TIFU by accidentally bullying my little sister out of our own culture.

Obligatory technically not today, This is a longer issue than that. Just had the realization today so i think it still technically counts??? Also sorry for the long post, I tend to ramble. This is (unfortunately) the cut down version. I tried my best guys, sorry.

So, I (M19) and my siblings, who we will call Estelle(14F), Finch(14NB) and Juniper(16F, the focus of this story) are all one quarter mexican. Dutch-Mexican mother, father won't talk about his background for some reason but he's white, if you're curious. This does make us mostly white, despite the fact that we call ourselves mexican pretty openly. Some people raise a brow at that in my experience, which is why I feel the need to provide some context for the role our culture plays in our lives. We received just as much exposure to dutch culture as well, but only our mexican part is relevant to the post.

Because of my dad's secrecy, and the way our mother raised us, we all pretty much adopted her cultural background entirely. She went out of her way to make sure we knew about our heritage and felt comfortable within it, especially when we were younger. We visited our abuelo at least a couple times every month. She cooked (and still does) Incredible mexican food. It has genuinely ruined all mexican resteraunts for me, even the super authentic places where no one working there speaks english. It simply cannot compare to her tamales. She taught us about famous mexicans throughout history so we'd have even more people like us to look up to. I think we might have known every single other Mexican family in our mega white town. My mom also tried to teach us Spanish as well as english, but that didn't pan out. let's just say I can get the gist, maybe, about half the time, if they talk slow and don't use fancy words.

We're definitely are still very white. I know this. We all, including both my parents, do and enjoy stupid white people shit. We act white. We look white. We are white. 99% people will look at me and all my siblings and not recognize anything but white bread. Unless it's summer, then its more like 70%, but that's because we get mistaken for italians instead. We get very tan, except for Juniper, which we will get into. But at the end of the day, I don't mind much, at least not nowadays. It's a fair assumption, one that i usually don't bother to correct because hey, they're not wrong. I'm plenty comfortable with my background, and I assumed my siblings all had similar outlooks. Apparently, I was wrong.

That very slight cultural disconnect got worse when we moved (around the time I was in 5th grade). Our new town actually does have a higher percentage of hispanic folk, but we didn't have the ties with these families like we did with the people back home, which had been going strong for literal generations. It also meant we didn't see our Abuelo nearly as much anymore. We still cook, and talk about our family and our heritage, just without the community we used to have.

All of this to say, we are Mexican. it's important to our family, and nothing will change that. not genetics or location.

Now, what you gotta know is that Juniper really, REALLY doesn't look like the rest of us. Yes, she is our real sister, you can keep your conspiracies. We all have dark brown, almost black hair, with 2b-2c curls. We've got medium skin that tans several shades darker, like i mentioned earlier. We all have really dark brown eyes and thick body hair.

Juniper is blonde. Bright white when she was born, but even now it'd still call it a shade of blonde, and it's pin straight. She has blue eyes. She is one of the palest people i've seen in person and burns the second she steps in the sun. Even some of the non-genetics stuff. Juniper, despite being raised alongside us with the exact same food, never managed to develop her spice tolerance. She hates any sort of spice that isn't salt.

Even before I fell down several internet pipelines, I would tease her about it. There really wasn't any sort of malicous intent behind it. To me, it was harmless banter, like older brothers are supposed to do. I assumed she knew I didn't mean anything by it. Not that that's an excuse. After a while, Finch and Estelle joined in, and even my parents would chime in occasionally. It became an inside joke in our family, one that has stuck around through the years to this day. "Are we SURE you're really related to us?" "I guess the mexican genes skipped over you." "It's okay, I still love you like my REAL sister." "You barely count as mexican. Like .2%.", "Whatever, gringo." I could go on and on. Whenever she would get a sunburn, or refuse spices in her food, or butchered a spanish word, or just happened to be there, someone would make a comment. She would always joke back, so I never thought twice. She has a tendency to avoid telling people when they make her upset and just play it off. She'l just choose to suffer in silence instead. A trait that I regret not thinking about earlier.

Finally, the realization. We all had a sibling outing today, and while we were talking, the topic of our background came up. Specifically, our relationship with our background, what does it mean to us specifically. Estelle and Finch both had a lot to say. I'll keep it short, but i was pleasantly surprised with how introspective they were, so much more thoughtful than i was at their age (They grow up so fast :,)). But then, we got to Juniper, and when asked about her thoughts, and she was all disinterested. She said something to the effect of "I barely even count anyway. Its not like it means anything." We thought it was a joke, and that she was going to laugh and talk about her real thoughts. But she didn't, and after she brushed off our questions and reassurances, the conversation moved on awkwardly. I ended up thinking about it all day, and i eventually realized, I played a large part in that attitude. I know I did, because she's parroting words I said.

For a brief time, I ended up developing a sort of cultural disconnect around late middle school. I rejected everything about the culture I was raised with because the internet convinced me that because I didn't have the right blood, and because I wasn't a walking stereotype, that I shouldn't call or think of myself as mexican. And by extension, my siblings. I was also a huge bitch in middle school. It was little comments. Juniper would be filling out a paper about herself from school, and i'd see her write down "i am mexican" and i'd make some sort of remark like, "Ehhhhhh, not really." or "No dude, we are so white." or "You really shouldn't say that like it means something." or "Erm, technically i'm 0000.1% black, so i'm black!" Stupid shit I thought was smart because I was stupid. I was like that with all my siblings, not just her. But she's really looked up to me, we're really close, and she always wanted my opinion on everything before she decided what to think, so I think it meant more to her. And that, combined with the years of teasing, I'm realizing it's my fault she feels so alienated. I was the internet pipeline in her life. We all lost our connections, we all knew we didn't quite fit the mold in our culture. But Juniper was the only one who didn't come home to a culture that welcomed her and made her feel at home.

I feel terrible. I love my sister, I love all my siblings, I never wanted to hurt her so badly. I don't know how to fix this. I want her to have the same connection the rest of us have, because I think it's so valuable, but Juniper doesn't even seem sad or anything. Just apathetic towards the whole topic. I'm worried I wont be able to undo the damage I've done. I want her to feel welcome with her own people. I wish i could go back and shut myself up forever.

Also yes I know the term "real mexican" is bad, i couldn't think of a better way to phrase it. He's not "diluted" like me and my siblings I guess. I'm still working on unlearning all that rhetoric I got fed about how your genes are the only thing that dictate your culture. We are all real mexicans in this family.

TL;DR: Through a mixture of teasing and stupid remarks 14 year old me thought were smart, I've managed to completely alienate my little sister from our heritage.

Edited for grammar because i can't spell for shit