Mixed Race Studies

The Rise of the Afro-descendent Identity in Latin America

teleSUR
2018-03-04

For Black History Month, Catherine Walsh, professor of Afro-Andean Studies at the University Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador, shares with teleSUR her views about the achievements and challenges for the construction of an Afro-descendent consciousness in Latin America.

What in recent history would you say has contributed to the rise of a Black and Afro-descendent identity, with Black communities now embracing more than ever their culture across the continent?

Yes, this has changed radically. Several moments in recent history are important to highlight: in the 1990s, with the rise of Indigenous movements, alliances were built between Indigenous and Black people like in Ecuador.

But Black communities also began to organize by themselves, involving the construction of a notion of a Black territory, sometimes referred to as the “Gran Comarca” from the South of Panama to the North of Ecuador, where national identity does not matter. Black people living in the region often come from the same families, they have similar last names, and for many years have moved freely over the borders identifying as Afro-descendent and regardless of the national borders…

Read the entire interview here.

Black Lives Matter in the Dominican Republic

teleSUR
2015-08-11

Auset Marian Lewis

Racial profiling is not just happening in the U.S., Haitians in the Dominican Republic suffer the same discrimination.

“Black lives matter” is a resounding cry heard around the world. The UN Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent said as much in a recent news release regarding the deportation of Haitian residents and migrant workers in the Dominican Republic. Mirelle Fanon Mendes France, head of the U.N. group stated, “The Dominican Republic does not recognize the existence of a structural problem of racism and xenophobia, but it must address these issues as a matter of priority so the country can live free from tension and fear.”

Since June 21 some 19,000 Haitians have fled the Dominican Republic for Haiti fearing the unfair deportation policies that make it difficult for legal residents to comply with demands, which not only disregard the Dominican Constitution but also violate international norms.

In 2013, the constitutional court of the Dominican Republic ruled that offspring of undocumented immigrants would become illegal retroactive to 1929. This immediately invalidated the legal status of an estimated 200,000 Dominican citizens. Of the 450,000 Haitian migrant workers in the country, 290,000 met a filing deadline for legal status. Of those who filed, the government ruled that only 2 percent were legal.

The clash between Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola has a strained history beyond the obvious racial differences. Haitians are the dark progeny of the French African slave trade while Dominican Republicans are mulattoes of Spanish descent. The enmity between the two countries is not only racial, but also cultural and historical. However, just as the world witnesses how little Black lives matter in American extrajudicial killings, the mistreatment of dark Haitians could well inspire a #Haitian Lives Matter twitter campaign…

Read the entire article here.

Blaxican: The Revolutionary Identity of Black Mexicans

teleSUR
2015-07-29

“The Afro-Latino term felt like home. There was finally a term that described what all of this was. It was a group of people who felt like I was feeling. I was finally able to identify with a group of people and it was a relief.”

Walter Thompson-Hernandez shares with teleSUR English the often-forgotten faces and stories of Black Mexicans, or Blaxicans, in the United States.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez often sees a reflection of himself in the stories his camera captures. Boldly staring into the lens of his camera, Black Mexican, or Blaxican, men and women slowly unveil a bit of themselves to him.

“I ethnically identify as Afro-Mexican. Racially, I embrace my Blackness as here in LA that is typically how I am read and what my experience is,” reads one of the photo stories now available on Instagram gallery known as “Blaxicans of Los Angeles.”

“The identity of Afro-Mexican acknowledges my African roots as well as the land we live on, though claimed by America, belongs historically to indigenous Mexican peoples.”

As the child of an African-American father and a non-black Mexican mother, the stories resonate with Thompson-Hernandez who started the Instagram page as an academic research project for the University of South Carolina, but found himself personally drawn to the project to understand the complexities of race and ethnicity in a country that often sees both as one and the same thing…

Read the entire article here.

Tais Araujo: Fighting Brazil’s Racism Takes More Than A Hashtag

teleSUR
2015-11-18

Leopoldo Duarte

Taís Araújo‬’s profile picture on her Twitter account. | Photo: Twitter, @taisdeverdade

Most Brazilians take pride in living in a “racial democracy.” According to them Brazil is supposedly a country that evaded racism through the amicable blending of its native, African and European inhabitants. But an event earlier this month is once again challenging this myth, when popular Black Brazilian actress Taís Araujo gained media coverage because of a series of racist comments made on her Facebook page.

Twitter user @LeonaDivaa shares screenshots of the racist commentary on Tais’ fanpage. Dozens of social media users compared the actress to a “monkey” and a zoo animal, while making sexually derogatory comments and taunting her for her skin color and natural hair.

Tais left the highly offensive comments on her Facebook account, deciding to publicize and take legal actions against the racist insults rather than erase them. In Brazil, for the last 20 years racism has been a non-bailable offense, however most offenders rarely face punishment.

Brazilians, in response, seemed to be taken aback by the rampant and open attacks against the actress, who has been called “Brazil’s Beyonce.” What followed evidently was an outpouring of solidarity on social media, using the hashtag #SomosTodosTais (or #WeAreAllTais) Brazilians started an online campaign, which was widely reported in the Brazilian and international press.

“I still can’t handle the fact that racism is still alive in such a mixed country such as ours. #SomosTodosTaís” 

…But while, hashtags like (#WeAreAllAFamousWrongedBlackPerson) have become popular recently, many Black activists in Brazil have voiced their discontent with these campaigns.

Most Afro-Brazilian social activists were thrilled Taís decided to publicize every step of her legal process—images of her leaving a precinct after making a testimony made headlines and stirred emotions—but activists are also at odds with how most (white) Brazilians only address racism when a celebrity is involved.

Famous Afro-Brazilian activist and blogger, Stephanie Ribeiro, went as far as writing an article entitled: “Please Stop Individualizing Racism.“…

…Brazilians have been taught that we live in “racial democracy”. According to this belief, Brazil evaded racism through amicable blending of its three primary peoples, Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous Americans. This myth is rooted in the book, The Masters and the Slaves, by sociologist Gilberto Freyre in 1933. Freyre argued that racial hierarchy was abolished with slavery, despite the fact that Brazil was the last colony to formerly free its slaves…

Read the entire article here.

Afro-Latinas Work for Cultural Survival

teleSUR
2015-03-20

Mai’a Williams
Quito, Ecuador

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of Afro-Latino youth in the U.S. rooting themselves, their families and their communities in their African heritages as a way to create cultures of resistance to the dominant narratives of colonization and white supremacy.

These movements have been for the most part led by Afro-Latina women who live within the intersections of oppression, gender, class, race, and immigration. They take inspiration from the past, as well as the future. And they work to co-create cultures that can fight against the overwhelming tide of erasure of their own African diasporic existences.The work of embracing Afro-Latino identity is a work for cultural survival and connection.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2010, 2.5 percent of the 54 million Latinos living in the United States co-identified as black. Many Latinos say that number is a significant undercount. Nicholas Jones, chief of the Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch said, “I believe that what we’re hearing from the Afro-Latino community is that they do not believe that those numbers accurately illustrate the Afro-Latino community presence in the United States, and that’s the dialogue that we’re having.”

In the same census, over half of Latinos also identified themselves as white and 36 percent marked themselves as “some other race.”…

Read the entire article here.