Recently, Lucas and I walked into a local Latin American restaurant.  It was a little early, but lunch was already being served, and we began to have a conversation with the waitress as she took our order.  Though she originally greeted us in what we thought was her attempt at basic English, her thick New Orleans accent gave her away as a local.  I’ve always said that you can’t look at someone in this city and automatically tell whether or not they are a native New Orleanian.  Had it not been for the fact that we were in a Latin restaurant, I would have just assumed that she was a local Creole of mixed race heritage.  This assumption wouldn’t have been further from the truth.  In fact, both of her parents were born in Mexico.

As we continued to talk she realized that Lucas and I were Latinos.  She admitted that at first she had not believed that we were. I got curious.  I brazenly pressed her about her initial assumptions regarding our ethnicity, and she stated: “I thought you were black, but I didn’t want to offend you.”  I was not offended, of course.  My family is from the Dominican Republic, a country where the vast majority (over 80%) are descended from Africans and I applaud my parents for raising me to be conscious of our heritage (which many Dominicans continue to deny to the present day).  I am a Latino and I am also a black person.  I am not mixed with both; I am both.

I am aware that the waitress was not trying to offend me.  Not all Afro-Latinos accept and celebrate their heritage the way I do and for various reasons.  Latinos are not a homogeneous group. We encompass so many different nationalities, ethnicities, and regions that coralling Latinos into any single and identifiable group is in many ways preposterous.  Most Latinos in the U.S., it seems, are content with identifying themselves through their nationality or simply as Latino with no specific racial or ethnic identification.

However, this does not preclude Latinos from the racial divide that inhibits this country.  My experience at the restaurant was not a rare one.  I have often been “mistaken” for African American.  In fact, my light complexion has led many people to assume that I am a local black Creole.  My “racial ambiguoity”  (as a friend has described it) has led individuals to various and disturbing reactions.  I have often found myself the audience of anti-Latino and anti-immigration expressions by non-Latinos.  Conversely I have had to hear utterly racist rhetoric against African Americans by those who do not consider me black because of my hispanic heritage.  This has always befuddled me because my skin complexion and hair texture are of a black phenotype. 

Essentially, the word ‘race’ is an institution based on a concept that was created out of a need to set whites apart from their African slaves.  As much as we talk about skin color, physical features, and hair texture, there is no such division in race.  There is only one human race, and according to science we are all the same regardless of our skin, hair, and eye color differences.  The word race is inappropriately used to refer to ethnicity, which is fluid and is much more reflcective of cultural heritage and geographic origin.  My “Latino-ness” is determined by the fact that my parents are from a country where Spanish is spoken, but my “blackness” is determined by how  I, as an individual, am willing to accept it. 

Now that we have the most powerful example of the meaninglessness of the United States concept of ‘race,’ about to take office in less than two weeks, isn’t it time that we began a more powerful, more serious, and more honest conversation about why we don’t accept our differences?  How can Latinos play into this discussion to ensure that going forward we talk not just in terms of black and white, but in terms of everyone?  Let me know what you think.  Hit me up.

Tags: El Rafa, ethnocentricity, hispanics, latinos, new orleans, racism

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