Fitting in (go figure!)
Black latinos can find race niches hard to accept
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Growing up in San Juan, Marisol Del Orbe, with caramel-colored skin and hair just crinkly enough to reveal a heritage touched by Africa, melded into a melange of multiple cultures. Many of them were in her own family.
With a Kenyan father and a Puerto Rican mom, Mrs. Del Orbe was a mestizo, one of the mixed-raced people who make up the mainstream in Puerto Rico, the country of her birth.
Mrs. Del Orbe loved and embraced all the strands of her heritage. She was never just black — until she came to this country. For her, and thousands of other black Latinos, coming to America can be culturally isolating as they suddenly find themselves put in rigid racial categories that don’t exist in their home countries.
The new identity that’s foisted upon dark-skinned Latinos “is weird,” she said, “because we’re black, but we’re not black.”
Initially categorized as black by their appearance, then as Latino by their accents, they often find discrimination from the mainstream and unease or even distrust from black Americans. They may feel separated from black people by music and social customs and by some black Americans who feel the Latinos are denying their African history. Many can’t fit easily into either culture here. (more…)
