complete sample answer to Essay 2 (b)

“Checking the Box”            

As I have shared in class on many occasions, my Grandparents are from Monterrey, Mexico. My Mother was the only to leave home and marry a white man. Her six brothers and sisters all still live in the barrio as do my cousins. No one besides me has a college degree.  Most shocking is the fact that all though I have familial ties to Mexico, if you were to ask me what I was, I would answer quickly “white.” On all the many school, census, medical forms that ask this question, I always check the “white” box for both me and my children. I have often wondered why that is? What makes me white and my cousins Mexican? Is it location? I believe that if I had not left Corpus Christi at the age of four, I would probably still be there and checking a much different box. I did leave however and my mother did marry my father who was white. None of my aunts and uncles intermarried. They all married fellow Mexicans. So I am half Mexican and half American--a literally correct Mexican-American. So why do I consider myself white?

Most of my whiteness ironically comes from my mother, who growing up in a strict Catholic household, decided to leave home much to the chagrin of my grandparents. I am reminded of Sarah Smolinsky in Bread Givers and her desire to rise above her poverty and the belief that college would solve all her problems and give her the life that she wanted to live.  Here we see education as the catalyst for change and for vertical movement.  I have continued this trend by becoming education myself.

If I ask “why am I white?” I must also ask “what is white?”  The dominant culture is so difficult to define because it is only defined by negation. I am white because I do not speak Spanish. I do not live in the barrio, I am not (a practicing) Catholic, I do not look Mexican, and I have a non-descript last name (thanks to my husband). I am bland, non-descript. 

            This blandness can also be seen in the things marketed to America, and in the things American’s want to buy and use.

These “furnishings” were disappointingly dull in themselves – plain cotton shirts and ties that in England would be the badge of having once belonged to an obscure county regiment or a minor public school. … There was a new life waiting in America for all the rubbish in the attics of genteel England (345)

Even the “bric a brac” is dull and plain. How can you deconstruct something so dull and plain? There just isn’t anything there. That is the problem with attempting to deconstruct the Dominant culture in America, it can only be defined by what it is not.

Plainness is also sought by Sara. “I considered a blue suit, a gray, a brown, Finally, I decided on a dark blue. Plain serge only! Yes. But more in style in its plainness than the richest velvet (239). Plain is the order of the day, color or flash is not considered “elegant” enough or worthy of a place in the dominant culture.

Mobility also seems to be a major factor in becoming part of the dominant culture. Sarah moves away to college in order to become a teacher. In the Exodus narratives, the Israelites must leave Egypt, my mother left her home and took me with here. There seems to be a need to separate yourself from you old world in order to successfully obtain upward mobility? Would Sarah have become a teacher if she had stayed in her father’s house? Would my mother have become a nurse had she stayed in her father’s? I don’t believe they would have. That on some level they would have remained too tied to the old ways to explore the new.

Sarah does reconcile with her parents, as my mother did with hers, so why the need to break free? Is it the immigrant spirit yearning to breathe free? Or is it just a fundamental human spirit to break from your family.

Sarah does reconcile and go back and brings her intended husband with her. She seems to acknowledge the need for family. It is now on her terms as she feels independent and secure in her own ability to earn her own way.  In much the same way, by mother returned, like Sara, only after she had made her way in the world. She was not quite welcomed with open arms. Like Sara, jealousy, maybe kept her family from truly accepting who she had become.

So I check the box. But now, I do not do it without looking at the other box as well. Should I check that box? What would that  mean? [JH]