By Jan Peña-Davis –

“My bad, girl, I thought you were black.”

Fifteen-year-old Delisha Lopez recounts as she remembers how her new locker partner greeted her at the start of this school year.

A sophomore student at Roberto Clemente Community Academy in gentrified Humboldt Park, Delisha fidgets as she twists a strand of short, dark, brown wavy hair, framing her round cocoa colored face.

The middle of three children, she chose Clemente over other schools because of the softball and baseball athletic programs. Although a good student, talking about sports makes her smile.

Clemente has a student population of Puerto Rican, Mexican, African-American and a sprinkling of Central American students, all ranging in skin tone from Spanish white to African dark.

Yet the issue of skin color and hair texture is often times the wedge between members of the same ethnic group.

The darker one is, the more negatively one is viewed.

Isn’t this the 21st century?

“How do you feel about being mistaken for black?” I ask Delisha.

“I remember the first day of school as the teacher called out my name.  ‘Lopez,’ she looked at me and added, ‘Aren’t you black?’”

Her voice became noticeably softer.

“I guess I’m used to it now or being mistaken for Dominican.”

But discrimination in the Hispanic community against our own darker-skinned ‘brothers’ didn’t disappear with our grandparent’s generation or upon arrival to the land of milk and honey.

Perhaps our parents were more effective at hiding it, but today as many groups attempt to assimilate into American culture, the practice of skin color categorization often rears its ugly head.

Within the Mexican community at the school, those students who look more Spanish shun the more indigenous students- the browner kids.

And those Mexican students from coastal regions where traces of African slavery are evident not only in skin color, but hair texture, roll with the black kids and ‘back burner’ their heritage.

Consequently, pockets of Spanish-speaking teenagers, separate themselves into groups according to “who looks the same,” fight one another over crumbs and inferior instruction that benefits no one.

“I stick to my own kind,” Delisha tells me,  “It’s even worse when I shop downtown with my mother, who has white skin and blue eyes.  I hear white people say lots of nasty things.”

I simply nod my head in understanding.

I do understand.

I’m the dark one in my family.