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Exactly! NYWriterDude is missing the mark on this one. My experience with this is more anecdotal than empirical but that's only because there aren't a lot of popular studies done on these issues within the Spanish speaking communities. In reference to what NYWD was talking about, I understand one or two people from any group do not represent an entire group of people. On the other hand, when I interact wtih dozens and dozens of a group of a people over decades who live in different areas, don't know each other, and aren't from the same country and yet I notice the same trends among them, I have to attribute it to the culture of said group of people. A longtime, close friend of mine is PR.
I know (some whom I was close to) or had associations with numerous individuals or families from these places: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Columbia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina.
If they look like J.Lo, Selena Gomez, Sophia Vergas they're White. If they look like Zoe Saldana or even a slight-barely-there-caramel-color, they're considered "BLACK" by their family and community and get teased. Most of the time it's not as malicious as Caucasian White Supremacy mockery of Black/darkskin. They're not going to hang up a noose or burn down a Black church over it but more like back in the day when people were teased for being fat or having four-eyes. In other words, you're at the bottom of the social-hierarchy totem pole. Hispanics/Latinas who are the skintone of J.LO, Selena, etc do not get teased for their color.
Black is associated with African so anything Black/African is the bottom of the racial hierarchy in their estimation. Even with the ones that look "Black", 9 out of 10 then will vehemently deny having an "African" background whatsoever. According to them, their ancestry hails from Spain. I've had this experiences with individuals like this on numerous occasions.
Heck, I've even had some claim INDIGENOUS ancestry to avoid having to admit any African related mixture regardless that a lot of their religious practices mixes Christianity/Catholicism with African animist, spiritual, and orishas/diety beliefs. If they're from indigenous backgrounds as they claim, I wonder why they're practicing African religions (imported to the New World) instead of indigenous (Native to the New World) spiritual practices?
Are there a few Black Hispanics/Latinos who admit having African ancestry? Yes, I've met ONE (she looked like a light skin BW) years ago and I was shocked to hear her admit it! She was a singer/spoken-word artist in NYC. The ones who will claim it are far and few in between.
NYWD keeps mentioning the late Celia Cruz. She was Cuban and again had no choice but to identify according to her phenotype. You know White Cubans weren't having her or anyone who look like her to identify as straight Cuban the same as they are. She and Cubans who looked like her had no choice but to acknowledge being AFRO-Cuban. The media made sure that qualifier was there - - like the mark of Cain.
Your post is excellent! I should also note that my girlfriend is Hispanic (Dominican) and not exactly light either. She is often mistaken as being a darker skinned Arab but certainly not white. Within her family the shade tones differ considerably. A good portion of my friends are Hispanic, from different countries and all vary in range. Some can easily pass for white. Others are clearly mixed with black. The thing is even the dark ones will claim their indigenous roots over their black ones because having taino ancestry is still viewed as being better than being black. My girlfriend is a mix of the three (white, taino and black) and you can certainly see the black in her in terms of her features but she doesn't have "pelo malo" as Dominicans would say, and her features are in line with tainos, but I'm not that stupid not to know that she doesn't have black in her and she admits it. Her mother and father interestingly enough have more of a taino look but there is clearly black lineage there, not because of skin color but the features. Black and taino is definitely a mixture that is overlooked. Even some Mexicans have such a mixture but you don't hear much about it because it's swept under the rug. Plenty of them near the coastal areas in Mexico where they have mixed into the population.
I don't mind living around ghetto people. Its the gangs/criminals that were my problem. So to the extent that gentrification pushed them out (and, yes, it most certainly did throughout Prospect Heights and much of Crown Heights North . . . I could point you to several old crips hangout spots along Underhill, Washington, etc.), I'm happy.
Your post is excellent! I should also note that my girlfriend is Hispanic (Dominican) and not exactly light either. She is often mistaken as being a darker skinned Arab but certainly not white. Within her family the shade tones differ considerably. A good portion of my friends are Hispanic, from different countries and all vary in range. Some can easily pass for white. Others are clearly mixed with black. The thing is even the dark ones will claim their indigenous roots over their black ones because having taino ancestry is still viewed as being better than being black. My girlfriend is a mix of the three (white, taino and black) and you can certainly see the black in her in terms of her features but she doesn't have "pelo malo" as Dominicans would say, and her features are in line with tainos, but I'm not that stupid not to know that she doesn't have black in her and she admits it. Her mother and father interestingly enough have more of a taino look but there is clearly black lineage there, not because of skin color but the features. Black and taino is definitely a mixture that is overlooked. Even some Mexicans have such a mixture but you don't hear much about it because it's swept under the rug. Plenty of them near the coastal areas in Mexico where they have mixed into the population.
In recent years it's come out a lot more in Mexican culture till the Mexican government took note on the census and counted Mexicans who identify as Black or Afro Mexican or whatever you call it. Out of I think 107 million people there was something like 1.3 million Afro Mexicans/Blacks. I may be slightly off on the figures, but they were close to that.
Exactly! NYWriterDude is missing the mark on this one. This is about Hispanics/Latinos in the USA. My experience with this is more anecdotal than empirical but that's only because there aren't a lot of popular studies done on these issues within the Spanish speaking communities. In reference to what NYWD was talking about, I understand one or two people from any group do not represent an entire group of people. On the other hand, when I interact with dozens and dozens of a group of a people over decades who live in different arease country, don't know each other, and they aren't all from the same country and yet I notice the same trends among them, I have to attribute it to the culture of said group of people. Not to mention, a longtime close friend of mine is PR (born and raised in L.I).
I know (some whom I was close to) or had associations with numerous individuals or families from these places: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Columbia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina.
If they look like J.Lo, Selena Gomez, Sophia Vergas they're White. If they look like Zoe Saldana or even a slight-barely-there-caramel-color, they're considered "BLACK" by their family and community and get teased. Most of the time it's not as malicious as Caucasian White Supremacy mockery of Black/darkskin. They're not going to hang up a noose or burn down a Black church over it but more like back in the day when people were teased for being fat or having four-eyes. In other words, you're at the bottom of the social-hierarchy totem pole. Hispanics/Latinas who are the skintone of J.LO, Selena, etc do not get teased for their color.
Black is associated with African so anything Black/African is the bottom of the racial hierarchy in their estimation. Even with the ones that look "Black", 9 out of 10 then will vehemently deny having an "African" background whatsoever. According to them, their ancestry hails from Spain. I've had experiences with individuals like this on numerous occasions.
Heck, I've even had some claim INDIGENOUS ancestry to avoid having to admit any African related mixture regardless that a lot of their religious practices mixes Christianity/Catholicism with African animist, spiritual, and orishas/diety beliefs. If they're from indigenous backgrounds as they claim, I wonder why they're practicing African religions (imported to the New World) instead of indigenous (Native to the New World) spiritual practices?
Are there a few Black Hispanics/Latinos who admit having African ancestry? Yes, I've met ONE (she looked like a light skin BW) years ago and I was shocked to hear her admit it! She was a singer/spoken-word artist in NYC. The ones who will claim it are far and few in between.
NYWD keeps mentioning the late Celia Cruz. She was Cuban and again had no choice but to identify according to her phenotype. You know White Cubans weren't having her or anyone who look like her to identify as straight Cuban the same as they are. She and Cubans who looked like her had no choice but to acknowledge being AFRO-Cuban. The media made sure that qualifier was there - - like the mark of Cain.
In order to speak on Latinos in the US, you need to have CONTEXT on Latin American culture in Latin America, and yes speaking Spanish helps.
In Spanish speaking contexts when people call family and friends people negra or morena, they are not being malicious. Latinos, in Latin America and in the US will call friends and relatives how they perceive them so if someone is really white or blond they will call the person mono (can also mean monkey) and there's also calling Asians ,or anyone with slanted eyes of any race chino. Anyone with long black hair and brown skin indio.
African Americans sometimes have difficulty leaving their own racial issues behind, and misinterpret things that they don't understand about Latinos because they have NO KNOWLEDGE of the CULTURE, and NO CONTEXT.
And by the way, I've lived in Latino neighborhoods in ways a non Spanish speaking African American hasn't.
Your post is excellent! I should also note that my girlfriend is Hispanic (Dominican) and not exactly light either. She is often mistaken as being a darker skinned Arab but certainly not white. Within her family the shade tones differ considerably. A good portion of my friends are Hispanic, from different countries and all vary in range. Some can easily pass for white. Others are clearly mixed with black. The thing is even the dark ones will claim their indigenous roots over their black ones because having taino ancestry is still viewed as being better than being black. My girlfriend is a mix of the three (white, taino and black) and you can certainly see the black in her in terms of her features but she doesn't have "pelo malo" as Dominicans would say, and her features are in line with tainos, but I'm not that stupid not to know that she doesn't have black in her and she admits it. Her mother and father interestingly enough have more of a taino look but there is clearly black lineage there, not because of skin color but the features. Black and taino is definitely a mixture that is overlooked. Even some Mexicans have such a mixture but you don't hear much about it because it's swept under the rug. Plenty of them near the coastal areas in Mexico where they have mixed into the population.
Oh, Black Americans talk about bad hair and good hair too. There's a reason why many Black women wear weaves.........
And Michael Jackson was hardly the first Black American to bleach themselves. Notice how many successful Black Americans marry white people? (I am not claiming there's anything wrong with interracial relationships by the way, etc).
When I was a kid (this has changed), African was used as a perojative way among African Americans (someone is so Black they look like an African, someone looks like a gorilla). There was a lot of internalized racism among African Americans and there really still is.
Do you have this among Afro-Latinos? Yes, you do.
As for denying downplaying Black ancestry. I once spoke to an African American guy from Tennessee. Dude told me he was English, Scottish, Irish, and a touch of Native American. I asked if there was any African ancestry . The dude was as Black as Clarence Thomas, as in you can't get any Blacker, complete with stereotypical Black features and hair. He later put in blue contacts and bleached his hair. He's not the only other very dark skinned Black American who denied being Black. Of course lil Kim, Michael Jackson, and Vanessa Williams all bleached their skin (so did Sammy Sosa). I once met a girl from Louisana. Black. Her skin color was medium brown. Like Vivica Fox. We were talking to someone and she said her family was France. She was African American. I asked if there was African ancestry is there. She was like, "Oh well".
Some very Black Jamaicans will deny being descended from African slaves, and will say they are Native to the area.
So back to Black Dominicans and other Afro Latinos. Are there people who deny or downplay African ancestry? Of course. But there is very true of African Americans and Caribbeans as well.
So back to what I said earlier, an African American who rants about Black Latinos supposedly wanting to have nothing to do with their African heritage needs to turn back the mirror and look at all the African Americans who feel the same. Look at all the ones who get some cash and get rid of their "ugly" African features (plastic surgery, skin bleaches). And I'm not saying Black features are ugly, only many African Americans do think so.
In fact, the self hatred and lack of regards for themselves is a big factor in why African Americans butcher themselves in the hood, as parents full of shame about their Blackness abuse their children and otherwise neglect them.
If I am blatantly honest about how I feel, and what the hell, I might as well be. Of course I've known many working class, middle class, and even well off African Americans.
With that said, I cannot deny that the worst neighborhoods in a city are specifically AFRICAN AMERICAN. Not that there isn't crime among Dominicans or other immigrant Black people, because there certainly is. But look at Harlem, full of Black Latinos and Africans. It's much better than the poor African American parts of Brooklyn. I don't think any immigrant came to America and would want to raise their children around that, and I do perfectly understand because you could not pay me to live in East New York or Brownsville (they have a lot of ghetto that would need to be displaced, much worse than Harlem or Bedstuy and even in the 90s Brownsville and ENY were still worse than do or die Bedstuy.)
The worst African American neighborhoods are so bad I've known people to refuse to visit their relatives who live in them. Harlem and Bedstuy because they are gentrifying, have a hipster vibe to them and are cool Black neighborhoods, and the South Bronx is starting to pick that up.
But back to Black Latinos, yes, in the context of their communities they are called and call themselves various names that mean Black. But given the vast African American underclass in parts of the city, yes immigrants do distance themselves from that. But so do middle class and above African Americans.
And I'm not saying all Black immigrants hate African Americans, and there's actually a lot of intermarriage and all. But I gave the reasons why people distance themselves from the African American underclass.
Oh, Black Americans talk about bad hair and good hair too. There's a reason why many Black women wear weaves.........
And Michael Jackson was hardly the first Black American to bleach themselves. Notice how many successful Black Americans marry white people? (I am not claiming there's anything wrong with interracial relationships by the way, etc).
When I was a kid (this has changed), African was used as a perojative way among African Americans (someone is so Black they look like an African, someone looks like a gorilla). There was a lot of internalized racism among African Americans and there really still is.
Do you have this among Afro-Latinos? Yes, you do.
As for denying downplaying Black ancestry. I once spoke to an African American guy from Tennessee. Dude told me he was English, Scottish, Irish, and a touch of Native American. I asked if there was any African ancestry . The dude was as Black as Clarence Thomas, as in you can't get any Blacker, complete with stereotypical Black features and hair. He later put in blue contacts and bleached his hair. He's not the only other very dark skinned Black American who denied being Black. Of course lil Kim, Michael Jackson, and Vanessa Williams all bleached their skin (so did Sammy Sosa). I once met a girl from Louisana. Black. Her skin color was medium brown. Like Vivica Fox. We were talking to someone and she said her family was France. She was African American. I asked if there was African ancestry is there. She was like, "Oh well".
Some very Black Jamaicans will deny being descended from African slaves, and will say they are Native to the area.
So back to Black Dominicans and other Afro Latinos. Are there people who deny or downplay African ancestry? Of course. But there is very true of African Americans and Caribbeans as well.
So back to what I said earlier, an African American who rants about Black Latinos supposedly wanting to have nothing to do with their African heritage needs to turn back the mirror and look at all the African Americans who feel the same. Look at all the ones who get some cash and get rid of their "ugly" African features (plastic surgery, skin bleaches). And I'm not saying Black features are ugly, only many African Americans do think so.
In fact, the self hatred and lack of regards for themselves is a big factor in why African Americans butcher themselves in the hood, as parents full of shame about their Blackness abuse their children and otherwise neglect them.
All of this is true. However, I disagree about having to speak Spanish to understand Hispanics. I do speak Spanish which allows me to dig deeper than non-Spanish speakers, but it doesn't take rocket science to observe what Klassyhk speaks about. My girlfriend and I speak about it regularly. She is into the black part of her roots though sometimes I think she goes overboard with it loving everything black, but it's good to see people acknowledge their roots.
All of this is true. However, I disagree about having to speak Spanish to understand Hispanics. I do speak Spanish which allows me to dig deeper than non-Spanish speakers, but it doesn't take rocket science to observe what Klassyhk speaks about. My girlfriend and I speak about it regularly. She is into the black part of her roots though sometimes I think she goes overboard with it loving everything black, but it's good to see people acknowledge their roots.
Yet Kassyhk seemingly had on blinders when it comes to African Americans denying or downplay African heritage, or using plastic surgery, bleaching, hair straighteners, and contacts lenses to alter their appearances because quite clearly some don't want to look like Africans.
So that's part of my contention with what she said.
The other part of my contention is in the majority of cases when Spanish people refer to someone by the color, it is not mocking and they do this not with just Black latinos, but with all Latinos based on appearances. Klassyhk somewhat misinterprets this because of her own baggage with racial issues.
Yet Kassyhk seemingly had on blinders when it comes to African Americans denying or downplay African heritage, or using plastic surgery, bleaching, hair straighteners, and contacts lenses to alter their appearances because quite clearly some don't want to look like Africans.
So that's part of my contention with what she said.
The other part of my contention is in the majority of cases when Spanish people refer to someone by the color, it is not mocking and they do this not with just Black latinos, but with all Latinos based on appearances. Klassyhk somewhat misinterprets this because of her own baggage with racial issues.
I don't know if that's the case. The older Hispanics in particular, I found some to be quite racist and condescending, and we can use the Dominicans as an example. When they first starting immigrating here in large numbers, they really thought they were hot stuff (as in superior to black people), and I know this because I witnessed it first hand even in college with younger Dominicans. I had a lot of Dominican friends and some of the things they would say about black people (often times in Spanish or in English) was eye opening, but for them they didn't think it was racist. They would laugh as if it was funny. Regarding blacks having skeletons in their closet, there's no denying that either.
If you can get eight out of ten customers to pay two-dollars more for bread you can get one-hundred-percent of stores to charge two-dollars more and the one to two people out of ten to force-migrate because their net-income becomes depleted by exponential cost-of-living. This is how gentrification actually works..
My experience: To and From NY every few years since the 80s and years of sociology and pure economics R&D. I make money from marketing.
The real reason it won't go away: Trust-fund babies and disposable-capital types laugh at the concepts of society and work, and NY has industry..
How the poor people have adapted: Division of cost of living. Multiple people in $2,000.00+/Month apartments taking public transportation.
What will happen to projects: Prison and eventual force-migration; welfare doesn't adjust to market trends and the people who stay there can't conform to the culture of the people who can gain employment in Manhattan. It's not a race or sex thing.. A pretty black women who is lesbian can walk in to over half the places in Manhattan and get hired quite quickly making an impressive salary with no experience.. Human nature..
This is for all the people in this thread and the harlem-crime thread who never bothered to learn how currency, society, and economics work.. Don't like something I've said here? Good luck telling rich people they can't have something without breaking a law.. The CIA even has their own Mexican drug cartel to make sure they get everything they want.. As others have pointed out: If your taxes have five digits in the boxes you have no say.. Complain and become a criminal extremist..
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