≡ The Black & Brown Divide
I happily live in a hood that is about 80% Latin. I value the weird juxtapositions that present themselves in my community. The backdrop of bodegas, chuletas with the dollar store Bamboo earrings, the old man and his son who blare bachata while beating their congas. Watching my little daughter wind her hips to the beat of the drum while the weathered faces of women who look much older than they are encourage her, calling her morenita and freca, the old papichuelo in the beat up pizzeria who calls me big woman and tries to lure me into a bad salsa two step.
This is the community I live in, the community I fight for everyday with out the slightest bit of apology yet I know they mistrust me. I hear the conversations in the few pieces of Spanish I can understand, I am often deliberately
overlooked in stores, at restaurants, brushed aside because I am Black. I recently went into a dispatch station to catch a cab and a driver came out. He didn’t ask who was there first he asked the lady next to me something in Spanish and signaled for her to go. I looked in disbelief at the dispatcher who apologetically told me to just wait one minute he would get a cab for me. I had been standing there first but I didn’t exist, I wasn’t one of “them”. This has happened to me countless times, in countless places in my own community.
This is what I have and am struggling with, when did I become a “them”. When did they become an “us”. I feel a comradery with my Brown neighbors that is not always reciprocated.
But it comes from my folks as well. Often I hear my Black friends and neighbors verbalize their mistrust and distaste for their Latin counterparts and I am just as dumbfounded and viewed naive when I object to the generalization.
Sheiiit, lets be real, Brown people don’t trust each other, my Puerto Rican neighbor often talks about how dumb and backwards Dominicans are. And shit everyone makes fun of and ostracizes the Mexicans.
The reality is we need to wake up. It is this type of residual imperialistic and racist internalizations that stops us from creating progress. We so often get caught up in the differences we fail to realize that we face many of same barriers even if the variants are different, the results are quite often the same. We also fail to check ourselves on how we continue to perpetuate many of the systematic oppressions that we have more often than not been the victims of. And the truth of the matter people is that as long as we continue to perpetuate the victimization of another group of brown and black people, including the various shades that make up the group we belong to then don’t be surprised that we keep getting stuck and can’t evolve as fast as we would like.
It is very simple. We need each other and our inability to love each other reflects our inability to love an intricate part of ourselves.
≡ Recent Entries
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- CONTEMPLATE: Give the P*ssy Some Respect
- COP: The Who’s That BLK GRL Ad Shoot
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- The Black & Brown Divide
- CONTEMPLATE: The BET Harlem Heights Premiere- The Review
- CONTEMPLATE: The BET Harlem Heights Premiere- The Swag Bag
- CONGREGATE: Holistic Hood
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
muchas gracias mi hermana tanya for writing this blog post. mi corazon es afro latina pero yo soy negro. i was born african american with an afro latina heart. my love of latin/afro latin culture started when i was a little girl and learned about mexico from my ccd teacher senor candelaria. it grew even more when i visited puerto rico with my family in the late 70s. that’s when i learned what my dad had preached growing up … that africans are everywhere especially in the americas and caribbean. we all share that blood. so we are all familia, right? i continued my love affair by taking spanish and learning about all types of history and cultures in the americas in junior high, high school, and college. i was able to travel to puerto rico for my high school graduation which was a huge for me. i learned so much. now my heart also includes cuba which happened when i visited in 2004. i hope we can all see that we are brown and black … blood, kin, familia.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Being of Jamaican and Cuban heritage, I am ALWAYS discouraged by the great ethnic divide. Fortunately I grew up in a family where skin tone was irrelevant and character was valued (except for traffic issues cuz if you cut my grampa off you became a “insert ethnicity here piece of sh*t). What hurts is that if you go back to Cuba or Puerto Rico or any island/country that’s rich in Latin and Afro-Latin culture, you don’t experience this bigotry because you can be as white as a the fallen snow and have a cousin the beautiful shade of Georgia clay and love and respect transcends the simple difference of skin color. Not to say that it’s a rainbow of love and people of all colors ride unicorns into the sunset, but I honestly think that the historical degradation of Blacks in this country have caused all who come here (of any ethnicity) to feel it’s okay to have separatist, hateful attitudes toward us.
As a parent this KILLS me. I want my daughter to grow up LOVING diversity and the opportunity to learn about other cultures while appreciating her own beautiful blackness, but at 7 years old, she’s already been ostracized as Taylor, the smart Black girl.
Unfortunately we live in a melting pot where most people don’t generally melt and mingle. They kinda cling to the sides and get all yucky… It’s time to get all up in the middle of this pot where shit is hot so we can finally get to the flavor of the issues we need to deal with. (Too much analogizing?) Yeah… So I guess all I can say is I LOVE the fact that I’m a Black woman in this world and when my best friends and I are together we look like a “We Are the World” poster and when we’re old and drinking whiskey - I mean mimosas, we have more countries to vacation to! Yay!
March 12th, 2009 at 9:57 am
It makes me sad that such a divide does exist because if we worked together, there is no telling how far we could go. In my mind, it’s similar to slave owners pitting house and field hands against each other. We’re still minorities catching the short end of the social and economic shift so neither group needs to get uppity with the other. That’s just my two cents…..
March 13th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Peace sista, You know I’m in tha same hood. I just want to uplift what you said at the end of your piece and what Candice said in hers.
“It is very simple. We need each other and our inability to love each other reflects our inability to love an intricate part of ourselves.”
“It’s time to get all up in the middle of this pot where shit is hot so we can finally get to the flavor of the issues we need to deal with.”
Thank you for bringing up the subject. I have decided just to be more open about this topic when I meet people in the streets and stores. Always with love, of course. I’m not real good at the get in your face kind of confrontations anyway, I don’t think my power comes from that!
As humanity, black, brown, red, yellow, pale skin…we have to let go of the victim mentality because just as one of the premiere laws of creation say-Like attracts like and your thinking broadcasts what types of experiences you will have vixrim, rescuer/savior, agressor or personal power and responsibility. Most of us are caught up in the cycle and don’t know how to get out! It starts with love and ends with love! Love harder, stronger, faster! Love yourself, Love the other because they are a reflection of you, Love us, Love Them! We are all one at the creation level!
Let’s speak truth to power. Heal our wounds about our selves so we can evolve and reflect the divine. Let’s ask that question…How do you feel about black people, white people…or whatever the diversity? Let’s create opportunities for us to mingle and converse! Nuture diversity and create unity! Let’s talk about humanity’s survival and evolution. How can we take interactions to a higher vibration because it is not serving us to be thinking all this negativity. It actually adds to a lot of the illness we have in OUR communities. Healing Love and Light, Zera PS come to open mic on March 28 7:00pm 835 Dawnson Street Bronx! Mizz Blk Grl herself will be featured1
April 13th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I’m so glad you touched upon this subject matter
and I talk alot about this to my friends and co-workers …My issue is…. What is it with how black men/folks are treating Latina females compared to African Americans?, and this maybe limited to my circle of associates, so I will speak about my own experiences…First off I luv my latina sistas just as much as they luv me and my culture..I remember when my grandma use to tell me when I was in school to ask anyone of my Hispanic friends did they know their roots come from the same roots as mines…plaid English do you know you Black? and based on the answer I got..I would either education or I would have to dismiss they ass for 2 reasons…One they got offended instead of embracing the truth and two they made me feel like it was some kind of competition of Cultures instead of a higher learning of such….I don’t know if that was the right way to approach that matter, especially in the 6th and 7th Grade but it open my eyes to things that now play out in my personal life as an adult…Anyhoo back to my point..when i get into a disagreement with my partner I have to endure the bull*%$! (excuse my French)…Why are black girls so damn difficult….So damn mouthy….ya’ll don’t listen and that’s why ya’ll get what ya’ll get….and the list goes on…..and let’s look at how Black females are betrayed in the media as well as music and videos…we ain’t nothing but a big booty to smack on….or we are the infamous Hoe and Bitch or somebody’s baby mama…But when I see Latina women I think of love, a sense of sisterhood, togetherness, belonging…and with men …alot of young Latina women are married with a husband that works and take care of her every need…take care of their families and they take pride in doing so…and that’s not to say Black families don’t share the same Values.. but me looking from the outside in maybe the reason I feel this way ,but what I don’t understand is how I’ve been involved with my partner (which is black) for over 13 years, watched his younger brothers grow up into teenagers, have worked side by side with his mother and assumed we had a blossoming relationship, and then his younger brother becomes involved with a latina and they been together for about 8 years now…she was even ivited to live with them, mind you when me and my partner first met and was dealing with each other, he was kicked out at 17yrs and I had just lost my grandmother at 16 years old and I fought hard to keep her apartment so we could have a place to stay together and we did..but as young as we were we was very much on our own …to fend for ourselves…to raise ourselves, it seemed like we was not important enough… there was also times when we didn’t have food and he would go to his mother for a plate or two…but GOD forbid his mother and Father wasn’t home when we needed something to eat because we wasn’t even allowed in the house unless they was there…(Sorry had to give a bit of history to understand where i’m coming from) But at the same time my partner’s brother and his latina girlfriend were allowed to do as they pleased and i understood that …but then again, I didn’t…(At this point I may have lost the reader of this comment but these are things that are eating me up inside and I need to get it off my chest)…The whole point is that I’ve been treated differently from how they treat his latina girlfriend….maybe she’s just a better person then me…maybe not…but i know i put on a song and dance to be excepted while homegirl didnt have to do much but be who she is…..She says all kinds of slick shit out of her mouth but no one notice…
she try that with me and i put her in her place…I’m being a bitch…I’m being negative….so what am I to do….Plzzz help this black girl lost