would be nice if the concept of ethnicity did not make me feel like I have to orient myself toward one race or culture. In America today, one’s pre-American identity seems to be dominant. Since multi-racial goes against singular ethnic orientation for establishing identity, I still reflect on who I am. When I ponder my African, Spanish, and Indian identities, they do not always awaken in me pleasant associations with concepts like acceptance and freedom. I am still trying to learn how to exist as multi-racial in a country where a lot of people seem to be far away from simply calling themselves American.  Sometimes we have so much diversity, we lose identity.