Personally, I Identify a lot with this week’s readings, especially with “Too Black to be Latina, Too Latina to be Black”. I think I have said it plenty of times in my posts, but I’m a black Latina, I lived my whole life in Guatemala, a Latin American country, until 2020 when I moved to New York. Here I have experienced a major identity crisis because black people’s culture in the U.S. is drastically different from mine, also most Latino people here (at least from my generation) were born in the United States, so they have a lot of purely American culture, some can barely speak Spanish, so I also feel out of place with United States Latinos. It is complicated to feel like you don’t fit in anywhere because it creates some sort of loneliness since you feel like no one understands your experiences. Belonging to multiple minorities it’s terrible too because you are at a lot of disadvantage just for being who you are, while there are people who are being praised because of that. Also, there’s no one who really thinks and cares about you, so it’s very complicated to find support and allies to combat your specific oppression. For example, the Combahee River Collective was not thinking about Afro-Latina immigrants, so my struggles as a part of that group wouldn’t be relevant to them. We still have a long way to go in order to achieve rights for everyone. Something essential to achieve that is developing a sense of empathy towards other communities and supporting them as well

“Too Latina to be Black” by Aleichia Williams, made me think of how people just make assumptions without ever really knowing the facts, solely off what they see. In the world they want us to believe we are progressing and equal but no matter how much we want to push that insinuation many actions continue to remind us differently. For example I believe no one is 100% percent themselves at work, but me I feel I have to try a little harder to be grammatically correct, present myself softer and consciously articulate my delivery when speaking. More-so then my white co-workers. If I mention how hard I have to try or work at this they probably wouldn’t even understand my struggle with it, because it Is the only way they know to speak which is proper. Society has it so that my way of speaking and how I present myself on an off day is not socially acceptable, but because of who’s standards?… not mines or my cultures that’s for sure!  Identity Politics is something I will hold close to me because it is important to know that my language, my culture, and my community is how I identify. Not this conformed forced society they are trying to continue pushing on us and calling equal.

When reading “Too Latina to be Black, Too Black to be Latina” her reading was good in my opinion, from someone who is Latina and Italian I believe that it doesn’t matter what race you are you should feel welcome because of who you are proud of and where your family is from. Throughout the decades I have seen the other community not represent people because of their race, besides Latina, I have heard stories either on social media or from people that people don’t feel welcome in their own ethnic community because of their race, they treat them as an outcast and I believe that is not fair. Everyone should be treated with the same respect you’ll give in your own community. Everyone is human and people always say to love everyone no matter what, but what’s ironic is the fact that they wouldn’t love people with the same nationality but a different race, race, and nationality or two different things and I believe people are not seeing it that way. To me personally, I find it to be interesting where people of different races commuters who are also their nationality, it shows how creative people through generations are and it can show love to not only our own race/nationality but other races as well. We are people who deserve love and respect no matter who we are and people need to open their eyes to see that it doesn’t matter if they have a different race they still feel welcome with their nationality and be proud of who they are.

Throughout the reading, “Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina” by Aleichia Williams goes into great detail about Williams’ personal experience as a Black and Latina woman. Her experiences throughout life and more specifically school has caused her to reflect on the way people perceive others just based on the color of their skin and simply how they look. As we know, the world has been built on stereotypes, gender norms, and overall conformities which causes people to label others and put them in boxes which they did not ask or want to be in. Williams describes an experience at school when she was sitting at a table with other Latin girls who judged her based off of her darker skin complexion compared to theirs. They spoke in their respective language, Spanish, and didn’t understand why Williams was sitting next to them. They treated her as though she did not belong to their specific “group” therefore, she had no place socializing or being around others that didn’t look the same as her. Based on my own personal experiences, this struck a nerve in me that was unsettling. I am also a Latina woman who has a very light skin complexion that constantly gets me mistaken as a white woman therefore, when I go to a Spanish restaurant or a Spanish club I often get looked at funny as though I don’t belong there. Just like Williams, I also speak Spanish as everyone in my household does, my friends do, and their families do as well however, when I am in a setting where it is solely Latin people with darker skin complexions then mine they automatically greet or speak to me in English as though they are already assuming I don’t know how to speak Spanish. Similar to Williams, it makes me feel as though I am being stereotyped and my identity is being conformed to fit in one box that simply just does not fit.

In this week’s reading, we read a creative prose piece, ” Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina,” by Aleichia Williams. She speaks about moving to a “quiet North Carolina,” where she experienced what she calls a race crisis. In middle school, her peers identified her as just solely a black girl who didn’t speak Spanish, and to their surprise, she did Spanish. Growing up in New York City, Aleichia didn’t have to deal so much with identifying herself as Spanish because she was surrounded by diversity, automatically thinking she was somehow Spanish. That was not the case in another state because her skin color identified her. I see it repeatedly when people choose to identify you with how you look rather than sparking up a conversation that will ultimately leave you with some background story. It upsets me when people also place anyone who speaks Spanish as “Mexican,” not only Mexicans who speak Spanish. As a Mexican American, I feel robbed of my native language before being conquered by the Spaniards was Nahuatl, an Aztec language. Spaniards like to look down on Mexican for not speaking the “Spanish” language correctly.
Moving along, Aleichia never lost who she was and embraced everything that came her way. In my experience, even when you go back to your home country, I experience a race crisis because I’m identified as not being Mexican enough to do things that anyone there can. I’m expected to sit there and look pretty, which is not who I am. I can do a lot more, and I prove it.