It's Okay to be Gray | Anni Vasquez | TEDxYouth@Vail
[Music] [Laughter] you I am a procrastinator this speech was procrastinated until the last minute and I'm not ashamed to share that with anyone you see I had this idea that's what a talk is isn't it but I got myself down with all the pressure that I felt I felt as though I had no right to speak for anyone but I realized now the only person that I can and will speak for is myself now moving to America is a struggle that I will never know it seems like some sort of scaring story that I've only ever heard from my sister a tale woven intricately but muffled by time almost like a game of telephone she told me that my great-grandmother Nina moved to this country from Mexico across from the border into Texas she did this in roughly the 1950s no one knows for sure since Nina is a distant memory for most everyone and my family during this time America was divided and very heavily into a certain social hierarchy White's on top african-americans second tier and Mexicans on the bottom Mexicans were seen as dirty and were taught to be ashamed of their ancestry my grandmother saw this and decided that if she was going to survive she would have to assimilate into American culture when Nina had children she sent them to school and she asked them to teach her English and other American customs as they became more Americanized she beat her children if they spoke even a word of Spanish or acted Mexican at all this mindset has been passed down through my family and it is the main reason for my lack of knowledge on my heritage and the reason that I do not speak Spanish when I was younger I had a very small perception of the world around me but the one thing that stood out to me the most was the color of my skin I grew up in sunny Southern California sir by people who were just as dark as Iowa's we shared brown hair and brown eyes but there was something that I lacked I didn't speak the same language since I was young I didn't give it much thought when I finally got into school I realized that not all the kids looked like I did some were pale with freckles blond hair blue eyes others was skin much deeper than my own there's a very clear divide between all of us that divide being culture the white kids were always more popular deemed prettier and overall better than the rest the Mexican kids spoke a language that I had only ever heard and whispered conversations between family members but louder and always seen as troublemakers since I didn't speak the same language as the other Brown children and I wasn't exceptionally popular or very involved in school I began to have a pretty big identity crisis for a child I drew myself with the skintone crayon which definitely wasn't brown blond hair and blue eyes I took my kindergarten self-portrait home to my grandmother who seemed shocked and told me that's not what you look like at all to which I simply replied it's what I should look like as I've gone as I got older I've been told that this world is separated into two specific categories black and white you're one thing but never the other nothing in between no gray I started to feel weird and my own skin always three shades darker than my white friends who weren't even white mind you they just didn't speak Spanish everywhere I looked people were so proud of being Makana they were proud of their culture the language that they spoke and the traditions that they practiced and I know none of it it was completely alien to me and I don't know it just it made me feel outcasted in a sense feeling like you don't belong in a place where people assume you belong because the color of your skin is a pretty rough position to be in other Chicanos looked at me and talked to me with shame and oftentimes disgust no foul and the friend day or fearing that I hated the culture despising that I could not converse with that in the tongue that was most comfortable to them but most foreign for me I felt like a smudge in my gene pool an embarrassment I didn't know what to do and I didn't know where I belonged was a too late to reassembly and some Mexican culture or when I remained whitewashed and ashamed I chose to embrace my heritage and to be proud of my roots instead of being embarrassed I asked more questions now that I'm older and I have a better perception of the world around me I love my skin I'm learning more about my culture and the language every single day and I've learned to find some sort of strength within this extensively awkward but exceptionally more colorful gray area it took me most of my teen years to find confidence within my cultural cocktail but why don't we teach this to our children when they're young so many families come to this country and are taught to be ashamed of where they came from but why perhaps it's because when you flip through the mail daily you don't see many brown children how many brown men and women do you see on the front page we lack the representation that our children need to realize that they're just as important as everyone else we need to teach our children that just because their skin swimming in melanin does not mean that they are less than we need to not let their minds be filled with doubt because they're not represented within mainstream media we need to let them know that they have the strength to choose who they want to be and what they want to do and not to let other children push them out of the spotlight with shame the real revolution that I am trying to start is one that encapsulates the beauty and accepting our differences and to not be should be ashamed of living in this gray area thank you [Applause] you