You know me, bruh...

On a few occasions, I'm reminded that I'm whitewashed. I am Americanized, no doubt, as I've lived in the US for my whole life. But I try to understand my Chicano heritage and being, although partially, a Mexican-American, must I have the mestizo skin color for people to believe me? Do I have to act like the beaner that most people stereotype when I mention my ethnicity, and they see I'm wearing hipster glasses or that I act like a hood rat from Detroit even though I'm obviously not black and I've lived in a suburb 15 minutes outside the city for the past 9 years? I was raised in a Mexican/Puerto Rican household, bouncing around from the urban to the suburban for the greater half of my life: am I not allowed to adopt the culture or the style or the vernacular or the behavior of the people that surrounded me for all those years, whether they were black or white, Hispanic or Arabic? I attended a Spanish-speaking school during the years that my brain most easily developed, like a big 'ol sponge, but am no longer fluent and barely conversational. Since I introduce myself as Hispanic, am I supposed know the language and be able to tutor all my friends and take their Spanish 201 placement tests for them? Or maybe I'm a hypocrite because I abuse my Spanish skills to rolls my R's when I pronounce my last name and say Spanish phrases to impress girls when they ask me to say something sexy? For all you French and German and Lebanese and Italian friends out there, do you know your native tongue? Or do you feel white, too, when you go to a restaurant and the waiter comes up with a thick accent from the country your ancestors are from and begins to describe to you the special of the day with such detail that it takes him back to the days when he was a wee-little lad on the sands of his motherland? What about when a close friend joked that I had a identity crisis because I'm a "whitewashed beaner who thinks he's black"? I suppose there is truth to that statement, but why can't I embrace it? Maybe I'm just theatrical and enjoy doing different voices and pretending to be different characters of people I've encountered throughout my life. Or maybe I'm just like an inside-out Oreo. Or, dare I say, maybe I'm cultured. I *have* drank a Cuban espresso in the streets of Cuba, guys.