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‘We Are, as Latinos, Quite African’

by richard01602

En espanol: ‘Somos, como latinos, bastante africanos’

Reporting on Black-Hispanic Ties Needs Work

Homepage photo from Project Pulso: “This is why Black history is just as important for Afro-Latinos“

Journal-isms Roundtable photos by Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks

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Each year, the city of Cali in Colombia celebrates the Petronio Álvarez Pacific Music Festival, a four-day tribute to Afro-Columbian traditions and culture. (Credit: Lisa Palomino/courtesy Ministry of Culture)

Reporting on Black-Hispanic Ties Needs Work

By Marcia Davis

“Should Black people care about ICE?”

It’s that kind of question that has some African Americans shaking their heads: “No, it’s not our fight.”

Others say, “Of course, we should care.” Many feel a natural instinct to support the underdog. They’ve been there.

Moreover, raids from ICE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement— have affected Black people from Haiti to Africa.

Those of Latino origins have varying views. Though many Latinos who voted for now-President Trump have said they approve of the president’s handling of illegal immigration, a coalition of national Latino and civil rights leaders held a virtual press conference this month to condemn the recent immigration raids in Los Angeles. They decried the federal government’s decision to deploy military force in local communities, despite opposition from local officials and residents.

And yet, the wide gap between Black and Latino voters in the presidential election had some wondering whether the coalition is fraying. “The election result of a week ago is evidence that the vision of a rainbow coalition as a political organizing principle is fading,” Charles M. Blow, who is Black, wrote in November for The New York Times.

“It’s evidence that many Americans are willing to subordinate racial and gender concerns when faced with unrelenting language about a lack of physical, economic and cultural security.”

In the 2024 presidential election, nearly half of Latinos (46%) voted for Trump. The percentage was even higher (55%) among Latino men. “That’s a bizarre turn of events for a constituency that was, just 20 years ago, considered a loyal part of the Democratic base,” wrote columnist Ruben Navarrette, who is Latino.

By contrast, about eight in 10 Black voters supported Democrat Kamala Harris, though that figure was down from the about nine in 10 in the last presidential election who went for Joe Biden, the winning Democrat.

According to some Latino observers, such as Navarrette and Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, many Latinos felt the Democrats weren’t speaking their working-class language.

The similarities and differences between the two groups was the topic of February’s Journal-isms Roundtable, which posed the question, “Are the media accurately covering Black-Latino relations?”

The session took place at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Newhouse DC, which co-sponsored the Washington event. Beverly Kirk, director of Washington programs, led the collaboration for Syracuse.

The Roundtable attracted 53 people in person or by Zoom. Another 175 watched on Facebook and 320 had seen the YouTube version by June 25. Click to view.

The panelists were:

  • Marie Arana, Peruvian American former editor of the Washington Post’s Book World section, inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress and author of three books on Latin America.
  • Torrance Latham, news editor at the Miami Herald, which is published in a city that is a locus for Latin American immigrants; its staff includes a race and culture writer, an immigration team and a Caribbean correspondent. Latham is also vice president of the South Florida chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
  • Don Podesta, retired editor and Latin American correspondent for The Washington Post, who was born in Chile and spent much of his childhood in Colombia before coming to the United States as a teenager. Podesta has lived or worked in almost every Latin American country.
  • Roland E. Roebuck, president of the D.C.-based Afro Latino Institute and a native of Puerto Rico.

The conversation covered everything from colorism to genocide to education. To the question at hand — “Are the media accurately covering Black-Latino relations?” — for the most part, the answer was no. Some exception was given to the Miami Herald.

The “no” was particularly true about Afro-Latinos, a group for which coverage has been nearly nonexistent, they said.

According to the World Bank, one in four Latin Americans identifies as being of African descent. They are one of the largest, yet least visible minorities in the region, comprising more than 133 million people, the majority living in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela.

At root of the Afro-Latino issue is the villainous hegemony of white supremacy.

“It’s remarkable to me that we would talk about Afro-Latino relations because we are, as Latinos, quite African,” said Arana. “We are actually — a good half of us — can trace a blood quantum of African blood. I can. I’m 8 percent African American, which means that I have a great grandparent who is Black.”

Refining the point, Arana said, “it’s not a binary thing. It’s a colorism, if you will, more than it is a racism.

“This is very much a part of my family, where you suddenly have a Black baby be born or a Chinese Asian-looking baby be born. . . .

“This very strong sense of colorism. The whole business of whitening the races is something that has come, you know, furiously down the generations from the colonial days. And still today, there is this sense that if you are slightly lighter you are better off. . . .

“The ethnicity that most intermarries in this country, in the United States of America, is the Latino. Because we’ve been doing it for 500 years and we do it here.”

Twenty-six people were in person at the Roundtable at Syracuse University’s Washington, D.C., campus, while another 27 were on Zoom. They were welcomed by Beverly Kirk, director of Washington programs, and Margaret Talev, director of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.

“So when you talk about race relations, it’s a very, very different quantity for us. Very different. . . .”

Roebuck said, “Hispanic migrants that come to the United States suffer a high level of frustration. Because in their particular country, they were considered white.

“And now they are in the United States. . . . So many of these individuals may require a lot of psychological help to adjust themselves . . . .”

Moreover, as Arana said, in the old country, they were classified by nationality. “We come to this country, we’re all called Latinos, we’re all called Hispanics for the first time in our lives, because we were, you know, Mexican Americans or Salvadoran-Americans or or Cuban Americans . . . we were not Hispanics or Latinos. And now we are forced into that group.”

Afro-Latinos might be the exception. In fact, Arana said, during slavery, “more than 10 million, almost 11 million, all went to Latin American countries in the Caribbean. And to the United States, what, 350,000 only came to the United States. So we are very, very infused with [the] African American population.”

Added Roebuck, “There is sort of a conspiracy of attempting to deny the Afro-Latino presence, because many institutions or organizations, etc., are pushing what I call genetic purity. Let us be clear that all of the Spanish-speaking countries express a high level of racism. And when they come here, they can’t express it openly, but that particular cancer and sickness is there.”

“When you say that [Latinos] voted for Trump, exclude Afro-Latinos,” he continued. “Because many of us did not engage in that craziness.”

The Miami Herald’s Latham said that Trump found a way to exploit divisions among Latinos and African Americans.

“Trump’s campaign kind of locked in on that division,” said Latham. “You know, Democrats kind of use the ‘people of color’ as a unifying term. And Trump, I think, kind of exposed that that’s really kind of like a fallacy … I don’t believe that everybody looks at Black and Latino voters as kind of this unifying force. I think in theory, it sounds great. But when I talk to people in South Florida, I think it’s very much divided.”

According to Latham, some Latin-origin voters said, “ ‘I’m going to vote off of my conservative interest,’ but now they realize somebody in their household might be married to a Venezuelan, their cousin could have Venezuelan or Nicaraguan ties and the fact that they’re going to get deported, it hits home a little differently . . . . feel like now that they’re going to kind of see how they voted directly impacts them. . . . And I think we [the media] can do a much better job of peeling back the layers because this is a very complicated issue.”

Latham was talking especially about Cuban Americans, who have made an economic impact in Florida and nationally, from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to musician Gloria Estefan.

Like Black Americans, those of Latin origins complain of being misunderstood and, too often, considered monolithic.

“Much like we had conversations in the past with white women voters voting against their self-interest, I think that’s going to be the same conversation we have for Latino voters in 2025 and beyond,” Latham said.

Podesta and Arana cited the wars of independence in Latin America as, Podesta said, “the one . . . point where we might have come together as a unified group, Latinos, whatever color we are. “And what happened in the wars of independence is that the white elites took over, right over from the Spanish and they promoted the same hierarchy that was there before.”

The Roundtable audience, both in person and on Zoom, peppered the panelists with questions and comments.

Journalist E.R. Shipp (pictured), who teaches at Morgan State University, said journalists should be better informed — “educating ourselves so that we don’t fall so easily into certain kinds of traps. . . . Only recently did I really start thinking about some of these issues we’re raising and how these various ethnic and even tribal differences exist out there.

“So that’s what we can do as journalists. . . . do a better job of educating ourselves so we can produce better stories, and then we’ll leave it to the activists to do some of the other things that need to be done.”

In the book, “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality,” Tanya Kateri Hernández, a law professor at Fordham University, said the family is the scene of the initial anti-Black crime.

“I know that was true in my household,” Joseph Torres (pictured, with Sowande Tichawonna), senior adviser at the advocacy group Free Press, said from his front-row seat at Newhouse D.C.

Family members would give such advice as “stay out of the sun because you’ll get darker.”

Torres introduced the issue of Spanish language media responsibility. “Our own media . . . we’re not addressing race in hierarchy at all.”

Unity is a challenge, Arana said.

“We do our best when we try to find our common experiences,” said the journalist and author. “And I think, you know, at this point in time that very thing is being tested. Not just for Latinos, not just for Latino relations, but generally.

“And I think if we could come to some sort of sense that even . . . with these very vastly different histories that we have — Latinos, African Americans, Anglo-Americans — that there is some sense I don’t see this being covered in the media at all. I don’t see the actual tensions that we are dealing with right now.”

John Yearwood, editorial director for diversity and culture at Politico and a former board member of the Vienna-based International Press Institute, said a good story can be had with a look at Francia Márquez (pictured), the first Black vice president of Colombia, and the second woman. She says she has endured racial abuse while in office.

As Podesta recounted, when Colombia’s president this year criticized some of the cabinet members, including her, “she came out afterwards and said, ‘You know, ever since I took over this ministry, I’ve been pilloried, I’ve been abused, I’ve been called every name in the book. I bet you, the ministry is only a year plus a few months old. So I bet you if some white guy or some mestizo from the elite had started this ministry, everybody would be saying, well, what a beast he is you can do it.’ “

Roebuck, the Puerto Rican-born activist, said Afro-Latinos in the United States can help mend any divide. First, he said, white Latinos can start by talking with Afro-Latinos, who can then serve as a bridge to African Americans.

In addition, he said, journalists must assume more responsibility to cover Latin-origin Latinos, be they white or Afro-Latinos. Accuracy is key. Journalists must report the full story.

“The role of the journalist needs to be redefined,” he said. “Especially under this special current presidential dictatorship. What is it that you’re going to do?”

Joe Davidson (pictured), columnist at The Washington Post, politely took issue with redefining the journalists’ role.

“We can investigate. We can report; we can expose. Without necessarily labeling ourselves as an advocate,” said Davidson.

“And so you can report, you know, you can report honestly. . . . It’s a matter of your journalism exposing everything that needs to be closed or to the extent that you can. …

“The point is that you report the truth about the way this country deals with Black people and Latino people. You don’t have to be an advocate. You just have to be a very aggressive journalist.”

Marcia Davis is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist.

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