“Are you ready to be Dolphins fans?”
My dad asked this of me and my brother as we packed up our house in El Salvador. I had never watched American football. Twenty-one years later, I’ve given up on the Dolphins but deepened my love for this country.
After the move, I grew up in heavily Latino Miami, Florida, where my race, nationality and bilingual ability seemed ordinary. Over the years, though, I have been asked a question in various iterations, and in different settings, that forced me to confront a part of my identity that I hadn’t previously considered.
The first time it came up was when I went to college in New York City. I attended a small college with fewer than 300 students, where I was one of but a handful of “minority” students. When I would introduce myself to someone, they would (naturally) ask, “Where are you from?”
I could have answered that my family most recently lived in Miami and that probably would have sufficed. But I never felt like I was from Miami. So I would answer that I lived in Miami but am originally from El Salvador. Almost every time, their response would be about my ability to speak English so well and without an accent. Once in a while, if the person I was meeting knew of El Salvador or had met another Salvadoran, their response would take the form of, “Wow, you don’t look Salvadoran.”
I never knew how to respond to that. Sometimes, other Salvadorans here in the U.S. are shocked to hear me speak Spanish to them, just like them. I also don’t know how to react to that. Sometimes I’m bemused. Sometimes it makes me feel like a platypus—like the lone egg-laying mammal. Like I belonged neither here nor there. Too Americanized to be fully Salvadoran, yet too Salvadoran to be American.
As I have thought about this over the years, though, I have learned that when it comes to God’s love for me, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither Latino nor Anglo. In Christ Jesus I am God’s son through faith.
I have also learned that we have all been perfectly made in his image, and if his plan is perfect, then all of our differences in heritage, culture, and background point to his glory. If all those differences make up one body, we should aim to love one another so that each part is working properly and the body can grow to build itself up in love.
As I navigate the choppy waters of multiculturalism, the biggest lesson I have learned is to extend grace as grace has been extended to me—to put away all bitterness and wrath and clamor and slander, and instead to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving to one another as God has forgiven us.
I have found that when I treat others with that attitude first, God’s redemptive love heals wounds and builds up the body of Christ.
Daniel Leiva is a Grace Downtown member and part of our upcoming panel discussion on cultural intelligence.