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- I think of an Afro-Latino as a person
who is visibly of African descent.
- So people want to embrace this Afro-Latino name
but they don't really embrace blackness
in any other parts of their lives.
(upbeat music)
- Hi, my name is Barbara Abadia-Rexach,
and I'm (speaks in foreign language), Afro-Latina,
and I like to research
about race and culture in Puerto Rico.
- Hi, my name is Danielle Clealand.
I grew up in New York, my family's from Puerto Rico
and I just moved to Texas from Miami.
I work on racism and Black consciousness in the Caribbean.
My first book was about Cuba and now I'm working
on two projects about Afro-Latinidad in the US.
And I identify as Black Latina.
- Hi, my name is Omaris Zamora.
I am born and raised in Chicago,
even though now I live in Jersey
and I identify as a Black Dominicana from Chicago.
And my work is about Black Dominican women
living in the United States,
and theorizing around Afro-Latina feminism.
- I'm Zaire Dinzey-Flores,
I am a (speaks in foreign language),
born and raised in Puerto Rico,
Dominican (speaks in foreign language).
- And we are Black Latinas Know Collective.
- Today, we're going to answer
the most frequently asked questions on Google,
about being Black Latinas.
- And we're here to clarify all the bull (beeps)
that y'all be wondering about.
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- So now a lot of people have started using this term,
Afro-Latino, and now there's some kind of like, you know,
it's cool to be Afro-Latino.
And so now, I think a lot of people that may have not come
and use the term before, are using it.
And some of those people are not Black.
In my opinion, I think of an Afro-Latino, classically,
as a person who is visibly of African descent,
who experiences life as a Black person.
- I think also, you know, what happens
is that people start using this idea
that comes from right all of our countries
that says, we all have African ancestry, we're all this mix.
And so people want to embrace this Afro-Latino name,
but they don't really embrace blackness
in any other parts of their lives, it's different.
You know, we might all have some kind of African ancestry,
but what we're really talking about
is kind of lived experience.
- One of the difficulties is that people are now fearful
of, Oh, don't police Black men, you know
who defines who's Black and who doesn't.
But I think we are like we don't know who's Black.
And then in real life, we all know who we think is Black.
If society thinks you're Black, you know, you're Black.
(speaks in a foreign language)
- In the opposition, when people are out here
claiming to be Afro-Latinos and they are not racially Black,
it is of the service to Black Latinos
to actual Black people's experience.
The actual Afro-Latinos, the real Afro-Latinos
have to sit back and bite our tongues, and like,
I'm not going to call that out
because I don't want to police blackness,
but I know that person is not Black,
and they're claiming something that is not theirs.
And it's erasing my experience.
- No, I think that people,
there are people that will say they're Afro-Latino
but they won't say they're Black.
And so I think, you know, if you do say,
Yes, I'm Afro-Latino,
you know, but you don't call yourself Black, cut it out.
- I think that Black is too political,
and they're not trying to be political,
because then they have to address
because see Black Lives Matter, because see, you know
white supremacy or whatever, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
(groovy music)
No.
(laughs)
That goes back to the idea to believe that,
oh, because some Latinos might have some Afro-descendancy
of Black family member, but they are not visibly Black.
So not all Latinos are Afro-Latinos,
even if they can send their DNA to all these DNA companies.
And they can be like, Oh look, I'm 5%, I'm 10%.
That does not make you Black, right?
We're not walking around the street here and be like,
Oh Bubba, I'm 10% Black, 10% White.
Give me my White Privilege.
That's just not how race works.
- (speaking in foreign language).
Wait, wait, wait, let me show you my daughter.
Wait, wait, wait, wait,
let me just show you (foreign language).
Oh, you have to make an argument.
I don't have to go find anybody
to explain that I'm Afro-Latino, nobody.
- It's not about your abuela, it's about you.
- (speaks in foreign language), it has a lot of, you know,
different meanings, because we're still dealing
with a lot of anti-blackness, a lot of denials,
that hasn't gone anywhere.
(speaks in foreign language) is usually referring
to back in the day when, you know, families would try
to deny blackness or hide blackness they would have,
you know, an abuela, who is an Afro-descendant,
hidden somewhere.
It's a phrase that's in English too, you know,
that comes from folks trying to hide African ancestry.
And so that's where it comes from.
You know, you say you're not,
you don't have any Black ancestry, (foreign language).
Show me your abuela, because she are hiding.
And so that's where it comes from.
But you know, we're also talking about it in the sense that,
we shouldn't be trying to point to some other relative
or a distant relative to prove
that we have this ancestry either, right?
So it goes both ways.
- We're all mixed, like really, race is a fiction.
Race does not exist.
You know, it's only real as a social thought.
It has real consequences.
It's very real, we've all made it very real.
The claim is for us to fight against the oppression
that race is.
And that's how identity comes about.
- Is that going to be at Gilbert?
(speaks in foreign language)
(ethereal music)
- Everywhere.
(laughs)
- Everywhere.
- Especially among people that live in the US
that maybe don't have a Latin American background,
that this is the place that slaves were brought from,
or people were brought here and then enslaved.
But really, there were far more people that were taken
and brought over here as slaves to Brazil,
to Cuba, to Haiti, to Dominican Republic, to Ecuador, Peru,
to all of these places that, you know
we don't necessarily associate with blackness.
And then, you know, there are places that, you know
we associate predominantly white countries,
that also had slavery, like Chile, right?
Like Argentina, like all of these, you know, Uruguay,
and then in Mexico, you know,
you had slavery up until a certain point, too.
And there are, you know, (speaks in foreign language).
So, you know, there is a middle passage
went throughout the Americas, and, you know,
slavery existed in all of these countries and, you know,
Brazil is actually the country that has the largest number
of Black folks.
- No, we have the data from the slave ships right,
up the middle passage and flip it,
this fantastic video where they had tracing the ships
across the country, crossing the Atlantic and there,
you see the volume of ships going South, right?
Like from the Caribbean South and Central America, right?
Like Nicaragua, and Honduras, and all these places
that are not associated with blackness,
but Brazil, of course, the most.
That shows 96% of those ships landed
in the Caribbean and South America and Central America.
So only like 4% went to North America.
So, you know, some people have tried to
then calculate like how, what that means
in terms of population.
But the vast majority of Black people are in Latin America
and the Caribbean.
I mean, now with migration, those numbers are shifting.
In some ways, we were part of those Black migrations, right?
We continue to move and be in other places.
But some people think like, Oh, (foreign language),
even more that they ask us like,
Oh, you don't look Puerto Rican.
Oh, you don't look Latina.
Oh, you don't look, when it's like,
your first guest should be that I look Latina,
as a Black person, before I look as if I'm from the US.
(jazzy music)
- This question makes me so mad.
I can't call myself Black without dividing other people.
It's so ridiculous,
and I don't really have an academic answer for this.
You know, it's the same thing as
talking about racism is racist, right.
Or talking about racism is divisive.
We're all different.
We have different ancestry.
We come from different places, different experiences.
Our skin colors are different,
and that has all kinds of consequences,
social consequences attached to it.
And so if I want to affirm my blackness,
or somebody else wants to affirm their blackness,
why is that threatening to you?
Because, that's what it boils down to, right?
It's threatening to somebody else.
And so, no, the answer is no.
And you know, we have to stop this
because it's BS, it's divisive, right?
When you tell me that I can't assert my blackness
now you're being divisive.
(speaks in foreign language)
- I would say divisive for whom, you know,
because they want to keep us silent.
Like, I think that there is really an intention
for us not to say anything
because the order benefits whom?
It keeps the order, it keeps us silent.
It keeps us (foreign language), it keeps us poor,
it keeps us sick.
It keeps us without access to resources and education.
So I'm like divisive for whom?
Let's talk about the social realities
of how our societies implement and maintain
racial inequality, because the proof is all there.
This reclaiming, it's a source of pride
but it's also about making change, so--
- The question just, this comes off as trying to silence,
I try to teach some of my students
about this particular fact, when we're looking,
for example at Jose Marti of Cuba,
and some of his essays and saying,
Oh, we don't talk about racism here.
We're all Cubans here, we're all right.
Which we use it a lot, we see that rhetoric a lot.
And Oh, we're all Mexican here, we're all Brazilian here.
So we don't need to be talking about race.
But that means that, you know, and it's a way of silencing
and back to society, when you were saying,
it's a silencing that also keeps us without access,
without being listened to without, right?
And it reinscribes the same colonial hierarchies.
You know, people may ask or say,
Oh it's divisive, let's not talk about it,
or, You're part of the problem if you're bringing it up,
you're just making it worse.
I'm not getting health care and I'm making it worse
'cause I'm telling you, I'm not getting health care,
because you're not paying attention
to the pain that I'm feeling.
Because you think that Black people
can just put up with more pain.
- They label us, (speaks in foreign language),
we all have a complex, it's your problem,
Hey, don't worry about that, you know, just accept that.
Like we're looked at as lesser than we are.
They label us as sick and demented
(speaks in foreign language)
to talk about rape, (speaks in foreign language).
Like, just keep working hard, do your thing.
It's like, yeah, we'll do our thing too, but.
- My favorite one is when people where I'm identifying
that some anti-Black shit is happening,
and I'm explaining the system on it.
And they'll just say, (speaks in foreign language).
And I'm like?
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- Pero Like.