Why Black Latinos say they live in two worlds: ‘We are here and we are also invisible’

Marie Nubia-Feliciano wanted to know about Latino student organizations when she arrived at UC Irvine in 1990 and visited the school’s multicultural center.

Before she could finish her inquiry, Nubia-Feliciano, an Afro-Borinqueña who presents as Black, was told by a student: “The Black student organization is a couple of doors down.”

When Nubia-Feliciano attended her first meeting with the Latino group, students asked her questions about where her parents were born, what music she listened to and whether she spoke Spanish.

Those lines of questioning, or what she refers to as “cultural litmus tests,” still occur today.

“I can walk into a room of African American people and I look like I belong, but I won’t know what to do because, culturally, I’m different,” said the Puerto Rico native. “I walk into a room full of Latinos and I know what to do, but I don’t look like I belong.”

Her feeling of not quite belonging is common among Black Latinos, who make up about a quarter of U.S. Hispanics.

Some also have felt overlooked in the national dialogue on racial justice that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police.

“We are here and we are also invisible,” said Alejandro Gutierrez-Duncan, 36, of Elk Grove, who identifies as Afro-Bolivian. “Sometimes (we) just get lost in the conversation”

Gutierrez-Duncan, a high school Spanish teacher, launched a podcast four years ago that focused on Afro-Latino issues. His podcast, which spanned dozens of episodes, touched on topics like media representation, African communities in Colombia and colorism, the discrimination of people with dark skin tones that is often perpetuated by people in the same ethnic or racial group.

In the classroom, he has taught students that many Latinos have African roots. In social settings, he feels he is mostly seen as a Latino, with no acknowledgment of his Blackness.

Slogans like “Latinos for Black Lives Matter,” he said, can “take away the narrative that in our own countries, we have Black people.”

Who identifies as Afro-Latino?

The U.S. Census Bureau classifies Latinos or Hispanics as someone of “Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.”

While many Latinos prefer to be referred to by their family’s country of origin, identifying a Latino’s race is complicated and multifaceted.

About one-quarter of U.S. Hispanics identify as Afro-Latino, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey. U.S. Latinos with Caribbean roots are more likely to identify as Afro-Latino and more likely to live on the East Coast or in the South, the survey found.

During Latin America’s colonial era, approximately 15 times as many African slaves were sent to Spanish and Portuguese colonies than the U.S., resulting in mixing among indigenous people, white Europeans and African slaves, Pew Research Center researchers wrote in their analysis.

Today, in Latin America, countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico contain the most African descendants. It wasn’t until 2015, for example, that Mexico began to allow Mexicans to identify as Afro-Latino in its census.

Jasmine Haywood, who has previously researched anti-Black racism among Latinos, said it’s common for Latinos to be talked about as a “raceless” or monolithic population when they are in fact a very diverse community.

“It’s taboo to acknowledge race. It’s taboo to acknowledge racism even though it’s very clear and very evident how that shows up in the Latino community,” Haywood said.

Haywood, who identifies as an Afro-Puerto Rican, said some Latinos grew up in households where physical traits like straight hair and Eurocentric features were preferred and the phrase “mejorar la raza” or “improve the race” was commonplace, which means marrying a whiter person in order to have light-skinned children.

Black Lives Matter

Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California, said the Black Lives Matter Movement has prompted calls for solidarity between Blacks and Latinos, who have also dealt with similar policing issues.

While Latinos are not as disproportionately impacted by police killings as Black people, Latinos are still more likely to be killed by police than white people, according to a 2020 police violence database by Mapping Police Violence, a research group.

In 2020, Latinos made up 17% of the U.S. population, but accounted for 21% of police killings, the database showed.

One of the most visible Afro-Latino figures last year was Omar Jimenez, a CNN reporter who was arrested by the Minnesota State Patrol during a live television broadcast covering the Floyd protests, despite identifying himself as a journalist.

“Ask any Black- or Afro-Latino — they will tell you about numerous experiences of being and feeling discriminated against,” Pastor said.

“There’s also a little bit of (feeling) invisible and not seen by the Latino community, but then not always seen by the African American community either.”

Nubia-Feliciano, 51, now a lecturer at Chapman University and UC Irvine, said she has seen some progress to acknowledge Afro-Latinos after the university emphasized the experience of Afro-Latinos during Hispanic Heritage Month last year.

But she is skeptical that it will last.

“Old habits are hard to break,” she said. “I still feel a little lost in the mix.”

This story was originally published June 7, 2021 at 5:25 AM with the headline "Why Black Latinos say they live in two worlds: ‘We are here and we are also invisible’."