Culture is in the eye of the beholder

Color is an illusion, no, really it is. I love color, bright colors to be more exact, and I know this to be a fact. I have combine some crazy colors together and to my eyes they make sense, to others...not so much. I have had countless arguments about a top I own, to me its orange, to my friends its red...but who's right? I can confidently say both; it is the context in which we saw the top that makes us draw the different conclusions. When I got the top I most likely got it in a store with white walls and very well lit room so I saw the top as orange. When I wore it I put it with a purple skirt (great and unusual color combination btw) probably in an awfully lit room and therefore people saw it as red. Does the color change? Well, no, its not a mood shirt, the color is the same...it is the context that changes.

Ok here is a challenge for you. What colors is the top circled tile and what color is the bottom one...To my eyes the top is brown and the bottom is orange...we'll get back to this latter.

So I attended Gordon College for my B.A. It is a primary white suburban school. In most of my class I was the only Latina or minority, unless I took it with a friend. My comments were most likely VERY different than my classmates. We would read a book, the class saw it one way, and I would see it completely different. The teacher would make a joke or reference, the class would laugh I would write it down and Google it since I had noooo idea what it was about. The teacher would tell us to write a paper and when I got it edited by the writing center the student editor would tell me "Wow I never thought of it that way!” Pretty much I was the neon sheep in a herd of white. I actually realized I had an accent in college, I was 18...I had been speaking this way for years and all of the sudden I had an accent...you see my context had change. I went from an urban Hispanic, mostly Dominican, context to a suburban white context.

At Gordon I had all these qualities I didn't have back home. All the sudden my Spanish was perfect, I was the best dancer in the room, like I said I had an accent, nobody knew the brands I wore, just like I had no idea which one they wore (it took me a while to figure out what the seagull was all about), my hair was amazing because it curled AND was able to become straight, I had an eternal tan and I was the loudest in the room...I was super Latina Girl, able to answer all questions about my culture and the city...but why weren’t these qualities true back home?

After my first year at Gordon I came back and all of the sudden I had a new list of qualities...the music I listen to was weird, I had a "white" accent, my clothes looked weird, I spoke with unusual words and terms, I made reference no one got (and didn't take the time to Google), my jokes didn't make sense, my hair was styled different and I was the loudest in the room...yeah...that one is the same in both places lol. It was as if I was a completely different person...but was I? Had I really changed that much in a year?I figured when I went back to college the next semester I would fit in the culture better since apparently I had change so much...but that wasn't the case.

So what was going on? Was I really these two completely different people? Was I changing my personality to fit in? I didn't feel like I had change that much between the two groups, so why did they see me so different? Why was I orange to one group and red to the other...wasn’t I Yicaury in both places?

I feel this is something most multi-cultural people go through. It seems that no matter which of the cultures you’re in you’ll never fully fit in, you are always too much of another culture. But you're the same person everywhere…

Back to the picture, I’m guessing by the way I phrased the question you figured out that the two colors are actually the same. Here let me remove the context so you can see I am not lying to you. If you think I'm tricking you cover the tiles around the color and you will see it’s the same color. Why do we see one as orange and one as brown if the color hasn't change? Color is an illusion and  so is culture and the way people perceive you, it's all about where you're at . You are not too much or too little of something, you are the same person but your context changes how people view you, just like the case with the color blocks. When I was in school I was the only Dominican from a city that most people knew, when I was home I was the only Gordon student people knew, but I was still the same Yicaury, I was just in different surroundings.
The reality of being a multi-cultural person is that you are way too unique to fit anywhere. Nobody has your culture mix, your life experiences, which guides your perception of life. Sometimes it's hard to fit in, but maybe we're not meant to…so do what you naturally do best, stand out, even if nobody sees you the same, they still see you :)