What Does it Mean to be Latino?
My dad goofs on me because I claim to be Latino. He's got a point, I guess, because (a) I don't speak Spanish (well), (b) I look like a white boy, and (c) his wife, my mother, is about as northern European as Americans come -- her parents both immigrated to the States from Norway. While I root for Norway in the Winter Olympics and my in-laws all call my son "Viking Baby," my surname's Del Rio. I have close relationships with my abuelo, three sets of aunts and uncles, and seven first cousins who live in Puerto Rico, plus I've met dozens of extended family there. In contrast, I've never met most of my relatives from Norway. I've always felt most at home in a predominantly Nuyorican neighborhood. And my closest friends are Latino. I love the fact that I even get to have this debate about my ethnicity. Is there anywhere else but America where I could father a child who is equal parts Puerto Rican, Norwegian, Irish, and Italian and who will probably marry a Carib-Afro-Asian-Latina? What a great country. It's a shame, though, that race-baiters and ethnocentrists try to incite divisions where they need not exist. Thank God for RC and others who are fighting back.
posted by Jeremy Del Rio @ 1/31/2005 01:20:00 PM
1 Comments:
Ah, yes, I have two adopted sons, one African-American, one African-American/Jamaican. My grandmother, also a Norwegian, has great grandchildren that are White (of which one is handicapped), Chinese and Black, grandchildren that are White, Jewish, Morrocan, and Catalanian (not sure if that's said correctly, but from an area within Spain called Catalan). A granddaughter who lives in Singapore and a daughter who spent many years in Guatemala and serves as the local hospital's primary translator. Needless to say, family gatherings are pretty interesting.
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