This Is What It Means To Be Afro-Latino

February 25, 2015
Los Angeles

In a QA for his 2011 PBS documentary

There were 11.2 million Africans that we can count who survived a Middle Passage and landed in a New World, and of that 11.2 million, usually 450,000 came to a United States. Thatâ€™s amazing. All a rest went south of Miami as it were.

There’s no doubt that a intersection between Black and Latino temperament runs deep, and nonetheless a Afro-Latino believe stays mostly invisible in mainstream media. In respect of Black History Month, we asked HuffPost Latino Voices HuffPost Black Voices

We viewed dozens of responses and gathered a list of a favorites below. We also paid loyalty to a few of a many Afro-Latinos who’ve shabby American culture.

Roberto Clemente of a Pittsburgh Pirates slides behind into initial bottom while personification a Baltimore Orioles during a 1971 World Series October.

“Being Afro Latino is being a bridgebuilder, station precisely during a crossroads of vessel Africanism in a US. we am a unapproachable Black Panamanian! We exist! And we exist with a believe that Blackness is tellurian in a scope. No one has omnipotence on Blackness and we are a proof!” — Merrick Moise

“Afro-latino is not about being Black and Latino, Afro-Latina means to be a Black Latina/Latino hence since a tenure Afro-latino came about in a late 70â€™s. Since Latino is not a race, a unequivocally not even an secular group, it is fake to contend that folks are Black and Latino, we are racially Black and afterwards many impute to their ethnicity or i.e Afro-Boricua, Afro-Dominican. Often in a US Black becomes synomus [sic] with those that are African-American that afterwards does not take into comment a millions of african descendants, Black people globally that are in a universe and in a USA.” — Rosa Clemente

Singer Celia Cruz seemed as a low-pitched guest on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno in Jun 1992.

“It’s apparently about people who brand as Afro Latino…to mystify what it means to be black and Latino and any multiple since a farrago of black temperament is mostly oversimplified. Just since people are both doesn’t meant they are reduction of one…” — Sophia Raine Surage

Kadyn Velez

“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” author and MIT highbrow Junot Diaz.

“Everyone in puerto Rico is african too..just many cannot accept it.” — Elizabeth VelÃ¡zquez Romero

“Black is a secular group, while a vessel secular marker of ‘Latino’ refers to language, culture, and republic of origin. To be a Black Spanish orator in a Americas means to feel, taste, hear, see, etc a West African birthright during all times in a phenoytype, in a music, in a dance, in a rhythms, in a food, in a language/daily lexicon, etc. We are a phenomenon of a informative memory. Often overlooked, when a really aspects of a enlightenment that are praised as being ‘Latino’ come from a African change on a Americas. We broadcast a believe upheld on to us from a ancestors by a really being; a really act of us living, surviving, and abounding is an act of insurgency in a face of white leverage in both a United States and a rest of a Americas. Sometimes this means vital life on a hyphen, to steal from Professor Juan Flores, conjunction being viewed as ‘Black enough’ nor ‘Latino enough’…but we’re Afrodescendientes and proud.” — L.Tamar Minter

“I am black and Latina…I competence usually be HALF black, though we am still black. It is stupid to take honour in black story month nonetheless to singlehandedly bar those of us who are TREATED like blacks, nonetheless some of a black sisters and brothers exclude to accept us as one of ‘them’. As a biracial minority, we fastener with a consistent state of acceptance from both cultures.” — Olivia Love

soledad obrien
Journalist Soledad O’Brien receives a NAACP President’s Award in 2007.

“Yes being black and Latino is challenging, pleasing and unique. From flourishing adult stuffing out pursuit applications that asked if we was: White, Black, Hispanic, Hispanic not of African decent. Which left me carrying to select usually partial of who we am. To being told by my Black and white friends ‘your not Black your Cuban’. To also experiencing injustice from white Cubans from remarks they would make toward me though now during me. But when we would respond to those remarks in Spanish we would hear this ‘Ohh tu eres Cubano, perdon el mano’. As if now we became reduction black since we spoke Spanish.” — Roger Garcia

Actress Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson, a absolute handling partner of one of New York City’s many distinguished law firms, in USA’s “Suits.”