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A Conversation With Latinos on Race

In this short documentary, Latinos grapple with defining their ethnic and racial identities.

Conversation - 06 Cut 2016-2-23 00:00 ALFREDO: I think the Latino identity is pretty confusing to me. Because often times I find it in a little check box on a form and I’m confused on whether I should put Latino or Hispanic, but I’m Mexican. 00:15 ISABEL: As Latin Americans as Hispanics in the US, there’s a community that gets built regardless of which specific country you’re coming from. 00:27 CARLOS: And our history is, a history of African people, indigenous people, Europeans, Conquistadores, all these different people colliding, many times not with their consent, so that informs all these loaded issues people have. 00:42 JANEL: It’s like navigating three identities. If you’re from the states, you’re American, you’re black, and you’re Latina, furthermore, wherever country that you identify in coming from, and that’s a lot to navigate. 01:02 FRISLY: At this point I actually don’t identify as Guatemalan, and it’s something that I guess a lot of like young immigrants sort of feel, where there is this saying sort of like, “ni de aquí, ni de allá,” not from there, not from here. 01:14 ALFREDO: In trying to blend in with the culture in America, I gave up a lot of what I grew up with, maybe I saw it as something that was kind of shameful or in the way. I wanted to dress like my friends in America, I wanted to talk like them, I wanted to be like them, listen to the same music, I started listening to country music. 01:38 GISELLE: I got all these crazy questions like—Did you come here in a canoe? Do you know what snow is? Do you live in a hut in Puerto Rico? 01:49 WILLIE: I thought my name was Spick until I was about 13, and that was my first awareness that race was an issue. 02:00 CARLOS: People say, “Oh you look like a white dude.” In some contexts, not in all contexts, depends where I am, depends who I’m with, depends on a whole lot of things, depends on what language I’m speaking. But, however I look when I leave my name, I can’t get a phone call back about an apartment in New York City, and this isn’t like ten places I call, this is like 30. 02:15 JAY: And I remember telling a kid one time, “Let me tell you, the Klu Klux Klan comes here, and they see you’re last name, you’re going too bro.” And the kids are like, “What are you talking about?” and it was like a big thing. 02:28 GREGORY: People generally, unless I speak Spanish, people assume right away that I’m African-American, that I’m Black, I mean, it’s just one of those things, it may be the deep voice, it may be the color of my skin. 02:43 BIANCA: Because I talk white I’m not Dominican, or I’m not black or I’m not Afro-Latino, or whomever people perceive me of being. And that hurt, and that still hurts. 03.02 MARTHA: Because one of my daughters is lighter than the other, they had blackness issues, and I remember my oldest daughter telling my youngest daughter that she’s black and that her hair, she says something, and I remember crying immediately. Like, “Oh my god. No, no, no,” and I had to sit them down and talk to them about our roots and that everything they learned from the family was wrong. 03:35 BIANCA: I feel like I wanted more, more of my culture, you know. I grew up, there was a point that I stopped speaking Spanish to her, and I still don’t speak to her in Spanish. So I feel like something was lost, and I don’t know if it was just because, she was busy raising five kids, and didn’t really think about culture in that way and how I would come to identify myself. 04:03 BONAFIDE: Growing up, as a young young teenage, I told people I was Puerto Rican which is completely you know, which is right. But at a particular point, when I became a little more politicized I was definitely more of a Black Nationalist, than I was a Puerto Rican Nationalist. Maybe because the concept of Black Nationalism, black liberation movement, is so much more accessible, there isn’t a language issue, so yeah I totally was reading Malcolm, Marcus and James Baldwin, and Huey Newton before I read any of the Puerto Rican nationalists. 04:34 FRISLY: Either you’re black or your white, and if you’re kind of in the middle, you kind of like don’t want to be in the middle, you want to— A lot of us want to be white, but we’re still brown, we ‘re still color, we still have color, we still according to what race, what the institution is telling us, its based on your skin color, so like, I’m brown and so that’s kind of like where it came— I’m not black and I’m not white, and I want to be white and so I’m kind of brown and this is kind of like a thing that’s there. 05:02 CARLOS: If you are closer to being white, you are supreme, if you are not, you are less than. And to me, that’s how I’ve understood it, and that’s why I think it’s very important Latinos who look like me say, “You identify as Latinos cool, Colombiano cool, whatever else, but you benefit from white skin privilege. The fact that you have ojos claros, and people want to fetishize that, understand what that means. However much I want to say that, “Oh my gosh, I’m so special because I have green eyes,” you’re perpetuating white supremacy by running with that. 05:33 RAQUEL: I’ll talk to a young girl, a teenager, and she’ll say, you know I’m not white enough to fit into mainstream society, I’m not Black-American enough to fit in, you know, in that faction of society, and I’m like, “But you know what, you’re the best person to be kind of like a connector between both because in you is everything, and being Latino in an American kind of New World way, is basically being a physical embodiment of how America began as we know it. So you’re every women, so for me being Latino is phenomenal. 06:03 CREDITS: DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY: Joe Brewster / Blair Foster / Michèle Stephenson DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Rudy Valdez EDITORS: Ben Sozanski and Ayana Enomoto-Hurst PRODUCERS: Geeta Gandbhir / Perri Peltz ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Ayana Enomoto-Hurst PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Katrina Fadrilan FEATURING: Alfredo Alcántara / Isabel Alcántara / Carlos Andrés Gómez / Raquel Cepeda / Martha Diaz / Bianca Frias / Gregory Frias / Janel Martinez / Willie Martinez / Jay Rodriguez / Bonafide Rojas / Frisly Soberanis / Giselle Vasquez

Op-Docs: Season 5

A Conversation With Latinos on Race

By Joe Brewster, Blair Foster and Michèle Stephenson February 29, 2016

In this short documentary, Latinos grapple with defining their ethnic and racial identities.

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