You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation

“You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation,” by Julissa Arce, is published by Flatiron Books (2022).

Julissa Arce was brought to the United States from Mexico by her parents. She was undocumented, but her parents believed in American exceptionalism. “They told me everything was possible in America as long as I worked hard and stayed out of trouble” (p. 3). She followed all the rules including working on losing her Spanish accent. And she broke a few rules. “So with fake papers I managed my way to one of the most coveted jobs on Wall Street. At Goldman Sachs I made enough money to be considered upper middle class” (p. 4). It was at Goldman Sachs that she learned she could never assimilate. She would always have brown skin. She doesn’t hope for a time when skin color is invisible like white people claiming they are colorblind. She concludes, “If we’re ever to receive full rights, we must do so on the grounds that as Brown people, we deserve them. Because we do” (p. 48).

Arce has written a personal story with a clear intention of teaching white people about white privilege, how it works, and what it feels like to be the victim. As a white person, I learned a lot. She also has a message for people who are not white: claim your identity, learn your history, celebrate your culture, discover freedom. Then she has a message for all Americans: let’s put an end to white racism, white privileges, white preference, white standards.

Arce is not waiting for white people to change. She celebrates that “together – Indigenous, African American, Latino, and Asian communities – we are creating change” (p. 182). That change is to become “We the People of the United States.” She proposes this strategy: “‘In order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,’ we must actually seek justice. Assimilation, diversity, inclusion – this is not justice. Representation is justice. Equality is justice. Intersection is justice. Freedom is justice.”

Although Arce has written a memoir, it is filled with historical facts and even a few statistics. So, one reason to read the book is to learn about Mexican Americans and the treatment they receive. For example,

“In 2023, under the guise of protecting the security of state birth records, Texas denied birth certificates to children of undocumented parents ... During the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and into the Trump era, the State Department denied passports to people who were delivered by midwives, as opposed to in hospitals, along the Mexico-U.S. border in Texas. Midwife births are a longstanding tradition in Mexican culture, but officials accused these citizens of using fraudulent birth certificates procured by the midwives. They said these Latinos were actually born in Mexico” (p. 47).

As Arce points out, many Mexican Americans did not come to America. The border changed and they found themselves living on the United States side of the border. Tactics like trying to keep Texans from getting birth certificates is just one of the many examples Arce uses to describe the experience of being a Mexican American. But her main point is that the internalization of white values needs to be named and assimilation rejected. Specifically, she rejects the lies that to be an American you must adopt the value of whiteness, the necessity of English, and the promise of success. In place of white values, she calls on Mexican Americans and all people of color to reclaim their history, identity, and culture.