opinion
Afro Latinos: Everywhere, Yet Invisible
“challenging People to Shape
a better Future now”
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L
ast year, during a discussion
on increasing the number of
African Americans in Major
League Baseball, Angel’s center-
fielder Torii Hunter in a USA
Today interview called the dark-
skinned Latino baseball players
“imposters” and said they are not
Black.
Hunter’s comments strike at the
heart of an issue that is one reason
scholar Miriam Jimenez Roman is
undertaking a three-day confer-
ence called “Afro Latinos Now!
Strategies for Visibility and
Action,” on Nov. 3-5 in New York
that will be the biggest such effort
her organization, The AfroLatin@
Forum, has undertaken.
“This is the first time we have
done such a comprehensive event
where we discuss Afro Latinos
specifically. We’re going to look
at the state of the field and where
we want to be, and there is going
to be a heavy emphasis on youth,
especially those in middle school
years.”
Jimenez Roman says the confu-
sion Hunter demonstrated about
the connection between Africans
born in Latin America and those
born in the United States is partic-
ularly acute for U.S.-based 11- to
15-year-old Afro Latinos. In the
context of a racist society like
America, they are not only strug-
gling to figure out how they feel
about themselves, but also how
they connect in relation to others,
especially African Americans.
There are millions of Afro
Latinos in America who live their
lives in what is essentially a
“Black” context but identify them-
selves as White, because of the
perceived stigma of being African
American, said Jimenez Roman,
who last year came to the West
Coast promoting her newly
released book “Afro-Latino
Reader,” co-edited with Juan
o ur W eeklY / nnPa
Cynthia Griffin
Flores. The 584-page publication,
which grew out of the notes the
two professors always pulled
together for classes they taught,
explores people of African descent
from Latin America and the
Caribbean.
“In the Latino community, we
tend not to talk about race; it’s in
poor taste to bring up race and
Bolivia, for example, there are
Black communities in the moun-
tains. They are totally isolated and
ignored.”
But in reality, Afro Latinos are
everywhere in Latin America as
they are in the United States, says
the head of the AfroLatin@
Forum.
In Los Angeles, there is large
community of Garifuna people
and many Afro Mexicans in
Pasadena.
The Garifuna are found primari-
ly in Central America along the
Struggles with self-image, assimilation
mirror Black American experience
racism. It’s the notion of com-
plaining. If you make a big deal
out of it, you are the problem, and
they say you’re playing the race
card,” explained Jimenez Roman,
who is of Afro Puerto Rican back-
ground, and noted that during
book events, African Americans
were much more receptive to the
reader than were Afro Latinos.
She attributes that to a dichoto-
my about race many Afro Latinos
experience in their countries of
origin.
“There is the idea that Latino
culture is Mestizo and European
and Indian, and Black people
don’t belong,” said the race and
ethnicity professor about how
many Latin American countries
think about themselves. In fact,
Latinos of African descent have
been in many countries for at least
200 years.
If they do acknowledge their
Black citizens, Jimenez Roman
said officials will say “they all live
on the coast.”
“This isolates them. Or in
Caribbean coast in Belize,
Guatemala,
Nicaragua
and
Honduras, and are descendants of
shipwrecked slaves who intermar-
ried with the Carib Indians on the
island of St. Vincent.
Both the British and French tried
to colonize the island, but were
initially rebuffed by the inhabi-
tants. By 1796, however, the
British were victorious in gaining
control and shipped Black-looking
Caribs to Roatán, an island off the
coast of Honduras. Only about
2,500 survived the voyage.
Because the island was too small
and infertile to support their popu-
lation, the Garifuna, originally
called the Garinagu, petitioned the
Spanish authorities to be allowed
to settle on the mainland.
New York has the largest
Garifuna population, heavily dom-
inated
by
Hondurans,
Guatemalans and Belizeans. Los
Angeles ranks second and is popu-
lated by the Belizean Garifuna.
The City of Angels is also home
to a growing number of Afro
Mexicans who have both a con-
temporary and historical space in
the city.
According to Alva Stevenson,
program coordinator with the
UCLA Department of Special
Collections, who has spent the last
12 years researching and lecturing
about Afro Mexicans, there were
some Afro Mexicans in California
in the early days prior to state-
hood, including the Pico family.
Two of the most prominent
members of the Pico clan, Pio and
Andres were intimately involved
in the development of the region
and the state. Both were business-
men who amassed fortunes from
their various ventures, including a
hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Both also served as key political
figures—Pio as the last Mexican
governor of California and Andres
as a member of the Assembly once
California gained statehood.
Reminders of their presence today
include a major thoroughfare, Pico
Boulevard, named in honor of Pio.
Their paternal grandmother,
María Jacinta de la Bastida, was
listed in the 1790 census as mula-
ta.
Stevenson said what is important
to note is that the Pico family orig-
inated from a town in Mexico,
Sinaloa, where two-thirds of the
inhabitants were of African
descent. And that sort of mixing
was not unusual.
“In fact, a professor did a DNA
study (in the last 20 years) in
Northern Mexico and found that
two-thirds of the people living in
the region have African ancestry,”
Stevenson said.
Sinaloa was also one of the areas
where the 44 Mexican settlers who
helped found Los Angeles came
from.
Read the rest online at
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One in Three African Americans are Broke
T
he first Friday of the month
is a day when economists
like me are riveted to the
news. We want to know what’s
up with the unemployment rate,
and with the changes that have
taken place in the last
month.
Last week, our nation
learned
that
we
treaded
water. The unemployment rate
remained at a high of 9.1 percent,
8 percent for white folks, and 16
percent for Black folks. Some
pundits were jazzed at the rates,
thinking that they meant we are
doing okay. What’s okay? The
real unemployment rate for
African Americans is close to thir-
ty percent.
This means that a third of the
Black world is not working. This
means that there are too many
Black folks who are tripping. This
means that too many are managing
pain. And with the Congress
ignoring the reality, failing to offer
the relief from the jobs bill, this
means that nobody cares.
I hear from people all the
time. Their stories are heart ren-
dering. They talk about the lives
they once had, the lives the now
have. Once upon a time, they had
homes, mortgages, and opportuni-
ties. Now they have lost jobs,
Page 4 The Portland Skanner october 12, 2011
b enneTT
c ollege
Julianne
Malveaux
homes, and their opportuni-
ties. They are the folks that stand
in the middle of the statistics. We
unemployed and nobody really
cares.
Go to church and count it
out. If there are three people hud-
dled over water, one of them is
unemployed. If there are three
people passing out programs, one
of them is unemployed. If there
are three people, or four, or five,
or six, this pox called unemploy-
ment has visited them. Who is he,
who is she? Mother, father, broth-
er. Sister, somebody who brought
One in three African Americans are
broke with no employment in sight
know the numbers, but we don’t
know their pain.
The pain is more acute for
African Americans than it is for
others. President Obama has not
fully addressed that, although his
spirited anger at the recent
Congressional Black Caucus din-
ner was a great step in the right
direction. Still, I have to think
that if there were a crisis in
Appalachia or in New Mexico,
there would be a more invigorated
response. Instead, Black folks are
a quarter to the table, and the quar-
ter isn’t there, not anymore.
In order to just stay even, our
nation needs to generate 275,000
jobs each month. Last month, a
month where some celebrated our
“progress”, we generated just
103,000 jobs. We aren’t moving
ahead, we are falling behind. Our
reality is that the jobs market is
broken and nobody wants to fix it.
Instead, we see a nation at polit-
ical gridlock. The congressional
republicans don’t want to pass the
President’s jobs bill, and they have
offered few alternatives. So we
sit and wait to see if anyone will
break the gridlock that keeps our
legislators
from
moving
forward. This is drama, it is trau-
ma, it is bless you, mama, cause it
is overtime for there to be some
forward movement.
Perhaps this is not an issue for
those whose constituency is enjoy-
ing a 9.1 percent unemployment
rate. But there are too many who
are experiencing much more than
that. Throw a stone into the Black
community. See who it hits. It is
one in three, one in three, one in
three. What that means is that the
pox called unemployment affects
everyone. When the reality of
worklessness hits so so many, the
fact is that it affects us all.
The numbers come out every
first Friday. The reality visits our
community each and every
day. One in three adult African
Americans cannot find work. This
is a depression level unemploy-
ment rate. People are hurting, but
nobody really cares. One in three.
One in three. One in three.
Julianne Malveaux is President
of Bennett College for women in
greensboro, north Carolina.