La Negra Tiene Tumbao
Tomi Lahren: To me true diversity is diversity of thought, not diversity of color…I don’t see color…
Trevor Noah: You don’t see color? So, what do you do at the traffic light? I don’t believe in that at all. There’s nothing wrong with seeing color. It’s how you treat color that’s more important.
Damn, I’m stunnin’ (fine to the bone)
Sweet like honey (he fine to the bone)
Walk through lookin’ like somethin’ (she fine to the bone)
Walk through lookin’ like somethin’ (we fine to the bone)
— “Tyra,” Rapsody
“I’m not black! I’m brown!” These were the words angrily yelled by my Afro-Latina cousin as a child when someone called her negra, repeated to me years later by my aunt as she held onto the kitchen counter for support, her belly shaking with unbridled laughter. Maybe my Puerto Rican cousin was justified in correcting the imagined assailant of the proper shade of her pigmentation, but it struck me as odd that she would become so upset over being called black. She is dark and has hair of African texture, often wearing weaves and styling it in long braids as a teenager, which I admired, so I couldn’t understand why she was defensive about, what I considered to be, an innocent statement. I thought, what is wrong with being black? While there is nothing wrong with it, I understand that I could never know the experience of being dark-skinned and the turmoil of accepting something that has been deemed in society as inferior. I don’t know the way in which that person called her negra, if it was more than factual and meant to ridicule; or how it feels to have your whole being reduced to the color of your skin. More importantly, I don’t know how she feels about being black, if she even understands what that fully means as a Puerto Rican, and that’s why I reached out to her to discuss her experience and possible struggles, but she was hesitant and, I might say, even resistant in engaging in the topic. I’m really interested in hearing how Afro-Latinos accept their blackness and if they had any moments where they were made to feel inferior about their brown skin because I was ignorant of this being a reality for most.
I remember years ago, when I was fifteen and travelled to my father’s country, Ecuador, one of my darker skinned cousins, who was around twelve at the time, had a breakdown over being called negra by the rest of our family, tearfully confessing that she felt rejected, marginalized, and as if she wasn’t pretty because she wasn’t fair skinned like most of the family. I was shocked by her angst and told her what she said wasn’t true. I assured her I hadn’t witnessed any relative shunning her and we all loved every bit of her including her brown skin, but it wasn’t enough to erode the emotions she endured over the years because of the color of her skin. I always thought negrita and negra were terms of endearment and empowerment, adjectives that shed a light as radiant as melanin on a feature that is distinctive and beautiful because that is how I view darker hues. After all, wasn’t I the girl in front of the mirror after a long day at the pool inviting the sun to graze my shoulders, face, legs, slipping my bathing suit top down to inspect my tan line, analyzing how much the sun had blessed me with a glistening tan? However, I don’t think it’s the word negra that is bothersome because in the Latino community negra is not used to demean but to state the obvious. The issue is often about the individual accepting their blackness, which isn’t their fault when history has taught us that being black is bad.
I find it hypocritical and hysterical that the same people who throw around the phrase “no dañe la raza” (don’t ruin our race, as in don’t hook up with someone black) slather their faces, arms and legs with Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil, soaking up the sunbeams like petals on sunflowers while discriminating anyone darker than themselves. A close friend of mine related a time when she was a young girl gathered around her aunt’s kitchen table with her cousins on Christmas while her aunt passed around gifts. Everyone received a white doll but when my friend opened hers, revealing a brown doll, her cousins and aunt laughed in derision at the difference of her skin tone reflected in their figurines. Overcome with anger, my friend threw her doll, crying out that she didn’t want it, a declaration she made not because she was reminded of her skin color—her parents had done an excellent job of giving her brown dolls so that she could see herself represented in her pretend play—but because what happened in that kitchen was not a kind gesture. She was singled out to make her feel inferior. That goes to show that discrimination is something that also occurs in the Latino community. In an article written by Natasha S. Alford, “More Latinas Are Choosing to Identify as Afro-Latina,” a Dominican-American woman shared her observation: “For some of the people in my family, good is associated with whiteness, and Black is associated with being inferior…Members of my family definitely make jokes about other people because of their skin shade or their color...those are things that are not uncommon in Latino culture.” I’ve heard those jokes and comments disparaging blackness, valuing light skin over a perceived idea that dark skin isn’t beautiful as if to be black is something to be pitied like a deformity, giving more privilege to lighter skin and less representation for Afro-Latinos. The same article by Alford brings up colorism (a preferential treatment given to light-skinned individuals) and how it’s mostly associated with the African-American community, but she emphasizes that colorism also happens in the Latino community for Black Latinos, stating: “Popular culture, however, has only just started to catch up to the existence of Afro-Latinas. Historically, when Hollywood or magazine covers have featured Latinas, they’ve been lighter-skinned celebrities like Salma Hayek, Jennifer Lopez, and Eva Longoria.” While the African-American experience is unique in its struggle, it’s the treatment of color that bonds the two groups because as Trevor Noah says in the quote opening this blog, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with seeing color—black is beautiful—however, what does matter is how we treat color either when we discriminate or ignore it. To say you don’t see color is to say you don’t see their black beauty.
I had a cool conversation with my Dominican friend, a badass born in the Dominican Republic who later relocated to New York where she lived for many years, where we talked about colorism and identification. She told me that she was always aware of her blackness and it was nothing she ever felt insecure about living in DR where everyone looked like her and living with family who never made her feel like black was inferior; she grew up loving her brown skin, her curly hair and had a great example of loving herself by seeing her father, a beautiful black Dominican man. Moving to the states was a different story and that was where she saw racism, where she noticed that what you looked like really mattered to other people. If there were any comments directed at her, she wasn’t insulted. She didn’t think anyone meant her any harm; she thought: If she didn’t see color, how could they? This elevated the conversation to the topic of being color blind and how that ignorance is detrimental in honoring what must be an indelible connection to our African roots and to black beauty. When I asked my friend if she identified as Afro-Latina she said she didn’t—she identified as being Caribbean because of where she was born. After I explained what the term meant, which is a newer word for anyone wanting to use it, she conceded that she was Afro-Latina and had no qualms about identifying as one. Of course, it’s her prerogative to use whatever label she wants but I believe using “Afro-Latino” to identify yourself can help individuals belonging to the African diaspora explain who they are for anyone daring to ask while expressing that they accept their blackness, a bold statement indeed.
In 2016, the actress Dascha Polanco from Orange is the New Black appeared on The Breakfast Club, referring to herself as a black woman, an “Afro-Latina,” an identification and description I had never heard until then and neither had Charlamagne tha God who questioned her, asking if it wasn’t enough to identify as Dominican. Polanco repeated that she was black and Dominican and there was a quick, quiet exchange between them about how the term was mostly important in the United States. Marveling at this novel word, I brought it to my boyfriend’s attention. He gave me a quizzical look and said, “Yeah, your sister’s Afro-Latina.” I was bewildered and, collecting my jaw from the floor, I researched what it meant to be Afro-Latino and to whom this term referred to, finding the explanation in Alford’s article:
There are millions of Afro-Latino people around the world, from Honduras to Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic, who have hundreds of combinations of skin colors and hair textures. But for many, the unifying experience comes from their visible Blackness. While some believe identifying as Afro-Latino is a personal choice, others argue it has more to do with a person’s physical traits—skin color and hair texture, for instance.
Although my sisters and I have a Puerto Rican mother with a temper hotter than the island weather, she never taught us about our African roots, which was staring us in the face in the rounded shape of my sister Margarett’s kinky curls and caramelized hue. I never questioned why her hair was different from mine and my youngest sister; why she had to sit on the floor of our living room in between my mother’s legs for hours to get a relaxer; why our skin shades contrasted like different editions of the same book. I spoke to her about being Afro-Latina because I assumed she had never heard of the word, lacking the knowledge of our ancestry and, just as I suspected, she was completely blown away and excited by this revelation, embracing the terminology that acknowledges her visible blackness. She told me that when most people see her they’re confused by her race and ask her what she is only to be surprised by her answer because they assume she’s black and not Hispanic. I explained to my sister where her black features came from using information I learned in Alford’s article which states that “[d]uring the transatlantic slave trade, more African slaves were taken to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the islands than to South America or what would later become the United States.” Despite these facts about how the slave trade impacted us, many Latinos either ignore or reject our African roots, truncating our stories like a badly edited film. I read a piece by Marjua Estevez titled, “Afro-Latino: 6 Women Open Up About Being Black and Latina,” where a Dominican woman from the Bronx summed up her experience perfectly:
Being raised in a typical Dominican household meant many things…But it also often meant denying our blackness after generations of exposure to political and societal anti-blackness…Once I started learning about my African roots, it felt as though I discovered a couple chapters of my life’s story that had been hidden.
I know I felt like I had just peeled back layers of my story learning what it meant to be Puerto Rican with deep African roots and why so many of my family had African features, so I found it my responsibility to enlighten my sister as I had been and supply her arsenal with another sassy reply the next time someone asks her what she is, to teach her about our important history and the reason for her black features, ameliorating the struggle she endured with her hair as a young girl. I think in a world that continues to be racist and discriminatory towards blacks it’s so important to unapologetically embrace our roots and the beauty of our blackness and just loving that part of ourselves without shame. I admire Afro-Latinos who embrace themselves like the fly rapper Nitty Scott who spits on “Hola”:
Cause my father chose a goddess from the isla
She bump Celia Cruz and Lisa Lisa
They went on half the kid, the Angelita
Dangle little Spanglish, that’s AFRO LATINA
This generation of Black Latinos should continue the conversation of accepting blackness so that the identification of being Afro-Latino is no longer revolutionary but rather the norm.
Alford, S. Natasha. “More Latinas Are Choosing to Identify as Afro-Latina.” The Oprah Magazine, 4 Oct. 2018, https://www.oprahmag.com/life/a23522259/afro-latina-identity/.
Estevez, Marjua. “Afro-Latino: 6 Women Open Up About Being Black and Latina.” The Body is Not an Apology, 17 July 2018, https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/afro-latino 6-women-open-up-about-being-black-and-latina/.
No Panty. “Hola.” Westside Highway Story. Louder Than Life Records, 2016. Rapsody. “Tyra.” Eve. Jamla Records, LLC, 2019.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2xv4fba65U&t=406.
References
Gonzalez-Barrera, Ana and Gustavo Lopez. “Afro-Latino: A deeply rooted identity among U.S. Hispanics.” Pew Research Center, 1 March 2016, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2016/03/01/afro-latino-a-deeply-rooted-identity-among-u-s-hispanics/.