Me: What’s she like?

Her: Nice, really pretty. She’s actually normal.

Me: Normal- thank goodness. Where is she from?

Her: She’s Mexican, but she’s actually tall for a Mex.., um, tall.

Me: Were you just going to say she’s tall for a Mexican?!

Her: Yes…

We both started cracking up because this happens a lot – people forget that I’m Mexican and they have a little slip of the un-politically correct tongue. Half-Mexican or not, I’m a Chicana. Was born there and until 2007 still had my Mexican citizenship. Although I wasn’t offended by her comment, it’s easy for people to forget or not even think that I’m (a short) Mexican or of Latina background. I’ve chalked it up to me thinking that it’s because I look more like my dad, who is Haitian. Because of this, I’ve heard my share of inappropriate comments about Mexicans enough times to not be surprised when it actually does happen.

The bigger issue here, I wonder what options I’ll have on the Census form this go around? This can always be a tricky question for me. I’ve seen some chatter on Twitter about the options for the ethnicity/race/nationality type questions. I hope that this decade they got it right because for the longest I was really confused by the “hispanic non-white” or “hispanic non-black” type choices. I know many hispanics that are black, ie. me. But, even if I wasn’t half Haitian, there are plenty of black hispanics. Plenty as in, like islands and countries full of black hispanics.

Keeping my fingers crossed on this question…