Professor Tanya Hernandez wrote an op-ed for Al Dia on Afro-Latinos in the United States and the discrimination they face from the Latino community.
The existence of Afro-Latinos and the discrimination they face in the United States can be mystifying for many people. This is in part because U.S. Blackness is primarily conceived of as embodied solely by English-speaking African Americans. In turn, anti-Blackness is popularly understood as a uniquely U.S. phenomenon affecting those English-speaking African Americans (with occasional recognition of the racialized struggles of Africans and others in the African diaspora).
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In short, discrimination stories help to illuminate the contours of Latino anti-Blackness because it is the public space dedicated to exposing and naming the harms of racism. Given the state of denial and confusion about the existence of Latino anti-Black bias and Afro-Latinos amidst demonstrable harms to Black bodies caused by Latinos, it is more important than ever to take notice of Afro-Latino voices.
