People either regale me with stories about the one time they went to a powwow because their great-great-great grandfather was 1/16th Cherokee, or people start singing “Just around the Riverbend.”
Normally, I have thick skin and can brush aside racist comments like nobody’s business. After all, I’m half Mexican and half Hopi — my mother was born in Sonora, Mexico, and my paternal grandparents were born on the Ohkay Owingeh reservation in northern New Mexico — so I’ve learned to ignore these comments all my life. There is often a big difference, however, in how today’s society treats these two races.