Even Among Our Own: On Latino Colorism 

(An Invitation for a Conversation)

Often I write about the racism I experienced growing up in Louisiana. They were white; I wasn’t. But today, I want to focus on my experience with internalized racism, specifically Latino colorism. I’d like to explore this topic more deeply, but for now, I’ll start with this…

I am the darkest sibling in my family. I’m considerably darker than my sister Julissa, and we share the same mother and biological father. Most of the time, I’m darker than both my younger siblings, who are half Black, like my stepfather. Even we Latinos notice skin color. Some of us are just as racist as white Anglo-Americans.

Take my ex–mother-in-law, for example. She never liked me. Her son and I were high school sweethearts. He was my first boyfriend, and in a desperate attempt to leave home, I married him at eighteen years old. She didn’t think my family was good enough. Neither of my parents went to college. They didn’t own a home. And the best part? My dark skin.

She is one of those light-skinned, beautiful Colombian women who could easily pass for Anglo-American. Well... until she spoke.

Long story short, she didn’t care for my dark skin. Once, I approached her niece about it, and she admitted that her aunt even treated her dark-skinned nephews differently than the lighter-skinned ones. No surprise there.

My stepfather is half Black. His mother, Havila, was an Afro-Black Honduran. Still, just about every one of her kids denied being Black. They denied their Black heritage, their dark skin, their curly or kinky hair. For so long, they denied it, even though one look at Havila made it clear she was a Black woman. You wouldn’t know she was Latina until she opened her mouth.

Growing up in Louisiana, so many, like myself, unknowingly hated the most natural part of ourselves. If I didn’t hear it once, I heard it a million times: “Ay, que hay que mejorar la raza.”“We must improve our race.”

That always stung me. In other words, they wanted to erase our race. And many of them did. Most of my father’s sisters married white men. Their children, my cousins, look white and speak not one word of Spanish. And those cousins who married white men?

La raza se borró. The race has been erased.

But not all. I cheer for those who learned to speak Spanish as adults and, against all odds, married Latinos. Those like my sister Julissa, my brother Polo, cousins Albert, Liza, and Carlita.

Even now, when I visit Honduras, I still hear it. The same old colorism, alive and largely unchallenged. 

“Look how light-skinned she is.” 

They say this in front of me, and in front of my nieces, who are also dark-skinned.

“Mira qué blanquita es.”

They say it with the same elation I hear when someone yells, “They’re having a boy!” compared to the less enthusiastic, “It’s a girl.” (But we’ll leave that topic for another time.)

Having survived the shame and self-hatred, today I look at my little brown nieces and always remind them:

“Tienes el color más lindo del mundo.”

“You have the most beautiful color.”

It isn’t to minimize others. I think all colors are beautiful. But it’s to let them know they aren’t missing anything by not being white. And it matters that they see someone comfortable in their brown skin. Someone defending their brown skin.

I didn’t see that growing up. I saw grown men and women crawl inside themselves, trying to hide what they never could:

Their brownness.

Their blackness.

Their natural beauty.