CHAPTER 2
Diciendo a su hijo de cinco años,
No juegues con niños de color extraño.
Telling her five-year-old son,
Don’t play with children of a strange [non-White] color.1
Latinos learn the Latin American/Caribbean-style racial hierarchy rules in public leisure spaces and schools, the two spheres in which the rules are most intensely indoctrinated outside the home. These two spaces where people play and learn are intimately intertwined because even before a child begins school, they are first immersed in how public spaces are racialized. That some public spaces are understood and unquestioned as White spaces is implicitly established at a very young age (as mediated through adult caregivers) and serves to normalize school-based racial hierarchies.
The Latino formation of White Latino spaces in the United States is influenced by Latinos’ implicit awareness of how Latin American and Caribbean geographies are racially structured and regulated. Latino White ruling elites, such as politicians, business leaders, and property owners, structure access to the spaces they own and frequent both in Latin America and in the United States. Indeed, traveling in much of Latin America and the Caribbean in a Black body can be disconcerting.
At the same time that there is great pleasure in seeing the vast numbers of Afro-descendants traversing the streets, there is also the jarring dislocation of noting their remarkable absence as consumers from many public spaces of leisure and entertainment. While the popular explanation for this duality is the entrenched convergence between skin color and socioeconomic status, there is also an active racial policing of public spheres that maintains them as elite White spaces. What is encouraging is that growing numbers of antidiscrimination law cases in Latin America challenge the exclusion of Afro-descendants in public accommodations such as dance clubs and banks.2 What is telling, though, is how closely the Latin American case stories parallel the narratives of Latinos cultivating White Latino spaces in the United States and its territories.
The US territory of Puerto Rico is an appropriate place to begin to unpack the complexity of Latin American–influenced Latino construction and preoccupation with White spaces under US law. A possession of the United States since the Spanish-American War ended in 1898, and accorded United States citizenship pursuant to the 1917 Jones Act, Puerto Rico is subject to US federal civil rights laws. Like the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, Puerto Rico has a long history of racial stratification stemming from its use of chattel slavery.3 Puerto Rico’s Spanish settlers extensively relied on chattel slave labor after having decimated the indigenous population in the early 1500s.4 As a Spanish colony, Puerto Rico did not abolish slavery until 1873. Thereafter, the colonial racial hierarchy continued with a privileged White elite, an intermediate “buffer” class of persons of African ancestry with physically apparent European ancestry and a sizeable population of disempowered darker-skinned African descendants.5 Indeed, when US troops invaded Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War of 1898, they were warmly greeted by Puerto Ricans of African descent with US flags pinned to their clothing.6 But after becoming subject to US governmental authority, Puerto Rican society continued to be racially stratified—and is so today.7 This is the case despite the fact that Puerto Rico’s legislature had instituted a variety of measures to address race discrimination as early as 1943, long before the US federal government enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964.8
Puerto Rico has long occupied a legal and cultural hybridity. It is a Spanish-speaking territory with its own codified local laws influenced by the Spanish Civil Code, and it also is subject to US federal law, such as US antidiscrimination legislation.9 This is why Puerto Rican cultural practices of racism can be vetted with an application of US–based civil rights law. Let us consider then how this is manifested in the legal mandate for racially equal access to public spheres for socializing, known as “public accommodations law” (encompassing restaurants, night clubs, hotels, service centers, and recreational facilities).10
Fridays in Puerto Rico are affectionately called “Viernes Social” (Social Friday), when coworkers and friends meet after work to socialize over a cocktail and sometimes dinner. One such Friday, friends Héctor Bermúdez Zenón, Jaime Tosado Martínez, and Pedro Mantilla met at Restaurante Compostela in San Juan city’s center to enjoy a Viernes Social dinner together.11 Since they were meeting after work, they were dressed in semiformal attire, as were the other patrons of the restaurant. However, this group of friends did stand out from all the other customers. Two of them were Afro–Puerto Rican and the third a White Puerto Rican. Compostela, a restaurant owned by White Spaniards Maximino Del Rey and Jose Manuel Del Rey, was like so many other upscale and elegant spaces in Puerto Rico, populated with White-presenting Puerto Ricans. Héctor Bermúdez Zenón was already accustomed to the White exclusionary spaces of Puerto Rico because of his elite professional life as an engineer on the island. However, Héctor implicitly expected that his elite education, career accomplishments, and professional attire would smooth his access into Puerto Rico’s racially exclusive recreational spaces.
Therefore, Héctor and his multiracial group of friends were not alarmed when they were asked to wait in the restaurant’s bar area until a table would become available for dinner. Compostela was a popular restaurant, and they understood some waiting might be required. They waited three hours. Three hours in which they were catching up on each other’s news but also noticing that White patrons who arrived after them were promptly provided with seats and service. When Héctor and his friends asked why they were uniquely experiencing such a long wait, the restaurant staff then stated that the restaurant required advance reservations to be seated for dinner. Mystified as to why the restaurant had not immediately stated that this was their policy, the friends exited the restaurant. But rather than drive away, they called the restaurant and asked about being able to have dinner there that evening. No reservations were required—is what the restaurant indicated on that telephone call, moments after the group had been denied access.
Thus, just as in Latin American public accommodations discrimination cases where a race-neutral reason is articulated as the denial for Black access (reservations needed, formal attire required, private club, private function, and so forth), the Compostela restaurant engaged in similar racial sorting. Fortunately for Héctor and his friends, they were able to file a claim for discrimination in the US federal court in Puerto Rico. When the restaurant owners sought to have the case dismissed, the judge did not agree that the case was not a viable claim of discrimination and the restaurant entered into a settlement agreement with Héctor and his friends.
Unfortunately, few instances of public accommodations discrimination ever get reported and sanctioned by a court. Officially reporting an incident of public exclusion means having to acknowledge the racial insult in a way that can aggravate the pain. Many people in Puerto Rico (and elsewhere) instead choose to bury the memory of the exclusion and reorder their lives to studiously avoid encroaching upon White spaces where they anticipate not being welcome. Afro-Latina sociologist Zaire Dinzey-Flores offers a poignant account of such racial survival choices.
One night, when I was about eleven, my sister and I and other children were picked up in a car by a classmate’s mother, for whom race did not seem to matter much (for friendship, that is), for a “disco party” at a private country club called El Club Deportivo. Some of us were members, some were not. Every child was admitted hospitably, except for my sister and me. The guard at the gate told us we could not enter. Our classmate’s mother drove us home. Days later, after another white parent complained, the club sent a note of apology and promised free admission to the next disco party. We did not try again.12
Countless instances of this kind of exclusion happen and can be devastating to a child’s self-esteem and psyche.
Notably, the Latino racial sorting of public spaces is not limited to the White Latino environs of Puerto Rico. Latino-dominated public spaces in the continental United States, like Miami and New Mexico, have also been beset by reported Latino anti-Black exclusionary tactics. Miami is a city long known for the density and growth of its Latino population. In 2019, the US Census Bureau estimated that Latinos constitute 72.7 percent of the city’s population.13 As of the 2020 Census, Latinos are 68.7 percent of all of Miami-Dade County.14 With such Latino demographic presence, it is understandable why Miami is referred to as the “capital of Latin America.”15 As in Latin America, in Miami White Latinos attain higher economic outcomes than Black Latinos.16 Moreover, the socioeconomic advantage of White Latinos persists even when their educational attainment is only slightly higher than that of Black Latinos. The racial replication of Latin American racial spaces in Miami is why Latino racial attitudes are integral to understanding how racial discrimination unfolds in the city. Indeed, when political scientist Mark Sawyer sought to explain the particularities of Miami’s Latino racism, he began the essay with a public accommodations discrimination vignette.
In Little Havana, Miami, a young Afro Cuban woman went into a “Cuban” hair salon seeking to make an appointment. She politely asked in Spanish how she might make an appointment to have her hair done. The proprietor of the salon snapped back in English, “We don’t work on Black hair here—you will have to go somewhere else.” The women in the salon went back to conversing in Spanish and the Afro Cuban woman left dejected.17
The following legal account of how discrimination in a national restaurant chain surfaced “Latino style” in a Miami location further elaborates the details of Latino anti-Blackness. Four years after the national restaurant chain Denny’s agreed to pay $54 million to settle the discrimination lawsuits of thousands of African American customers who had been refused service or had been forced to wait longer or pay more than White customers, one of its Miami Latino-run branches continued its racially exclusionary practices. Despite the national court order and the company’s diversity training for its employees, along with a newly constituted in-house monitoring system for random checks, Latino anti-Blackness at Denny’s continued.18 In 1994, the Denny’s settlement was the largest and broadest settlement under the federal public-accommodation laws, thereby making the 1998 Miami incident that much more disturbing.
On January 2, after working a four p.m. to midnight shift as correctional officers at the Everglades Correctional Institution, a group of nine uniformed coworkers gathered at a Miami Denny’s to celebrate the holidays together. Six of the nine coworkers were African American (Nicole Channer, Sylvia Clinch, Clifford Fortner, Vickie Kendrick, Maryline Laroche, and Aaron Wright) and the other three, White (Daniel Carpenter, Francis Tulino, and Alma Waters). After they were seated the server returned to their table and claimed that the restaurant was out of food. Such a claim was belied by the restaurant’s own records, which indicated that customer traffic was sparse at the time and only eight customers had been served between midnight and 1:00 a.m., despite the restaurant’s capacity for 143 customers. Because the group could see that other customers were being served and that cooks were preparing food in the kitchen, they asked to speak to the manager for further explanation. Inopportunely, it was Latino Carlos Ibarra who was the manager on duty at that time. Rather than following the established Denny’s “Don’t Fight, Make It Right” instructions for handling customer complaints, Ibarra escalated the situation.
Ibarra insisted that the restaurant was completely out of food, that the group could call the restaurant’s 1-800 number if they had a complaint. He then informed the group that he would not speak with them any further, the restaurant was now closed, and they would “have to leave.” No explanation was provided for why the restaurant was closing when its hours were posted as being open twenty-four hours a day or why they were initially seated after the presumable closing hours. Ibarra then physically escorted the group out of the restaurant and locked the door, as he said to them “You don’t look right together.” As the coworkers were all still in their correctional officer (CO) uniforms, the most significant difference in their appearance was their skin color and gender. Yet, while many of the customers inside the restaurant were surely mixed-gender groups, none of them were African American. Moreover, when CO Laroche called the restaurant from the parking lot after the group was ejected from the premises, the restaurant employee on the telephone stated that the restaurant was indeed open but that a few items on the menu were not available. While waiting in the parking lot, the coworkers observed a group of five or six White Latina customers arrive, for whom Ibarra unlocked the door, then ushered them into the restaurant. All of which had African American CO Fortner reconsider what he had been told a month earlier, when he had previously tried to eat there and was told that “the stove was broken.”
Given Denny’s earlier national notoriety with racial discrimination, it would be easy to attribute manager Ibarra’s behavior to the chain’s previous manager training in how to deal with “blackout,” the company code word for what they felt were too many Blacks in the restaurant at one time.19 However, after Ibarra banished the multiracial group of COs from the restaurant, three of the African American COs headed over to another Denny’s location in the suburban Miami Lakes area. There the African American COs were admitted and served without question that same evening. It appears that only the Denny’s Ibarra managed was now barring Black patrons in Miami. As part of its management training, Denny’s had provided Ibarra two separate sessions on its nondiscrimination policies, along with instruction on the corporate policies of protocols for customer incident reports and never improperly locking restaurant doors. Ibarra flagrantly violated all these Denny policies and lied to the COs about the nonexistence of food that evening, as he insisted that the multiracial gathering of friends “don’t look right together.” When the COs filed their lawsuit for discrimination, Denny’s chose not to defend Ibarra. Instead, Denny’s regional manager suspended Ibarra. After Denny’s conducted an investigation they terminated Ibarra. All of which underscores the significance of Ibarra’s actions as a Latino manager separate from Denny’s prior history. As a result, the court awarded each of the COs financial compensation for the racial exclusion they experienced.
While no other city in the contiguous United States has a nickname akin to Miami’s “capital of Latin America,” others do have significant Latino populations in which anti-Black sentiment can influence how public space is regulated. In fact, as early as the 1930s, Afro-Cuban Evelio Grillo observed how the Cuban émigré clubs in Tampa, Florida, did not admit Afro-Cubans.20 When the new century arrived, it was accompanied by the same White Latino exclusion of Afro-Latinos in Tampa and elsewhere.21
Like Tampa and Miami, Chicago is a city with a density of Latino residents living and working in Latino enclaves. Within such ethnic enclaves, Latino ownership of restaurants and shops is not unusual. Unfortunately, the Latino ownership of such venues of leisure and commerce has also been accompanied by a Latino culture of anti-Blackness against Afro-Latinos and African Americans alike.
Afro-Latino Eric Trujillo felt the chill of anti-Black animosity when he sought to have lunch at the Mexican restaurant Cuauhtemoc.22 Upon seating himself at a table, Eric waited for forty-five minutes while the Latina owner, Martha Perez, and a waitress looked at him and whispered between themselves rather than approach his table for service. After observing at least ten other patrons who appeared to be of Latino descent enter the restaurant after he did and be greeted politely and served quickly, Eric raised his voice to attract the waitress’s attention. When the waitress asked Eric for his food order, she did so from a distance of three feet from his table. When the food arrived, the waitress pushed it across the table as if Eric was diseased. None of the non-Black Latino patrons were treated with the discourtesy aimed at Eric, the only person of African descent in the restaurant. While Eric did not suffer any out-of-pocket expenses from the long wait for service, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations concluded that the racial humiliation the restaurant caused him warranted financial compensation to him along with paying the City of Chicago its maximum fine.
In addition to compensation for emotional distress and administrative fines, victims of discrimination can also be awarded punitive damages when the racist conduct is especially outrageous. Edna Pryor and Emma Boney are two Chicago residents who experienced such outrageous conduct when attempting to shop at Cirilo Echevarria’s retail clothing store Passion for Fashion/Casa Echevarria.23 When Edna, a Jamaican woman, entered Casa Echevarria, store owner Echevarria demanded that she check her bag. Edna explained that she did not have any bags and was only carrying her purse, which she did not wish to check. Rather than acknowledge Edna’s common-sense concern for the security of her purse contents (a wallet, identification, and personal items), Echevarria instead ordered Edna out of the store, stating that he did not want “N——rs” in his store. When Edna later returned with her friend Emma Boney (who is African American), Echevarria escalated into declaring that his business was not for Black people, and again stating that he did not wish to have “N——rs” in his store. He refused to talk to Edna and Emma, and instead shouted at them to “get out,” as he escorted them to the door.
Even though neither Edna nor Emma incurred any out-of-pocket expenses from the incident, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations decided that Echevarria’s egregious display of Latino anti-Blackness warranted the imposition of a financial penalty for the emotional distress Echevarria caused to both Edna and Emma. Moreover, the commission awarded punitive damages to both Edna and Emma, along with imposing a fine on Echevarria payable to the City of Chicago.
Chicago Latino anti-Blackness is not restricted to establishments that Latinos own but also infects Latino operations of national and local chain establishments. Bernie Andrews was an African American slapped with the indignity of Latino anti-Black exclusion and hostility when he entered a McDonald’s franchise located in the Jefferson Park area of Chicago’s North Side.24 While Jefferson Park has long been noted as a vibrant Polish American residential neighborhood with a sizeable number of Irish Americans as well, the Latina manager of the local McDonald’s seemingly took it upon herself to police the space as a Whites-only eatery.
Bernie was able to enter the restaurant and eat his meal. However, the law is still violated when a customer is treated differently due to race after being admitted and served. Once he finished his meal, Bernie entered the restroom, and while there its Latina manager entered and sarcastically asked him if he was taking a bath. She then told him, “Get out, n——r,” and exited. As Bernie continued to wash his hands, two other female employees opened the door to the men’s room, and through the open door he saw the manager speaking to a Latino patron. Upon speaking with the manager, the Latino patron entered the bathroom and bumped Bernie. He then placed his right hand in his coat pocket, feigning that he had a weapon, while interrogating Bernie with the questions: “Why are you bothering that lady, Old Pop? N——r, why don’t you go back to the South Side where you belong?”
When the McDonald’s franchise owner attempted to have the case dismissed as lacking merit, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations disagreed and refused to dismiss the case. The commission concluded that it could be reasonably inferred from the allegations not only that the Latina manager had racially harassed Bernie with her verbal assault but that she also had requested or condoned the Latino patron’s racial harassment. After the commission refused to dismiss the case, the parties decided to forgo further proceedings, as is often the case when litigants resolve a claim among themselves with a settlement agreement.
Unfortunately, patrons like Bernie can be accosted by Latino anti-Black bias even outside cities like Chicago and Miami, which are known for having a density of Latino residents living and working in Latino ethnic enclaves. For instance, Carlsbad, New Mexico, is a city whose mineral-extraction-based economy and state parks tourism are not accompanied by the same acclaim as Miami. Yet, it too is populated with a significant number of Latinos. The 2000 census listed Latinos as 36.7 percent of the Carlsbad population.25 By the 2010 census that number increased to 42.5 percent, and the 2019 American Community Survey estimated an increase to 51.5 percent.26 While Carlsbad may not be confused for Miami, its Latinos are numerous enough to influence how racism is experienced. Grant Pirtle is an African American resident of Carlsbad who felt the sting of Latino anti-Black exclusion despite being married to a light-skinned Latina woman.27
One Saturday afternoon, Grant Pirtle entered Allsup’s Convenience Store located on National Parks Highway and attempted to make a purchase, the total cost of which was $7.63. Grant handed over a five-dollar bill and three one-dollar bills from change he had received during an earlier purchase at a Chevron gas station. When presented with the eight-dollar tender, the White Latina cashier, Mary Jane Celaya, examined the five-dollar bill in the light and stated that the bill was counterfeit. Grant then offered her a ten-dollar bill and twenty dollars. Celaya then proceeded to rub the bills with her hand and concluded that all of Grant’s money was “counterfeit and no good,” even though she did not examine the one-dollar bills.28 Nor did she employ any of the official store protocols she had been taught for dealing with suspected counterfeit bills (and which were conveniently listed on a poster next to her cash register). The protocols include different features for detecting counterfeit bills and the actions to take, such as “Keep the bill from the passer,” “Delay the passer with some excuse if possible,” “Telephone the police or the U.S. Secret Service,” and “Write your initials and the date on the border of the bill and surrender the note only to the police or Secret Service.” Celaya’s failure to follow any of these store procedures suggests that her stated concern with counterfeit bills was itself manufactured. She then topped off her performance by removing the items Grant wanted to purchase out of his reach and behind the counter.
Blocked from any means of making a purchase at the store and mortified by Celaya’s deep-seated suspicion of him as a customer, Grant left the premises. Plagued by the public humiliation that Celaya subjected him to, Grant decided to return to the Chevron convenience store at which he received the proclaimed counterfeit bills. Grant related the difficulty he encountered with Celaya, and the Chevron clerk examined the money and used a special marker to determine if the bills were counterfeit. Using the marker, the Chevron clerk was able to definitively conclude that the bills were not counterfeit. In fact, when Grant entered a different convenience store that day, he successfully made a purchase with the same bills Celaya had refused to accept.
Grant then returned to Allsup’s Convenience Store and asked Celaya how Allsup determines counterfeit money. Celaya responded that there is no formal method in place and that she could tell “just from the feel of it.”29 Grant asked to speak to a manager, and Celaya obstructed him at every turn by first claiming there was no manager in the store, that there were no managers at any of the other Allsup’s locations, and finally that she could not call over the assistant manager who was actually in the store, because he was busy and could not talk to Grant. Celaya’s coup de grace was to order Grant to leave the store.
Grant went home to his wife, Yolanda Pirtle, and told her about the incident that was still upsetting him. Yolanda decided to return to the store and see whether Celaya would treat her any differently as a light-skinned Latina. Celaya not only refrained from asking Yolanda any questions about the bills she tendered, she also accepted the bills and permitted Yolanda to successfully complete her purchase. The bills Celaya accepted from Yolanda without question, were the very same bills she rejected outright from Grant as presumably counterfeit. Grant submitted a complaint to the New Mexico Human Rights Division. The division conducted their own investigation and concluded that there was probable cause to assert a discrimination claim. Thereafter, Grant filed a lawsuit in federal court, and a settlement agreement was reached.
Viewed as a whole, the public accommodation case examples demonstrate that elite and nonelite Latino-dominated public spaces, from upscale gourmet restaurants to midlevel chain restaurants to highway convenience stores, are all subject to being racially policed. Yet, when confronted with accounts of discrimination, people often respond with expressions of hope that education and the progression of time will effectuate social change. That reaction may be sincere and well intentioned, but it misses how even the educational context can be riddled with hierarchy producing anti-Blackness. What the following narratives underscore is that unraveling the roots of racial discrimination must be intentional to be effective, because the status quo operation of our educational environments are not always equipped to disrupt Latino anti-Black bias.
THE EDUCATIONAL SPACE
While college campuses often pride themselves as being at the forefront of promoting public conversation about racial diversity, Afro-Latino college students have reported that on campus “Latino spaces have always been the most violent.”30 A 2017 study of Afro-Latino college-student interviews, blog posts, and focus groups found that most had strong feelings of social exclusion from other Latinos in their colleges. As one participant noted:
My entire life, Latino spaces have always been the most violent for me. To this day, I can’t enter a space where there are only Latinos. Even though everyone knew I was on the board [of a Latino college student group], I’m at every meeting, this one girl looked uncomfortable with my presence, but I don’t think she really realized that that’s what her face looked like as soon as I walked into the room, but it’s like I know that face well enough to know exactly what you’re thinking right now and what your discomfort means in this space and why.31
Similar findings were found again in 2020 interviews of AfroLatino students attending a small, urban, commuter public college in the New York Metropolitan area.32 The common theme across all the interviews was the anti-Blackness the students experienced from their fellow Latino students who mocked them as being too Black in appearance to claim a Latino identity. “They’d make fun of me, like you aren’t Latina.”33
This also accords with research that indicates that Latino student involvement in majority-Latino college-student organizations significantly increased the odds of in-group harassment.34 Such insights help explain earlier findings that the skin color of immigrant Latina college students impacts their self-perception.35 The darker-skinned Latina-immigrant college students had lower self-esteem as compared to the lighter-skinned Latina-immigrant college students.
As an antidote, education researchers recommend specific interventions. They exhort higher education practitioners to become knowledgeable and aware of both colorism within the Latino community and microaggressions against Afro-Latino students. With this knowledge, educators will be empowered to intentionally foster learning environments that challenge anti-Black racism among Latino students. In addition, it is advisable to encourage “collaboration and dialog between Latino and Black student groups [particularly because] those who are themselves victims of discrimination can also be victimizers of others who are perceived to hold even more racially subordinate positions.”36
Similar interventions have also been recommended with respect to tensions between Latino and African American college students. Patricia Literte’s study of public university students in California observed that racial stereotyping among the Latino students fostered anti-Black sentiments. “Nancy, a Mexican American student, described the stereotypes: ‘Basically, Blacks are very loud and always pick fights.’”37 Literte concludes that universities should be proactive in easing Latino versus African American tensions by implementing conflict resolution and peace-building programs. Case filings data indirectly suggests that such conflict resolution programs are desperately needed. But first a few words about the case records.
US federal and local laws protect the privacy of students who file discrimination claims, and for that reason the public records about the lawsuits are quite barebones. Absent consent from the complainant, government agencies, like the federal Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education that administer the discrimination claims, are prohibited from publicly disclosing the complainant’s name and personal information.38 As a result, the publicly available data for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) lists all pending cases only by the name of the institution sued.39 Searching for Latino-specific claims in the public OCR data is thus impracticable. Public access becomes feasible only when complainants (or minors represented by their parents) decide to use their resources to continue their fight in federal court and to disclose their identity.
Local agencies that enforce state and municipal antidiscrimination law often refrain from even publicly posting their list of pending cases. After a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for further information, one such agency, the New York State Division of Human Rights, indicated privacy law permitted them to release only a list of cases the agency had reached a final determination on. Between 2010 and 2020, the agency flagged forty-five final determinations related to Latino bias against Afro-Latinos and African Americans. That still leaves an entire universe of pending cases. But one immediate pattern is evident—at least 58 percent of the relevant final determinations were cases filed in the higher education setting, whereas only 42 percent related to the K–12 setting. All of which suggests that the higher education setting could greatly benefit from the Latino-Black conflict resolution interventions that commentators have recommended. This is underscored by the anti-Blackness of Latino college educators that Afro-Latino peers have witnessed.40
However, the K–12 educational context presents an even more aggravated set of circumstances. The educational studies literature has tended to focus on how Latino and African American communities are pitted against one another as competitors for scarce resources in under-resourced schools into which children of color are segregated from White students in better funded public schools.41 Educational scholarship has spent less time discussing the physical clashes between Latino and African American students. Yet in California in particular, at least ten different high schools as described in chapter 1 have been the center of Latino versus Black violence that has had little to do with the strategic skirmishes of leaders of color seeking political control of public institutions.42 In other words, segregated public schools can be “a venue for the negotiation of power, resources, and control among minority populations within a community,” but that is not what directly instigates the inter-racial violence among student populations.43
One incident that especially stands out as an example is that of Samohi High School in Santa Monica, California, where in 2005 it took twenty-six police officers half an hour to settle a riot with the aid of police reinforcements from other area police departments.44 Initially there was a fight in the school cafeteria between an African American student and a Latino student, after which a crowd of two hundred students rushed the scene for what they expected would be another lunchtime fight between African Americans and Latinos as had occurred in the past. This was not related to gang-on-gang violence. One African American student expressed fear for his safety because Latino students “who have graduated from Samohi often get involved, showing up after school and line up waiting to pick a fight with black kids. They just don’t like each other. It ain’t never gonna stop.” Indeed, thereafter then mayor Antonio Villaraigosa himself had to intervene after more high school brawls broke out between Latinos and African American students.
These concerns are not limited to California. In fact, education specialist David Stovall cautions that it is very important to note regional specificities when examining the issue of Latino anti-Blackness in school settings.45 Historical migration patterns and the variation in segregated spaces across the country influence when, how, and against which Afro-descendant populations Latino anti-Blackness is manifested. In Chicago, where Professor Stovall has both researched and worked as a K–12 teacher, he has observed waves of clashes between Latino and African American students, from the late 1990s, 2000s, and again in the 2010s. With each wave of violence, Chicago public school officials would attempt to mitigate the racialized confrontations by designating separate school entrances for students arriving from the south of Chicago and those arriving from the north of Chicago. The intense residential segregation of Chicago guaranteed that the separate entrances would act as de facto “African American only” versus “Latino only doors” for these students arriving from separate sections of the city.
Yet, there are occasions when ad hoc administrative attempts to contain racial conflict are insufficient within and outside Chicago such that news agencies are made aware of them. Several notable news accounts include the 2014 lunchtime fight between African Americans and Latinos at Streamwood High School in a suburb of Chicago. The fight involved at least forty students across two different floors and offices.46 Educators note that racialized lunchtime school spaces are “where the trouble usually happens.”47 Another such lunchtime melee that reached news outlets was that of Canyon Springs High School in Las Vegas. It was notable because the police felt compelled to use pepper spray to quell the fight between Latino and African American students.48
Apart from large-scale school melees, Latino anti-Blackness also crops up in individual instances of bullying. Alma Yariela Cruz, an Afro-Latina student in Puerto Rico, was eleven years old in 2018 when two classmates taunted her for two years with racial slurs such as “negra sucia” (dirty Black girl), “negra asquerosa” (disgusting Black girl), “negra dientúa” (big-tooth Black girl), along with racist commentary about her Afro-descended hair.49 The racial harassment Alma experienced parallels that of another Afro-Latina middle schooler in Denver. While traveling to school she was excited about having had her hair professionally done for the first time. But when she arrived at school, her Latino classmates told her that despite what she did to herself she was still ugly and undesirable. They threw water all over her new clothes and hair and called her “ape man, jungle bunny, and monkey.”50
When African American Kavin found herself the target of race-based bullying at the public school she attended in Marion, Texas, part of the racially hostile environment she experienced from the majority White non-Hispanic population included an assault by two Latina students.51 The two Latinas surrounded Kavin at her locker and began taunting her, punched her, and threw her back against the locker. The two Latina students could have chosen to abstain from the White non-Hispanic student campaign to terrorize Kavin and her two sisters as the few African Americans at the school. Instead, they chose to actively throw their lot in with the White non-Hispanic anti-Black racial harassers who repeatedly hurled racial insults and ostracized Kavin on the White non-Hispanic-dominated cheerleading team she was nominally a part of. Such racial allegiances are not so difficult to comprehend when one considers that the anti-Blackness learned in Latino family settings surfaces as early as preschool. Sili Recio, an Afro-Latina living in Orlando, Florida, in 2015 recalls how her preschool daughter was called “black and ugly” by a fellow Latino preschool classmate.52
As distressing as biased classmate bullying can be, school-based Latino anti-Blackness does not end there. Latino school officials are also part of the problem. In fact, anti-Blackness by Latino instructors has been documented as early as 1884. That was the year that Afro–Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Schomburg was told by his fifth-grade schoolteacher in Puerto Rico that “Black people had no history, no heroes, no great moments.”53 (It was that White Latina’s anti-Blackness that inspired Schomburg’s lifelong dedication to amassing an archive of African diaspora literature and letters now housed by the New York Public Library’s Research Division at the Schomburg Center.)54
Over a century later, Latino-instructor anti-Blackness continues to be a problem. After twenty years of being an educator, Afro–Puerto Rican Noemí Cortés still sharply recalls how a fellow Latino teacher in Chicago ostracized his Black students.55 Because this (White Cuban) middle-school literacy teacher automatically assumed all his Black students were deficient, he refused to interact with them directly and instead segregated them into a separate corner of the classroom for instruction exclusively with a special education aide. Cortés also noted that the teacher’s racialized perspectives about his Black students also informed his perception of a twelve-year-old girl as impossible to work with because she was “such an adult.” (“Adultification” of Black youngsters as a racist dynamic will be more fully elaborated below.) For these Black students in Chicago, the classroom ostracism by their Latino teacher was all a part of the racial trauma they experienced in school: Latino students freely used the N-word in the building and the Puerto Rican security guard openly shared his presumption that all Black students were behavior problems to be closely monitored and regulated. For this reason, Cortés found it necessary to provide classroom time and space for these Black students to decompress from the stress of navigating the anti-Black minefields of the predominantly Latino school.
Strikingly, Cortés is not alone in her concerns about Latino teacher anti-Black attitudes in Chicago. David Stovall has directly observed how Latino administrators in Chicago rely on anti-Black racial stereotypes when deciding to accord discipline for school infractions committed by African American students that, in contrast, are excused as inconsequential when committed by Latino students.56 Stovall vividly recalls how one Latina school principal in particular was so wedded to her racially biased views of African American students as inherent behavior problems who could never be trusted that she would across-the-board refuse to consider the perspectives of African American students. Each of her interactions with African American students was hostile, and this was also reflected in how she denied them school benefits (admission to special school programs, appointments with guidance counselors, appointments with college recruiters, access to school trips, and so on).
This is a dynamic that extends beyond Chicago. Consider the reflections of Afro-Dominican José Luis Vilson, who taught math for fifteen years, from 2005 to 2020, at a New York City public school in Washington Heights that was densely populated with Latinos, particularly from the Dominican Republic. During his entire fifteen-year tenure, Vilson repeatedly witnessed the Latino school administrators treat dark-skinned students as inherently incompetent and prone to misbehavior.57 This reliance on Black racial stereotypes also resulted in disproportionate punishments for Black students. However, the racial bias was seemingly imperceptible to the Latino school administrators.
Latino anti-Black attitudes surface early in training of teachers. Roberto Montoya, an instructor of student teachers at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Education since 2012, has repeatedly observed his Latino students express anti-Black attitudes and interact negatively with their fellow Black education students.58 Especially worrisome to Montoya is that when he attempts to intervene and create a teachable moment regarding Latino anti-Blackness in the classroom, many of the Latino student teachers dismiss it as irrelevant to them. These then are the unteachable teachers sent off to instruct the nation’s young people. In short, the anti-Blackness of Latino teachers and school administrators has material consequences despite being effectively invisible in public discourse. And this invisibility adversely affects even the most well-meaning of school reform attempts.
Contemporary Providence, Rhode Island, provides a useful case study. It is a school district in which Latino students are 65 percent of the K–12 public-school student population, and Black students are 16 percent.59 During the school year, the students are taught primarily by White non-Hispanic teachers who continually subject students of color to school discipline for infractions that other students also commit without the same disciplinary consequences.60
However, during the summer months, the Generation Teach program offers these same middle-school students an academic enrichment program that specifically seeks to end racial injustice and inequity in education.61 The instructors are intentionally more racially diverse and directed to endorse the program’s antiracism mission. And yet Latino instructor anti-Blackness manages to encroach upon even this carefully crafted educational space. Time and again, teachers observed a Latina program leader reprimand African American students for the very same infractions lighter-skinned Latino students committed without chastisement.62 The Latina program leader’s differential treatment extended to reprimanding the African American students for behavior as innocuous as purchasing food items from the school vending machines rather than eating the food provided in the cafeteria. The racial disparity was particularly noticeable because the entire student population of all backgrounds used the vending machines as an alternative to the cafeteria food they did not like.
Equally concerning, a junior Latina instructor was observed over-sexualizing her African American and Afro-Latino middle school students in problematic ways that were never addressed by the program.63 The over-sexualization of the boys was manifested in the junior Latina instructor’s constant touching and flirting with them, which many other teachers found inappropriate. The “adultification” of young Black girls is a topic that has only recently garnered some public attention in the conversation about intersectional discrimination (the vortex where race and gender combine).64 However, adultification is just as detrimental to the formation of boys of color. Interacting with children of color as if they were much older, based on racial stereotypes about their inherent sexual prowess, not only deprives those children of an actual childhood characterized by adult nurturing and guidance but also exposes them to being more harshly disciplined. Adultification is where the school-to-prison pipeline begins.
The junior Latina instructor’s fellow teachers believed she was operating under such Black racial stereotypes, given her proclivity for inserting into a conversation the non sequitur of how much she wanted to date Black men by starting with light-skinned men and then “working her way up” to dark-skinned men. It appeared to her coworkers that the inappropriate behavior this Latina teacher had with her Black male students was a dress rehearsal for launching her fantasy of dating Black men. Educational programs that ignore the Latino deployment of racial stereotypes create hostile learning environments for children of African descent.
Unfortunately, the Latino sexualization of Black students is not limited to this single example of a Latina Providence educator. Education specialist David Stovall has noted the same problem with Latino sexualization of Black female students in Chicago.65 In fact, a 2018 report by the Chicago Tribune revealed that the Chicago school district was the site of massive sexual abuse and assault of its students, and the reports of sexual abuse continue.66 Notably, a significant number of the victimized students who were profiled by the Chicago Tribune exposé were Black. Inasmuch as Latinos and Afro-Latinos together constitute 20.9 percent of the Chicago school district population of teachers, they are not excluded from the concerns of racialized sexual abuse.67
Nor is the racial climate across the country much better among Latino educators themselves. At a meeting of Latino educators in Colorado, Afro-Latina Marta Cruz-Janzen was met with great hostility and was told, “Some Hispanics don’t want you to be one of them because you represent everything they don’t want to be. How dare this black woman speak Spanish and claim to be one of us? They see you as black and they don’t want to be black. They want you to stop saying that you’re like them.”68
In short, the tales of Latino anti-Blackness in public spaces of recreation and education all resound a consistent theme. Across diverse geographic locations what remains consistent is the manner in which Latinos regulate public spaces to exclude and demean Blackness. Playing and learning in White-dominated Latino spaces is where Afro-Latinos are taught the rules of Latino racial hierarchies, and African Americans are informed that they are unwelcome. In the next chapter I consider how all this permeates the work context.