For the Balkinization symposium on Tanya K. Hernández, Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality (Beacon Press, 2022).
Berta Esperanza
Hernández-Truyol[1]
I am
delighted to participate in this important conversation about Racial
Innocence – a book about an awakened existence presented through
Tanya’s sharp, multidimensional lens. The work utilizes personal experience,
cultural narratives, and case reports, to provide snapshots of daily racialized
existence in the land of Latines’[2] claimed racial innocence –
a land where consciously or unconsciously, race always matters.
Racial Innocence is an awakened obra that is not only about law – the intellectual enterprise, the mind; it is also about the Latine multidimensional identity, body, and soul. I was born in Cuba and raised in Puerto Rico, so I am no stranger to the intra-Latine racial biases that the book so brilliantly not only exposes, but also engages. To any Latine, the book must hit home. But the book should hit home for everyone involved and interested in the pursuit of racial justice. It is revolutionary and evolutionary – it is awakened[3] – and much needed for the justice project.
I
remember being on the hiring committee at St. John’s University when Tanya
first tossed in her hat into the teaching ring. We interviewed her, we hired
her. Her very bright shining light was palpable. I was delighted that another
Latina would be on the faculty. That very reality gave way to some interesting
conversations, such as the myriad occasions on which I had to explain that no,
this is not nepotism, we are not related (not that we couldn’t be). I was just
another faculty member, not in any position of power. Hernández is a
very common name. In fact, were we to time travel, we would find that the
surname Hernández took up as much space as the most common Anglo names such as
Smith in the big fat NYC phonebooks.
On
the direct topic of the book, let me share one vignette from Tanya’s first
semester. One day she walks into my office, not calmly and,
handing me a paper, asks, “Madrina, que se supone que yo haga con esto?”
(What am I supposed to do with this?) I look at the form, a personnel form
seeking demographic information. Tanya had checked both the “Black” and the
“Hispanic” boxes. The administration had returned the form informing her could
only check one box. Racial Innocence.
One
of my early awakenings was moving to the U.S to attend college and learn that I
am an “other” because I am Latina. Arriving in upstate NY from Puerto
Rico with a Paris, France mailing address the administration housed me in the
international dorm with Latine students from abroad. An early example of the
homogenizing of identidad Latina by the majority that results in the
invisibility of diversity within the group and allows not only the othering of
Latines from the so-called normative, but also hides the othering of Latines
among themselves. This inter- and intra-Latine othering replicates and reifies
the racial hierarchies historically established by the group in power.
It
is significant that colonization brought with it the institutionalization of
racial hierarchies in América Latina. From the Latine historical
position, the desirability of “Whiteness” represents the internalization by the
colonized of the colonizers' predilections.[4] In comunidades
Latinas, race-based distinctions, imposing a hierarchy where
"Whiteness" is the coveted hue, is traceable to early Spanish
colonizers' views on race. In New Spain (Mexico) where the Spanish were a White
minority, Spanish attitudes toward the Native population paralleled the Spanish
xenophobic expulsion of Jewish and Arabic persons from Spain.
Following
this historical pattern, in the new land Spaniards sought to identify those
with “purity of blood”[5] in
order to create a social hierarchy that privileged “Whiteness.” To establish a racially
driven socioeconomic structure during the colonization period, the Spaniards in
Mexico (as well as in other places) established a complex system of racial
categorization that included the prohibition of public office holders from
having a “taint” of Indian, Arabic, or Jewish blood.[6]
Those with “tainted” blood were denied entry to schools and universities, and
mestizos/as were specially targeted for discrimination.[7]
The
Spaniards had a detailed structure of race and class-based hierarchy to go
along with the system of social, economic, and educational stratification and
segregation. In fact, the ordering is plainly marked in graphic charts
reflecting the social order[8]
and
confirming the social and economic value attached to “Whiteness” that persists
to date.
As
critical theoretical conversations have unveiled, the U.S. notion of race is
exceptional. For one, whiteness is tied to Anglo-Saxon origins. Consequently,
the “phenomenon” occurs – confirming the notion of race as constructed – of
Italian persons[9]
and Jewish persons,[10] for example, “becoming”
White, and of Spaniards losing Whiteness and becoming Hispanic.[11]
The
governing paradigm for racial construction in the United States is the one drop
rule: one drop of Black blood renders one Black. Latines, as Tanya notes, have
a one drop rule of sorts, but it exists in the inverted context: “blanqueamiento”
– Whitening – the idea that one drop of White blood puts one on the
road to whiteness. Hence the notion of “bettering the race” by marrying White
(or light) that Tanya examines.
The
desirability of whiteness, of course, is but the flip side of the
undesirability of not-whiteness. To his dying day my papi, like Tanya’s abuelita,
struggled with the U.S. categorizations. When filling out forms he always
checked the White box, instead of the Hispanic box although the White box
provided “White, not of Hispanic origin,” ranking Whiteness over Latinidad and
giving life to Tanya’s observation that a racial/ethnic conflation results in
the revelation and confirmation of the existing racial hierarchy. The very
conflation resulted in the rejection of Tanya’s forms in that fall semester. Moreover,
conflation detrimentally promotes the erasure of the intra-Latine tensions
while embracing the hierarchy of racial values.
If
one is conscious, one sees these slights and racial and ethnic subordinations
daily. Sometimes they are so subtle they may be difficult to perceive; as we awaken
they dislocate. In one anti-subordination talk I gave at a law school I addressed
both race and gender issues. In considering the supposed “model minority” label
attached to Asian persons, including high economic achievement, I called
attention to the many Hmong persons who at the time were struggling with
poverty. In engaging gender, I exposed the cultura Latina’s
subordination of women. After the talk two Hmong students thanked me; it was
the first time they heard about themselves in a law environment. Latine
students also approached me. Yet, while they appreciated the talk, they took
exception to my “airing our dirty laundry.” Without airing, I told them, there
can be no change. All communities should be deeply grateful to Tanya for this exceptional
broadcast.
The concept
of racial innocence, the idea that Latines can be racists, is part of daily
life. Tanya’s book serves to open society’s collective eyes to obscured racial
injustice. It is a powerful example of the need to awaken the law to its role
in subordination, the reality of multidimensionality, and the imperative of centering
the marginable for justice to prevail.
Racial
Innocence is an Awakened book. Awakening signifies attaining a critical
consciousness[12]
-- a concept widely embraced in myriad disciplines such as religion,
psychology, education, sociology but nonexistent in law. Across disciplines,
the ongoing process of awakening entails questioning the status quo by recognizing
and naming, reflecting upon, and resolving the problem.[13] In the context of law,
there is the need to identify, analyze, and reject injustices as well as take
action to eradicate them. Racial Innocence is a work of critical
consciousness. It recognizes the problem and names it: Latine anti-Black bias;
reflects upon the myriad levels at which the bias is deployed; and acts to
resolve the problem urging Latines to be at the forefront of racial equality in
the U.S.
Those
questioning the status quo must be aware of and acknowledge their own biases.
The analysis must locate the site of power and examine who is excluded.[14] This is precisely what Racial
Innocence does – Tanya is cognizant of and exposes the anti-Black bias
in the comunidad Latina and how, in the context of the “Anglo” majority
within the U.S., that bias works to subordinate all Latines.
Awakening
entails the realization that each one of us is guided by our perceptual
playbooks[15]
– the collection of systems of beliefs,[16] cognitive scripts,[17] created and passed down
by families, religious traditions, cultures, the societies in which we live.
Each of our perceptual playbooks is imbued with ideas, theories, and tropes
that define us and delineate how we see the world. Operating based on the perceptual
playbooks that are ingrained in us, define our thoughts and are the foundation
for our viewpoints, requires that we engage in a critically conscious analysis:
a) identify and name the myriad foundations for the perceptual playbook; b)
interrogate their consequences; c) take action as necessary to reveal and resolve
the tensions in the foundations of inequitable beliefs. Racial Innocence is unique
and effective because Tanya knows first-hand all the layers of the perceptual
playbooks that she engages, exposes them, in particular the anti-Black Latine
conception of racial mixture, and in so doing creates a path for justice and
equality to prevail.
In
providing an awakened narrative in Racial Innocence, Tanya
presents a critically conscious analysis that exposes the series of
assumptions, and patterns of behavior embedded in Latines’ perceptual playbook.
Once conscious of our perceptual playbooks, we can arrive at a truth that
eschews learned racial hierarchies and dualities of good/bad; right/wrong.[18] For example, in the
process of awakening, we may reach awareness that our individual culture is not
the “truth.” For Latines, it could be the racialized fault lines of White and
Black hierarchies within la cultura Latina and the
realization that these are *not* the “correct and only” way to be, that racial binaries
are constructed to control, that many racial and other tropes that set up
hierarchies are simply the heteropatriarchy asserting its power and our bowing
to it reflects our internalized oppression. Tanya exposes the racial fault
lines within la cultura Latina that replicate the
unconscious, albeit intentional, racial hierarchies created and imposed by
those in power not only today, but throughout history.
To
awaken is to accept what we do not know and to resist filling in that knowledge
gap with the created knowledge of our perceptual playbooks. Tanya tells us,
Latines and non-Latines alike, that we need to flex our brains to eschew the
misinformation on race that exists within the cultura Latina as well as
that believed by the majority.
Awakening
allows us to pierce the veil of our individual perceptual playbooks, expose the
myths based on the inherited tropes, interrogate the patterns and the sources,
systemically challenge and dismantle the belief systems, and create new
narratives/counternarratives. It is a life-long process of critical
deconstruction of learned perceptual playbook thoughts; a process of truth and
reconciliation, imbued with continuous cycles of progression and regression.[19]
Racial
Innocence pierces the veil of racial innocence within la
cultura Latina. The book raises awareness of the cultura’s racial biases
and dismantles its flawed foundations. Consequently, it enables the formulation
of a path to justice, a location in which all Latines’ voices, interests,
positions are acknowledged and embraced.
Significantly,
because of the heterogeneity of Latines not only culturally, linguistically,
racially, religiously, socio-economically, in ranges of ability, in sexual
identity, educationally, etc. anyone/everyone could be Latine. Thus, Tanya’s
book can be a roadmap to justice for all vulnerable, marginalized, subordinated
peoples. Racial Innocence is an Awakened tour de force. Thank you
Tanya for that amazing gift.
[1]
Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, Stephen O’Connell Chair at the University of
Florida, Levin College of Law. She can be reached at hernandez@law.ufl.edu.
[2] I
will utilize the term Latine rather that the other, perhaps more popular ways
of addressing the population that is the subject of the book. While Latina/o,
because it is gender inclusive, non-binary identifying persons; Latin@ could be
viewed to include the genders as well as symbolically the non-binary, but it is
unpronounceable. Thus, my choice of Latine is to promote a non-gendered,
non-binary inclusive way to address the people about whom Tanya writes. There
is not enough room in this conversation for me to explain why I opt not to use
Latinx.
[3]
See Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, (2022) "Awakening the Law: A
LatCritical Perspective," Seattle Journal for Social Justice: Vol. 20:
Iss. 4, Article 9 (introducing the concept of awakening to the law) available
at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol20/iss4/9.
[4] Luz Guerra, LatCrit y la Des-Colonizaci6n
Nuestra: Taking Colon Out, 19 Chicano[/a]-Latino[/a]]
L. Rev. 351, 355 (1998).
[5]
David Hayes-Bautista, Identifying "Hispanic" Populations: The Influence
of Research Methodology Upon Public Policy, 70 Am. J. Pub. Health 353, 354 (1980).
[6] Id.
at 354.
[7] Id.
[8] 1 Levi Marrero,
Cuba: Economa y Sociedad: Antecedantes Siglo XVI: La Presencia europea 3
(1976).
[9]
See, e.g., Brent Staples, How Italians Became White, Opinion, NY Times,
Oct. 12, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/columbus-day-italian-american-racism.html.
[10]
See, Emily Tamkin, Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and
Identities (2022); Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White
Folks (1998).
[11]
See, José G. Soto-Márquez, “I’m Not Spanish, I’m from Spain”: Spaniards’
Bifurcated Ethnicity and the Boundaries of Whiteness and Hispanic
Panethnic Identity, Sociology of
Race and Ethnicity, 2019, Vol 5(1) 85-99, available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2332649218766388;
see also, Jaime Gonzalez, I’m white
in Barcelona but in Los Angeles I’m Hispanic? October 28, 2015, available
at https://theworld.org/stories/2015-10-28/im-white-barcelona-los-angeles-im-hispanic.
[12] Alexis
Jemal, Critical Consciousness: A Critique and Critical Analysis of the
Literature, URB. REV. 602, 603–06 (2017). See PAULO FREIRE, PEDAGOGY OF THE
OPPRESSED 35 (30th ed. 2000).
[13] Melissa
Summer, “You Are a Racist”: An Early Educator’s Racialized Awakening, 105 SOC.
STUD. 193 (2014).
[14] Id.
[15] Hernández-Truyol,
"Awakening the Law," supra note 3, available at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol20/iss4/9.
[16] SHEFALI
TSABARY, A RADICAL AWAKENING (2021) [hereinafter SHEFALI]; TARA BRACH, RADICAL
ACCEPTANCE: AWAKENING THE LOVE THAT HEALS FEAR AND SHAME (2003).
[17] Anna
Welpinghus, The Imagination Model of Implicit Bias, 177 PHIL. STUD. 1611, 1622
(2020
[18] Peter
Amato, The Theory of Awakening: A Classic Grounded Theory 99 (2016) (Ph.D.
dissertation, Saybrook University) (ProQuest).
[19] Hernández-Truyol,
"Awakening the Law," supra note 3, available at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol20/iss4/9.