AfroLatina How Systemic Racism Followed Me

[Music]

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

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

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

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

[Music]

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[音乐]

哦，你说西班牙语

，你是什么，

我很抱歉，但你看起来一点也不拉丁裔，

你是黑人吗？

这些

只是我

在生活中作为非裔拉丁裔听到的一些冒犯性和不请自来的评论我们

是因为像 doranzia abunda 一样，无知

是丰富的

，有些人宁愿生活

在幸福的无知中，然后花五

分钟在谷歌上阅读有关

跨大西洋奴隶贸易的信息

如果你用谷歌搜索跨大西洋奴隶贸易，

你会看到大英百科

全书会告诉你详细的

历史

，而奴隶贸易的第一站之一

就是我来自多米尼加共和国的那个岛，

你看我出生在圣 pedro de

macoris 博士的一个沿海小镇，

人们在星期天淹没马勒孔，

坐在海边喝总统酒

，听梅伦格舞曲，

听起来

不错，

圣佩德罗也有复杂的种族

历史

这是崩溃

有大量

说英语的移民来自

圣佩德罗的激光安蒂奥群岛

，他们称他们为椰子，他们在多米尼加共和国

的甘蔗产业繁荣期间来找工作

，他们

留下来让一些 pedro 成为他们的家，

他们的文化在

我们自己中根深蒂固

，我们吃像

dani quequez 我姐姐最喜欢的

don plinase con bacalao 和像番石榴一样的饮料

我们还有 gouloas 一个民俗

舞蹈团，如果你问别人，它会在我们当地的节日期间跳舞

来自圣佩德罗，圣佩德罗

最出名的是他们

可能会说

棒球，

你知道为什么，

因为在圣佩德罗有一种不言而喻的耻辱，

因为它与 cocolo 和 cocolo 文化联系在一起，因为这意味着

在许多地方承认你自己的黑暗和嗯 dr 遍及 dr

和 san pedro

，我们会做一些事情来

更加认同欧洲 lin 比

我们的非洲血统更老，例如，

在

80 度以上的天气里

，女性把直发当作自己的工作，她们还把

远离阳光

以免阴影变暗作为自己的工作，但

yReaders

英语演讲, 学习英语。

AfroLatina How Systemic Racism Followed Me

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