Y tu abuela? That's what the census and AfroLatinos are asking. The video above dramatizes an encounter between a Spanish-speaking youth whose grandmother rejects his friends because she assumes (incorrectly) that they are African Americans. I took two things from the video:
- Abuelita doesn't like you hanging around black kids
- I have to check off black and Latino on the census
2 comments:
Yeah, I'm in agreement with you. I don't like the premise of the whole video firstly. It smacks of acceptance of Latino racism to me. And secondly it's not clear, it does make you think that all Latinos should be putting down Latino and Black. But we all clearly are not. And I find it hard to believe that Latinos are going to accept classification as either "white" or "black". Most are going to put "other" because most are a mix of everything and don't feel comfortable selecting one or the other. I always select other myself as well.
I asked my husband just now too, what he would select on the census. He is Dominican and clearly looks black. He said he would select Latino. And when I pressed the color issue he said he would have to select other. So, all in all, I think that Latinos are going to be forced to lump themselves into categories that they might not agree or others might not agree with. But, as long as we have the larger "Latino" umbrella, this should help diffuse some of the confusion on "color" hopefully.
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