Dismantling Anti-Blackness in the Latinx Community
Lourdes Torres is a Professor of Latin American studies and Latino studies and critical ethnic studies at DePaul University, and recently moderated a Chicago Latinos in Philanthropy panel on Anti-Blackness in the Latinx Community. Her reflections on this event are below.
Anti-Blackness is an enduring problem in the Latinx community that we all need to confront. As part of this effort, Latinos in Philanthropy organized and hosted the event “Understanding the role of Latinxs in combating anti-blackness and setting course towards solidarity” on May 24, 2022. That program included an introduction to the concept of anti-Blackness which I provided and a panel discussion on how to dismantle anti-Blackness in our social justice work with Antonio Gutierrez, Strategic Coordinator and Co-founder of Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) and Cindy Eigler and Aislinn Pulley, Co-Executive Directors at the Chicago Torture Justice Center. In this blog post, I provide some highlights from that program which I hope will inspire you to actively take on the work of unlearning anti-blackness and commit to dismantling it everywhere it shows up.
It is useful to remember that Latinidad is an evolving, fluid concept, always under construction, and will only be as robust as we make it. If we want to create a truly inclusive community that embraces all of us, we have to pay attention to those who are often excluded when we reference the “Latinx community” in our work and in conversations with our family and friends. Afro-Latinx people are often missing from our history books, mainstream media, popular culture, and our imaginations. What’s more, we often disavow our Afro-Latinx familia and actively discriminate against them. This anti-Blackness is both a product of Latin American heritage and a feature deeply embedded in US society.
A Legacy of Anti-Blackness in Latin America
Although some believe the myth that racial harmony reigns in Latin America, the truth is that there is a long legacy of anti-Blackness throughout the region. Of all enslaved Africans brought to the Americas, fewer than 6% were taken to the United States while over 90% were transported to Latin America, Central America and the West Indies. For centuries, the status quo across the Americas has been a racial hierarchy with whites at the top and Blacks at the bottom. Because many Latin Americans have ancestry that includes the blending of African, Indigenous, and European heritage, an ideology of mestizaje, or racial mixing, tends to mask the racial discrimination that has always occurred historically and continues to this day. It is an ideology that rests on a mythology that is easy to accept but which belies the reality of a cruel hierarchy that we need to examine if we are to be a truly inclusive society invested in abolishing racism.
We like to say we are all mestizos as if to suggest that this mixture shields us from racism. However, there is plenty of evidence of historical and present day structural and cultural racism In Latin America. The people with fewer material resources, poor housing, and inferior jobs tend to be Black, while those enjoying a more comfortable socioeconomic status tend to be white. Culturally, we see the propagation of racist notions in the preference for white skin and features when we perpetuate the notion of blanqueamiento (whitening), believing we have to mejor la raza by marrying a light-complected partner, or continuing to use expressions like pelo malo (bad hair) for Afro-textured hair. These ideas are passed down from parents to children within families and across communities. Latin Americans are taught to admire whiteness and avoid blackness.
Racism in the US
Racist attitudes from Latin America coalesce with US style racism across various generations of Latinx immigrants. And together they sustain white supremacy and anti-Blackness. If we are familiar with US history, we know that this country is built on and structured by the genocide of native peoples and the enslavement of Black peoples. Anti-Blackness as an ideology in practice, has made it possible to enslave, imprison, and limit the opportunities of Black people for centuries. Anti-Blackness is inherent to the US, as this country’s institutions are based on white supremacist fundamentals. Currently, there seems to be an increasing social awareness of Black peoples’ experiences of discrimination, yet there is a failure to see anti-Blackness as essentially foundational to the building of this country and a structural fact of life in the US and globally.
Latinx Complicity in Anti-Blackness.
Due to this history, it is imperative that we commit to understanding how Latinxs are complicit in promoting anti-Blackness. A good place to start the work of unlearning anti-Blackness is by reading Tanya Katerí Hernández’s, Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality. The book conclusively documents how Latinxs actively sustain structures of racism. Hernández reviews numerous contemporary cases of anti-Blackness enacted by Latinxs across contexts, including in public spaces, the workplace, educational institutions, and housing. She points out that there is an alarming number of Latinx people in white nationalist groups like The Proud Boys who played a major role in the January 6th insurrection. She forcefully refutes the oft-repeated idea that Latinxs, as people of color, can’t be racist because we don’t hold structural power. Hernández documents how, in fact, Latinxs can and do actively promote white supremacy and engage in racist practices, denying Afro-Latinxs or Black Americans job opportunities, places to live, targeting them violently, and using dehumanizing epithets against them, among many other examples. Hernández provides a path for us to understand anti-Blackness by Latinxs leveled at Black people at all levels of personal, interpersonal, cultural, political, and economic life.
Given this sad reality we have to work to unlearn the anti-Blackness that we are all steeped in and uphold. We need to think more deeply about how anti-Blackness exists within the internal dynamics of our families, communities, and workspaces and impacts not only Black Americans but also Afro-Latinx within our Latinx communities. Colorism is a thing in our culture and we have to understand how we are often pitted against each other to the detriment of Latinx unity. While we are often very good at noting how Latinx people are discriminated against in many spheres, we are less attentive to the differential impact of racism in our communities specifically against Black or darker-skinned Latinxs.
Anti-Blackness is a global pandemic, it is everywhere: in our homes, schools, workplaces. It is a problem that has to be approached concurrently at the individual and institutional level. The pervasiveness of anti-Blackness means we have to acknowledge it in ourselves, our families, and our institutions, and work consistently to unlearn it and stop participating in it. White-presenting Latinxs in our communities have to recognize their privilege and investigate the ways they are upholding white supremacy consciously or unconsciously.
Forging Black and Brown Solidarity
In order to unlearn our own racism, we can look to examples of the people who are in the trenches doing the work of dismantling anti-Blackness. If we believe ourselves to be committed to social justice, it is not possible to adhere to single-issue politics. We must adopt an approach that allows us to analyze how different oppressions support and strengthen each other. Two groups that have committed to such transformation are Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) and the Chicago Torture Justice Center.
At the May 22nd panel, representatives from OCAD and Chicago Torture Justice Center discussed what addressing solidarity looks like. They pointed out that white supremacy and our capitalist system depend on a strategy of divide and conquer to subjugate Brown and Black people and keep us fighting each other instead of identifying and challenging the root causes of our oppression. They affirmed that “the “oppression olympics dynamic” is a dead end and instead we need to access an intersectional framework to build stronger coalitions and collective power. By thinking about race relationally, and through a shared context of meaning and power, we draw connections among subordinated groups and better comprehend the logic that underpins the co-constituted forms of inclusion and dispossession such groups face. This approach attends to how, when, where, and to what extent groups intersect and how we can work together since there are limits to examining racialized groups in isolation.
For example, OCAD uses popular education discussions to name anti-Blackness within their own organization and begin to challenge it. They teach about deconstructing legacies of colonialism and remind members of both the Black Latinx leaders and Indigenous leaders who have been erased from our histories. Additionally, they draw the connections between state violence and the criminalization of Black and Latinx communities, stressing the importance of building trust and solidarity to work in coalition so we will be a stronger force against white supremacy. The Chicago Torture Justice Center is likewise talking with their constituents about mass incarceration and state violence in all its forms (including immigration, deportations, and detentions) and pointing out its origins, as well as its historical, and present-day manifestations, particularly in terms of how they impact Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Lives.
The panel ended with a useful discussion of how philanthropy/funders can support the work of fighting anti-Blackness. Among the ideas shared were supporting the building of cohorts among organizations working in different social justice sectors to build stronger partnerships; providing more funding to understand and put into practice transformative justice processes; and funding projects that promote and create affordable housing, good jobs and alternative economic systems, as well as resources for mental health and education.
In short, we are all called upon to dismantle anti-Black bias. This is a life and death matter. As Tanya Hernández states, let’s cancel anti-Blackness!
Lourdes Torres is Professor of Latin American studies and Latino studies and critical ethnic studies at DePaul University. She is a board member of the Woods Fund Chicago. Connect with her at @RogersParkRican, www.linkedin.com/in/torres-lourdes-394301ab, and ltorres@depaul.edu.
