{"id":54666,"date":"2017-07-30T00:07:49","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T00:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54666"},"modified":"2017-07-30T17:35:51","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T17:35:51","slug":"we-need-to-talk-about-colorism-in-latinx-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54666","title":{"rendered":"Colorism In Latinx\u00a0Communities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colorism In Latinx\u00a0Communities<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Lumen Blog<\/a>
\n2015-07-16<\/p>\n

Yesenia Padilla<\/strong><\/a>
\nSan Diego, California<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I was absentmindedly scrolling through my Facebook feed when I noticed a meme a relative\u2014we\u2019ll call her Jenni\u2014posted. \u00a0\u201cLol,\u201d she wrote, \u201ctoo good not to share!\u201d The meme<\/a> was in English and Spanish, and read, \u201cWhen people tell me I look White [sic] not mexican [sic]\u201d then was followed by a litany (in Spanish) of talking-out-one\u2019s-neck insults to the hypothetical insulter:<\/p>\n

\u201cListen you tacky barefoot indian from the hills, not all Mexicans are the same dark-as-a-tire skin color as you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stared blankly at post as it collected likes, the \u201ctears of laugher\u201d emojis<\/a>, and \u201cjajaja<\/a>\u201d\u2019s piling up in the comments. I was shocked. Jenni posted this? My relative, who goes to protests for immigrant rights and anti-gentrification rallies, who knows all of our ita\u2019s traditional recipes, who listens almost exclusively to salsa and cumbias? Does this person who shares my blood feel this way about my brothers, and our cousins who are considerably darker than she? Does my family member feel this way about me?<\/p>\n

In posting this meme, my milk-white, freckled pariente Jenni was reproducing colorist attitudes and ideas that were not only accepted in Latinx communities but actively encouraged and enforced. It didn\u2019t matter that we grew up together in San Francisco<\/a>, one of the more liberal cities on the West Coast<\/a> (pre-tech boom, of course). Colorism<\/a>, the discrimination and prejudice of light-skinned People of Color (POC) against darker-skinned POC, has deep roots in Latinx communities and must be confronted…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the United States, colorism in our communities is not only manifested through anti-Black and anti-Indigenous attitudes, but also cooptation of Black and Indigenous movements to the benefit of lighter skinned Latinos. When I think about Jenni\u2019s Facebook post, I can understand her frustration toward the erasure of her cultural background through her ability to \u201cpass\u201d, but I wish she would see how lashing out at darker skinned latinas is only reinforcing white supremacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,14646,8,23674,20],"tags":[240,27388,27387,27386,24146],"class_list":["post-54666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-social-justice","category-usa","tag-colorism","tag-lumen","tag-lumen-blog","tag-the-lumen-blog","tag-yesenia-padilla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54666"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54675,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54666\/revisions\/54675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}