Black Latinos’ Double Burden

If Elian Gonzalez’s face was dark chocolate-colored and framed with soft, wooly hair, would the Cuban American community in Miami be as passionate about him?

I don’t think so. There is prejudice against those who are both Latino and black, those whose ancestors arrived from Africa on Spanish or Portuguese slave ships.

Living in Los Angeles, it might be easy to think that most Latinos are brown-skinned and of Mexican descent; after all, the majority of our city’s Latino population identify as Mexican.

On Spanish-language television networks, the majority of the Latino news anchors, reporters and actors are fair-skinned. Embracing mostly those Hispanics of European ancestry for the significant roles, we may see brown but rarely, if ever, do we see black Latinos.

While entertainers such as Cuban-born Celia Cruz and Mexican singer Tonia la Negra demonstrated long ago the duality of being both black and Latino, the Spanish stations in Los Angeles and the networks across the U.S. don’t seem to acknowledge this reality.

But Latin American scholars and historians agree that about 95% of the Africans forcibly brought to the Americas were brought to what is now Latin Aamerica. They are concentrated in the Caribbean, Colombia and Brazil, where half of the population is of African ancestry. And many dark-skinned Latinos also live in the United States.

Although the Hispanic community struggles along with African Americans for equality, it appears that even some Hispanic organizations discriminate on the basis of skin color.

Several years ago, five black Latino journalists came to me and the head of the local Black Media Coalition to gain support for their charges of discrimination against several Spanish-language broadcast outlets in Los Angeles. They alleged that although professionally qualified, they were not hired because of their dark skin. However, very few people cared and without any broad base of concern, they gave up.

National NAACP President Kweisi Mfume works to hold networks accountable for diversity, but so far, no one has voiced political concern in supporting the rights of Latinos of African descent within the Latino organizations.

A black Latina wrote recently in Hispanic Magazine that Latinos see blackness as a liability in this country, perpetuating the long-standing racism in South America. In Peru, blacks are still being used as ornamental images--chauffeurs, valets and servants, and blacks in Brazil are still considered marginal members of society.

We rave about Latin sounds, but even with the new devotion to the resurgence of Cuban music, I am disappointed that there is no discussion of the racism experienced by Ruben Gonzales, an Afro-Cuban pianist with the Buena Vista Social Club.

He writes in the notes accompanying his recent CD, “I played a lot with the orchestra of Los Hermanos Castro, even through they practiced what you might call a kind of apartheid. They always tried to have all white musicians . . . When I joined one of the big bands, they’d be saying behind my back to the director, ‘Couldn’t you find someone a little lighter? . . . Anyway, this isn’t any different from any other Latin American country.” In countless other Latin American countries, blacks are shut out of government positions of power. Television shows, news programs and magazines omit dark faces. Unfortunately, this lack of racial diversity illustrated in Spanish-language media in the United States reflects a deeper, insidious racial consciousness that continues to define and determine power and inequality among Hispanics by skin color.