Black, White, and Beyond: Racial Identity in the United States

Black, White, and Beyond:

Racial Identity in the United States

            Children do not seem to have a very good understanding of ethnicity or race, myself included. When I was little, I thought there were only two races, black and white, and since I wasn’t black, I must’ve been white, it just seemed so simple, and the issue never really came up so I was never corrected. That is, until one day I asked my mom what race we were, and imagine my shock when she tells me “Oh, we’re Mexican mijo.” It was mind boggling, I always saw myself as an American, and that was usually synonymous with white, so of course, I thought I was white, rather than black, I didn’t even know there was a third option, let a lone a fourth and fifth. As I grew, race became much more apparent to me, along with black and white, there was Latino, Asian, Arab, Native American, and so much more, and yet, I was incredibly surprised to learn through this course that my original white-black polarization view is actually very prominent in American society when identifying people by their race. And when you add in people of mixed race and ethnicities, I began to realize that ethnic identity was not as simple as I had originally thought.

            People in the Afro-Latino community seem to have a really rough time with the issue of race. If say, a Puerto Rican of African decent were to immigrate to the United States, U.S. natives would have trouble identifying what he is, or at least have trouble putting a label on it. As stated before, there is a sort of long standing white-black polarization in the U.S., so natives would often try to fit people of mixed heritage into one of those categories if they can, so this Afro-Puerto Rican who at first glance looks like an African American, would probably be written off as just black by most. However, even though most “white” people would see this person as just black, other African Americans may not be so welcoming to this Afro-Latino. While he or she may look black, the fact that they speak Spanish, come from a Latin country, and were largely engrossed in a Latino culture, members of the African American community may call this person “not really black”, despite legitimately being of African descent.

Similarly, people in the Latino community would also treat this person as a “low man on the totem pole”, considering him or her as less Latino because he or she was of African descent (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBaPG14cdkM). This is actually a very prominent trend in the Latino community, Latino/Hispanic is actually a very mixed race, and it is often stigmatized to acknowledge ones “negro” roots in favor of pointing out their European roots, especially if they are light skinned Latinos (https://webcourses.niu.edu/bbcswebdav/library/eReserves/20152-ILAS-100-----1/suebma.pdf). This is even present in my own family, my mother and aunt are both light skinned, and while my mother doesn’t really care about such things, my aunt is “thankful” that she and her children are light skinned; so what, if being light skinned is something to be thankful for, does that mean being dark skinned is something to be ashamed of? The issue of race is not a simple one, it is highly present in the lives of all, but at the end of the day it is up to the individual to decide how they identify themselves, and however that may be, they should take pride in it.