Blackness in the Latinx Community is Confusing

This is an open space for uncomfortable conversations. There’s room for mistakes, room for misunderstandings and none for judgement because that is the only way to learn.

I know Dayra Santana as a fellow Torch member who’s currently Editor-in-Chief. She is a senior at St. John’s University with a major in Communication Arts and Legal Studies. Before she was Editor-in-Chief, she was Features Editor. I met her when she was assistant Features Editor. She’s also a fellow Dominican and right then we clicked. When we weren’t going back and forth about what stories were going on our section, we bonded over hair and music. I knew I had to talk to her about this topic.

Where was your family born?

Okay, so my parents are both from the Dominican Republic. I believe my mom was born in the capital. And she lived there till she was like nine, and then came here. And then my dad was born in Cotuí, which I think is province of Sánchez Ramírez, I believe, and he met my mom when they were in their early 20s. They met like how everybody meets they were like at a cousin's birthday party and yada yada fell in love, wrote love letters overseas. Then they got married at 21ish, I believe, and that was when my dad came to America for the first time. He learned English by watching TV and having conversations with my mom I think he probably took some classes, too. And they grinded, they worked multiple jobs and started their little family. I go to the DR like often as I can I haven't been in a really long time but most of my family still lives there, especially on my dad's side.

When did you say your mother came to the U.S?

She came when she was, I want to say around nine years old, so my mom doesn't have an accent. My dad has a very thick accent when he speaks and my mom is definitely more Americanized than my dad. And that's where like culture differences definitely come in because my mom's Dominican but she was raised here. So it's a little bit different from my dad who was raised completely differently and then kind of came here and even to this day there’s still like culture differences that are so prominent in our family which is really interesting to me.

So what does anti-blackness in the Latinx community mean to you?

For one, it's deeply ingrained. I would say, as an American when you go down in DR, you see it with your own eyes and you'll see people denying it as you're watching with your own eyes like, that this is real, this happens, especially with Haitians who hold positions that minorities in the U.S. hold so Haitians are working in the hotels and they're working in like landscaping, and I mean like the racism is blatant. It's almost like a joke to hate Haitians. I mean it's just it's just really breaking. People will deny it. And yet you see it. I would say for people with my complexion and my hair type which is like, I don't have the kinkiest hair in the world, but my hair is not pin straight either. You know, you go to DR and you see people who look like me and I just always kind of wonder how can you not see blackness in looking at these people. It's just a lot of denial and a lot of "No, I'm native." "No I'm Dominican I'm not Black." "No I'm native." So I feel like for me blackness in the Latinx community just comes with a lot of confusion, which like I don't know it's it's confusing to me it's a confusing subject, I didn't know what Afro Latina was until I was like, 15, and I met- I have a family friend who- we're not related but we could be sisters like we look very similar, we have the same hair, etc. And she was like yeah I identify as Afro Latina and I was like, awesome. Is that what I am too? I mean we look similar. But there's no type of any acknowledgement or like discourse about it. Growing up in these families. So it's a lot of confusion and just a lot of identity crises and hatred of oneself.

So would you say right now that you identify as Afro-Latina?

I would say so but then identifying as that comes with feelings of like, am I? There's always a question mark. I could say that I am but then the question comes, okay are you Black? and I don't know how to answer that question. As I don't think anybody's ever seen me as Black. So it's like, I don't know, so I say I'm Afro-Latina because I feel like I want to respect, where I come from. Like respecting that my culture is a result of African culture, there's no seeing beyond it. You listen to something like merengue or see people, the way we dance, the music we play, it has to come from somewhere and it feels like they come from Africa. So I'd say I identify as Afro-Latina but it's always. It's never said very confidently. I've noticed. Like you want to say it it's right there on the tip of your tongue. But then you say it and you're kind of left with this residual like, am I flaw. Which is really unfortunate because, I don't know as human beings we deserve to have an identity, we're always looking and searching for one.

So people always say you know there's a privilege to that ambiguity, because it's like, oh well if you don't know that you're Black, at least you're not those people who wake up and have to deal with that. But then it's also not easy to live that ambiguity either. So it's like, maybe it's a privilege, but it's also tiring constantly running around in circles, because I don't know how to kind of walk around through life, with that question.

It comes down to a lot of times between Black and Latino communities. Almost a competition of who suffers more. I feel like we can acknowledge that yes I am privileged that I don't feel like I have a target on my back as a Black American, but I feel like you also have to acknowledge that some people don't even know where their lineage comes from beyond their grandparents. And a lot of us Hispanic people have this kind of a way of, where do I come from and who am I and I feel like you have to acknowledge that. And that pain in order to have a conversation about Blackness.

So you said that you feel like nobody's ever really seen you as Black. How do you think that people have seen you?

So, when I was young, people mainly I think base it off of skin color. So my skin is brown so people assume I'm Indian, which has been like my whole life and I have had people- I distinctly remember being in a school assembly in elementary school, and some musician came to play. I don't know, some guy was singing in Spanish and playing bongos or something. And maybe he was playing a song I knew or something and maybe I said something or sang along and I remember people sitting in front of me. Like two Hispanic people turned around and they're like, you're not Hispanic. And I'm like, I am though. And people more so will tell me what I am, as opposed to anybody ever really asking me what I am. So some people will act. Once I say like, Oh, I'm Hispanic they’ll be like, oh you're Dominican. And that’s when that clicks. I think I’m always faced with that question. I feel like for a lot of people that's where the whole identity crisis stems from, it’s having people tell you what you're not. And then there comes feelings of, oh, I'm not Hispanic enough, I'm not good enough to even identify as this .Yeah, which is like a hard thing to come back from.

Did you say that you speak Spanish fluently?

I do. I mainly speak English in my house. Because my parents both speak English very well. I speak Spanish to my siblings mostly like bossing each other around. But if I have to have a conversation in Spanish, like yes I speak it fluently. I guess I'm fortunate that my parents speak English like I never have to translate things for my parents growing up but it's nice to still speak it though.

It’s funny because my dad has been playing these old VHS tapes of home videos. So I’m seeing all the videos of me and it sucks because I already knew that my first language was Spanish and then I eventually kind of lost it because of school and stuff. But just hearing myself speak Spanish, it just came right out of my tongue, I didn't even have to think about it.

Right, because like as little kids like you just go for it. Definitely when I was younger and we'll go to DR, there was always like a language barrier between me and my little friends running around in DR. But you know how to make do. I definitely like it better now that I'm older, because like taking Spanish class helps. Obviously as Dominicans we also don't speak- we speak like broken Spanish in some sense so to learn like, oh that's what that actually word is.

So you said you’ve seen anti-blackness in the Dominican Republic?

I can think of specific examples so like, I would say that most of my family in DR is a mix of my color or lighter. My dad came out really dark, he's like the darkest person for like no reason. This is funny actually I just realized. His siblings are like your color. They're identical like the same face but my dad's Black. His nickname is literally moreno, if people don't know his name they call him moreno, because he's Black, so like, How funny is that. But I was at a resort. And actually, now I have a better example. So in DR, I don't know if you've noticed, or you know this but like everybody has housekeepers even people who aren't super well off, will have somebody come in and live with them and clean. So, when I was younger, maybe when I was 12. We have a family friend, they're wealthy. They live in like a nice house on like the nicer side of town, still in the third world country. At one point they had a baby girl. And so they hired a little girl from the countryside, literally younger than me probably 10, who came to help raise the child and she was very dark, like darker than me she was Black. And the other little kids would literally pick on her and be like, you're Haitian, you're Haitian. She's like no I'm not I'm Dominican. And it was always this little battle that they'd have back and forth and it always confused me because I'm just like, why does it matter? At a resort, we saw a Haitian guy driving a go kart and one of my little friends was literally yelling after them. Just rude things. So there's blatant rudeness. They'll see a Haitian person and it like rises something out of them I don't know, it's very strange. It's very bizarre to me.

How did you first learn about like anti-blackness in your experience? Have you ever experienced that yourself or did you ever come across it?

I think it's just more in those little instances that kind of build up over time that you're like, Huh. I think I can say looking at someone like my dad who visibly looks Black, and then having people tell me, no, he's not Black. I've always just been like, weird. Very weird. And it has to do with like his hair texture. So like his hair's not kinky, el tiene "pelo bueno" so he's not Black. It comes down to well, if blackness means the color of his skin. Because if that's what it is, he's Black. It's always been a question that maybe I didn't put together until I was older. All I ever was, was Dominican. And then you hear things like Afro Latina, and you're like, that makes sense, like maybe that's the word I've been looking for. I mean the instances are all the time it's like added on to a family party randomly. I had someone just tell me, hey, make sure you don't date Black guys. It's like, make sure I what? My cousin, is Black. Her last name is a French Creole last name. She's dating a guy who's very dark skinned and her mother wouldn't even look at the dude, didn't want him in the house, didn't want her dating him, to the point where she moved out because she was like, how can I live with a person like this whose mind will never change. What I feel about a lot of my family members, it's that people that will never change because they're old and they're stuck in their ways and it's like, is it even worth my time to change their minds? Hearing comments like that affects me because it feels like it's about me too.

So would you say you've never really experienced someone firsthand being racist towards you?

I would say no. I feel like in the workplace was when I started to notice the difference. Because when you're not white, then you're other. And I remember in my internship. Last summer, the only people in the office that were Black were interns. We were all Black interns. Kudos to us because, Black excellence. Just experiencing micro-aggressions for the first time was really interesting because that's just reaffirming that you’re other, but I wouldn't say that I've ever had a racist racist experience or anti-black experience directly onto myself that was obvious.

Yeah, that's what I always think about too. When I look at my privilege I think about the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced racism. I know in some cases that could be because of my skin color. But when looking at others darker than me who also haven’t that’s where the question of Blackness is also tricky. I'm not negating the experience but I'm just saying, well how do we kind of define Blackness in this case?

Yeah I think that’s a struggle and that's the conversation that we should be having. I should be talking to Black people and learning what their experiences are because you find out very quickly that the Latino experience isn't the Black experience. Not to say that it's not a struggle and not to say that we don't experience discrimination but maybe it comes down to asking yourself, what is your experience in this country, because I can say that I haven't had the experience of a Black woman. Fortunately for myself I haven't. I think that's what the struggle to identify as Black as a Latino is because you're always like, well I'm not Black like that. Yeah, that's not my experience.

When all this stuff was happening, kids from my high school were on Twitter saying they’re two peas. I was in a group chat and were were sending screenshots. And there was a guy i went to high school with. He tweeted, “Do white passing Dominicans call themselves black too? Amongst my siblings and cousins our skin colors range from white to Black. Which ones of us call ourselves Black, which don't? Or do we all?” And it was like a genuine question. You hear a lot of like, “you’re Black, Dominicans are Black, period.” But then it's like, but I'm not. I'm light skinned. Do I still call myself Black? Is that taking away from the Black experience?

Have you had this conversation with your parents?

Um, I have. I think there's just a disconnect. Yeah, I mean, my mother is light skinned. I don't think I will have the same experience in this country because we look different. I don't think she understands that my experience as just being darker is going to be different from her experience. Like she doesn't see that. My dad. I asked him this question like two weeks ago. I was like do you consider yourself Black and he's like no I don't think so. But I'm like, if you got pulled over by a cop, he would think you're Black. Like put that into perspective. I feel like it's a hard conversation to have with our parents because they never had to think about this because it didn't matter. They came to this country and they were at a disadvantage, and that's it. And they struggled, and they overcame. My dad, he'll always say like, if I didn't have an accent, I would be in a higher position than I am now, which I agree with. That's a disadvantage he feels like he has, but when it comes down to race. I feel like it's a more difficult conversation to have because they've never had to think about it.

This time though I feel like our generation of younger people, first generation, second generation kids. I think we have more of a I don't know if the word is empathy but when everything happened with George Floyd, it was literally all I thought about for like three weeks. I was stressed like I wasn't eating, it was taking a physical toll on me because it was literally all I could think about. My parents were just like, yeah, this sucks. Now I'm gonna go to work. I feel like this generation of kids, or maybe I speak for myself but there's just more of a concern for the overall well being and welfare of people, whereas like my parents can watch the news and they'll be deeply affected and very saddened, but what can they do, is go to work and provide for their family. But I think we want more from our lives than just like like making a family like a lot of people want to make a difference, or maybe we're just young, you know, and I can't imagine like the older generation’s mindset.

What do you think the result looks like as we keep amplifying this conversation?

You have to think about what your personal outcome or your personal contribution would be. And so I feel like if anything were to come out of having these conversations for myself personally like. One thing that has always driven me and will always drive me is like representation and wanting to see yourself so badly representing and never have, like, I love TV it's my passion. I love shows everything, all my heroes were always TV show characters, they were always also white women, because that was all I ever saw. And so the only motivation I feel like I have is just so badly wanting to see myself and wanting little girls like me to see themselves. Somebody who's Afro-Latina on the screen, would mean so much, just to identify. This is what a person could look like. They exist, and then move on and show them as like normal people and living people. You know, that's just a dream, I feel like we all deserve to like feel seen. And a lot of the representation we see of Latinos are people who look like Sofia Vergara, or JLo, and that's not what we all look like. And so to start small from there. I feel like that is the contribution that I was put here to make and I think it comes down to asking yourself, what is the piece, you feel like you can leave behind. So like, it would mean the world to be like the first Latina who looks like me to do anything. I’d like to work at New York Times or to work at HBO and make a TV show, like I think it starts by seeing yourself. I hope these conversations bring real change and real representation because it comes down to the voice that's writing this on paper. And if we're not in these rooms if we're not in a writers room. We're never going to be heard or seen.