AfroLatina How Systemic Racism Followed Me
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oh you speak spanish
what are you
i’m sorry but you don’t look latina at
all
are you
black black
these are just some of the offensive and
unsolicited comments that i’ve heard
in life as an afro latina in the u.s
because like doranzia abunda ignorance
is abundant
and some folks rather live their lives
in blissful ignorance then take five
minutes to google and read about the
transatlantic slave trade you know the
one where millions of africans were
captured and taken from their lands for
over 400 years
that one
well
if you google transatlantic slave trade
you’ll see that the encyclopedia
britannica will tell you a detailed
history
and one of the first stops
on that slave trade was the island where
i’m from republica dominicana
you see i was born in san pedro de
macoris a coastal town in the dr where
people flood the malecon on sundays and
sit seaside to drink presidentes
and listen to and dance to merengue
sounds like a good time right
well
san pedro also has a complicated racial
history
here’s the breakdown
there’s a large population of
english-speaking immigrants from the
laser antio islands in san pedro they
call them cocolos and they came looking
for work during the sugar cane industry
boom in dominican republic and they
stayed they made some pedro their home
they their culture became ingrained in
our own
and we eat foods like
dani quequez my sister’s favorite
don plinase con bacalao and drink like
guava
we also have the gouloyas a folkloric
dance group that dances during our local
festivals
if you ask someone from san pedro what
san pedro is mostly known for they’d
probably say
baseball
you know why
because there’s an unspoken shame in san
pedro for being associated with cocolos
with the cocolo culture as it means
acknowledging your own blackness
and
um in many places in the dr all over dr
and in san pedro there are certain
things that we do to identify ourselves
more with the european lineage than with
our african lineage for instance women
make it their job to have bone straight
hair during
80 plus degree weather
and they also make it
their job to stay out of the sun
so as not to get a shade darker but
lately there’s been a movement to
embrace our own blackness and rock our
natural hair textures
however that wasn’t always the case
it’s a little girl
i used to be called indiacita which on
its face is a term of endearment and
it literally means little indian so it
confused the heck out of me because at
the same time
i was learning that taino indians had
been long gone for centuries so how was
i a little indian
there were also terms to refer to my
hair like belo malo bad hair as opposed
to
good hair which meant really more
european-like hair
and as you can imagine
these kinds of words and language
can lead to
unfortunately seep into a young child’s
psyche and not just confuse them about
who they are but make them ashamed of it
in an interview with npr frances robles
a reporter for the miami herald
interviewed black people in dominican
republic for a story she was writing and
she asked them what whether they
believed they were black and they said
they didn’t they did not believe they
were black
and some of them surprisingly said they
only found out they were black when they
came to the united states
um but wait there’s more
dr also had a major influence from a
racist dictator for over 20 years
leonidas trujillo ruled the dominican
republic and he had a strong
anti-haitianism
policy
and anti-blackness
he even killed thousands of haitians
during the parsley massacre
dude even tried to cover it up
but it was later learned that
he truly was trying to cleanse the
island of its own blackness and at the
same time he had a
flexible immigration policy for people
of european descent
our history is exhausting y’all but in
many ways san pedro is a microcosm of
other latin american countries where my
fellow afro-latinos
are
suffering from the same things
from racism from social injustice and
they’re still fighting for their rights
it’s no secret that latinos can also be
racist against each other
there’s no question that
something called mejorar la rasa or
improve the race is still a thing
it basically means marrying someone of
lighter skin so that your children could
be of lighter skin as well
there’s no question that both in the u.s
and in america
i’m sorry and in latin america the
lighter your skin color the easier for
you to pass as white have better
opportunities in life and be treated
equally
why
because the general rules of colorism
and racism still apply
no matter where we go
i mean many of you remember that brown
bag test that was used um amongst
african americans
in the 20th century the test was
basically that you
compare a brown bag to someone’s
complexion and that if the person was
darker than the brown bag they were not
allowed in
certain social settings
and
henry lewis gates a harvard professor
described the test as internalized
racist notion that light skin is a
marker of intellectual cultural social
and personal superiority over and above
darker people
well as afro latinos
we are marginalized based both on our
skin color and our ethnicity
more recently in the u.s you witnessed
the uprising and strength of the black
lives matter movement
similarly last summer in colombia black
and indigenous groups erupted in
protests against police violence racism
and other civil rights abuses and in
mexico 2.5 afro-mexicans were finally
included in the 2020 census
there are similar stories all over latin
america
and in the u.s during and after the
floyd protests last summer
latinos were faced to look in the mirror
to face their own anti-blackness and
colorism
now at times it feels like we forget
we’re also subject of similar levels of
racism and we need to do more
now
after migrating to the united states
with my family we settled in union city
new jersey which should really be
renamed little latin america
if you know you know
i mean walking on bergeron avenue
felt like taking a stroll through the
caribbean central and south america
union city was a safe place to land and
it became my second home
and because of that
attending a predominantly white
university
was an even greater culture shock
in college i oftentimes was the only
latina and black student in some of my
classes
and i quickly realized that
no no it could definitely get worse
when i started law school
law school proved to be even more racist
and elitist than college was
during my second summer in law school i
worked for the it department
and my boss sent me to hook up a
computer for a new professor
as i was walking towards the white male
professor’s
office he stopped me at the door
and told me he didn’t need any cleaning
at the time
i was gutted
but i quickly and politely responded to
him that i was there to assist with his
computer and that i was a third year law
student
i also told him i’d send someone else
i’ll never forget how red his face got
he was embarrassed but he wasn’t
embarrassed enough to apologize
or
to be ashamed i think he was more
embarrassed that he was exposed
now there are many similar stories that
happened in law school too many to
recount here
don’t get me wrong i’m proud to be the
first lawyer in my family
i mean
nbc news says that i’m one of less than
two percent of latina lawyers in the u.s
which is a ted talk for another day
um
but
i’m proud nevertheless and it’s been
hard it came at a price
i graduated law school over 10 years ago
and i’ve been in
in my profession over for over 10 years
as an attorney
but there are days that i feel like i
don’t belong
often times
i not only have to do my job
but i had to work harder than my white
counterparts
i’ve been questioned on everything from
whether i’m truly an attorney
whether
i’m worthy of my salary
whether my oral advocacy skills were
good enough because spanish is my first
language i recall a colleague told my
one of my old bosses that i didn’t
belong in the courtroom that i
should stick to writing briefs guess
what i argued before the supreme court
of new jersey this year two times
although existing as a dominicana an
afro-latina in the united states
is not rare and our identity is ever
more present today because of social
media
sports the creative arts
hollywood
it doesn’t change how we’re treated in
our everyday lives
in fact a pew study says that 57 percent
of latinos in the us believe
that their lives are affected by the
skin color
this isn’t just my story
this is the story of millions of
afro-latinos around the world
and according to pew 12 to 15 million
after latinos in the u.s
there’s no question we exist
it’s simple really our race is black our
ethnicity is latino
some of us speak spanish when we get mad
or lose our temper or spanglish or
portuguese or french creole
heck some of our latinos just speak
english when they’re mad
some of us eat rice and beans like it’s
our religion
or platanos some of us prefer a good
burger
some of us listen to aventura when after
a breakup and
some of us just listen to mariah or
adele
you get the
drift
the thing is african-americans and
afro-latinos are some of the most
talented multi-faceted resilient people
that i know our rich culture our music
our traditions our beautiful skin our
bodies are the subject of intrigue
admiration and imitation
but it is not our job to educate people
about who we are
it is 20 21
i shouldn’t have to explain why my hair
is one texture this week and another
next week
you have search engines google
smartphones
enlighten yourselves learn about hair
textures from 1a to 4c
we already have to deal with these
stereotypes that are assigned to us for
being black and being latino
so the burden is now on you
do the work
get educated
it is a new day
by now we know that there are implicit
biases that racism
is not often blatant but most recently
we’ve learned that people have been
emboldened to make their racist ways
known
and if they don’t want to learn about
people who are different than them then
that’s okay
but don’t get in the way of those who
still want to evolve
i challenge you today
think about how you treat others in your
everyday lives
who are different than you i implore you
take a few minutes a few seconds even
pause before you speak before you judge
before you act
do the work
ask yourselves do i truly feel this way
at my very core
or is this a product of my environment
was i conditioned to think this way
am i making assumptions or stereotypes
before getting to know someone
are these truly my own thoughts are
these thoughts that have been reinforced
by my upbringing or my environment dig
deeper truly educate yourselves about
other cultures races and ethnicities but
don’t just educate yourselves
educate your children and your
children’s children
and maybe the seeds of that knowledge
that you plant today will multiply and
grow for centuries to come
maybe we can truly leave this world a
better
place
thank you
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