Chicago Tribune | Exploring race - Becoming Hispanic by way of a T-shirt

This essay is about T-shirts. But it isn’t your typical T-shirt controversy story. There’s a wrinkle and I’ll back up a bit. We Americans often ascribe race based on how a person looks. This is one reason why Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama defines himself as African American, even though his mother was a white Kansan and his father, a black Kenyan. Obama looks like a black man. Jennifer Companik is a Latina, but she says people often see her light skin and dark hair and believe she’s an exotic- looking Italian. That was the case in her small northwest suburb until a year ago when she started wearing a set of colorful South American T-shirts that her husband bought her. On a few other occasions she also noted the reactions of residents when she spoke Spanish. It was an enlightening experience. This is Jennifer Companik’s essay:”*

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