Fordham Law Professor Tanya Katerí Hernández is quoted in this South Florida Times article, arguing that racial bias has influenced the attitude of Cuban Americans towards African Americans.
The Herald did not explore whether racial bias has influenced the attitude of Cuban Americans towards African Americans. Tanya Katerí Hernández would argue that it does. The AfroPuerto Rican, a Fordham University School of Law professor and graduate of Yale and Bown universities, published a book on the subject in 2022, “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle For Equality.”
Hernández knows of what she wrote. Her grandmother’s family had pressured Hernandez’s mother to put her newborn, who had dark skin and curly hair, up for adoption “as soon as possible, so that the girl’s complexion did not tarnish the ‘white’ lineage that the family had taken such care to protect, despite being descendants of Black and Indigenous enslaved peoples in Puerto Rico,” El Pais reported. Her mother refused and her own daughter – Tanya – was born with dark skin and curly hair.