PBS Special: BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA

Marcus Garvey was able to do just that.

 

I thought President Barack Hussein Obama was going to be that next Marcus Garvey. What a huge mistake. He has yet to pay for my mortgage, or to give me free gas for my car. I'm disappointed in the messiah.

 

First person in US history to be deported too. Jamaica in the house son lol

 

LOL

A lot of white boys thought he would take away their guns and give reparations to Black folks...

 

That's because He was a real Black Leader..and not some lousy politician.

 

Which was so stupid. It shows how dumb all Americans are because there were black people who believed that shit too. Smdh

 

GQ Bro had me rolling with an earlier post about a week ago about being disappointed that Obama was not giving us all free gravy bowls!

 

Has anyone seen the first episode? I will not miss the Cuba episode tomorrow.

 

Barack Obama clearly stated that he didn't want people to call him a black candidate but he was a candidate who happened to be black. What ppl don't understand is that the American President is portrayed as the most powerful
person in the world to the outside world by Americans because most of you like living vicariously through powerful rich people but the thing is, in his own country the president is not necessarily the most powerful and can be strong armed into accepting stuff that he really doesn't agree with. So to the black people who thought all of a sudden kool aid will be dropped from helicopters for folks in the hood and those who like that poisonous stuff, he needs to conform to the policies.
Barack Obama wants a second term and trust me if he decided to hip hop the white house his light skinned ass will be kicked so NO brothers and sistahs aint getting shyt just because Obama is black.:smt018

 

Yeah, I saw it. The only one I haven't watched yet is the Brazil episode. I like a lot of the content. I even added some commentary to a discussion thread on the pbs.org site about the Haiti/DR episode. Most of the stuff is common knowledge, but it's good for it to be all pulled together and presented in a coherent whole for viewers to digest. Aside from Prof. Gates destroying the pronunciation of most words, he was largely accurate. People who posted on the discussion threads at the PBS site were angry about his use of the US "one drop" standard, which I know many of us here agree is garbage, but I think he wasn't so much saying he agreed with it as he was saying that, according to this standard, much of Latin America would be considered black, in an attempt to raise awareness of the region as a significant repository of African racial and cultural history. And the other important aspect of the show that I thought needed to be brought forward is the lengths to which many will go to negate their African heritage, regardless of the amount.

While I'm not saying people should solely identify as African when they are clearly of multiple lineages, I did find it interesting that the African ethnicity is the one that people most struggle to erase from their family tree. While you saw many people of indigenous and African heritage struggle to claim and identify whichever strain of European ancestry they had and assert it, almost to the exclusion of the more obvious non-white elements visible in their faces, you saw few half Europeans proudly proclaiming their "indigenous-ness" or their "African-ness" (sorry for having to butcher the language to make up these terms, but you know what I mean). If these were truly completely post-racial societies, you would see people proclaiming ALL heritage equally, not maximizing their European and minimizing the indigenous and African elements.

 

Why do African Americans accuse Latinos of self hate if they don't identify as black? Countries in Latin America had the one drop rule in reverse like Puerto Rico for example if 1 of your grandparents was full white you were white. So now folks going around calling them self haters but what's the difference from AA's with white ancestry only calling themselves black?

I think it's often took out of context when Latinos say they are not black. In many places they don't divide into racial categories as the US does. Black to them is a color aka the color of the African slave. As they intermixed and came up with new lighter colors they gave those colors their own names too. They are not denying their African ancestry they are denying their skin color and they are accurate. The US one drop was not accurate what so ever. Under the one drop rule People with very dark, to med brown, to light brown, to even white was labeled as black based on ancestry. This was not accurate. So how can you use the inaccuracy of the US to label someone else that wasn't that inaccurate?

 

That's not really true, a black man like Will Smith or Obama would be considered black anywhere in Latin America, the only difference is that in Latin America "black" people who look mostly white like Colin Powell are not labeled as black.

 

Posting again I see huh Mrs Duke. How are things on the plantation?

 

LOL

She don't know what the fuck she's talking about.

 

Correct.

 

I disagree. There is, in fact, a great degree of self-hate/hostility toward all things African, present in many of the cultures. There are lots of people who are quite African in appearance, and many do in fact, argue with you that they have no black "blood". I have personally experienced this with many Dominican and Colombian women I have dated who were darker than I am. If you point out curly hair or full features you will be shocked by how many people say they come from the indigenous or Arabs in Spain, or whatever. It happens less in some countries that are more 'African' in cultural expression than in those that struggle to maintain links to the Iberian peninsula.

So while they don't have the one-drop rule, there are quite a few people who deny African ancestry when it's as plain as (pardon the pun) the nose on their face.

 

That is not what I have read and I've always heard that there are Latino people that are considered white in Latin America and then they come to the US and are told they aren't white.

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/demsem/loveman-muniz.pdf

An interesting anecdote to consider was that during this whole period, Puerto Rico had laws like the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar where a person of mixed ancestry could be considered legally white so long as they could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white. Therefore people of mixed ancestry with known white lineage were classified as white, the opposite of the "one-drop rule" in the United States.[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Puerto_Rico

 

I wasn't trying to imply that no one had this sort of issue I just personally think Americans make it bigger than it really is. And I don't really see the difference between a person that looks like this saying I'm not black and a AA saying I'm not white.

 

I think the examples you are referring to about black people with known white ancestry being "allowed" to be white are like what empyrium was talking about with Colin Powell, but it's RARE that someone as dark as Will Smith would be considered as white (I've never heard of such an extreme example). And Barack, while technically a mulatto (I hate using these ridiculous terms) is called black almost universally in Spanish and Portuguese-language press.

Many of the rules you cite were used during slavery as pseudo-scientific distinguishing characteristics for separating the children of slave masters and African and indigenous women from the larger groups of slaves in their surroundings. These terms have almost no social relevance or use beyond anecdotes or physical descriptions in the modern era, however.

 

Bad example. David Bisbal is a Spaniard with Arab and Roma ancestry, along with Catalan and Castilian. And I hate to tell you this, but racial consciousness and denial of African ancestry are large problems in Latin America and greatly complicate attempts to address racial inequality in the countries in question. This difference in racial consciousness causes problems amongst Boricuas all the time, most starkly between those with experience in the US versus those who remain on the island.