I read something yesterday about ethnicity that really bothered me and since I have OCD I haven’t been able to forget it. My mother is Hispanic and my father is white. I look like I am white, but I also have the dark brown eyes and hair of a Hispanic person. To be honest, I look like my Mexican relatives; many of them were fair-skinned. That’s the thing that really bothered me. It was the idea that some fair-skinned Mexicans wanted to pass for white. I don’t know if it’s true; I never saw any of my relatives do it. They would find it demeaning to try to pass for white; they were proud to be Mexican.
The part that bothers me is that I feel like I have lived in between two worlds all my life. If I am around Hispanics, they don’t accept me totally because I am part white. If I am around whites, I am not accepted fully because I am part Hispanic. The worst part is being able to pass for either and hearing the way people want to group themselves from others. I never understood that. My best guess is that human beings have a need for belonging. They want to know that they aren’t alone and having different groupings helps them to feel this sense of belonging. The problem is that it creates this horrible us and them attitude. Wars and atrocities have been committed and will continue to be committed all in the name of the idea that one group is different from another.
I think it is all an illusion. I never felt like I belonged at all. I always felt like I was just a little different from everyone else. Even if I belonged to a group, I still felt like I was the odd one that would stick out. The only time I ever really felt like I belonged is when other people accepted my oddity and uniqueness. I think I always felt this way because I am a little off and because of my OCD. Yet it gives me the perspective that we are all the same and unique at the same time. No matter how much we try to distinguish ourselves from the “other” it is just excuses and made- up justifications. The only real truth is that we are all God’s children and that makes us all equal in His eyes. At the same time, we are all as unique in His eyes as the grains of sand on a beach. It’s a wonderful paradox that means I can have a personal relationship with God, but so can everyone else. It means that God loves me and wants me to love my brothers and sisters in Christ equally just as He would. Equally not because they deserve it, not because of who they are, but because each of them is a creation of God. I can love all of God’s creations even the ones that are difficult to love for God’s sake.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
