- Latine is a gender-neutral alternative to Latino/a, much like Latinx, but with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘x’ because the vowel sound flows better in speech, especially in Spanish.
- I’ve included two sources for the definitions of most of these terms, and the sources are quite good. If you still don’t believe me after reading this and want more definitions, do your own research and make sure to use credible sources only.
Telling non-Black Latines who think they are Black that they are not, in fact, Black is like telling a child that Santa Claus is not real. No matter how much evidence you present, indignation is sure to rear its ugly head. They kick, scream, tell you you’re a liar and tell you you’re just mean. It is seldom because they don’t understand, which is one reason why they’re actually worse than children. Kids hold onto the notion of Santa Claus for safety and comfort, and they do it with a limited ability to cope with significant, sudden change and the accompanying feelings. Non-Black Latines be grown, intellectually capable, but willfully ignorant because life is just more fun when you get to walk around saying nigga Aht aht. Se acabo.
Let’s start with the context. Some simple facts, history, and definitions. When people want to know what you and your family claim culturally, they might say, “what are you?” or “what race are you?” or “what’s your ethnicity?” We have grown to interpret all of those questions as interchangeable because we are taught that they essentially mean the same thing. Sometimes people answer with their race, sometimes with their ethnicity, sometimes with their nationality, whatever they identify with most. The trouble is that those questions are not interchangeable. Those words mean very different things.
Definitions time. Keep in mind that in a lot of ways, these definitions will be new to you. The overwhelming majority of us were not taught these definitions in school, not because they’re inaccurate, but because knowledge is power. They don’t teach us this explicitly in elementary school for the same reason that they romanticize MLK and vilify Malcolm X: because to arm us with a deep understanding of the origin and function of race as we know it would be to severely fuck their plans to continue this white supremacist regime. That said, let’s dig in.
The word race refers to the grouping of people based on their physical characteristics. The American Sociology Association, the body of folks who study human society’s development, functioning, and social problems, states that “race refers to physical difference that groups and cultures consider socially significant.” If we ask good old Merriam-Webster (though we know that the dictionary is not the best source for nuanced explanations of social issues), we find that race is “any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry.” In all of the definitions from credible sources, they state physical attributes as a pillar of race. Race is about phenotype. It’s about people who look similar and share ancestry. Note how none of the definitions mention DNA, parents, or cultural practices.
Races are Black, white, Asian, and Indigenous. That’s pretty much it. Sounds too simplified, right? Indeed humans are far more nuanced than that. It sounds too simple because it is too simple because some simple-minded assholes made it up. Race is a social construct that, although purportedly scientific, came to be from nothing more than the bigoted musings and flawed findings of white people, namely (you called it) white men. The concept originated in Europe as a way of classifying people. The English had a long history of separating themselves from others, especially foreigners. When the perception of Irish folks became that they were savages, the English attempted to conquer them and force them into labor. The attempts largely failed because of Irish resistance, but this set the tone for how they would treat Native Americans and Africans as they went about the world colonizing. Folks like J.F. Blumenbach and Samuel A. Cartwright only further muddied our understanding of the term with pseudoscienc e, coining false diseases and terms like caucasian to justify their actions. Although race was made up, its function in our society today is very real. Understanding the origin of the word is necessary for you to understand the harm in claiming an identity based on your agenda instead of facts.
Now let’s define ethnicity.
The ASA says, “ethnicity refers to shared culture, such as language, ancestry, practices, and beliefs.” Merriam Webster says that the word ethnic refers to “large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background.” Latine, for example, is an ethnicity. Latine is not a race. The other identifier that often goes with race and ethnicity is nationality. Nationality refers specifically to the nation that a person is from or to which they claim allegiance. It’s about geography. American, Dominican, Swiss, Ghanaian, Dutch, Japanese, Bolivian are all examples of nationalities.
Having these definitions in mind, I’ll use myself as an example to put it all into a real-life perspective. My race is Black. My ethnicity is Latina. My nationalities are American (literally only including this for clarity because I’m a citizen, so technically I am an American national) and Dominican; since I was born there, I’m a citizen of the island.
Everybody who encounters me walking down the street knows I’m Black. People were experiencing me as Black and telling me I was Black before I even knew that I was Black. It was clear to me very early on in life that despite how I saw myself, the world was irrefutably perceiving me as a Black girl. Growing up in a Dominican household, naturally, I hated that and pushed back against it as much as I could, but my race is what it is, and that’s that. Non-Black Latines be the only ones on the face of the planet who see a Black person when they look themselves in the mirror, but they swear everyone else is wrong. They have to pull out pictures of their mommy, daddy, brother, cousin, great-granddaddy and do all kinds of mental gymnastics to conclude that they are indeed Black despite their NC15 complexion.
If my mother were a blond-haired, blue-eyed white woman from Yorkshire, could I walk through life claiming to be a white woman? I once asked someone that while we had this very conversation, and they said, “No. I mean, yeah, you could, but…” and then we both burst out laughing. “Right,” I said. I could walk around saying I was a white woman, but that would just be ridiculously untrue, and I would literally be the only person under that delusion. Everybody else would continue to see me as the Black woman that I clearly am. I could say that I have white ancestry, I could say I have white DNA, I could say I have white culture (lol), but I could not claim that my race is white because my skin would still be brown and my hair would still be an afro, and my nose would always be wide, and I’d still be Blackity Black.
And I think that in a lot of ways, people feel justified in claiming a Blackness that is not theirs to claim because they’ve lived in proximity to Blackness. But proximity to Blackness doesn’t make you Black. Growing up around tons of Black people doesn’t make you Black. Being socialized by Black people doesn’t make you racially Black. Having Black family doesn’t automatically make you racially Black. You can have Black family, Black lineage, Black ancestry, Black DNA in you, but still not be racially Black. The sooner you can have intellectual honesty about that, the better. Because if proximity meant that someone else’s race could rub off on you, I would’ve been exploiting the white privilege I absorbed from my peers at Fieldston long ago.
We know that there is an enormous problem of anti-Blackness within the Latine community. The concept of Latinidad was literally created because non-Black folks who were colonized by Spain wanted to distinguish themselves from Black folks. They wanted to be able to say, “we are not them; we are something different altogether.” We see anti-Blackness in Latine media, where the overwhelming majority of stars are white Latines. We see it in our homes when our families utter contempt for “esos negros” or when we feel the deep pressure to “mejorar la Raza.” The most popular Latine artists are white or non-Black, and the things they do that are likable and trendy are often things they’ve learned from Black folks who will never get the credit. And if you claim to be someone who is committed to the liberation of Black people, someone who at the very least doesn’t want to participate in the erasure of Black people, then you need to start within yourself. That means stop crying when we tell you that you’re not Black because you don’t look Black. You don’t have a combination of the dominant Black features that we were distinguished by when race was created, and that we continue being othered for. The brown skin, the wide nose, the thick, unmistakably Black hair, the lips, the phenotype. Just literally deal. Because you can’t effectively combat anti-Black oppression if you’re confused or in denial about who is experiencing it. (Hint: Not you.)
Or you can, of course, continue to be willfully ignorant after I took the time to type this out for you with hyperlinks y todo thoughtfully.
But then don’t cry to anybody when you say nigga to the wrong Black person, and you get Twisted Tea rocked.
Originally published at https://www.lannyanais.com on January 25, 2021.
