According
to an article in Latina “The
frustrating ironies of being Afro-Latina hit Yuly Marshall with stunning
regularity: At work at a Miami hospital, Hispanic patients of the Cuban-born
radiology technician usually assume she’s African American, asking her, ‘Where
did you learn to speak Spanish like that?’ and expressing shock—even skepticism—that
she’s really Latina. Other times, fellow Latinos will disparage African
Americans in front of her with phrases like, ‘What can you expect from Negros?’
and then turn around and tell her, as if paying her a compliment, ‘But you’re
not like that. You’re one of us.’” Ms. Marshall’s own friends would completely
disregard her Black heritage while speaking to her as if she were only Latino.
It’s not right for someone else to determine your culture when you are clearly
one of both. The fact that they assumed calling her different and “one of us”
was a compliment is disrespectful to her African American side and therefore disrespectful
to her. On top of that when she speaks Spanish she is looked at by some as a
strange entity. This is because, in the minds of some people, someone who looks
black like her shouldn’t be speaking Spanish so fluently. Perhaps is this
society learned to accept and learn about Afro-Latinos as a race of their own,
these types of discrimination wouldn’t happen. This type of ignorance happens even with celebrities. The video bellow is an interview of Afro-Latino celebrities who went through the same misunderstanding with people who wouldn't accept them as both Black and Latino
