Multi-Ethnic Complex

I don’t know if you’re a big fan of NBC’s The Office, but it’s my favorite show. Hands down. I remember a particular scene from the third season’s “The Merger” episode. Michael Scott meets Karen Filippelli for the first time, and upon first glance, Michael says, “Wow. You look very exotic. Was your Dad a GI?” I recall the look on her face from the first time I watched it. And I remember thinking, in a very comical way, that this is how I feel when people ask me about my ethnic identity. Generally, the dialogue goes something like this:

Other: “So…umm, what are you?”

Me: “Well, I’m multi-ethnic. I’m latino, but I’m white, too.”

Other: “Wow. Worthington… How’d that latino thing happen?”

Me: “Well, you know, I have two parents, so…”

Other: “Right, right. So then, what are you?”

Me: “I’m Both.”

Other: “Righhhht… So do you identify more with the white side, or the latino side?”

And that’s the thing - it’s frustrating as all hell because it feels like I have to choose between something. It’s either one or the other, never both, or in my case, all four. Since my last name is Worthington, a lot of people assume that I’m white or some (more PC) will say “Anglo-Saxon” or “WASP” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). The truth of the matter is that a majority of me is probably not. Mostly, I’m from four families (three of which aren’t actually WASP heritage, but Gaelic, Italian and Spanish). Regardless, I’m not any one of these. I’m all of them. Yet, people try again and again to make me choose.

When I was in middle school, I had these friends who were also Mexican and Italian. And, I kid you not, I almost forgot my last name was Worthington because I’d run around with them talking about “Viva La Raza,” “Brown Pride,” and spending too much time looking at Low Rider Magazines. At one point, I even thought it was shameful to spend too much time with white girls (even if I secretly had a crush on them). I’d talk to them for about 5 minutes, tops. I had convinced myself that I was the next Homie’s figurine. My mom didn’t like the idea, so when I asked her if I could wear Ben Davis clothing, Dickies Clothing, or at least JNCO’s, she just looked at me. I was hopeless. She bought me Bugle Boy jeans instead and told me I wasn’t going to be a little cholo. That’s the abbreviated Latin affair I had with my ethnic identity.

Then there was the white affair. One of my high school friends almost convinced me that I wasn’t a Latino. He said he spoke more Spanish than I did, though he was white, and lived in the country. During my junior year of high school, I raised sheep and started wearing Cinch clothing, since Wranglers were for people who didn’t want children. I gave up hip hop, which is what I grew up on, and I started listening to Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw, while dreaming about making out with some freckle-speckled brunette beauty who went from churning butter on her family’s farm to becoming Miss Rodeo Teen of Texas. I even tried chewing thistles in my teeth during livestock shows for that added white authenticity.

A couple of years down the road, during the summer of 2007, I attended a race and ethnicity conference in the Bay Area. It was a part of a program I was doing with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. Ironically, everyone at the conference was segregated into ethnic groups. The purpose was for us all to have a safe place to talk about our fears and our values, and to discover the things we wanted people from other ethnic groups to know about us. I remember feeling stressed at the thought that I was going to have to choose which group to go with.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to. They said I was going to be a part of a multi-ethnic group, which strangely felt relieving. Yeah. Relief, that’s what it was. And not just for me, but for everyone in the group. It didn’t matter that all of us were made up of different stuff. There was Chinese/Spanish, Black/White, Mexican/White, Moroccan/Lebanese/Mexican, and Japanese/Black. Whatever - … everyone was there. And everyone had one thing in common: we didn’t like it when people asked us to choose.

I don’t know where that comes from, that whole choosing thing. The more I think about it, I think that perhaps a lot of it had to do with being born in the 80s and growing up in the 90s. I remember every time I took one of those standardized tests in elementary school (the ones that allow you to pass into the next grade level), they wanted you to check these little boxes indicating your ethnicity. But they didn’t just tell you to “check all that apply.” That’s only recent. Back in the day, you could only check one. Just one ethnicity. I dreaded those little check boxes every year because the options were so limited: “African American,” “Asian American/Pacific Islander,” “Hispanic,” “Caucasian,” “Native American,” and “Other.” All I was left with for most of my life was choosing between two of those choices, because God knows I never wanted to be an “other.”

Anyway, I found healing at that conference, in that group. I stopped feeling forced by people’s cornering questions that pressured me to choose one part over another. I realized that nothing was wrong with me for not wanting to choose, but that a lot of people have yet to wrestle with the fact that our country and our world are becoming more diverse than it ever has been. According the US Census, there are over 6 million people who are categorized as “two or more races.” And the diversity is only expected to grow.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m not choosing anymore and I don’t think anyone else should have to either. Because parts matter, no matter how great or how small they may be. There’s a great parallel for this in 1 Corinthians 12, when Paul is talking about the body of Christ and all of its members:

“But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body…those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor… But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.”

Giving great honor…That’s what we should be about.

In a world whose racial makeup and ethnic demographic is changing rapidly, we should ask ourselves what it means to give great honor to the each part of the body. Not only should we do this in the lives of our friends, but we should strive to understand how this serves as a model for so many other things in our lovely, shape-shifting world. What does it look like to give great honor to different denominations within the Church? Political ideologies? Cultures? Moral viewpoints? World religions? Nationalities? Languages, even?

How many ways do we choose one part over another? And how many ways might this be killing the fabric our humanity? One of the most striking aspects of Paul’s quote is the bit about those parts that seem to be weaker, yet are indispensable, in the body of Christ. In other translations, I’ve read, those parts that seem “weakest,” “least important,” “insignificant,” etc. When we apply this principal to any of those questions mentioned above, we understand that we cannot undermine any of the parts that exist in our world. Not with ethnicities, nor religions, moralities, cultures, languages, etc. To be honest, I can’t give you a full explanation why we shouldn’t do that, I just know that we’re not supposed to. And I’ve felt it, too, in my own life whenever I stopped undermining the parts inside of me. One of my friends likes to remind herself, “At the end of the day, everyone wants to feel special.”

Maybe that’s it. I think that’s beautiful; the feeling that I exist, that I can be validated or important. The feeling that wherever I may be in this world, whatever language I speak, whatever family I came from, whatever social class, whoever I voted for, whatever baggage I carry, whatever decisions I made or didn’t make, whatever grocery store I shop at, whatever clothes I can afford, whatever color or colors my skin may be, whatever it is…I am necessary.

Yes. I am necessary. You are necessary. She is necessary. He is necessary. They are necessary. We are necessary. Great healing comes in not just saying these words, but believing in them and feeling them and understanding most of all that God is telling each of us in the world these things. What a mysterious, beautiful, and special world we live in, brothers and sisters.

Every part of it wants to be special. So let us discover the true meaning of that statement.

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Matt hails from San Antonio, TX, home of the NBA Spurs Dynasty. However, his current home finds him in Abilene, TX finishing out his last semester at ACU studying English. In his spare time he’s an ex-president, chef, roommate, friend, hip-hop head, storyteller, speaker, and writer. One day, he hopes to write a book or five. Also, Matt wants to give a shout out to his Mom and his niece Giselle.