3 ms·

I’m a white Latino and no, we don’t. Maybe on paper if someone assumes I’m mixed or Afrolatino, but I get all the privilege of being white passing. Not only tha

I’m a white Latino and no, we don’t. Maybe on paper if someone assumes I’m mixed or Afrolatino, but I get all the privilege of being white passing. Not only that, if I’m hanging with brown Latinos they feel safer with me. I’ve often seen my friends stopped by police or given looks when alone but not with me. The whole Hispanic thing is a mess in the US. Not only due to color of skin but culture and class. I have friends in my home country who are mixed and dark skinned but culturally fit with a suburban white American more.

erickhill 3y ago
I took a class in college that focused on Latino culture in the US. It was taught by a professor originally from Puerto Rico. For context, this class was taught in Los Angeles. He said that even across central and south American cultures skin tones affected how people were perceived and treated as applied to class. The lighter the skin the better in most cases but not all. He wasn't proud of it or endorsing it, just stating it as a fact of life in many countries. And he'd been on the other side of that perception, too. He later intersected those prejudices with the interesting pride many take (or appropriate) from the art and symbols of indigenous and ancient civilizations (Aztec, Mayan, etc.) even if there were no direct biological ties. It's a very complicated topic with countless caveats and anecdotal experiences. But the biases we witness and experience in the US are not unique by any means, that's for sure.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
It also doesn't help that 1. Latinos are extremely colorist in their own countries and have serious racism from the "European" heritaged ones vs the "indigenous" ones. This dynamic is a big deal in latin america 2. Latinos in the USA voted more heavily from Trump in 2020 than in 2016, and iirc trump got like 39% of the latino vote in 2020. Latinos are extremely conservative and are straight up abandoning catholocism and embracing evangelical protestantism due to the "liberalisation" of the catholic church.

erickhill 3y ago

I took a class in college that focused on Latino culture in the US. It was taught by a professor originally from Puerto Rico. For context, this class was taught in Los Angeles. He said that even across central and south American cultures skin tones affected how people were perceived and treated as applied to class. The lighter the skin the better in most cases but not all. He wasn't proud of it or endorsing it, just stating it as a fact of life in many countries. And he'd been on the other side of that perception, too. He later intersected those prejudices with the interesting pride many take (or appropriate) from the art and symbols of indigenous and ancient civilizations (Aztec, Mayan, etc.) even if there were no direct biological ties. It's a very complicated topic with countless caveats and anecdotal experiences. But the biases we witness and experience in the US are not unique by any means, that's for sure.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

It also doesn't help that 1. Latinos are extremely colorist in their own countries and have serious racism from the "European" heritaged ones vs the "indigenous" ones. This dynamic is a big deal in latin america 2. Latinos in the USA voted more heavily from Trump in 2020 than in 2016, and iirc trump got like 39% of the latino vote in 2020. Latinos are extremely conservative and are straight up abandoning catholocism and embracing evangelical protestantism due to the "liberalisation" of the catholic church.