In the Heights & The Widespread Erasure of Black Latinx Lives Across the Cultural & Political Landscape
Discrimination against Black folks goes severely underreported. I say this as one of many Black folks who are deeply aware that the hypervisibility some cases of discrimination enjoy are the tip of the iceberg—a world-eating Galactus. The erasure is, perhaps, more profound when it comes to the anti-Blackness Black Latinx folks face in every space—including the arts and in politics.
Most of the Latinx culture both Latinx and non-Latinx people enjoy come from Black people. Including the music (merengue, reggaetón, trap, Spanish rock, bachata), but especially the salsa, sprinkled all over the In the Heights movie, for instance—a film many consider anti-Black for the utter and complete erasure and disregard of Black lives: Black dark-skinned Dominican lives that roam in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. Washington Heights is an enclave aptly called Little Dominican Republic but you couldn’t tell by watching Lin Manuel Miranda’s film. Imagine a musical about Little China but only Indians are playing them and in the spirit of Asian unity, the Chinese are supposed to celebrate their erasure and gaslighted into silence for even daring to ask for an accurate and honest portrayal of themselves. That happened to Crazy Rich Asians, but in reverse. Jon M. Chu directed both. He learned nothing from his first rodeo and is at again with In The Heights.
When you don’t have authority in something, you pass the buck to someone else who does. That’s what someone with scruples and respect for people in their respective fields does, but it’s never done for Black Latinx folks. Even our studies are skewed because they’re not broken down by race. And, as usual, Black folks are at the bottom of a caste system that the people on top (in the media and those who get to speak for us) get to exploit. In other words, there’s a difference in the pay gap of white and Brown Latinas vs Black Latinas. There is a difference in the media presence of white and Brown Latinx folks in comparison to Black Latinx folks, but we are all lumped together. Thus, the least oppressed of us gets and does claim as much discrimination as the most oppressed of us and is showered with speaking gigs, jobs in corporate America, loans, contracts, book deals, positions in Hollywood, orgs, politics, you name it. It’s a very sinister and disparate ethnicity that exploits the hell out of Black and Indigenous lives, but nobody has it worse than Black Latinx folks because we aren’t usually the face of Latinidad. All thanks to a willfully clueless white America and an exploitative and opportunistic Hispanidad.
How many Black Latinx women and men have you seen speaking about our issues on TV? How many are interviewed about immigration, education, healthcare, housing, tech, culture, music, Hollywood, art, job opportunities? How many Black Latinx politicos do you know at the national level that aren’t entertainers? If America sees a Black person of Latin American descent speaking about the border or immigration in general, it’ll take a second look or perhaps change the channel because certain issues have been associated with a specific country, region, and phenotypes even though Black Latinx folks also face incredible obstacles to come to the States—when they’re in the States. There’s also no shortage of non-Black megalomaniacs to speak for Latinx folks even when the issue concerns them the least or none at all.
So next time you turn on your TV, read a magazine, watch a panel and our issues are brought up but you see no visibly Black people, know that anti-Blackness and colorism are the culprits. Even if you do see Black Latinx folks getting coverage and profiled, ask yourselves how many Black Latinx people behind the scene got paid to bring that to fruition. If, and that’s a big if, there is one sole Black person who pitched that idea and was it magically approved, ponder how many of those ideas were shut down and the number of microaggressions and outright disrespect that Black Latinx person received and continue to get just for doing what they were hired to do.
The next time you read about a Latinx scandal that Black Twitter made trend, believe Black people. And for all that is holy, do not police our tone, do not wield professionalism and respectability against us—most times the only tools we have against white supremacy or any type of oppression are mockery and disrespect because civility has been a long-employed and very effective tool of discrimination and control. We have no other way but to be confrontational. We must make people uncomfortable.
Many of us have been writing and yelling about Afrolatinx discrimination and erasure within the national and local stage to the four corners of the Earth for decades now. Just take a good look at the local news—see who is sitting at a studio desk covering our issues and those in the field. The difference in skin hues should disturb anyone with an ounce of integrity.
Now ask yourselves, would you have been exposed to this piece if I weren’t a light-skinned Black Latinx man? As much as I’ve been de-platformed, lost gigs, harassed, and dismissed for speaking for our most marginalized, I still get to turn heads once in a while and I believe it is my responsibility to raise these issues.
Truly believe the Black women who are usually the ones putting their lives, their bodies, their mental health, their careers on the line. They’re the ones who know the most about Latinx oppression and the least to be sought to speak on it and get paid for it—even when it comes to their own issues.
All hands on deck now.
Believe visibly Black Latinx women.
A mainstream or indie magazine would usually pay me between $250-$450 for one of my pieces. Since I decided to go solo for the sake of keeping my voice unedited and uncensored, I created this website. Keeping it afloat and these pieces coming is not just time-consuming, but it’s also costly because it angers a lot of those same mainstream papers and magazines (along with their donors) for calling them out—so their favorite retaliation tactic is deplatforming. Especially of unapologetic and unhypocritical Black and Brown voices. Ideally, I’d like to raise between $250-$450 per piece and many of you have actually stepped-up to the plate and helped me accomplish that. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you would like to see more of these and support one of the few unbought indie voices, please contribute:
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César Vargas is an award-winning writer, advocate, strategist, speaker, and social critic with a loyal following and a robust social capital that spans from coast to coast: Editors, journalists, celebrities, activists, artists, executives, politicians, and multiple communities. He was named one of 40 Under 40: Latinos in American Politics by the Huffington Post. He’s written about internal and external community affairs to several news outlets and quoted in others: The Huffington Post, NBC, Fox News, Voxxi, Okayafrica, Okayplayer, Sky News, Salon, The Guardian, Latino Magazine, Vibe, The Hill, BET, and his own online magazine—which has a fan base of over 25,000 people and has reached over a million—UPLIFTT. He’s familiar with having a voice that informs, invigorates, and inspires people—creating content that usually goes viral. He recently won two awards from Fusion and the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts for his films Some Kind of Spanish and Black Latina Unapologetically. He attained a degree in Films Studies from Queens College, CUNY. He is currently raising and distributing funds for Haitians in Sosúa.
