The Angry Latina
By Melissa Rivera-Jovel
Being one of the only Latinas in a majority white school is tiring.
When I was accepted into the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, I was ecstatic. I was the only person in my eighth grade class that got into a specialized high school. Many people had told me that I was making a mistake when I decided to go to HSAS since I wouldn't fit in because of my background. I took their words as mere exaggeration.
I cried for the first three months of high school. Nobody looked like me, and nobody knew who I was. It felt like I didn't belong in HSAS. I thought it was all in my head until one of my peers said that I didn't look like I could pass my classes. I was alone and out of place. There weren't people singing the songs I knew around the cafeteria, or banging on the tables to make a beat. I felt like an imposter.
Sophomore year I had surrounded myself with people who didn't make me feel like an outsider. I saw the people who stood up for themselves became social pariahs, so I just let people's words roll off my back. Then came the implicit bias training. The school had set aside a few days to bring awareness to the implicit biases held by everyone. Professionals came to our school to teach us about the biases expressed all throughout the media and our day to day lives. They also taught ways to stand up for ourselves and others. However, the people that needed the training most were saying ignorant, hurtful things just because it was "funny." I wasn't surprised, but I was tired. I was also tired of the fact that all that AP World History students would know about my country, Honduras, is that we are a "banana republic".
Flash forward a year and I was running for student body president. The last few years had been filled with me being quiet and wondering if certain people in my school realized the bubble that they live in. I was aware and tired of teachers mispronouncing my peers' names or calling me the name of the only other Latina in the class or even other students silencing others when they were trying to share their grievances. This led to me wanting to make a change in myself. I had spent most of high school being silent as to not be seen as the angry Latina who would, inevitably, be dismissed when standing up for herself. I decided that the best way to find change in my school was to be the leader of change in my school.
I lost the election. When I found out about my loss, I was not shocked. I had prepared myself the previous night because someone told me that they would not support me because of my ethnicity, and I knew that they wouldn't be the only one who felt that way. After the election, some of my friends told me that people saw my running mate and me as the "token minority candidates." On the night I lost, I wrote out all the struggles I faced while being a Latina in HSAS and how they were highlighted throughout the election. When I released it, some people saw only what they wanted to see: the angry Latina.
If I were to give bright-eyed, freshmen advice, it would be to use your voice. Do not silence yourself because you are afraid of seeming too vocal or because you don't want people to just see you as your ethnicity. Once you speak up for yourself, you will find that you are not alone. After releasing my experience as a person of color in HSAS, a lot of other people came to me with their personal stories. Some other people even revealed that they did not truly know the struggle of being a person of color in the school. It won't be easy, but change will come as long as students use their voice to stand up for themselves.
