A Coconut's Journey by Christopher Anthony Chavez

As a child, I thought I was white; everyone around me was white. I was completely immersed in the culture. Junior high was a reeducation camp that was a torturous, racist gulag. The world I had grown up in became unfamiliar and threatening. Neither Anglos nor Mexicans saw me as one of their own. The Mexicans saw a Pocho; can't speak Spanish and too assimilated into the white culture. The Anglos saw a wetback; someone who would never be an equal. My career was filled with optimism, advancement, and success; until I found myself in the Cradle of the Confederacy, where Anglos silently smirk or laugh at our truth while blocking advancement and extinguishing careers because we have the wrong racial pedigree. Pinche gringos will never understand how we see Anglos in power; they neither believe nor accept our reality, a reality filled with concealed racism and arrogant disdain. In the end, there is no redemption, no comforting justice for us, only the quiet echo of inequality. There are many good people on this earth to whom I owe much. But there are just as many—if not more—evil, morally corrupt Peckerwoods ready to limit us to cleaning their toilets and tending their fields.