Week 5 Response - Citizen


“Hey Patsy, Hey Laura,” you say. Patsy looks at me. She knows I’m always up for a fight and I am normally, but today, I’m tired.
Patsy says, “Her name’s not Laura.”
You’re immediately apologetic. “I meant Laura,” you say, satisfied now that you remembered the difference between Law-ra and Laou-ra.
“It’s Jennifer, actually,” I say.
Your face falls with an, “Oh.”
I want to question your surprise, but I don’t. It makes sense. Laura and I are both short and dark haired and friends with Patsy. Even though we all took chemistry together last year and were lab partners at one point, it makes sense. Laura’s hair is black and cut into a bob and her skin couldn’t be lighter. My hair is past my waist with light brown highlights right now and I’m several shades off-white, especially compared to Laura. But it makes sense.
Or was your surprise because of what my name was? “Jennifer” is Welsh in origin, derived from Guinevere, and means “Fair Phantom.” Just for fun, my last name means “polished,” so I’m a shiny ghost. I’ve spent the better part of two decades arguing with my parents over why they chose that as my name. They’ve never said, “Because it’s easy to say in English,” but that’s the real reason. It didn’t matter that for my grandmother and my aunts that don’t speak English, it’s very hard to say in Spanish. Yen-EE-feir.
It’s a shame. You’re cute. I could’ve gotten to know you. Maybe we could’ve dated, gotten married, had a few kids. I know I’m getting ahead of myself, especially since you don’t know my name, but I always get ahead of myself. Now in our imaginary future, I know we’d have one of two problems. Either you’d remember I’m different or you’d forget. If you remembered, you’d ask if we could skip dinner with my parents because, “It’s hard for me to understand them.” If you forgot, you’d complain to me that your boss was trying to add diversity to the team and because of it, you’d rejected over a dozen “perfect” candidates that would have fit nicely into your old boys club.
Either option would be terrible. But we’re not married, we’re having a conversation, and you’re saying, “I’m really sorry, I can’t believe I mixed you up.”  
I smile, say, “It’s fine, it happens.” Not to you. But it happens. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sister

Hi How are you? Has your husband been able to find work yet? How are the kids? You should consider coming here. If he can’t find work soon, you should come to the US. It’s easier here to work. The jobs are plenty. They’re labor mostly, field work, working the farms or sometimes on the railroads. It can be hard. It’s exhausting work, but the pay is decent and sometimes they will notice your work and pay you more. You really should think about it and come soon. I’ve been hearing rumors about the border. They plan on charging more, imposing rules, something to make it harder to cross over. I’m planning on moving soon to another province. The officials here are pushing me into the army. They’re trying to make me fight their wars. I am not treated like them. I can tell. The pay here is much better, but I hear what they say when they think we cannot understand and it’s far less money than they used to pay the white workers when they would still do the jobs. Less pay, harder work, w
Read more

Week 10

Come the end of this class, I find myself still thinking about how place, space, and migration funnel into identity formation. In regards to matters of migration, mixed-race identities, and citizenship, for example, I still have a lot to sift through in terms of what it means to be in flux, to be at rest, to be in departure, to encroach upon an arrival, and to be in a comfortable proximity to different types of personal and material security. I am also still curious about racial identity formation as/within a framework of collaboration. Many of our classes engaged with one specific identity at a time. Although minority identities are necessarily woven together by a common struggle for freedom and understanding in various capacities, I am wondering how these different identities actively work to inform each other cross-culturally. We spoke about passing and some of the negotiations and consequences mixed-race identities carry and eject, but that relationship often times seemed told
Read more

Week 5 Response

To whom it may concern, We appreciate your efforts to talk about racism and immigration in the states, but we do not hate immigrants. And immigrants should not despise us. Yes, it is true that immigrants are hired  for jobs before and African American is hired. Yes, immigrants and the children of immigrants do get better grades than black individuals in the United States. But let’s talk about why this happens. Let’s not forget to talk about the systemic and institutional oppression that has kept blacks and Latinx immigrants in the gutter for years. You should talk about Jim Crow and government policies that were used to hinder the advancement of blacks. This view of blackness and dirty and unacceptable that permeates this society is the real problem. When black people take a step forward, white America pushes us several steps back. Blacks and immigrants should not have to fight for job opportunities. So in the future let's focus on the issues that keep us in this cycle of oppr
Read more