Challenging the Binaries: The Ongoing Struggle for Black Latine Identity in the United States

By María Cioè-Peña

Over 6 million people living in the United States self-identify as Black Latines or Afro-Latinos. Their claim to their Blackness is in jeopardy. 

In multiple US states, an effort is afoot to define Blackness and limit who can identify as Black. According to NPR, “Republican state officials [are calling] for narrower definitions of Blackness that do not include people who also identify with another minority group.” These policies are aimed at limiting how Latines define themselves, in an effort to limit access to voting, further sow division across the African diaspora, constrain coalition-building across Black communities, and, ultimately, maintain Black erasure. As such, attempts to essentialize racial categories are not meant to “prevent state actors from artificially inflating the minority counts” as some Republican state officials claim, but rather to consolidate and/or maintainpolitical power.

Historically, few Latines self-identified as Black. But recent global conversations around antiblackness have made space for Black Latines (e.g., Afro-Latinos) to foreground their experiences with race and racialization within and outside of the Latin American diaspora. Although there are varying reasons underlying individuals’ decisions on how they self-identify, Latines are heavily connected to an imagined mestizo (mixed) Latine race that centers those with White and Indigenous lineage while denying our Black ancestry.  

Nonetheless, in the US, Latines are racialized on account of their skin color in addition to their migration status and their linguistic ability. In my research on Latines’ educational experiences, racially diverse Latines frequently describe how labels (e.g., ELL, special education) assigned to them by school agents expose them to racism, bias, and discrimination under the guise of academic support. My work has also called attention to the parsing of positionalities that happens along programmatic boundaries, with students being reported in demographic data as EL or students with disabilities, as Latinx or Black, but never both. Similarly, equity discourse concerning the needs of racialized children often foregrounds the experiences of those who are Black, Latinx, or Indigenous, as if Latinx children cannot be both Black and Indigenous.  

In “Writing, Rioting, and Righting Como Negra,” I describe three ways that I, as a Latina, was introduced to antiblackness through my participation in educational programs and spaces that essentialized Latine identity. I detail how I internalized antiblackness, the resulting harm, and the impact these experiences had on my personal, social, and political identity and engagement. I also push us to consider how identity shifts over time, often influenced by our social positioning and reinforced through schooling experiences, and my hopes for a more expansive definition of Latinidad.

Let’s be clear: Race is a construct. Thus, any effort to put parameters around certain categories should be understood as brazen attempts to maintain hegemonic distributions of power, privilege, and knowledge.  

What would it mean for us to allow greater, more expansive definitions that acknowledge students’ complex identities and positionalities? What would it mean for people to define themselves and their communities rather than ceding that power to others?

About the Author

María Cioè-Peña is an assistant professor in Educational Linguistics at The University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. As a neurodiverse, bilingual/biliterate researcher, she examines the intersections of disability, race, language, and education policy centering the lived experiences of Latinx bilingual children with dis/abilities and their families. She is the author of “Writing, Rioting, and Righting Como Negra: A Testimonio of Black Latinx Erasure in Bilingual Education” in the Spring 2024 issue of Harvard Educational Review.