Jasmine M Haywood. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Volume 30, Issue 10. 2017.
“My mom would joke around and say she was going to bathe me in milk. One of the jokes she used to say when I asked why I was darker than everybody else was that she left me in the oven for too long. Yeah. So, growing up I always wanted to be lighter skinned and I found myself not attractive because I was dark skinned.” — Author’s interview with an Afro-Dominican female
According to the national exit polls from the 2016 presidential election, Hilary Clinton received 65% of the Latino vote, in comparison to her opponent who received 29% of the Latino vote. While most Latinos did not vote for our current president, it is nevertheless astounding that one-third of Latinos in the United States supported an individual who referred to Mexicans as rapists, drug dealers, and ‘bad hombres’ (Moreno, 2016). While Hilary Clinton was not a perfect candidate the knowledge that one out of every three Latinos in this nation voted for a man who has repeatedly degraded, homogenized, and criminalized Latinos with his Trumpismo approach to politics is profoundly unsettling (Moreno, 2016). The current president’s approach to leadership was quickly dubbed Trumpismo within the first month of him taking office. According to Gillespie (2016), Trumpismo reeks of fascism and consists of violent language and authoritarian populism.
In this article, I will first describe the Latino population that voted for the current president and overview reasons as to why they voted for the current president. I purposefully center the anti-Black racism within the Latino community and focus specifically on recent political and nationwide events that are connected to anti-Black Latino racism. Additionally, I articulate two propositions for researchers to take into consideration in regards to the study of Latinos. The importance of articulating these assumptions is threefold: First, to bring light to the endemic nature of anti-Black Latino racism; second to allow for more nuanced representations of Latinos in empirical research; third and finally, to provide fertile ground for extending scholarly work to recognize the manifestations of anti-Black Latino racism.
Who Are Los Trumpistas?
The outcome of presidential elections is largely determined at the state level. The fraction of the electorate that voted for our current president in the state of Florida is higher than the national percentage. In Florida, 35% of Latinos voted for the Republican candidate, and of that 35%, more than half (54%) were Cuban (Krogstad & Flores, 2016). Thus, Cuban Americans were twice as likely as non-Cuban Latinos to vote for the Republican candidate. Given that Florida was a battleground state for the 2016 election, has one of the highest allocations of Electoral College votes, and 67% of the nation’s eligible Cuban voters reside in Florida, the Cuban vote was critical for this past election. However, the blame cannot be placed solely on Cuban Floridians.
The Cuban share of the Latino eligible voter population in Florida constitutes 31% and Puerto Ricans make up 28% (Krogstad & Flores, 2016). In California, the state with the largest percentage of Latino residents, a quarter of Latinos voted for our current president. Pantoja (2016) argues that the ten-point difference in Trumpistas between California and Florida is attributed to geographical differences and how state-level contexts influence primary concerns for Latinos. For example, the Latino population in California, which is overwhelmingly Mexican, is primarily concerned with immigration, whereas that is not a pressing concern for their counterparts in Florida for whom safety from terrorism ranks as their top concern (Pantoja, 2016). For example, Denise Galvez, co-founder of the organization, Latinas for Trump, is a Cuban-American based in Miami, Florida. Galvez (2016) considers herself ‘American first’ and shared that immigration is not a concern of hers because not all Latinos, ‘think [the current president] is racist’. Additionally, in regard to demographics, despite Galvez’s national organization, los Trumpistas are comprised of Latino males more than Latinas. As such, a closer look at the 2016 Latino eligible voter population paints a complex picture. In this way, disaggregated data—by race, ethnicity, geography, and gender—on Latinos are vital.
Why Are There Trumpistas?
One of the primary reasons that such a significant portion of Latinos support the current president stems from a taboo and unmentionable topic that most Latinos do not want to address—anti-Blackness. Rhetoric and practices of anti-Blackness within the Latino community are deep-seated and ingrained (Cruz-Janzen, 2003; 2007; Haywood, in press). For example, practices like blanqueamiento (whitening) and mestizaje (race mixing) are maintained as channels of upward mobility and white superiority (Adames & Chavez-Dueñas, 2016; Cruz-Janzen, 2007). This fact makes it difficult to expose and discuss because that would then mean we are exposing our parents, grandparents, siblings—or even worse—ourselves. Uncovering anti-Blackness amongst Latinos, some of which are of African descent themselves, can be uncomfortable and difficult. Nevertheless, for the liberation of all marginalized individuals to occur one must realize that all oppressions are entangled and interlocked.
The killing of an unarmed Black teenager, Trayvon Martin, and the resulting Black Lives Matter movement provides a good example of the embeddedness of anti-Black Latino racism. Half Peruvian, half monoracial white male, George Zimmerman, murdered Martin. Robert Zimmerman, the defendant’s father, asserted that due to George Zimmerman being half Peruvian the crime could not have been racially motivated (Stutzman, 2012). In a letter sent to the Orlando Sentennial, Robert Zimmerman stated, ‘George is a Spanish-speaking minority with many Black family members and friends. He would be the last to discriminate for any reason whatsoever’ (Stutzman, 2012). Interestingly, Zimmerman then claimed that he identified as Hispanic. In essence, Robert Zimmerman is claiming that Latinos cannot engage in racist acts. This is simply not true. The ‘I have a Black friend’ claim is all too common among well-meaning whites and does not disqualify one from being racist. The histories of countries in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean show myriad examples of anti-Black racist practices that were employed by Latinos (Acuña, 2014; Hall, 2011; Hunter, 2005; Ruiz, 2008). The killing of Trayvon Martin and acquittal of Zimmerman shows how a white Peruvian was able to benefit from White supremacy and in turn get away with murdering a Black boy. Following this case, many news articles and blog posts discussed the ways in which Zimmerman downplayed his Latino identity and gained access to Whiteness (Ahmed, 2013; Garcia, 2015; Latino Rebels, 2012; Vargas, 2014). A quick glance at the comments on these pieces proves that this point made many Latinos uncomfortable. Additionally, CNN was attacked for referring to Zimmerman as a ‘White Hispanic’ (Palanas, 2013, n.p.). The critics seemed to come from two camps. The first group consisted of Latinos that were upset that the mainstream media was attempting to frame the crime as one committed by a Latino towards a Black boy, concerned that their emphasis on his Latino identity would serve to cause more divisions between the Latino and Black communities. The other camp comprised Latinos who were offended that white was used in conjunction with Hispanic (Navarrette, 2013). In other words, naming the whiteness that some Latinos possess caused outrage.
Ruben Navarrette, a white presenting Latino himself, wrote the following in a CNN article: ‘Whatever the reason for using this term [white Hispanic], I don’t like it. And I don’t have any use for it. Are we now going to refer to people as white Hispanics and Black Hispanics?’ The refusal to name that fact that Zimmerman and others within the Latino community have access to light skin or white skin privilege and therefore benefit from colorism and in turn white supremacy is a large part of why anti-Black Latino racism persists. While light-skinned and white-skinned Latinos do not benefit from all of the privileges associated with whiteness, empirical studies have shown that they are better off educationally and socioeconomically in comparison to darker skinned Latinos (Arce, Murguia, & Frisbie, 1987; Espino & Franz, 2002; GóMez, 2000; Murguia & Telles, 1996; Telles & Murguia, 1990). The Story Institute (2016) took a series of photographs of the 29% of Latinos that represent Los Trumpistas. These first and second-generation Latinos from the Southern USA shared stories of ‘working hard’ and wanting the current president to ‘stop the flow of illegal immigrants’ (The Story Institute, 2016, n.p.). Thus, while one might think that Latinos would be improbable champions given the racist and anti-immigration rhetoric of Trumpismo, Trumpistas reveal a more complex reality. This reality is one in which Latinos have become victim to a colonized mentality and have internalized racial projects like the myth of meritocracy. Moreover, almost all of the Trumpistas showcased in this project are light or white-skinned. In this way, the elephant in the room is the ways in which light and white-skinned Latinos are used as pawns for white supremacy because they are non-threatening and visually palatable.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement coalesced in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin, and was principally organized by Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza in 2012 (Black Lives Matter, n.d.). BLM shepherded a national dialog and centered attention on anti-Black racism. An essential part of the movement is that it advocates for all Black lives concentrating on those who ‘have been marginalized within Black liberation movements’ (n.p.). This call-to-action inherently included Afro-Latino lives as well. Nevertheless, how many Latinos turn a blind-eye towards the BLM movement and conveniently tiptoe around standing in solidarity with those fighting for Black liberation? Similarly, how many Latinos condone the police killings of unarmed Black individuals in the USA?
Two Propositions for the Study of Latinos
In an attempt to disrupt Latino anti-Black racism I offer three propositions that should be taken into consideration by scholars conducting research around Latinos. As an Afro-Puerto Rican feminist researcher, I utilize both Black feminist thought (BFT) (Hill Collins, 1990) and Latina feminist thought (LFT) (Delgado Bernal, 1998) in theorizing these assumptions, reflecting the representation of elements of both traditions in articulating these considerations. I have also drawn on the critical race theory literature which complements and overlaps with BFT and LFT. The convergence of these three bodies of literature, along with recent events and my own lived experiences inside and outside of the academy, provides the primary context for conceptualizing and theorizing the following propositions:
- An essentialist approach to the study of Latinos is intricately linked to structures of domination
- Latinos can harbor internalized oppression due to white domination and a colonized mentality.
Proposition 1
There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives. Indigenous identities, much like other identities, simply cannot be separated out in this simplistic way (Lorde, 1984, p. 138).
Racial or ethnic essentialism suggests that there is one, monolithic Black experience or Latino experience (Harris, 1997). Essentialism reduces the lives of those that confront multiple forms of oppression and focuses on who possesses an authentic viewpoint and experience. For example, the belief that there is one Latino experience masks the racism that an African descendant Latino might experience and causes that story to be lost. An anti-essentialist perspective highlights the depth and uniqueness of each person’s story and recognizes that each person has a distinct and different lived experience of oppression. According to Harris (1990), essentialism stems from, ‘the second voice, the voice that claims to speak for all’ (p. 588). Harris (1990) offers three reasons as to why essentialism is pervasive:
Essentialism is intellectually convenient, and to a certain extent cognitively ingrained. Essentialism also carries with it important emotional and political payoffs. Finally, essentialism often appears (especially to white women) as the only alternative to chaos, mindless pluralism (the Funes trap), and the end of the feminist movement. (p. 589)
Thus, the consequence of the essentializing a particular group is that some voices are concealed so that others can be privileged. Black feminist, bell hooks (1991) reminds us that when minoritized groups do ‘employ essentialism as a way to dominate in institutional settings, they are often imitating paradigms for asserting subjectivity that are part of the controlling apparatus in structures of domination (p. 175).’ In this way, Latinos that assert a monolithic, simplistic view of the Latino population are doing so, oftentimes unknowingly, as a response to domination and colonization.
The essentialist approach to the study of Latinos in higher education is pervasive but covert. It invisibilizes, erases, and disregards the lives and experiences of Afro-Latinos and other Latinos that are impacted by interlocking systems of oppression. Researchers have rarely disaggregated data collected from Latino college students by ethnicity, in turn treating this population as a homogeneous group (e.g. Torres & Baxter Magolda, 2004; Torres & Hernandez, 2007). While the label of Latino is useful for showing intergroup comparisons, the problem is that within the higher education scholarship it does so at the expense of exploring the complexities of identities and interactions within the group. Distortions inherent in aggregate national, state, local, and institutional data on Latino students alters the diverse realities of Latino students in the USA and does not allow researchers to paint a full picture of their experience in higher education (Bensimon, Hao, & Bustillos, 2006). While generalizing and labeling the Latino experience can be a meaningful practice in terms of politics and providing unity, it should be explicit, conscious, and done with consideration. An anti-essentialist perspective requests, ‘that we define complex experiences as closely to their full complexity as possible and that we not ignore voices at the margin’ (Grillo, 2013, p. 22). As such, researchers should be cautious of how they may be presenting a monolithic perception of the Latino population and take into consideration which Latino subgroups are being erased.
Mari Matsuda’s (1991) approach of ‘asking the other question’ to bring forth the interconnectedness of oppressions in structures of domination is a worthwhile tool to consider. Upon classifying a situation as racist, Matsuda asks: ‘Where is the classism in this racism? Or, where is the sexism in this racism?’ (p. 1189). Borrowing from and building upon this method, I suggest asking the intragroup question. For example, suppose that we focus on the issue of the deaths of Black women in the USA. When we ask the intragroup question, the deaths of Black trans women and poor Black women are exposed. Thus, not only are we required to recognize other forms of oppression, but also acknowledge how ‘no form subordination ever stands alone’ (Matsuda, 1991, p. 1189). In regard to the recent election, asking the intragroup question exposes that Latinas were more likely to vote for Clinton than Latino men. This hints at the presence of misogyny in the Latino community. The significant proportion of Latinos that cast their votes for the republican candidate challenged the monolithic narrative that all Latinos are pro-immigration and democrat. A more critical, anti-essentialist look at the Latino voter shows that Latinos were not a unified front against a xenophobic candidate.
Proposition 2
The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us (Lorde, 1984, p. 123).
The concept of internalized racism or internalized oppression stems from work around a colonized mind (Fanon, 1963, 1967) or mental colonization (hooks, 1990). Fanon (1963) described the colonized mind as the result of being subject to continual oppression which leads to the marginalized wanting to be like their oppressor. White racism is often internalized insidiously through cultural myths and seemingly neutral ideologies (e.g. the myth of meritocracy). Pérez Huber, Johnson, and Kohli (2006) explain that internalized racism ‘goes beyond the internalization of stereotypes imposed by the white majority about People of Color. It is the internalization of the beliefs, values, and worldviews inherent in white supremacy that can potentially result in negative self or racial group perceptions’ (p. 184). The desire for Latinos to want to be more like their colonizer is the result of the legacy of racism imposed by the Spanish who put into place structures and systems that maintained color-conscious hierarchies and cultivated a preference for whiteness among Latinos (Acuña, 2014). As such, it is important to note that internalized oppression is not a phenomenon that exists in a vacuum. It ‘commences externally; i.e. dominant players state the chain of behavior through racist and discriminatory behavior’ (Padilla, 1999, p. 772). With this in mind, internalized racism should not be likened to low self-esteem or self-worth, rather it is structural, systemic, and insidious.
Padilla (1999), CRT legal scholar, examined the internalized oppression of Mexicans and stated that they ‘must have been convinced that our society is now colorblind and hence race-based preferences to ameliorate past discrimination are no longer necessary’ (p. 771). Similarly, one of the Trumpistas featured by The Story Institute (2016) shared:
There are people coming from Nueva Laredo, I don’t know if they are Mexicans, Cubans, Syrians, I don’t know who they are. So if they come here legally: bienvenidos [welcome]! But if they don’t, then, who are you? What are you doing here? You could be a killer, you could be a rapist, I don’t know who you are.
Elva Leyendecker, a 61 year-old Mexican American woman that lives in Texas, shared this sentiment. Her comments demonstrate how she has internalized the white-supremacist rhetoric that all immigrants are killers and rapists. Ironically, many of the Trumpistas that the Story Institute showcase are immigrants themselves or come from a family of immigrants. Tatum (1997) observes that successful people of color often intentionally distance themselves from the characteristics, behaviors, or language associated with their racial or ethnic group in an attempt to bypass the stigma of these qualities. This distancing is both a coping mechanism and a product of internalized oppression.
Sociologists and psychologists have studied Latino skin tone and its effects on life chances, education attainment, occupational status, income, and self-esteem (GóMez, 2000; Murguia & Telles, 1996). However, there is a lack of literature that makes the connection between a systematic preference for lighter skin and its relation to internalized racial oppression. This preference for lighter skin is exhibited by lighter skinned and darker skinned Latinos alike (Golash-Boza & Darity, 2008; Haywood, in press; Torres-Saillant, 1998). As for Black Latinos that harbor internalized racism, Frantz Fanon’s work in Black Skin, White Masks is relevant. Fanon contended, ‘Wherever the Negro goes, he remains a Negro’—Black. In this way, despite how they may have been perceived in their country of origin, Afro-Latinos are still racialized as Black or people of color in the mainland USA (Duany, 1998; Torres-Saillant, 1998).
Bearing in mind that Latinos can internalize whiteness, it is imperative for researchers to look for and highlight the ways in which that internalization manifests. Take, for example, Alemán and Gaytán’s (2016) study on student of color resistance to critical race pedagogy. The authors found that the students in their study, ‘internalized Eurocentric, white supremacist ideologies and [were] unable to imagine a worldview that acknowledges and elevates their racial and cultural identities from a lower status position to one that is worthy of discussion, let alone study’ (p. 139).
Conclusion
Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground (Ahmed, 2004, p. 189).
It has been my hope in this article to shed light on Trumpistas and overview reasons as to why they voted for the current president. In the fight to dismantle white domination it is necessary to highlight the anti-Black racism within the Latino community. The set of propositions that I outlined can be useful in presenting a more holistic and detailed view of Latinos. While the list presented is not exhaustive, it is a start to uncovering anti-Black racism within the Latino community. It is imperative that scholars be aware of the ways in which they perpetuate the dominant discourse of essentializing Latinos as a monolithic group and concurrently disregard the considerable diversity among Latinos. As such, they must turn their attention toward intragroup dynamics, intragroup racism, and data disaggregation for Latino students. Moreover, increased attention towards how educators can use critical race-based approaches to cultivate racial consciousness for minoritized students is necessary, in addition to how Latino students rid themselves of internalizing dominant ideologies. This article is not meant to downplay any oppression that Latinos face or create a sort of Oppression Olympics, rather the aim is to extend an invitation for both Latinos and researchers to see how they may be contributing to a perpetuation of white supremacy by essentializing the Latino population and harboring internalized oppression. In an effort to disrupt interlocking systems of oppression, Latinos can contribute by acknowledging and dismantling essentialism and internalized oppression, which, in turn, will bring forth our full humanity.