“Ninety percent of Latinos said that they are friends with people of a different race, making them much more likely than the rest of America to reach across racial lines to make friends.” The rest of the article goes on to talk about whites and blacks, but I think part of the reason Latinos tend to cross race barriers so easily is that Latino (or Hispanic) is not a race, it’s an ethnicity. Unlike the old world countries, we’re more likely to come from countries in which people are of all races. In other words, I’m less likely to see a Cuban-American as an other no matter their race; they’re part of my tribe. European whites tend not to have that as their countries are pretty much pure white.
4 responses to “This seems to agree with my experiences”
The caveat is that…well…within the countries that our families are from the same racism exists. It’s just that here in the states (like in Miami) we’re “all in it together” as the other. Even then there are plenty of Latinos who are plenty prejudiced against darker or lighter Latinos.
I agree about how the racism can be pretty bad where Latinos are from and that a lot of the love in the USA is from a shared immigrant experience. But I think most of the light/dark stuff is more about different countries – and as the clip from TDS showed – there’s a lot of weird prejudice/hate there.
They’re lines that are probably unnecessary to draw, but I look at it as racism vs. nationalism. Both are no good, but one is more insidious, if that makes sense.
Indeed. It definitely makes sense. For one thing, racism seems to always exist while nationalism seems to be milder unless there’s a war.