On Being Half-Latina and Not Feeling Latina Enough

Despite the understanding that we are not a monolith, it’s not uncommon for many Latinas to feel like they aren’t “Latina enough“. In a recent interview promoting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, actress Jenna Ortega was told by journalist Carolina Reynoso, “I just want to say, from one Latina to another, you are Latina enough. I don’t care what anyone else says.” Upon hearing this, Ortega gets up out of her seat to hug Reynoso. You can tell this is something both women needed, to give the affirmation and to hear and accept it. I came across a clip of this interview while scrolling through Instagram and nearly burst into tears while watching. I’ve had to fight accusations that I am not “really Mexican” or “Latina enough” my whole life and had underestimated how healing it would be to see someone who has faced similar accusations be relieved of them. It’s an unfair battle, but one I am not alone in.

My earliest memories of racially charged comments toward me are around the ages of five or six but my mother’s first memories go back even further, when I was four in a department store with her. There had been a very publicized kidnapping case where a woman of color had taken a white child against her will, and was caught in a grocery store by someone who sensed something was wrong. A week later while shopping with my mom, a complete stranger came up to me and calmly asked, “Little girl, is this your mommy?” When I smiled and nodded, clearly comfortable, the woman left without further comment. Her concern was understandable, my mother has big brown eyes and big black curly hair; the opposite of my blonde hair and blue eyes. I have no recollection of this interaction, but my mother remembers it vividly.

This was the first of many times our relationship as mother and daughter would be scrutinized. Each time this happens, no matter the intentions of the person, no matter how innocuous, it always hurts. I can’t count the number of times when ordering in a coffee shop, innocent baristas have asked, “Separate or together?” When taking our orders. “Together,” my mother will fiercely reply, “she’s my daughter”.
I’m not completely white but I am “white passing”. A term I avoid using because it is covered in blood, misogyny, and colonialism. While my skin, natural hair, and eyes are light, I wouldn’t say I have many other white features. I’ve often said I have my mother’s face with my father’s colors.

If you get to know me, I am very Latina in that traditional sense. This isn’t to say I exist in a bubble. I am well aware of the privileges my looks have afforded me and take full responsibility for that privilege. This is only to say that I am not a watered down version of my other half. This is a misconception mixed race people, particularly those of us who are half white, have to fight against.

This conflict has always existed in me. The dissonance between the way I look and the way I am has been part of my identity for as long as I can remember. Though I don’t speak Spanish myself, my mother is bilingual and openly speaks Spanish when the occasion calls for it. I grew up watching movies about Latino protagonists. I ate Mexican food and danced in a Mexican folk dance group for twelve years. I danced in quinceañeras, first communions, cultural festivals, and Mexican weddings and had my own quinceñera. I am far more connected to my Latina heritage than I am to my white heritage. I am not even entirely sure what my white half is made up of. Yet I’ve had to fight to “prove” my Mexican half my whole life.

First there were the assumptions about my family, that I am my mother’s step-daughter, that I am adopted, and even that she was mine and my sister’s nanny. Then there were the years I was told to “prove it” by both my white friends and Latino strangers who didn’t believe me when I shared my heritage with them. “Oh you’re Mexican?” I remember a group of boys at a quinceñera asking me, “Speak Spanish then,” they taunted. When I told them I never learned, they laughed and leered at me, “Then you’re not a real Mexican.”

People are often surprised to hear that it is not just white people but even my fellow Latinxs that will test me on my Latina qualifications. Everything from my eye color to my mother’s status as a first generation American has been used in conversations as ammunition against me. My sister and I both were told as children that we weren’t “really Mexican” if our parents weren’t born in Mexico. When others are determining if I am “Latina enough”, time and time again I fail these tests. To try and quantify one’s ethnicity is something I’m very familiar with. While in conversation with a half-Chinese friend of mine she summarized what I was feeling best by saying, “To be told you are not ‘really’ your [ethnicity] because you are mixed, is a microaggression.”

This blatant whitewashing of my identity rose to a new level when I was in acting school. Multiple times throughout my acting school experience, plays that centered Latinx narratives were chosen for classroom workshops or performances, Anna in the Tropics, The House of Bernarda Alba, Blood Wedding, and Spike Heels to name a few. Not only was I passed over as a casting choice for all these plays, but in many cases actors cast in the Latina roles were white, non-Latinas. Once when I said I wanted to learn “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story in a music class, my teacher told me I would never be cast as Maria, so it would be pointless. When I told him I was Latina and mentioned a fair skinned blue-eyed actress who had played Maria on Broadway, he told me arguing was unprofessional. I brought this up to the Dean of Students during a one on one meeting, tears in my eyes. I asked why I was routinely being looked over for roles meant for Latinas saying, “I’m proud of my heritage, I never want anyone to think that I’m hiding it or that I’m ashamed of it. Am I doing something wrong? Why am I losing Latina parts to my white peers?” He simply replied, “We try to cast our students the way we think professional casting directors would. You don’t look Latina.”

Instances of whitewashed casting that has happened in the last ten years have all been met with serious backlash, and ones that have happened further back are regarded as racist mistakes or “products of their time”. Latinas are not a monolith. “Latina” often covers Anya Taylor Joy, Rita Moreno, Yalitza Aparicio, Jennifer Lopez, Sofia Vergara, Ariana DeBose, Cameron Diaz, and Salma Hayek to name a few. Some of those actresses I look like, others I share little physical features in common with. To be told that “I don’t look Latina” is ignorant at best and blatantly racist at worst.

I wondered, what would have qualified me as “Latina enough” in this white man’s eyes? What would qualify me as “Latina enough” to the Latinx community? In an episode of the Netflix series Gentefied, the character Chris Morales (Carlos Santos) is put to a literal test to see if he is “really Mexican” by his Latinx co-workers. He is asked trivia ranging from naming Mexican states to Mexican telenovela actresses. He’s judged on his dancing, soccer skills, and blind taste tests of Mexican candy. And at the end of this test, his judges fail him. But did he ever stand a chance? Furthermore, how could I stand a chance against anyone who’s ever tested me? What even is “Latina enough”? No one seems to have an answer for what it is, only what it isn’t.

The truth is, I will never be Latina enough. Even if I could speak Spanish, even if I had brown eyes, even if my father wasn’t white, there would still be someone finding fault in me. There would still be people — even within my own community — seeking to violently divorce me from a large part of who I am. The only person I can be Latina enough for is myself. I can be half white, have privileges from the way that I look, and still be proudly Latina. These two facts can coexist.

After years of playing the game and tallying up my Latina points to prove my worth, I’ve decided to throw the whole system out. I am Latina enough for me, and I can be satisfied with that. I encourage other Latinas who share my struggle to do the same. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to your home country, or if you hate spicy food, or don’t speak Spanish. There is no singular Latina look or mindset. We are a spectrum of experiences, a rich palette of skin tones, and a field of stories. There is simply us — a community of women proud of our heritage. That is enough.