There's a strong movement in pop culture these days to increase representation of non-Caucasian Americans. It's nice, and it's necessary, when you consider this nations background of immigration. The American forefathers make up a pretty well known list of 'old white guys', but the true strength of our country has always been its diversity; different cultures bringing different points of view to the same American issues, making the USA something far greater than the sum of its parts. Somewhere along the line, these most recent generations have become privileged, and this fallacy that America is monochromatic has seeped into the public thinking and has been accepted as truth. Even overseas depictions of Americans fall back onto the Aryan template; blonde hair, blue eyes, strapping build. Well, sans the strapping build; more modern depictions of Americans show us as slovenly, obese creatures of ignorance and egocentricity. The digressive point here is that even externally, the 'face' of America has been, untruthfully and for far too long, a White Male.
The truth of America is that it is comprised of People Of Color, hailing from literally every other country in the world. The cry for representation is being answered, not in just in TV shows cordoned off in the ethnic corners of Cable, but out in front in summer block-busters and smash-hit network, cable, and streaming Television shows. Every time a show or movie featuring a character of color stripped of the age-old stereotypes does well, it opens the door for representation of another group. People whose voices could not previously be heard are now part of a growing chorus, and - slowly - change is happening.
This is beautiful. My own personal world was always a weird dichotomy that I struggled to make sense of. My family is mixed, through 5 generations, so I grew up surrounded by a veritable rainbow of people. One of our family reunion photos looks like a United Colors of Beneton ad. Additionally, the leaders in my family were women; they worked the longest and the hardest, and they called the shots when the shots needed to be called. Most of the men in my family were functioning alcoholics who spent their energy on good times with a bottle, and earning the scratch to support their habits.
Yet television and films showed me time and time again that heroes were white guys who handled the crises and got the hapless women in their lives out of the scrapes in which they found themselves. I can't imagine how many times I asked myself, "why can't she just free herself? Why is she just waiting to be rescued?" In my mind, Tarzan should have been hanging out with the gorillas while Jane was the one dealing with evil poachers. Also, Jane would have been Hispanic, but that's just me.
That does, however (and finally), bring me to the point of all this. I am in love with the growing POC movement in media. As an aspiring creator, though, I find myself lost and questioning my own place in it.
The ethnic mixing that I mentioned earlier has given me a weird viewpoint. I grew up in what was essentially a Puerto Rican family. Loud parties when we got together, pasteles during Christmas, salsa music whenever the hell we felt like, and all that passion and fire that we're known for. My immediate household, however, wasn't exactly that; my biological father was a middle-aged white guy that knocked up a troubled Latina teen who was in the deep throes of family rebellion. Since I was born as part of that rebellion, I was intentionally kept from a lot of the cultural hallmarks that Puerto Ricans are known for; I barely speak Spanish, my sense of machismo is non-existent, and I never really learned to dance well. This meant that, growing up, my Puerto Rican peers didn't think I was Puerto Rican enough to associate with, and so I was rejected. Getting back to that mixing, my grandfather was a tall, handsome black man from the south (who apparently oozed charisma, according to the stories). Yet I'm not even close to being black enough for my black peers to accept as one of their own. And of course, if you're half-white, whatever else that half is automatically disqualifies you as being white as far as any of the Caucasian people I met in my youth were concerned. The grand sum of all that meant I grew up lacking a cultural identity. I would - and sometimes do - say I'm Puerto Rican, but I always felt that was fraudulent, that I couldn't prove it, so I never really bought into it myself.
Twenty-plus years into my adult-hood, and I've learned to accept myself and solidify my own self-identity. I don't feel the need to associate with a single culture or ethnicity. My friends hail from, forgive the cliché, all walks of life. The rejection I faced regularly during my formative years has given me an outsiders point of view; I've often considered myself an Alien amongst "my kind". I don’t think this is a bad thing, as it’s served me well.
Now I'm striving to become a writer and creator during this movement where the previously private voices are gaining public audiences, where support for People of Color is growing even as the pushback gets more aggressive. What do I do? I support the movement 100%; I think the art and literature and stories that are coming out of it are not just great in quality, but contain concepts and lessons that I think are necessary for all of us to learn.
But this lack of cultural identity that I have, which has served me well previously, has now left me wondering where I fit. I'm a kid from The Bronx - one of THE GREAT melting pots of this country - with black and Puerto Rican features, an Irish last name, and a worldly sense of self inscribed through association with Asian, Black, Hispanic, and rich American cultures.
I know who I am. I know what I am going to be. But today I find myself wondering if I can make my place in the part of this world I want to stake a claim in. It's not that I fear rejection - rejection is the hammer and chisel with which I was carved - but that I require an audience in order to succeed, and I'm terribly afraid the voice and message of the outsider born from within - my voice - has no audience to find.
