CHAPTER 6
In my examination of how discrimination claims of Latino anti-Blackness arise in varied contexts like the workplace, the market for housing sales and rentals, schools, public venues, and the criminal justice system, two central patterns become evident. First, anti-Blackness is much more significant than many commentators care to admit. Second, the ability to identify and address Latino anti-Blackness is hampered by the notion that Latinos can’t be prejudiced or racist simply by virtue of being Latino.
In some respects, these dynamics were anticipated by sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s observation that “the post-civil rights era has brought changes in how racial stratification seems to operate” whereby color gradations “will become more salient factors of stratification” and dark-skinned Latinos will be racially subordinated to light-skinned Latinos in a Latin American manner.1
In a related fashion, legal scholars Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres together forecasted that US race relations would evolve to offer light-skinned Latinos a “racial bribe.” A “racial bribe is a strategy that invites specific racial or ethnic groups to advance within the existing black-white racial hierarchy by becoming ‘white’ . . . to secure high status for individual group members within existing hierarchies.”2 Guinier and Torres specifically note that a racial bribe is evident whenever lighter-skinned Latinos are offered a chance to be considered more acceptable to White non-Hispanics than darker-skinned Latinos “so long as they maintain their social distance from Blackness.”3
However, the racial bribe is not limited to instances in which Latinos consciously reject identifying with Blackness, but instead more broadly encompasses the overarching Latino exaltation of Whiteness. Yet, efforts to raise the concern in public discourse regarding the Latino proclivity for esteeming Whiteness to the detriment of Afro-descendants is frequently met with heated Latino outrage and denial. When articles were posted to the social media news outlets Huffington Post and Latino Rebels regarding the topic of White Latino privilege, Latino commentators vociferously disclaimed the existence of Latino Whiteness and Latino White privilege.4
Undergirding numerous responses was a disturbing resistance to acknowledge how differently Latinos can be racially positioned depending upon their pigment, phenotype, and hair texture. It is a Latino ethnic nationalism that elevates a color-blind notion of Latinidad (a vision of a panethnic Latino community). One blog post that was part of the social media storm was entitled “Who and What the Hell Is a White Hispanic?”5 The online debates illustrated the way in which the notion of Latino homogeneity allows White Latinos to “enjoy their White privilege unbridled while pretending [Latinos] across the entire color spectrum have the same opportunities and are treated equally” and are never agents in the oppression of Blackness.6 This social media glimpse into contemporary Latino public discourse on race and identity suggests that without an effective intervention unmediated Latino racial attitudes will continue to hinder US racial equality efforts.
It is for this reason that the tales of Latino anti-Black discrimination recounted in this book are so important, inasmuch as they help disrupt the Latino myth of “racial innocence”7 and clarify Latino agency in racism. The stories show how the performance of Latino Whiteness entails subordinating Blackness as embodied by Afro-Latinos, African Americans, and other Afro-descendants in an unstated racial bribe for social status, all while claiming a mantle of Latino racial innocence. This is so even for those Latinos whose White self-identity may conflict with others perceptions of them as non-White, as is often the case with light-skinned Latinos of low socioeconomic status.8 As sociologist Nicholas Vargas explains, “contested” Latino claims to Whiteness can “seek to legitimate group membership as [W]hite by expressing similar and sometimes even amplified notions of colourblindness than their non-contested white counterparts” with conservative racial views.9
Yet, Latino leaders and organizations often advance Latino advocacy projects that ignore Afro-Latino concerns regarding anti-Blackness. This is partly explained by the pressing need to address the many ways the entire multihued collective of Latinos are discriminated against in US society.10 As critical race theory scholar Laura Gomez notes, the deep societal prejudice against the Latino category itself merits serious study and attention.11
Nevertheless, a unified-front advocacy presumption of a homogeneous Latinidad that experiences discrimination in exactly the same way sustains the racial innocence platform. Plainly stated, the reality of anti-Latino societal prejudice can be deployed to block any recognition that Latinos can themselves harbor anti-Black bias. Overlooking the particular inequalities that Afro-Latinos suffer undermines actual group solidarity for effectively advancing social justice.
In fact, when Latinos experience discrimination at the hands of other Latinos, their sense of collective belonging to other Latinos, which sociologists refer to as “linked fate,” decreases.12 Inasmuch as Afro-Latinos report greater rates of discrimination from fellow Latinos as compared to what White-identified Latinos report, Afro-Latinos are more likely to feel less of a linked fate with other Latinos. Indeed, Afro-Latinos indicate sensing more intragroup conflict among Latinos than do White-identified Latinos, who are more likely to believe that relations between Latinos are good.13 In turn, Afro-Latino dissatisfaction with Latinos as an ethnic collective can hinder the ability to galvanize unified political action.
ELECTORAL POLITICS AND EQUALITY EFFORTS
Electoral politics studies demonstrate that a sense of Latino linked fate is an important influence on Latino political choices.14 The voting rights context is where Latino anti-Blackness has to be carefully navigated to effectively protect Latino political participation. The process for designing electoral districts provides a perfect illustration.
After the results from a census count of the US population is released every ten years, electoral voting district boundaries are reassessed for balance based on population size. This ensures that regions have equal representation in the number of government representatives they elect. In addition, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 mandates that redistricting plans be free of racial discrimination. Thus, a redistricting plan is required to provide politically cohesive racial groups that are sufficiently large and geographically compact an equal opportunity to participate in the political process by electing a candidate of their choice.
As Latinos and African Americans increasingly live in neighboring areas, voting rights lawyers have determined that working in solidarity across racial groups is crucial for helping ensure the political power of people of color. As the US Supreme Court has repeatedly narrowed the applicability of the Voting Rights Act for challenging racially discriminatory voting districts, racial solidarity has become even more important. This need is embodied in the turn to “unity mapping.”
Unity mapping brings together community leaders from various racial and ethnic groups that live in close proximity to each other to craft a consensus plan, which is then jointly presented to redistricting authorities to consider as they decide electoral district boundaries.15 This entails extensive community hearings to assess the degree to which different groups share concerns and what district configurations would best present these common interests. How disheartening then when these vital pursuits for helping communities of color are themselves subject to racially hostile mindsets that undermine joint collaborations.16
During his tenure as president and general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Juan Cartagena encountered Latino anti-Blackness in his own unity-mapping efforts. During community outreach sessions, Cartagena heard Latino residents state regarding African Americans, “We don’t want to be in the same district with them” and “we don’t want to be like them.”17 While Cartagena did once manage to surmount anti-Black bias in 2010 to successfully create a unity map for New York City’s city council districts, his organization has not been able to do so in other regions.
Similarly, Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) has also experienced unity-mapping defeats with Latinos in Texas.18 Janai S. Nelson, now president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, asserts that unity mapping entails “really difficult conversations” about racial power sharing in which anti-Black bias is felt even when not stated in a blatant manner, but “you can feel it. You can almost cut it with a knife.”19 Failing to acknowledge Latino anti-Black bias thus hinders the cross-racial cooperation necessary for unity mapping and the important project of making the Latino vote count.
Coming to terms with Latino anti-Black sentiments could also help illuminate, in part, why some Latinos cast votes for candidates who overtly manifest bias against Latinos. As voting-rights expert Terry Smith pointedly observed about Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election, Latinos “gave Trump nearly 30 percent of their vote, a curious tally for an ethnic group that had borne the brunt of Trump’s racial ridicule.”20 Some Latinos continued to support Trump across his entire presidential term, during which he promoted White supremacist ideas and policies.21 Latino allegiance to such a politician cannot be explained solely as a matter of Republican Party allegiance when the candidate epitomizes blatant disregard for the equality of Latinos. Like working-class White non-Hispanics who vote against their own socioeconomic interest in pursuit of an association with the privilege of White racial identity, White-identified Latinos can and have done the same.22
In short, ignoring how Latinos have a race as well as an ethnicity disserves the attempt to organize collective Latino political-and social-justice-reform efforts.23 It can also misinform how Latino organizations assess public policies and their interventions. The US government’s consideration about how to structure census taking provides an important example.
CENSUS POLITICS AND CIVIL RIGHTS
For the last few years the Census Bureau has been considering a proposal to add “Latino” and “Hispanic” to the list of government-defined races on its decennial population survey questionnaire.24 This would be a dramatic change from treating Latino/Hispanic as an ethnicity to instead treating it as a race. Since the 1980 census, “Hispanic origin” has been part of a separate ethnicity question rather than being listed as an option in the “What race are you?” question on the census.25 Such a two-part formulation in 2010 enabled Latinos to indicate their ethnic origin as Hispanic and simultaneously indicate their racial identity as White, Black, Asian, American Indian, or Native Hawaiian. Despite the fact that the 2020 Decennial Census Program decided to continue to use the existing format of two separate questions, the Census Bureau remains interested in supporting a change to the single question format in the future, and a number of Latino organizations endorse that proposed change despite the alarm raised by Afro-Latino activists about its potential adverse impact on civil rights measures.26
Latino census-box checking affects how civil rights laws are implemented. The racial and ethnic classifications that the Census Bureau uses were devised in 1977 for the specific purpose of facilitating the application of civil rights laws. By comparing the census count of individuals by race to the statistical presence of each racial group in workplaces, housing purchases and rentals, and access to mortgages, racial disparities can be uncovered and then investigated for discriminatory practices. Collapsing Latino/Hispanic ethnic identity into the list of racial categories with Black in particular risks obscuring the number of Afro-Latinos and the monitoring of socioeconomic status differences of Latinos that exist across race.
Yet, national Latino organizations are so focused on promoting Latino unity, however well intentioned, that they can be shortsighted about the distinctive needs of Afro-Latinos. This is part of what demographer Michael Rodriguez-Muñiz calls “population politics.”27 For example, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the National Council of La Raza all publicly endorsed the Census Bureau recommendation to treat Hispanic as a homogeneous racial category, with the assertion that there would be very little loss in necessary data, since Afro-Latinos could always elect to check both the “Hispanic” race box and the “Black” race box to indicate their Afro-Latino identity.28
What such a perspective underappreciates is how Latino anti-Black bias will surely inhibit the Census Bureau’s count of Afro-Latinos in ways that the experiments with test questions cannot readily appreciate. When “Hispanic” is juxtaposed as a racial category distinct from others, Latinos perceive the other categories as pertaining only to non-Hispanics. This helps explain why prior to the 2020 Census, Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico differed in their use of the “Some Other Race” (SOR) box compared to Puerto Ricans living in the mainland United States. The Census Bureau views the use of the SOR box as a respondent’s lack of identification with the established racial boxes. Notably, Latinos in the United States use the SOR box more than any other group, writing in responses such as “Mexican,” “Hispanic,” or “Latin American.” Thirty-seven percent of Latinos did so on the 2010 census, as did 42 percent on the 2000 census.29 Yet, only 11 percent of Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico itself selected “Some Other Race” or “Two or More Races” on the 2010 census, as compared with the 30.8 percent of mainland Puerto Ricans that selected “Some Other Race” or “Two or More Races.”30 On the island of Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans can view the racial categories as pertaining to themselves and not exclusively to US mainland racial groups. In contrast, stateside Puerto Ricans’ census-box checking occurs in a context of comparison to US racial groups of African Americans and White non-Hispanics. Such comparisons thereby implicate Latino racial attitudes.
To be sure, the Latino affinity for Whiteness discussed in chapter 1 operates in tandem with a Latino cultural flight from Blackness. Both hinder the Census Bureau count of Afro-Latinos. Juxtaposing Hispanic as a “race” distinct from others would further aggravate the undercount. Inasmuch as Latinos historically prefer to view Blackness as always situated outside their national identities, the Black category would be deemed as uniquely African American in contrast to Hispanic as a “race.”31 For instance, the distancing of Blackness in Puerto Rico enables Puerto Ricans to view Blackness as imbued primarily in their Dominican neighbors, while Dominicans instead view Blackness as imbued primarily in their Haitian neighbors.32 A similar racial distancing happens in other Latin American countries where Blackness is presumed to be contained in geographically limited spaces rather than being a fundamental part of the nation state.33 For these Latinos, Latino Blackness is never within but instead displaced elsewhere. For US-based Latinos, “real” Blackness is imbued only in African Americans and English-speaking Afro-Caribbeans and Africans. Again, Blackness is always somewhere else. Even in Miami’s large Caribbean population, Blackness is often exclusively associated with African Americans, such that Afro-Cubans consistently report not feeling welcomed by fellow White Cuban residents.34
The Latino disassociation from Blackness on census forms has only been reinforced by the Census Bureau decision to have the 2020 race question for the very first time list possible ethnic origins for each racial category.35 Notably excluded from the Black origin options was Latino ethnicity. Thus, in the choice of Black ethnic origins, only “African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, Somali, etc.” were listed as examples. The Census 2020 list thereby situated Blackness as something separate and apart from Latino ethnicity, yielding only 1.9 percent of Latinos who indicated their race as solely Black.36 In contrast, when Latinos are instead asked whether they are Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean, or of other African descent in Latin America, the percentage of Latinos claiming Blackness rises to 24 percent.37 The 2020 census formulation of the Black race question instead discouraged the recognition of Latino Blackness, in ways that some census data experts had predicted it would.38
An additional hindrance to being able to collect census data that accurately detects the socioeconomic differences between Afro-Latinos and other Latinos is the disinclination light-skinned Latinos have for acknowledging their greater access to societal preferences because of their White appearances. This dynamic was especially on display in the 2020 census results. During the months the 2020 census was being administered, the nation was sheltering in place from COVID-19 and transfixed by the multitude of George Floyd–inspired #BlackLivesMatter protests on their screens. For Latinos, this moment was also accompanied by the amplification of Afro-Latino voices naming Latino Whiteness as part of anti-Blackness. Many White-presenting Latinos expressed discomfort at being implicated within racism, as reflected in one Latina’s observation: “I just don’t usually go for white because although my people’s colonizers were, I definitely am not.”39 Or, as some Latino Twitter users tweeted: “I’m not white, I’m latino. I’ve never had white privilege or been look [sic] at as so,”40 and “White privilege is a myth. I’m Latino and even I know white privilege is a myth.”41 That Latino iteration of “White fragility” surfaced in a significant way in the 2020 census responses.42 The number of Latinos who identified as White alone decreased by 52.9 percent.43
Even more telling, is the landslide shift from White-identified Latinos selecting only the White racial category, as they had done in prior censuses, to large numbers instead selecting White in combination with other racial categories. For instance, Mexican American Julissa Arce had always selected the White box in response to the race question, presumably based upon her outward appearance, but on the 2020 census, she instead added additional categories such as American Indian, Chinese, and “Some Other Race.”44 Indeed, the percentage of Latino White-only response checking declined from 53 percent to 20.3 percent, at the same time that the percentage of Latino multiple-race response checking increased from 6 percent to 32.7 percent.45 The same pattern also occurred on the island of Puerto Rico, with the percentage of Latino White-only response checking declining from 75.8 percent to 17.1 percent, at the same time that the percentage of Latino multiple-race response checking increased from 3.3 percent to 49.8 percent.46 By electing to group themselves within the amorphous census category of “two or more races,” White Latinos in Puerto Rico and across the United States hindered the ability to make comparisons that reveal the existence of racial disparities amongst Latinos. For instance, this hamstrings the legal system’s ability to sanction an employer who systematically rejects qualified Afro-Latino applicants while simultaneously hiring White Latinos. Without racially specific Latino census data to compare to the business’s hiring pattern, such an employer’s racism is swept away with the defense “I do hire Latinos.” But Whiteness and Blackness make a real difference in the lives of Latinos, and we need census data that helps to measure that for social justice intervention.
Moreover, the Census Bureau exacerbated the obfuscation of intra-Latino racial disparities with its 2020 innovation of listing ethnic origins for the White racial category that noticeably excluded Latinos, just as the Black racial category ethnic-origins list did. The White racial category instead invited respondents to identify their origins in the White category by listing German, Irish, English, Italian, Lebanese, and Egyptian examples. Furthermore, as with prior census tabulations, if a Latino respondent checked the White racial category and nevertheless inserted a Latino ethnic origin in the “Some Other Race” write-in space, the Census Bureau counted that as an indication of a Latino checking “Two or More Races” to express a multiracial identity. Put together, these two Census Bureau choices in 2020 resulted in Latino White-only racial category checking declining by fourteen million people, at the same time that the number of Latinos tabulated as White in combination with some other race increased by fifteen million.47 With one small administrative sleight of hand, the 2020 census transformed White Latinos into “multiracial” Latinos whose White privilege can no longer be readily quantified.
Further altering the census form to collapse Hispanic ethnicity into the census’s racial categories rather than having it remain a separate ethnicity question will likely escalate the White Latino population disinclination to acknowledge the significance of their Whiteness. The ethnicity into race alteration proposal also shields Latinos from confronting their own possible Blackness. In contrast, retaining two separate questions enables all Latinos to demarcate their Hispanic origin as an ethnicity with the first question and then reflect on their racial origins with the second question specifically on race. This way forces the confrontation with the census racial question for a cognitive dissonance that is quite useful. This is borne out by the Afro-Latino narratives relating how the census race question brings out from the shadows family discussions of Blackness and race.48 Yet none of these insights are visible and relevant to policy making as long as Latino leaders continue to ignore the existence of Blackness and racism within their communities. The same cautionary concern applies to grassroots activists and Latino communities.
LATINO-AFRICAN AMERICAN RACIAL COALITION BUILDING
Even though productive coalitions between Latino and African American communities have been formed regarding concrete political issues of concern, they continue to be fragile and not broadly embraced by many Latinos. For example, attempts to mobilize Latinos regarding racialized violence perpetrated by police officers have been complicated by the need to navigate White-identified Latino views of “African Americans as automatically warranting police officers’ fear or suspicion” and critiques of African American behavior as “too aggressive or feisty toward the police.”49 Even with the massive onslaught of support for #BlackLivesMatter in the wake of George Floyd’s brutal death in 2020, there were Latinos who were captured on film yelling racial slurs while chasing away African American men on the street, whom they automatically presumed were present to loot their neighborhood.50 Indeed, some Latinos are seemingly “obsessed with demonizing Black Lives Matter.”51 In fact, Latinos who align themselves with African Americans in their politics risk being assaulted by other Latinos using the derogatory Spanish term “mayatero” (n——r lover) and viewed as being disassociated from authentic Latino politics.52 Latino commentators asserting that “until our global Latine community understands that Black Lives Matter, we are no better than the white supremacists that hate us” court great Latino outrage in response.53 Notably, Afro-Latinos stand out in their strong support for #BlackLivesMatter when questioned in surveys.54
Against this backdrop of exclusionary impulses are notable examples of Latino–African American coalition building that have surged often out of moments of social crisis. In the 1960s, the Young Lords alliance with the Black Panthers provided an example of Chicago African American and Latino communities coming together to pursue programs of direct action to bring their neighborhoods such services as day care, free breakfasts, and vocational training.55 Within New York City, the Young Lords Party also participated in Black Power movements and African American civil rights.56 In Winston-Salem, North Carolina churches and nonprofit agencies productively fostered Latino-African American alliances, after White non-Hispanic residents began to demonize the Latino US presence in the wake of post-9/11 immigrant surveillance and a weakened economy.57
Within electoral politics, African American–Latino cooperation is exemplified by the example of the 1983 Chicago mayoral campaign of Harold Washington, the first Black candidate for mayor.58 Latino communities in Chicago voted in huge numbers for Washington. Of the forty-eight thousand votes that separated Washington from his Republican rival, close to twenty-eight thousand of them were cast from Latino communities.
Interethnic community-based advocacy organizations and worker-based coalitions are also spaces for partnership.59 In Los Angeles, the Community Coalition was founded in 1989 as an African American and Latino organization with the goal of transforming beleaguered South Los Angeles neighborhoods through public safety campaigns, gang reduction efforts, and many other programs.60 Across the country, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) provides an example of Black-Latino cooperation in response to the growing societal anti-immigrant animus.61 BAJI is an education and advocacy group comprising African Americans and Black immigrants from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean that together oppose repressive immigration bills. BAJI also brings together all these communities to dialogue about the myths and stereotypes, as well as the cultural, social, and political issues that divide those groups. Moreover, BAJI provides the African American community with a progressive analysis and framework on immigration that links the interests of African Americans with those of immigrants of color. BAJI’s analysis emphasizes the impact of racism and economic globalization on African American and immigrant communities as a basis for forging alliances across these communities.
Similarly, Encuentro Diaspora Afro in Boston was founded in response to the growing racial tensions from increased Latino immigration to the city.62 The organization acts as an Afro-Latino culture ambassador to African American community advocacy and political events and also designs community seminars and programs to improve cross-ethnic relations. Notably, participants have been quick to identify Boston’s intense residential racial segregation as a key factor in racial hostilities.
What this small sampling of Latino–African American coalition efforts indicates is that there are venues for addressing interethnic conflict.63 Indeed, as noted historian Paul Ortiz reminds us, “an African American and Latinx history of the United States teaches us that the self-activity of the most oppressed is the key to liberty.”64 Why then are these efforts alternatively described as the “failed promise of black-Latino/a solidarity?”65
THE FUTURE OF RACIAL EQUALITY
The stories gathered in this book suggest that efforts toward interethnic coalition building for social justice will not be broad-based, sustaining, and fully transformational until Latino anti-Blackness is recognized and addressed. Indeed, experienced labor organizers note that “Latino leaders are past due in questioning [how Latino networks can] operate under an ‘anti-blackness’ narrative and pigmentocratic framework that affords privileges to light-skinned individuals.”66 In addition to Latino civil rights leaders, other actors who strongly influence the advance of racial equality are the lawyers and judges who enforce our nation’s antidiscrimination laws. The stories of discrimination within this book are proffered with the hope that they will elucidate the complicated terrain of Latino acts of discrimination and the role of anti-Blackness in its manifestation.
Some readers may question why the sampling of stories in this book should matter. They may be of the view that the stories are limited in number and representative of each person’s individual experience only at a finite point in time. Such a view loses sight of the fact that social movements are built with individual stories. Take for example the feminist movement. Long before institutions found value in surveying women about their perspectives, the feminist movement crafted policy platforms from individual stories of women that had been articulated in consciousness-raising sessions, rather than dismissing them as isolated instances of harm.67 The excavated voices lifted up in this book illuminate a pattern of Latino anti-Blackness across time, geographic spaces, and contexts. It is time to listen to those marginalized voices and have them matter.
For legal actors, the book’s interrogation of the “Latinos can’t be prejudiced” defense to racism is especially clarifying for the enforcement of antidiscrimination laws. Educating both lawyers and judges about how Latinos are not only victims of discrimination but also part of the problem of societal discrimination will fortify the ability of law to redress discrimination in an increasingly diverse society. This intervention is also needed for the public at large that serve as jurors in cases of discrimination. Veteran antidiscrimination law attorney Chris Kleppin says that when he works on Latino anti-Black bias cases he has found that, just like judges, there are also jurors who “really don’t get it and find all of this to be just nonsense. I’ve also seen people shake their heads and volunteer and say, I don’t understand this. And so it’s all about education.”68
For proper enforcement of antidiscrimination law, any judicial presumption that Latinos cannot harbor racial bias against one another is a danger. Therefore, it is critically important for lawyers to explicitly educate the judiciary in their court filings, and juries as well, with expert presentations about the particulars of Latino anti-Black bias.69 In fact, EEOC supervising trial attorney Kimberly Cruz says that all civil rights lawyers have to be prepared to educate the judges they interact with.70
One case in particular is an ideal model of how, when legal actors are educated about Latino anti-Black bias, antidiscrimination law is more appropriately enforced. Civil rights attorney Judith Berkan effectively did so by including the expert testimony of Palmira Ríos, an Afro–Puerto Rican sociologist and former commissioner and president of the Puerto Rican Civil Rights Commission. Ríos’s testimony as a qualified expert on race discrimination in Puerto Rico was instrumental in illuminating how the Sears Roebuck branch in Puerto Rico operated under a racial hierarchy when Victor Rivera Sanchez, an Afro–Puerto Rican, worked there.71
When Victor applied for a job at the Sears retail location in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, his aspiration was to obtain a commissioned sales position. However, upon his arrival at the store he was immediately directed to the warehouse. What Victor discovered was that the warehouse was the Sears Mayaguez location for its Black employees. With three hundred employees storewide, only seventeen were Black and primarily relegated to the warehouse. The warehouse of Black workers was referred to as “the tribe,” directly conjuring the vision of an African tribe far removed from the light-skinned and Whiter employees on the sales floor. Latino supervisors and coworkers continually verbally assaulted those Black employees with a litany of racially derogatory Spanish terms for Blackness, such as “Negro, Negrito, Moreno, Africano,” and the term “Bembon” (a stupid person with a presumably African large, thick lower lip).
In the twelve years that Victor worked there, the warehouse was vigilantly maintained as a so-called African tribe, not only by directing Black applicants there but also by assiduously preventing Black employees from being transferred out to any other department. Applicant skin shades were monitored with the requirement of application photographs for all employee files. Darker-skinned employees were diverted to what were deemed Black-appropriate positions. One exclusionary tactic was to uniquely demand previous sales experience from Black applicants, contrary to written sales job descriptions that omitted any requirement of previous sales experience. In turn, White applicants with no sales experience were chosen for those sales jobs instead.
Victor endured years of applying for transfers and promotions that were always denied. A hiring context devoid of uniform criteria essentially authorized the Latino supervisors to make selections not based on merit but instead upon their own biases. Complaints Victor made to his Latino supervisor and Latina director of human relations about the anti-Black, racially hostile work environment all went unheeded as unworthy of investigation. The final insult that prompted Victor to file a legal claim was when he was rejected yet again for a sales position that was instead given to a White employee who had not even applied for the job. The White employee landed the position through the racially exclusive network of supervisors that chose to transfer him.
Ríos’s expert witness report explained how common racism is in the Puerto Rican labor market, and she provided context for the indicators of anti-Black bias exhibited at Sears Mayaguez itself. As a result, the judge assigned to the case, Jaime Pieras Jr., had clarity about how racism operated at Sears Mayaguez, despite the judge himself being White and a member of Puerto Rico’s social elite as a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan. When Sears claimed that the case should be dismissed because Victor was properly denied transfers to positions for which he lacked experience (despite the fact that supervisors had erratically imposed experience requirements for those positions), Judge Pieras Jr. rejected the request for dismissal outright. Thereafter, Victor was able to reach a settlement agreement with Sears Roebuck de Puerto Rico to resolve his dispute thanks to the work that his lawyer did in educating the judge about Latino anti-Blackness.
In short, educating legal actors about Latino anti-Black bias enhances the enforcement of antidiscrimination law. It is my hope that this book’s unmasking of Latino anti-Black bias can aid not only legal actors but all who are joined in the pursuit for racial equality. Let Latino racial innocence be cancelled.