Heylee Soto

One way that geography taught Williams about her body and identity is that it made her aware of the differences between how people were treated based on their race. In the Dominican Republic, she didn’t notice much racism because everyone was dark-skinned and accepted her. When her family moved to New Jersey, however, it was very different: “I developed my racial identity in New Jersey” (Williams). This is where she began to realize that people treated others differently based on their skin color. For example, at school, some people told her that they would treat her differently if they knew what race she really was (because they assumed she wasn’t black), while others judged her because they thought she was trying to act white. She became confused and frustrated because she felt like no one could see past the color. In “To Latina to be Black and Too Black to be Latina,” Aleichia Williams discusses how geography has played a huge role in the shaping of her identity as an Afro-Latina. She states, “I feel like it is more of a ‘Southern’ phenomenon that our blackness is more prominent than our Latinidad. It’s not that we don’t want to be Latinas; it’s just that people always remind us that we are black first (Williams).” This shows how geography is able to teach us about ourselves and how we see ourselves. The way people react to you or what they say about you can have a huge impact on how you see yourself. Oftentimes, when people from other countries see someone who is half white and half black, they will assume that person is fully white because those were the people that would have been in power over them for so long. However, people from the U.S. are more likely to assume a half-black person is fully black because of the race relations history of this country with regards to slavery and segregation. When Alicia Williams was five, her family moved to Puerto Rico. This experience shaped her understanding of who she is—both in terms of her physical body and her cultural identity.