Time Machine Series:

Exploring Past, Present & Future

PAST

Back in elementary school when the forms came around that asked you to state a race, I would check the box that said “white.”  I had been told by my parents, however, that I was Spanish. Later versions of that form came with a “Hispanic” box, which I eventually filled in. With light brown hair, olive colored-skin, and only a trace resemblance to Mexican Americans, I looked more like an Anglo, Northern New Mexico term for white. I wasn’t exactly white, nor African American, nor Asian American. I was, like most people in that part of the world, a blend of races: European and Native American.  Back then, I didn’t know the totality of what that meant, and trying to pinpoint my race, whether on a form or not, was always a challenge.

PRESENT

I recently took an ancestry DNA test, and it came back just as I had suspected: 34% Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese) and 29% Native American. Traces of English, Greek, Italian, Middle-Eastern, Jewish, and African comprised the other 37%. Hispanics are, as comedian John Leguizamo once said, the world’s mutt. We have varying degrees of indigenous heritage of the Americas, mixed with the blood of the Spanish, Portuguese and the other European people that conquered those lands. Who I am today is a reflection of those distant pasts. I’m a blend, and proud of it. I look at my own sons today, and I see a beautiful mix of mine and my wife’s diverse lineages. One son is fair with red hair, the other has dark hair and olive skin. I see my Spanish, Native American, and English, and I see my wife’s Irish, Norwegian, and German. In our boys, I see the spectrum of the world’s citizens.

FUTURE

My sons have carried on our tradition of genealogy, passed down from their maternal grandmother, who kept copious records dating back to the 1600’s. I was able to give them what I had compiled going back several generations, too. The names and birthdays are fun to look at, they say, and compare to their instantaneous DNA results. They share theirs with their friends and significant others. It’s all for entertainment now, as it should have been from the beginning. When the forms come around, there’s not even a question of what you are, as though you should be a type. Now it’s just a matter of who you are. Character, the common denominator.

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Photo by Alex Pasarelu on Unsplash

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