Mixed Race Studies

Opinion: ‘In the Heights’ is just more of the same whitewashed Hollywood

The Washington Post
2021-06-21

Julissa Contreras and Dash Harris Machado

Producer Lin-Manuel Miranda attends the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival opening-night premiere of “In the Heights” on June 9 in New York. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Julissa Contreras is a Dominican writer, poet, actor and creator of the “Ladies Who Bronché” podcast. Dash Harris Machado is co-founder of AfroLatino Travel, producer and facilitator of the “Radio Caña Negra” podcast and producer of “NEGRO: A Docu-series About Latinx Identity.”

The recent controversy surrounding “In the Heights,” the big-budget film based on the musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, came as no surprise for Black Latin American and Caribbean people. With its White and light-skinned leading roles, the film became part of a long tradition in the Americas of Black erasure.

When moviegoers and journalists, including the Root’s Felice León, started highlighting the lack of Black leading cast members in the film, many prominent figures rushed to defend it. “We shouldn’t burden Lin-Manuel with the responsibility of representing every Latino,” commentator Ana Navarro said. “You can never do right, it seems,” actress Rita Moreno said in defense of Miranda. “This is the man who literally has brought Latino-ness and Puerto Rican-ness to America.” Both accounts are inaccurate.

Read the entire article here.

Dash Harris is doing the work to end anti-Blackness in LatinX culture

theGrio
2020-06-16

DeMicia Inman

Through her work in creating ‘NEGRO: A DOCU-SERIES ABOUT LATINX IDENTITY,’ Harris hopes to dismantle anti-Blackness in the LatinX community.

The African diaspora gave much of the world a very layered identity. For centuries, the slave trade resulted in African natives being sold or stolen as slaves and transported across the globe. Now, Black people reside in countries from the United States and Brazil to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Dash Harris, an Afro-LatinX woman, understands not only her multi-cultural heritage but also the implications and societal structure surrounding her identity. Through her work in creating NEGRO: A DOCU-SERIES ABOUT LATINX IDENTITY and more, she hopes to highlight LatinX existence and dismantle anti-Blackness in the LatinX community…

Read the entire interview here.

Afro Latinos’ Mixed Identity Can Leave Them Out of the Mix

NBC News
2014-02-27

Patricia Guadalupe and Suzanne Gamboa

Afro Latino Marco Davis laughed when he recalled the lengths he went to keep in touch with black and Latino alumni groups when he graduated from Yale University.

“One year I would put down that I was Hispanic so I could keep in touch with the Latino groups on campus that I was involved with, and another year I would put down black, so I could get their information. I would alternate because I wasn’t able to put down that I belonged to both,” said Davis, 43, who has a Jamaican father and a Mexican mother. “The university said they didn’t have it built in to their computers to check off more than one box at a time, and I had to do just one.”

Like Davis, other Afro Latino Americans feel they straddle two communities, each with a distinct heritage and history celebrated in the U.S. eight months apart. Black History Month comes to a close Friday and Hispanic Heritage Month begins in mid-September.

Black Latinos say there is little understanding of their mixed heritage, and little knowledge of the history of the importation of slaves by Spanish-speaking countries of which many, though not all, are descendants.

Yet growing racial pride and a move to a more multiracial society with changing demographics are helping this group stake a claim to being both black and Latino…

…Filmmaker Dash Harris, who is of Panamanian descent, hopes to bring more exposure to the Afro Latino experience though a documentary series, Negro. Harris said the work grew from her own frustrations.

“I was exhausted trying to explain who I am,” Harris said. “I’m not here to convince anyone about their African ancestry because that’s a fact. It’s about educating the next generation.”

Afro Latina Sarita Copeland Singh, a Washington lawyer married to a Trinidadian with Indian roots, said she sees change afoot.

“We definitely need to hear and learn more about Afro Latinos so that it won’t seem so unusual,” said Singh, 30, who is of Panamanian descent. “My young daughter already moves easily between both worlds.”

Read the entire article here.

Boa Aparência (Good Appearance): How Colorism Plays Out in Latin America

50shadesofblack.com | Fueling Conversation
2012-10-08

Dash Harris
In.a.Dash.Media

“Go to the banks and you’ll see how racist, this country is.” This was a sentiment expressed ad nauseam in my interviews about how colorism drives societal treatment. Interviewees in every country I visited for the docu-series always cited airports, banks and TV shows as representations of the aesthetic their particular country strives for:
 
Whitewashed.
 
It was true, I only saw one tanned bank teller throughout my travels, in Honduras. For any of the others jobs that were pointed out, the standard was homogenous, light skin and straight hair. This preference is blatant even within advertisements and postings for jobs…

…White supremacy and the aspiration to be the closest you possibly can is rooted in the idea of ‘mejorando la raza’ or improving or bettering the race by marrying white, if not white then light. Almost all of my interviewees have heard this phrase from a family member or friend as advice in the dating and marrying game. One Honduran, whom her friends call her ‘negra’ because she is dark skinned said her family said she hit the jackpot when she started dating her current boyfriend, a redhead very pale skinned Honduran. On the other hand when someone who is light or pale chooses to date ‘dark,’ families insist they are ruining or damaging the race. To preserve the privilege of being light, some have even resorted to marrying within their own family, like actress Michelle Rodriguez found out about her kissing cousins. Many of my interviewees came from mixed family backgrounds where their parents different colors caused a lot of fighting, drama, discontent, and familial problems that still persist to present day. The most common, was a dark skinned father and light skinned mother…

Read the entire article here.

Hue & Phenotype: Colorism… Even More Complex

50shadesofblack.com | Fueling Conversation
2012-09-21

Dash Harris
In.a.Dash.Media

I have interviewed over 100 people for this docu-series and recently I’ve come across more and more interviewees who ask me about my background. I’ve had a handful of Caribbeans ask me if I were ‘dougla,’ a person of Indian or indigenous and African ancestry and when I was in Honduras I was called a mulatta, which means the same. Usually someone who identifies as a mulatto is of european and african ancestry but that’s not how it was used in Honduras among the people who described me as such. I asked the reasons for these assumptions and people pointed out that my skin wasn’t “very dark” and my hair was curly and my eyes were “different.” I found that interesting because I consider myself a chocolate brown, my hair has gone days without a comb being ran through it because of the wrangling that it calls for and I see my eyes as any other person’s eyes can be. One Garifuna young man said I wasn’t ‘black enough’ and I could remedy that by getting a ‘super black boyfriend,’ he graciously volunteered himself. All courting aside, I thought he and many others were just pointing out the phenotypes that guide perception and categorization of ancestry in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is important to note that the U.S. is the only country that followed the one drop rule of hypo-descent, where you were considered ‘Black’ no matter what other ancestry you had. This did not exist in Latin America so it gave way to many ways to describe someone based on skin tone, hair color, hair texture, size of nose, lips, eyes. These all decide what category you’ll fit into. Your desciptors may also vary just based on individual perception. In Brazil there are 134 color descriptors. In the Dominican Republic ‘javao’ describes someone who is of pale of light complexion with “African features,” the list below shows more…

Read the entire article here.