Color Lines

     I've travelled many places and feel fortunate to have had that opportunity. It never failed that once someone met me I could see that they where trying to figure out - "What I was." Go to any zoo nationwide and observe some one seeing a rare animal - that would be the look I would get. Usually in conversation people ask, "Where are you from?" 

    "I'm a Cherokee citizen from Oklahoma." I would always reply. Relief would spread over them as my mysterious self becames solved. Other times they acted as if I made it up, these people always wanted me to "say something" in Tsalagi. Sometimes they would say, "O I thought you might have been Hispanic,"  or "O I knew you where something else, but didn't want to ask."  And some people truly curious and excited would ask me questions ranging from knowledgable to ridiculous. You might think I would mind all of this, but at least I got the opportunity to educate these people. They were better than the assumer group. Which is really what this piece is about. 

     I spent the last two years of highschool in Texas. I gained a very deep personal appriciation of how badly Latinos get discriminated against. I was called words I didn't know the meanings to, but the intent was familiar to me. I got followed around by creepy people with shaved heads. 

    Supremacists where not the only ones that mistook me. So many Latinos came up and started speaking Spanish to me. They always walked away bewildered that I couldn't communicate with them. 

    Several years later, I was waiting in a long line in a wide hallway to enroll my preschooler. A man coordinating the line looked at me and then he gravely said, "Can you come with me?"

    "Yes," I replied. He moved me to another line leading into a different office room. I thought, finally they are trying to get more of us seen. I didn't wait long and it was my turn. A lady wearing a red suit jacket flagged me over to a banquet table she was sitting behind. One seat across from her was open, the other occupied by a woman filling out school enrollment papers. I sat down and she breifly spoke Spanish with the other lady and then turned to me.

    "I have everything filled out already and the immunization records. This is the birth certificate..." I stopped talking. Both of them just stared at me opened mouthed. About three seconds later the enrollment councilor asked, "You speak English?"

    "Yes I do." I replied.

"But...but are," she said fumbling around and seemed so lost. Obvious to me was that the man in the hallway outside had made a mistake that I had seen many times before.

    "Did they put me in the wrong room? I'm a Cherokee citizen from Oklahoma." I told them.

"O...yes...they did. I'm here to enroll our Spanish speaking parents."

    "Should I go back out into the hall?" I asked.

"Ah, no no just a moment and my assistant will be back and she can take you to the other room so you don't have to wait again." She told me and smiled.

    I nodded. For the next minute I could tell that the other lady was getting the run down on what had happened from the councilor. I don't think I ever felt like more of a third wheel in my life listening to them, knowing what it was about, and yet not understanding anything besides 'Indian'!