For author Julissa Arce, 'sounding white' isn't a compliment

It's Been a Minute

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🗓️ 27 September 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

Julissa Arce used to think that the secret to fitting in was to "sound white" — to speak English perfectly, with no accent. And for years after her family came to the U.S. from Mexico, she did all the things immigrants are "supposed" to do to assimilate: she went to college, got a job at Goldman Sachs and became an American citizen.

It wasn't enough. So Arce decided that the solution was to stop trying to fit in, and instead embrace her whole identity. Her ideas come to life in her book, You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation.

In this encore episode from this past March, guest host Elise Hu revisits her conversation with Arce about the book, and what it means to celebrate your own culture and history.

You can follow us on Twitter @NPRItsBeenaMin and email us [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey y'all, you're listening to It's Been A Minute from NPR.
0:03.0	I'm Elise Hugh.
0:04.2	Today we're replaying a conversation I had back in March with
0:07.4	Julisa Arse. She is awesome.
0:10.5	She's an author speaker and immigration rights advocate.
0:14.9	I was born in Tascoreto, Mexico, which is three-hour south of Mexico City.
0:20.4	It's this beautiful town, said on a lush green mountain.
0:24.9	And I moved to the US when I was 11.
0:30.0	When I was 14, my visa expired.
0:32.9	And that's when I became one of the 11 million undocumented people in this country.
0:38.4	I remained undocumented for many years until I married.
0:45.7	Julisa spent most of her young adult life trying to assimilate.
0:49.7	She learned English, went to college, got a job on Wall Street.
0:53.0	But despite everything, there were always moments where she felt like she didn't belong.
0:58.0	In school, at work, in everyday life.
1:03.2	That is, until Julisa realized, as she writes about in her new book,
1:06.8	she was really running a race without a finish line.
1:09.5	And she argues the idea of assimilation is actually designed to keep people of color and
1:14.7	immigrants aspiring to something we'll never achieve.
1:19.2	Being white.
1:19.7	Julisa's book is called, You Sound Like a White Girl, the case for rejecting assimilation.
1:26.6	And at the very beginning of our chat, I asked her where that title came from.
	...

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