For Teresa Benitez-Thompson, race is no barrier to love

RENO, Nev. -- Teresa Benitez-Thompson, 36, is a mother of four, a social worker at a private hospice company and a Nevada state lawmaker. She was born in Ventura, Calif., where her white mother met her Mexican father. In the 1980s, Benitez-Thompson moved with her mother and sisters to Reno, where she was raised by her maternal grandparents.

Q. Do you have a memory of realizing you had this heritage, this ethnicity?

A. In elementary school, I remember very vividly having a fight with kids on the playground because they said I needed a green card and I didn't know what that meant. I went home to my grandparents just absolutely upset. That was the first time I realized I might be perceived as being associated with something different.

Q. What has been your best experience and/or worst experience with someone of another race?

A. I'm a Western girl and when I got married to my very Southern husband, I remember that for his family there hadn't been any type of biracial marriages or relationships. His parents went to Little Rock High and Ole Miss. His family was there when both institutions were desegregated. For his family, it meant a lot for him to say, 'This is the person I love,' and for his family to say, 'Ok, we're ok with that.'

Q. How did your experience of race change you?

A. In some ways I want to say it's had no impact on my life but there are moments when I know that's just not true. I'm in my third term as a legislator and people still confuse me with every other member of my caucus that is a Latina.

Q. How do you think your feelings about people of different races, and your experiences with them, are different from those of your parents?

A. I think very different from my parents. I know (my mother's) side of the family's history back 100 years and there are no interracial or biracial marriages at all. The same thing on my father's side. When I think about my children and the world they are growing up in, I expect that they are going to love people that may look like them and may not look like them and that is not an issue for me.

Q. What do you think is your generation's biggest race challenge?

A. I think it pertains to how we keep the conversation going (so that) we don't feel complicit in where we are and we don't take for granted where public policy has come in terms of creating a level playing field.

Q. What do we need to do, as a country and as individuals, to move past race as a way to divide and define us?

A. I don't know that we move past it, I think we just talk about it and own it…We still have to work to make sure that we find a love for each other.

Anjeanette Damon also writes for the Reno Gazette Journal