- If a person says they don't see color run
because they don't see you.
- To go through the world in a black body,
It's an experience that black folks understand.
(gentle music)
Alexis, como estamos?
Estamos bien gracias!
Esta idea, Afro Latinidad, our diaspora y cosas así, you studied this before, am I right?
- You studied this before, am I right?
- Yeah.
In college, I took an anthropology sociology class,
and it was about the African diaspora
in the Spanish speaking countries of the Caribbean.
And this was the first time in a classroom setting
that I heard anything about our African ancestry
in Latin America.
But it helped me in a moment when I was really struggling
with my identity to understand myself.
- What is your intention in this video,
and what is that you want to get out of it?
- Well, I really wanted to give the spotlight
to these experts and these scholars who have been studying
the history of our people, have them explain
in their own terms where we came from,
the current moment that we're living,
anti black racism in our community and how it has affected
the culture and the society in which we exist.
(speaks in foreign language)
- Hi, we are the Brujas of Brooklyn.
We are identical twin sisters.
My name is Dr. Miguelina Rodriguez.
- Hi, I am the other half of Brujas of Brooklyn.
I'm Dr. Griselda Rodriguez-Solomon,
and we are both professors of the social sciences
within the City University of New York system or CUNY.
- I'm a PhD student in the joint program in Africana Studies
and history at the University of Pennsylvania.
I'm a longtime educator.
- I'm Hilda Lloréns, and I'm an anthropologist
at the University of Rhode Island.
I'm an associate professor, and I study
race and racialization and gender in mostly
the Hispanic Caribbean and among Latinos
in the United States.
- As black Dominican women, there would be no DR,
there would be no Haiti,
there'll be no Quisqueya and Haiti,
fortunately and unfortunately, if it wasn't
for the Transatlantic slave trade.
- The transatlantic slave trade called the Middle Passage,
enslaved Africans who were captured in
largely West and Central Africa, to the Western Hemisphere.
- [Miguelina] Right blackness started
on the western hemisphere,
in what's today the Dominican Republic and Haiti,
because it was a slave port for almost 200 years
before the United States became involved in the slave trade.
- And Latin America at one point and actually still today,
had more enslaved people than the United States did.
- As much as do you wanna straighten your hair,
and you Sammy Sosa's out there lightening your skin,
and getting surgery,
to you know, reflect more European white features.
and it's gonna come,
its gonna come out in your babies, right.
And I think that when you learn the rich history
of the African West African continent,
Griselda and I studied abroad in Senegal, West Africa.
In college, you realize like,
wow, wow, we are a black people.
But sadly, we've been robbed of that aspect.
- People are not born slaves,
people are enslaved, right.
And so that's a big linguistic thing to think about
when you're talking compassionately about African people
who were in fact enslaved, right.
Because they weren't made into something.
- So it's important to recognize that the language, right.
And the manifestations of anti blackness, may change
when you go across into any different country or place.
- Anti black racism in the US.
The reason it is different is because it has been codified
into the legal system of the United States.
In the United States with Jim Crow separate
and of course not equal.
In the United States there were,
clear laws
even zoning laws, real estate laws, right.
You know, all of these things that were in place to separate
the so called racist, right.
In Latin America, those things have never existed
in the books, in the legal system.
However it has always existed or it exists today
in the structures of the country.
- The differences that makes it a little tricky
is that in Latin America, like in the US,
but it's more prominent in Latin America,
we have something called the Pigmentocracy,
and it's literally a hierarchy based on pigment.
If you go to the Dominican Republic or Colombia,
Argentina, Guatemala, the lighter skinned people
that look more European tend to be the ones that lead
the political parties and have the power, you know.
And the darker you are, you're more associated with poverty
and low levels of education.
- In Latin America, we have this the myth
of racial democracy.
And in the United States, a governing principle
is this one drop rule, right.
If you have a single drop of black blood, you are black.
The underlying logic behind both of them is anti blackness,
because we have the racial hierarchies in any country
in this hemisphere and guess who's at the top, right.
Whether it's white Americans or white Puerto Ricans,
or white Peruvians or white da da da, da, da, da, da.
It's the white folks at the top
and guess who's at the bottom, right.
- Los negros!
- [Daniel] There you go.
- And the darker you are, the more enclosed you are.
So the darker you are, the smaller your world is
because you're enclosed.
- At the end of the day our ancestors,
our relatives have been taught that to be lighter skin
means survival, means a better life.
- In Latin America specifically, the darker skinned
that you are, the more racism you experience.
So skin tone is really paramount, right,
to experiences of racism discrimination.
Colorism is not just this abstract idea,
it's actually
has real consequences, right.
The lighter you are in Latin America,
the more privilege you have,
which means more access to jobs, schools, education.
- I'm definitely seeing now in this moment
that Latinx communities are struggling with the language
to address anti blackness.
- Whenever anybody black, brown, orange, yellow, purple
starts a conversation with, "listen, I'm not racist
but I don't see color."
I don't see color? Why? Why are you-
- If a person says and I'm gonna do this, if a person says
they don't see color run because they don't see you,
And with my family, I'll speak from my family
and my acquaintances, they will find the most ridiculous
thing "Que negro con los dientes mas lindo,"
"That black man has beautiful teeth" like,
but they won't say that about a white man
because the white man in their eyes is complete
and whole and beautiful,
although well, meaning they're backhanded compliments.
And when you call someone out they're like,
"I didn't mean anything."
And it's like, well the road to hell
is paved with good intentions.
"Todo somos iguales, todos somos Dominicanos, todos somos Boricuas," all right.
- And essentially, the logic there is that we can eliminate
racial inequality, right.
By ignoring racial difference, right.
We are all from X community.
And so we're all equal, right.
But that doesn't change the reality, right.
That black Latinx folks have different
and specific experiences than non black Latinx.
- Nancy Lopez talks about street race,
I love the concept.
The question is, what's your street race?
And the street, what it means is what do people assign you
when you're walking in the street.
And so, for evidently black people, right.
Like the people who cannot...
In Latin America, a lot of us can wiggle out of blackness,
these people cannot wiggle out of blackness
and therefore suffer, now my job as somebody
who has a little bit of light skinned privilege, right.
Is to listen and to validate those experiences
rather than saying, "Well, that's not true because there
isn't racism here."
- But how do the ideologies of Blaqueamiento
and Mejorar La Raza promote white supremacy,
and how do we move beyond this to black affirmation?
- There's a painting called the Redemption of Ham.
It's about a Brazilian family, right.
And you see a dark skin black grandmother with her hands
raised to the sky as if she's thanking God.
You see her daughter, who is lighter skin
she's still visibly black, but she's lighter skin.
You see the daughters partner, who was a white man.
And you see the child who was white.
And this demonstrates the aspirational movement,
generation by generation towards whiteness.
- These ideologies like Blanqueamiento and Mestizaje
are very much colonial.
They're very Latin American rooted.
- Blanqueamiento and Mejorar LaRaza,
are aspirational ideas that manifests in dating practices,
right, and who you choose to partner with,
but at their core are white supremacist ideas.
- I'm still in the process of forgiveness,
because they just didn't know better.
And to them that was like a ticket out.
It was a ticket out where like somewhere somehow having
a lighter skin, grandchild was somehow gonna not only get
them out of the situation they were in, but it was also
like, "I don't want you to endure what I had to endure."
They didn't have the language, right.
They didn't have the privilege to unpack all of the hate
that was brought upon them, and that's why it's our duty.
That's why Griselda and I go hard
because we don't have an excuse.
- You know, a lot of my work is in phenomenology
which is this idea that our oppression and domination
happens in the mind more than anything else.
So if you get people to think like a white person,
I'm gonna be very like simple in my explanation,
then you can control them because you've disassociated
them from their true self.
So this idea that to be successful, you have to
not only look white, but then think white and engage
the world in a very European way,
which is very individualistic, very like competitive,
self made, I think that's one way in which we're
indoctrinated and we're kept oppressed.
- I think it's important to recognize that
Mejorar LaRaza and all that is internalized violence.
And so how do we move to black affirmation, right?
It's for black Latinx folks to write, draw, record
and amplify our stories in our own voices.
- As Latinx folks, I think is important to remember then,
you know, Migue is always clear on this,
that not all Latinx people are black.
But for those that are, it's about doing your homework.
We're very big on like reading, reading, reading,
doing your research, doing your homework,
and also embracing the parts of your lineage
that are of African descent, whether it's from Mexico
or Dominican Republic in your own way, there's no formula.
- So that five generations from now they're not wondering
what they're black Latinx great, great grandfather
or grandmother, we're thinking
or feeling at the time, right.
Let's give that gift to our future generations.
- To be unapologetic and like, you know,
express your blackness and however you feel it's correct
to those that don't identify as black or even if you do,
let other people embrace their blackness however they want.
It's really unsettling to me, what I'm seeing now
is seeing the reverse Colorism within the Latinx population
where there's all these like police coming out,
like policing people's blackness like,
oh, you're not really black because you're light skinned.
You know, whoever's listening to this and needs
to hear this, we have to be very careful on the way
we go about trying to relay these messages
because it's starting to sound very divisive.
If you're a lighter skin Latinx individual and you happen
to be in a space where race is being discussed.
Do not keep your mouth shut.
- Yeah.
- For Non black Latinx folks buckle up, it's a long ride.
Assume that you engage in anti black practices
because you do.
The question isn't if you do, but how you do?
Because anti blackness is woven into our cultures
and is perpetuated in our everyday lives.
Work to recognize, deconstruct and unlearn those habits.
If you're not sure you should go to a workshop
because those workshops exist.
- So if you hear your mom or your dad or your tio,
you know, or your cousin saying racist things,
you know, calling them out.
It doesn't have to be confrontational
You can just say, "Hey, you know, I don't know,
I don't like that."
And this is the same thing
for anti LGBTQ comments,
It's the same, right.
We have to become consequential, we have to follow through.
If we say that we believe in justice, we have to act it out.
- We do need allies.
You know, this is rhetoric that like,
we don't need allies, we need allies.
And we welcome allies, right.
The thing about allyship is understanding
and I always say this, and I'm about to write the publisher
House of 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed,' to start getting a cut
because I keep pushing that book so much.
The liberation that we are seeing right now, the uprisings
that we're living through right now,
they need to be headed by the oppressed, because they're
the only ones that know true liberation,
because true liberation only comes from living
through these experiences.
- So we have to listen and validate rather than invalidating
and acting like they're crazy because they are not,
these are real experiences, right.
And then we have to take our part in the system.
- Follow, listen and to support the work
of black Latinx folks who have been doing this work
for years, if you're a non black Latinx person,
what they are writing about is not for you to confirm
or deny or challenge, right.
This is about the black Latinx experience, right.
It's time to listen, it's time to learn.
And it's time to dismantle the kinds of violent
thinking and behavior that has existed for centuries
within our community.
- It must, it must, must, must be rooted in love.
There's a lot of anger, but sometimes we allow the rage
to cloud our heart space to the point where we don't give
people the benefit of the doubt and even people
and people are gonna be hearing this and they
may be like, "that's some weak a** sh*t"
- I would like to see more intentional collaboration
and community building across the African diaspora, right.
Now, oftentimes and I'm guilty of this too sometimes,
we imagine that in our ethno national communities, right.
We are most welcome, right.
And yet there are limits to that.
Because when I go to Puerto Rico, they're like,
because I'm too black to be accepted
as what Puerto Ricans Look.
The people who understand our lived experiences are not just
the ones who are from our ethno national communities.
To go through the world in a black body, is an experience
that black folks understand regardless of the flag
that they rep, the language that they speak,
or the place where they were born.
And I'm not saying that people are not building community
across the diaspora.
People are, I just wanna see more of it.
Invest in our communities, invest in each other,
care for each other and do all this while we are alive.
- The Haitian Revolution, the people who fought
the revolutionaries who got rid of the French in the colony
really kind of set the spark on a global scale.
These movements that we see today
are the result of that, right.
So even in Latin America, where we say,
oh, you know, it seems like they're so far behind.
And the answer is yes and no,
it seems like they're far behind, but there's actually
a lot of work that has been and is being done
by black individuals in Latin America.
- I'd like to see more black Latinx histories written
and taught by us, that center us and show
the many textures of our lives.
- If we don't approve things with love by looking
at the people that are being negatively affected,
and the system, and the people, and groups
that are negatively affected.
We could burn this mother down and create a new world
and it's gonna be the same thing in a matter of decades,
because we didn't deal with it at the root.