I've got a bit of a unique perspective on this. My mother was a first generation Honduran immigrant, she was brought to this country(USA) when she was a baby, and my father was a full blooded Cajun man, the real coon-ass type. Family can be traced all the way back to burning church in Acadia. They divorced before my second birthday.

I came out as brown as they come. I was the spitting image of my maternal grandfather. I spoke Spanish as my primary, lived in a small mostly Hispanic apartment complex with my mom, and had a thick accent. I was your typical Spanish youth in every way; except my name. I got a pretty race-neutral first name but I also got my fathers french as fuck last name.

I was reminded every day that I was half-white, that I didn't really belong with the rest of the Spanish kids. Everything I did wrong in the neighborhood was blamed on my whiteness and I would be called 'Gabacho' by my friends. By the time I was 11-12 I had been completely alienated from the rest of the kids.

So like any prepubescent kid I rebelled. I didn't want to be a Gabacho, and if I couldn't be Hispanic then I decided I would be white. I told my mother I wanted to spend more time with my father(he would come see me once or twice a month). My mother didn't want me to be bullied anymore so she agreed. I started sleeping at his house more, hanging around his new wife, also white, and spending more time with his side of the family. I also started to work on my English and would try and avoid Spanish wherever I could, even around my mother. Things were strange for quite a while.

I was the only brown boy at the family Boucherie. When I was with my father my whole world was upsidedown, they weren't bad to me but I was treated differently. I'd get weird looks from strangers when walking with my white family or playing with the white kids in my fathers neighborhood. The white kids called me 'Mex' from time to time, but it always seemed more playful than hurtful. Still hurt though. I started splitting my friend's into groups, the white kids and the Hispanic kids and I would act differently around both of them, white for one and Hispanic for the other.

I really didn't feel like I fit in anywhere, and thats pretty unnerving to a 12 year old. Puberty changed everything though. I was a tall kid but once I hit 14-ish I stopped getting taller, my shoulders got big and my gut got fat. I had inherited my fathers short stocky build, but that wasn't all I got from him. my sketchy pencil Spanish mustache got course and wiry and started filling in the rest of my face fast. My voice got gruff (and I don't know if it was spending so much time with my father) but my high pitched Hispanic accent gave way to a thick work-slurring Cajun accent. Lastly my skin got whiter, not by a great deal, but I went from looking obviously Hispanic to looking like a tanned white boy.

Kids that new me growing up called me 'white-passable', kids that didn't called me 'coon-ass'. And to be fair I dressed the part, I started to dress and act like my father; camo hat, boots, attitude, everything. I didn't really know who I was but for a time I felt like I belonged. I switched from a public school to a private catholic school(mostly white) in 9th grade. This was because my mother remarried into money and we could afford to move out of that shitty apartment and into an actual decent neighborhood.

And just like that the world saw me as white. I stopped speaking Spanish almost entirely, mother remarried white and didn't speak it around her husband, so I had no real reason to speak it anymore. To the outside I was just another white redneck.

That was almost 15 years ago and most everyone I know would say that I'm a white guy. Even the ones that I have told I'm half-Honduran, they just shrug and say I look white, I act white, so I must be white. It's only my birth certificate that disagrees.

I still feel uneasy whenever I hear that. I don't know what I would call myself. On forms I'll check white and Hispanic if possible, unless it says "Non-hispanic white" in which case I will check Hispanic or other.

So your question was whats it like to be white?

I don't really know how to answer that. Maybe my life would have been easier/harder if I was born all white/hispanic, or maybe it would have been the same. All I know is there are some shitty people out there that will label you and tell you how you should behave and interact with people. And there will be some great people who will not give a fuck about how you look but judge you according to how you act. Life is a mixed bag and you can only play the hand you were delt, so make the best of it. That's all I got.