Afro-Latinos in the US: Know Us, Recognize Us, Include Us
Driving while Black. Walking while Black. Jogging while Black. Vacationing while Black. Dining while Black. Shopping while Black. Voting while Black. After the New York City Central Park incident in May 2020, you can add Birdwatching while Black to the list. Following the arrest of CNN’s Omar Jimenez on live television while reporting on the George Floyd murder, you can also add Reporting the news while Black. (We still don’t have an answer from the Minneapolis Police as to why he was taken into custody. He was never charged.)
African Americans are well-acquainted with these experiences. That Afro-Latinos face the same struggles because of the way we “present” within a black and white racial construct is less discussed, yet the struggles are the same. I know them intimately. I am a Dominican American Afro-Latino whose parents came to the U.S. from Barahona, Dominican Republic, in the 1950s and 1960s. We and others like us feel these injustices every day of our lives.
Throughout my professional career, including my 21 years on Wall Street and in my current role, I have often been the only person of color, Latino or Black, in the room. Unless the meeting or gathering is tied specifically to diversity and inclusion, it’s still rare to see people of color in high level meetings. We have a lot of work to do to narrow that gap.
There are millions of Afro-Latinos in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of Afro-Latinos throughout Latin America—the Dominican Republic; Loiza, Puerto Rico; Havana, Cuba; Veracruz, Mexico; Panama City, Panama; Limón, Costa Rica; Esmeraldas, Ecuador; Yapatera, Perú; Barlovento, Venezuela; Bahia, Brazil; Garifunas from Guatemala to Nicaragua; the department of Chocó in Colombia. We are a community of hundreds of millions with one thing in common: our ancestors were brought to the New World from Africa against their will as slaves.
Despite efforts to advance racial equity in the U.S., Afro-Latinos often remain an afterthought or are left out of the conversation completely. Our inclusion is the exception, not the norm. We are expected to choose either our ethnicity as Latinos or our race as Black people, an assimilation construct created by non-Afro-Latinos that does not recognize our intersectionality. This can escalate to outright suppression of our identities. The fact is that we do not separate our Latino pride from our Black pride. On the contrary, for millions of Afro-Latinos, our culture is Afrocentric, reflecting our heritage in Latin America from the history of colonialism and slavery.
In August 2020 and February of this year, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR), where I serve as president and CEO, organized its first-ever Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas in Corporate America webinars, respectively. They were two of the most-watched webinars in HACR’s history, and we became the first organization to host sessions dedicated to the Afro-Latinx experience in Corporate America. The webinars caught the attention of Corporate America, with many companies adjusting their Hispanic Heritage Months plans to include talks about Afro-Latino experiences. While I’m encouraged that more companies are giving attention to this intersectional population, more work needs to be done to create an inclusive environment for Afro-Latinos. Our webinars centered on the workplace, but the same dynamics are present in all areas of American life.
Latinos must have a serious entre familia conversation about its lack of Afro-Latino inclusion. While we have seen improvements in recent years, we still have a long way to go. Just as Latinos look to allies to support our movements for empowerment in this country, we also need all Latinos to stand with us, especially when it comes to issues of race.
So, as we honor Black History Month and, along with millions of Dominican Americans like me, celebrate Dominican Heritage Month simultaneously, we must have courageous, solution-based conversations about the challenges facing Afro-Latinos in the U.S. In an environment where both Blacks and Latinos have been under attack, we must lock arms together, march together, sing hymns together, lift our voices together, and call for equality and an end to racism, TOGETHER! This is not a time for silos.
In the spirit of our civil rights icons in both the Black and Latino communities, “we shall overcome” and sí, se puede.
Cid Wilson is the president and CEO of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) in Washington, DC. He is the nation’s first Afro-Latino to serve as CEO of a major national Hispanic organization. In 2009, President Barack Obama named him to the National Museum of the American Latino Commission, making him the only Afro-Latino appointee tasked with planning a future Smithsonian American Latino Museum on the National Mall. He is the former board chairman of the Friends of the American Latino Museum (2012-2016). He has served on the board of multiple organizations over his career focused on Dominican, Latino, educational, and community issues. His professional career started in the mailroom of a Wall Street investment firm before he rose to the corporate board room and was named by Forbes as the #1 Wall Street financial analyst in his field in 2006. He serves on the board of directors of LatinoJustice PRLDEF and is a longtime Gold Life Member of the NAACP. He is a near-lifetime resident of Bergen County, New Jersey.