It’s Hispanic Heritage Month.
So fuck it.
I’m going to talk about being Hispanic.
More specifically, being Salvadoran.
I don’t talk about my Hispanic heritage nearly as much as I probably should. I’ve written about plenty of things over the years—society, culture, politics, religion, morality, empathy, current events, and all sorts of other topics—but my own Hispanic identity has usually remained somewhere in the background.
That’s changing today.
Because I’m Hispanic.
I’m Salvadoran.
And that is one part of who I am.
I’m also mixed. My ancestry includes Polish, Austrian, German, and French heritage as well.
But there’s something particularly interesting about being mixed that I’ve increasingly become aware of as I’ve gotten older.
You can occupy multiple places in society at once.
And sometimes those places can seemingly contradict one another.
For me, personally, I haven’t experienced a tremendous amount of racism directed toward me because I’m Hispanic.
That’s my experience.
It isn’t everybody’s experience.
And I don’t want to pretend otherwise.
There are Hispanic people who have experienced far more racism and discrimination than I have. There are people whose appearance, accents, names, socioeconomic circumstances, or other aspects of their identity make them targets in ways that I may not be.
Being mixed has probably played a role in my own experiences.
I can sometimes benefit from being perceived as white.
That’s a form of privilege.
And acknowledging that doesn’t erase the fact that I’m Hispanic.
Both things can exist simultaneously.
That’s something I’ve had to learn.
I can benefit from white-passing privilege in some situations while also experiencing prejudice because of my Hispanic heritage in others.
Those realities aren’t mutually exclusive.
The first time I can really remember experiencing something directly related to my Hispanic heritage was around 2020 or 2021.
I had a falling out with a friend, and after the falling out he briefly contacted me. I didn’t want to hear from him, and during that interaction he called me names relating to my Hispanic heritage.
I’m not going to get into the larger circumstances surrounding that relationship.
That’s not the point of this article.
The point is that it was one of those moments where something I had mostly understood intellectually suddenly became personal.
Racism wasn’t just some abstract concept I could read about.
Someone was directing prejudice toward me because of something about my heritage.
Then, earlier this year in 2026, I experienced something similar.
I was on a train with my mom when a Black man who appeared to be experiencing some kind of episode began saying things to us, including things directed toward my Hispanic heritage.
It was awful.
And I want to make something clear here.
A person’s own race does not somehow make them incapable of being racist or prejudiced toward somebody else.
People can experience discrimination themselves and still discriminate against others.
That’s one of the uncomfortable realities of human behavior.
And I think it’s important to acknowledge that without turning the discussion into a competition between racial groups.
Because that’s where conversations about race can sometimes go completely off the rails.
Someone experiences prejudice.
Someone else responds by pointing out that another group has experienced something worse.
Someone else responds with another example.
And suddenly we’re not actually talking about the person who was harmed or the prejudice that occurred.
We’re keeping score.
I don’t think that’s useful.
My experiences don’t invalidate someone else’s.
Someone else’s experiences don’t invalidate mine.
We can acknowledge both.
That’s part of what being socially conscious means to me.
Over the last several years, I’ve become much more aware of how complicated identity and privilege can be.
I’ve learned more about racism.
I’ve learned more about prejudice.
I’ve learned more about the ways people can be privileged in one context and marginalized in another.
I’ve learned that people don’t experience society from some perfectly neutral position.
We all have different backgrounds.
Different families.
Different cultures.
Different appearances.
Different names.
Different experiences.
And all of those things affect how other people perceive us.
That’s particularly interesting to me when I think about my own name.
Jaime David.
It’s my pen name.
And in hindsight, it almost seems strangely appropriate.
“Jaime” can be ambiguous depending on how someone pronounces it. I pronounce mine “Jay-me.”
“David,” meanwhile, is probably a name that gives people a much more immediate impression.
My pen name wasn’t originally chosen as some deliberate statement about my mixed identity.
It was based on my middle name and confirmation name. I’m not going to say which is which.
But looking back at it now, there’s something fitting about the ambiguity.
Jaime David is difficult to immediately categorize.
And so am I.
I’m mixed.
I’m Salvadoran.
I’m Hispanic.
I’m also descended from European backgrounds.
Depending on what someone knows about me—or thinks they know about me—they may perceive me differently.
And that ambiguity has made me think a lot about how much of identity is internal and how much is imposed upon us by other people.
Sometimes people decide who you are before they actually know you.
They hear your name.
They see your face.
They hear your voice.
They learn where your family comes from.
And suddenly they’ve constructed an entire story about you.
Sometimes they’re right.
Sometimes they’re wrong.
Usually, they don’t know nearly as much as they think they do.
That’s one reason I think empathy matters.
Not the shallow version of empathy where we simply say, “I understand how you feel.”
Sometimes we don’t understand.
Sometimes we can’t understand.
We haven’t lived somebody else’s life.
But we can still listen.
We can still learn.
We can still recognize that our own experience isn’t universal.
That’s something my own mixed identity has taught me.
I’ve had experiences that other Hispanic people haven’t had.
I’ve had privileges that other Hispanic people may not have.
I’ve experienced prejudice that other people who are perceived as white may never experience.
And I’ve also gone through much of my life without experiencing the degree of racial discrimination that some other Hispanic people have.
All of those things are true.
None of them cancel the others out.
And if anything, having some degree of passing privilege gives me an opportunity to think about these issues without pretending that I’m the definitive authority on them.
I’m not.
I’m just one person.
One Salvadoran person.
One Hispanic person.
One mixed person.
One creator.
But I do have a platform.
And I think having a platform comes with some responsibility.
If I can talk about something, I should be willing to talk about it.
If I have privilege in a particular situation, I should be willing to recognize it.
If I don’t understand somebody else’s experience, I should be willing to listen rather than immediately dismissing it.
And if I screw something up, I should be willing to learn.
That’s increasingly become my approach to the world.
I’m not interested in pretending I have everything figured out.
I’m interested in understanding.
I’m interested in learning.
I’m interested in having difficult conversations without immediately turning the people involved into enemies.
And I’m especially interested in the idea that we can acknowledge someone’s humanity even when we disagree with them.
That’s something I think society desperately needs more of.
Because we’re living in a time when people can become incredibly attached to categories.
You’re this.
I’m that.
You’re part of this group.
I’m part of that group.
Therefore, I know what you’re like.
Therefore, I know what you believe.
Therefore, I know what you’ve experienced.
But we don’t.
People aren’t categories.
We’re people.
And my own identity is a pretty good reminder of that.
I’m Salvadoran.
I’m Hispanic.
I’m mixed.
I’m also Polish, Austrian, German, and French.
I’m a writer.
I’m a musician.
I’m an author.
I’m a blogger.
I’m a podcaster.
I’m a creator.
I’m a million different things that don’t necessarily fit neatly together.
And that’s okay.
Maybe being mixed has made me particularly comfortable with ambiguity.
Maybe that’s why I’ve become so interested in understanding people rather than immediately categorizing them.
Or maybe I’m just me, and that’s simply how I’ve grown over time.
Either way, I’ve become more socially conscious over the years.
And I’m still learning.
I don’t think learning ever really stops.
So during Hispanic Heritage Month, I wanted to finally say something that I’ve probably left unsaid for too long:
I’m proud of my Salvadoran heritage.
I’m proud that it’s part of my story.
And I’m also aware that my experience with that heritage isn’t universal.
I can acknowledge the privilege I’ve had.
I can acknowledge the prejudice I’ve experienced.
I can acknowledge the things I don’t know.
And I can keep learning.
That’s what being socially conscious means to me.
Not having all the answers.
Not pretending that my experience represents everyone.
Just being willing to look at the world, recognize that it’s complicated, and keep trying to understand the people who live in it.
That’s the kind of person—and creator—I want to be.
And yeah.
Maybe it’s about damn time I talked about being Salvadoran.