Is Hispanic Heritage Month anti-Black?

Published in

ZORA

4 min readSep 17, 2020

ZORA Fam,

As celebrations for Hispanic Heritage month commence this week, ZORA contributing writer Adriana Maestas calls on us to interrogate umbrella terms like Latinx and Hispanic. She points out that some critics of Latinidad, employed as a catch-all cultural identifier for a diverse set of people, say it is anti-Black and anti-Indigenous. In rethinking language, Maestas says we should take a good hard look at who benefits from the Latinidad construct — and who is excluded.

“In the end, Spanish is still a colonizer’s language, and lighter-skinned Latinxs tend to be the ones who benefit the most from Latinidad. In centering a common Spanish or Iberian heritage, the Latinx and Hispanic labels signal proximity to whiteness built on a white supremacist foundation that is reinforced by the media and by those who are invested in marketing products and ideas to people who may fall under these labels.”

➡️ Read: The ‘Latinx’ Label Centers European Heritage. We Should Stop Using It.

Even as we constructively critique language, Maestas tells us we can “still honor solidarity work that has occurred between groups in the U.S. and throughout the Americas.”

Take care,
Christina M. Tapper, ZORA deputy editor

Dancers march down 5th Avenue in traditional Spanish costumes during the 55th Hispanic Day Parade, October 13, 2019.

Looking to learn more about Afro-Latinx culture and history?

Check out these reads from Afro-Latina authors, recommended by Jolie A. Doggett:

Halsey Street by Naima Coster
This debut novel tells the story of a Dominican girl discovering the effects of gentrification on her Brooklyn neighborhood.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Written in verse, this novela tells the story of a 15-year-old Afro-Dominican girl growing up in the Bronx who uses slam poetry to escape her strict household and discover who she is.

Let Us Be Enough by Ariana Brown
In her book collection of poems, this AfroMexicana writer provides words of affirmation to Black women, Latinas and Mexican Americans needing to feel seen.

Letters to My Mother by Teresa Cárdenes
After losing her mother and being sent to live with relatives who ridiculed her appearance, writer Teresa Cárdenes pens letters to her ‘Mami’ in an effort to find beauty in her life.

📚 Love to read? Join our virtual book club, hosted on Instagram. This month’s pick is Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward. You can find the reading schedule here. 📚

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