00:00When people see a woman who is darker skinned and having her speak Spanish is like, wait, what?
00:06Also understanding that not all Latinas look the same and doesn't make any of them less or more Latina because
00:13of it.
00:13I identify as an Afro-Latina.
00:15I identify as an Afro-Latino.
00:17I identify as Afro-Latina, namely an Afro-Indigenous Latina.
00:22I identify as Dominican.
00:23I do identify as Afro-Latina.
00:25This hair especially.
00:27I never really used to identify or embrace with my Afro and my Latinidad because I felt like I was
00:34downgrading myself.
00:35My father is Afro-Dominican and my mother is an Indigenous woman from Latin America.
00:40So I identify as both.
00:41So growing up, I come from a household.
00:43I'm a mixed kid.
00:44So I always knew that I came from a mixed background.
00:46As an Afro-Latino, being Asian, I definitely get questioned a lot about being Black.
00:52It's one of my biggest insecurities.
00:56Definitely recognized sort of a bias towards being sort of non-Black, being a white Latina,
01:04whether it's like novellas, whether it's movies, and definitely a lot of anti-Black sentiments.
01:10Colorism in the Latino community is very prominent.
01:15Till this day, prominent effects on your social economic class, how far you can get in life,
01:21how classy you're considered, how beautiful you're considered.
01:24If I go in a room full of Latinos that are light-skinned, I'm la negra already.
01:29I'm already la negra.
01:30I'm the Black girl.
01:31They'll have their hair straight and they're lighter skinned and they're already like, oh, look at, like, oh.
01:36It's like, like, they have some type of authority just because they're lighter skinned.
01:41And I'm just like, oh, okay.
01:43When I go to Latin America and I'm in El Salvador, everyone's like, negra, like, this is a negra.
01:50She's not, she's not, like, one of us, you know.
01:54But when I go to DR, it's like, oh, yeah, you could, you're literally, like, you could be, your name
01:58could be Carmela.
01:59Like, you're, you're in.
02:01There's literally, in the DR, they have this, they call them, like, trigueñas, which is literally, like, the color of
02:08wheat or trigo.
02:10And it kind of reminds me of the, like, brown paper bag theory in America.
02:17You know, if you're lighter than this or you're darker than this, you're considered more wealthy and more attractive.
02:21Having 3B hair wasn't as accepted either.
02:24People would pressure me into straightening my hair because I felt like it would be more beautiful and, like, it
02:30would be more platyable for, like, people to understand.
02:34At first, when I lived in DR, I was, like, in denial.
02:36I was like, I'm not straight, I'm not curling my hair.
02:38You have to put chemicals in it so that it can be straight.
02:41How this person here had nappy hair versus curly hair or she had a very African nose versus a, like,
02:49slender, thin nose.
02:51You're not allowed in the club if you're, like, my skin color.
02:54So my friends that are light skinned, they get in and sometimes I won't get in.
02:57If colorism was not a thing, then, like, why do we see the very whitewashing of pop culture in Latin
03:05America?
03:06Music like reggaeton is by nature African, is by nature Black.
03:10And some of the top female pop stars in reggaeton are all white.
03:15Like, that should not be a thing.
03:17Our national dance, merengue, comes from Africa.
03:21So I just think, like, in every little thing that we touch, they are there.
03:25Music played a really big role in me identifying as an Afro-Latina and me feeling like I belonged in
03:32a society where there was no room for me.
03:35Those songs that your parents play, if you're Latina, and then I can listen to, like, Biggie.
03:44I can go from, like, reggaeton to salsa to hip-hop to listening to classics like jazz.
03:50Latino music like cumbia, merengue, salsa, bachata, all the drums in that music is African.
03:57All drums are African, when you look how music has sort of changed and evolved over the many years.
04:04Also, food.
04:06I might want to have rice and beans with my noodles, and then the next day I might want to
04:10have some baked macaroni and cheese and some jerk chicken.
04:13I know Dominican food is so African.
04:16Like, we have this one thing that's called mango, and it's literally, like, mashed up plantains.
04:21Or you could have, like, mashed cassava or, like, mashed yuca.
04:26That is just so African.
04:28Being an Afro-Latina, you know, there's things that, you know, people might think that takes away my Latinidad.
04:36I don't speak fluent Spanish.
04:38Spanish is my first language.
04:40So I do speak fluent Spanish.
04:41Funny enough, my younger siblings don't speak Spanish, however.
04:44And I guess it's from growing up in the United States, and I feel like the whole political climate kind
04:50of also encourages you not to want to maybe identify as that.
04:55I'm made up in Spanish.
04:56That is our colonizer's language, though.
05:00This idea that, like, if you don't know Spanish, you're not Latina, or you're not really Spanish, you're not really
05:06Latina, is, like, kind of bullshit.
05:08Because, like, my ancestors, my father's ancestors, my mother's ancestors didn't even speak Spanish.
05:15Like, that is completely false.
05:17Everything, pretty much, that makes up Puerto Rican is pretty much, I would say, engraved from our African roots.
05:23I think our beauty, not for nothing, but this still crack ever, and I think that does come from there.
05:30Now that I've embraced my Afro-Latina identity, I feel like I can be myself.
05:34I feel like I don't need to weigh in or weigh out which, like, which side is more important.
05:41I feel like me just being present and being myself explains the fact that I'm an Afro-Latina, that I
05:47have both cultures and both heritage instilled in me.
05:51I've never not been Afro-Latina, and I think now where I'm at a place in life where it's becoming
05:57a little more common,
05:59people are creating more conversations around Afro-Latina identity, it just makes me really proud to be a part of
06:07that also.
06:07So.
