Yes, You Can Be White and Latino at the Same Time Despite White Supremacy

There is healing and clarity in the multiplicity of truth

Image by Caroline Veronez via Unsplash

This summer, I decided to visit a good friend of mine—I’ll call him Alejandro— who recently moved to the lovely and racially segregated city of Chicago. He lives on the white side of town and in a neighborhood known as ‘Boystown.' This part of town is overflowing with white people, so it's no surprise the majority of Alejandro’s friends are white. 

His friends are not just white, though; they are Anglo-white. What do I mean by "Anglo-white?" Anglo-white people are not only those who have pale skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair. They are white people of varying ethnicities, including British, German, Irish, Jewish, etc., who've historically assimilated into Anglo-whiteness. In other words, they are the whites who are currently allowed into the country club of whiteness and don't experience othering.

You see, though Latine people have varying races, we are homogenized as “Brown” and othered fiercely in the U.S. I experienced being othered again while in Chicago visiting my friend. Alejandro and I had dinner with one of his new Chicago friends, I’ll call him Skyler, and we organically talked about race and identity. When it came to the identity portion of our talk, I revealed to Skyler that I am not just "Latino," I am white too. He had a confused look followed by a pause. Skyler asked me to clarify what I meant, and so I said the following:

"Yea, racially, I am white. I am ethnically a colonizer (Spanish and Portuguese), some Indigenous, and North African. Culturally, I am Mexican. So, I essentially identify as a white-Mexican or white-Latino."

“But I don’t see you as white. I see you as Latino,” Skyler responds.

I can't remember how the conversation ended that night because we ended up getting hammered at the restaurant, but we did revisit the conversation several times after. Though I am comfortable and confident in my identity work, I couldn't help Skyler dismantle his own internalized white supremacy. Perhaps with time and more conversations, though.

Contrary to what white supremacy has taught us, you can be white and "Latino" simultaneously. I understand how upsetting this might be to many (unknowingly white and "light-skin") Latinos. However, it is necessary to understand our racial identity to show up responsibly and ethically for Black liberation. As the amazing Black-Latine feminist Lutze Segu (aka: The Social Justice Doula) rhetorically asked of white-Latine, "how can you be my ally when you're avoiding your whiteness?"

That brilliant question rings so true in its simplicity. Consequently, I think it's essential to break away from the binaries that inevitably arise in this challenging identity work. So I’ll map out below what being a white-Latine means and doesn’t mean in the U.S. context.  

For more on this piece please visit medium.com/@joeypierre