It’s Hispanic Heritage Month.
And, well, fuck it.
I’m Hispanic.
More specifically, I’m Salvadoran.
And somehow, despite having spent years writing about practically everything under the sun, I barely talk about that part of myself.
So I think it’s time I did.
My heritage is actually pretty mixed. I’m Salvadoran, but I also have Polish, Austrian, German, and French ancestry. There are a bunch of different threads running through my family history. But for the purposes of this particular conversation, I want to talk about the Hispanic side of me. The Salvadoran side.
Because being Hispanic is part of who I am, even if it isn’t necessarily something I have always centered in my writing or my identity.
And being mixed has made my experience with race and ethnicity somewhat complicated.
I want to be very clear about something from the beginning: personally, I have not experienced a tremendous amount of racism directed toward me because I am Hispanic.
That’s my experience.
It doesn’t mean racism against Hispanic people doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean prejudice doesn’t exist. And it certainly doesn’t mean other Hispanic people haven’t experienced things far worse than anything I’ve personally dealt with.
It means that I’ve been fortunate in some ways.
I think part of that comes from being mixed and, depending on the person looking at me, being able to benefit from some degree of white-passing privilege.
And that’s something I’ve become increasingly conscious of over the years.
Because privilege doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has never experienced discrimination.
Sometimes people exist in a weird middle ground where they can benefit from one aspect of how society perceives them while simultaneously being vulnerable to another.
That’s something I’ve had to learn to understand about myself.
I can benefit from being perceived as white by some people.
I can also be perceived differently by other people because of my Hispanic heritage.
Both things can be true.
And I think recognizing that is important.
The first time I can really remember experiencing something that felt unmistakably directed at my Hispanic heritage was around 2020 or 2021.
I’m not going to get into the entire situation because that’s not what this post is about, but a friend I had a falling out with later contacted me. I didn’t want to hear from him, and during that interaction he called me names relating to my Hispanic heritage.
It was one of those moments where something suddenly becomes very real.
It’s one thing to know intellectually that racism and ethnic prejudice exist.
It’s another thing to have someone direct it at you.
Then, earlier in 2026, I experienced something similar in a completely different context.
I was on a train with my mom when a Black man who appeared to be going through some kind of episode began saying things to both of us. Some of what he said was directed at my Hispanic heritage.
And honestly?
It was awful.
I don’t care what someone’s race is. If someone directs racial or ethnic prejudice toward another person, that’s prejudice.
I also don’t think someone’s own identity somehow makes them incapable of participating in racism or prejudice.
But I don’t want this post to become a story about either of those people.
Because the point isn’t them.
The point is me.
And what these experiences have made me think about.
For the most part, I’ve been lucky.
I’ve gone through much of my life without having to personally deal with the kind of racism that I know many other Hispanic people have experienced. And because I know that, I don’t want to pretend that my experience is representative of everyone else’s.
It isn’t.
My experience is mine.
And I think that’s actually an important part of talking about heritage.
There isn’t one universal Hispanic experience.
There isn’t one universal Salvadoran experience.
There isn’t even one universal experience of being mixed.
People can share pieces of an identity while having completely different lives.
And sometimes those differences are shaped by things as simple as what you look like, what your name sounds like, where you grew up, who you’re around, or what assumptions people make when they first meet you.
Which brings me to my name.
Jaime David.
It’s my pen name, and in hindsight, it’s almost weirdly appropriate.
“Jaime” can be ambiguous depending on how you pronounce it. I pronounce mine “Jay-me,” which is generally how people who know me pronounce it.
“David,” meanwhile, probably conjures up a pretty specific image for a lot of people.
And that’s funny to me because my pen name wasn’t originally chosen with any grand statement about identity in mind.
I picked it because it followed from the names I had chosen for myself.
I’m not going to explain which name is which, but the two names come from my middle name and my confirmation name.
That’s all I’ll say about that.
But looking back at it now, there’s something almost fitting about having a name that can feel ambiguous.
Because that’s me.
I’m mixed.
I’m complicated.
I’m not necessarily going to fit perfectly into whatever box someone expects me to fit into.
And sometimes you don’t fully understand what that means until you start learning more about the world around you.
That’s probably the biggest thing that has changed for me over the past several years.
I’ve become much more socially aware.
I’ve learned more about racism.
I’ve learned more about prejudice.
I’ve learned more about privilege.
I’ve learned more about how different people’s experiences can be even when they technically share the same broad identity.
And, perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned that I don’t have to pretend I know everything.
I can learn.
I can listen.
I can recognize where I have privilege.
I can recognize where I don’t.
I can recognize that someone else’s experience may be completely different from mine.
And I can try to understand that without turning everything into a competition over who has suffered more.
That’s important to me.
Because if I have some degree of passing privilege, then I think I have a responsibility to be conscious of how that can affect my experiences compared with someone else who doesn’t have that privilege.
And maybe that gives me opportunities to talk about certain things that other people don’t always have the same freedom or safety to talk about.
I’m not saying that makes me some kind of spokesperson for Hispanic people.
It doesn’t.
I’m one person.
I’m one Salvadoran-American person with a weirdly complicated mixture of ancestry, experiences, privileges, disadvantages, assumptions, and contradictions.
But I am Hispanic.
I am Salvadoran.
And that’s something I’ve realized I don’t talk about nearly enough.
I talk about being a creator.
I talk about writing.
I talk about music.
I talk about books.
I talk about science.
I talk about mental health.
I talk about society.
I talk about whatever the hell happens to be on my mind that day.
And somehow, I don’t talk very much about this part of myself.
So during Hispanic Heritage Month, I’m changing that.
Not because I think I suddenly need to make my entire creative identity about being Hispanic.
I don’t.
But because heritage is one of those things that can sit quietly in the background of your life until you actually stop and think about what it means.
For me, being Salvadoran is one part of a much bigger identity.
I’m also Polish, Austrian, German, and French.
I’m mixed.
I’m ambiguous.
I’m still learning.
And I think that’s okay.
Maybe that’s actually the point.
We don’t always have to fit neatly into one category.
Sometimes understanding who you are means understanding the different pieces of yourself, recognizing the privileges you have, recognizing the prejudices you’ve encountered, recognizing the things you still don’t understand, and remaining willing to learn.
That’s what I’m trying to do.
I’m trying to be more socially conscious.
I’m trying to keep an open mind.
I’m trying to understand people who are different from me.
I’m trying to recognize when I have advantages that somebody else doesn’t.
And I’m trying not to let those advantages convince me that everyone else must experience the world the way I do.
Because they don’t.
And neither should I expect them to.
So, yeah.
Happy Hispanic Heritage Month.
From one Salvadoran creator who probably should have talked about this shit a lot sooner.
I guess I’m talking about it now.