Julissa Calderon: "It’s Time for Latinxs to Step up for Black Lives Matter"
Julissa Calderon is a Dominican American actress and producer who first rose to fame as a video host at BuzzFeed. Recently, she starred as Yessika in Netflix's hit series Gentefied, which was just renewed for a season 2. In January, she was named one of Variety's much-watch Latinx actors of 2020. Here, she shares her hopes for the Latinx community and the Black Lives Matter movement, as-told-to digital director Arianna Davis.
I first saw the video of George Floyd being killed by a police officer on Instagram. Immediately after I saw it, my heart was broken—shattered. I just kept thinking: When is enough enough? How many times do we have to record this and put this out there for people to see what's going on, and for us to get justice? As an Afro-Latina, this fight is also my fight. But I know it’s been a struggle for many in the Latin community to understand that the fight led by the Black Lives Matter movement needs to be our fight, too.
So many of us whisper about our African heritage while glorifying our European ancestry, and I understand why. Racism is very deeply ingrained in most Latin American cultures, and many of us don’t have the knowledge or language to understand just how beautifully complex our roots are. Many don’t understand there are differences between race and ethnicity—that we can be proud to be Latino and be Black.
The word race is often used to define someone by their skin color and physical attributes—for example: Black, Asian, or White. The word ethnicity most often refers to the way in which one identifies learned aspects of themselves—i.e., nationality, language, and culture, for example: Latino, Jewish, or West Indian.
But the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and more have made it clear that it’s time for everyone to wake up, including the Latino community. We need to unpack our shit, unlearn all of the problematic things we have been taught for so long, and educate ourselves. Many Latinos are Black, and we cannot continue to deny our Blackness. And for the Latinos who are not Black, they still need to step up to support their Black brothers and sisters. I’ve seen so many people in my community fighting for the Black Lives Matter movement—yet many aren’t, or think it’s not their problem. But this is not just a fight for Black Americans; dismantling racism is a fight for all of us.
Still, it’s a process. Getting more Latinos to understand how pressing it is that we unify with and support the Black American community right now—and why—is not as easy as it sounds. The internalized racism in our cultures goes way, way back. Growing up in Carol City—a mostly Black neighborhood in Miami, Florida—I can remember my father standing at the door, peering out at the Black kids while saying things like "Look at all these monkeys."
Like me, my three brothers are Dominican. But if you were to see two of them, you wouldn’t think they speak Spanish, based on what society has programmed us to think. The same goes for my mother. So imagine the four of us as kids growing up in this household, listening to our light-skinned father say these disgusting things about Black people—who were also people who looked like us. We grew up feeling negative feelings not just toward other Black people, but ultimately, ourselves.
I’ve heard so many stories like this from other people in the Latin community, and they’re the result of a broken system around the world; colorism, racism, and prejudice are rampant in so many Latin countries—and I’m not just talking about the Dominican Republic.
Unfortunately, I do think Dominicans get a bad reputation, because we so passionately love our culture and so proudly represent being Dominican that many of us can’t (or won’t) acknowledge that most of us are also Black, due to our ancestry. That’s because we come from an island where—like many other places in the world—society perpetuates the idea that you are more privileged in life based on your skin color. People run with that mentality as they try to do better for themselves, and through generations, we have continued a cycle of thinking that if you are more fair skinned or have finer hair, you are “better.”
Even the media that we consume contributes to this cycle. We watch Spanish news channels or novelas, and most of the people that are reporting or cast on these shows look like they're of European descent. We never see anchors with my hair or skin tone—even though so much of Latin America looks like me. This is all the norm in so many Latin American cultures, especially in the Caribbean. Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans...I mean, Cuba has such deep roots in Africa. But in Miami, if I asked any of my Cuban friends about their Blackness, it was “What?! Huh?! What do you mean?!”
My own journey toward accepting my Black identity was a long one. Growing up, I didn't think of myself as a Black girl. And that was because of two reasons: First, in my household, I wasn't being taught my history as a Dominican American who clearly has African roots. But also, where I was raised in Miami, the Black community did not look at me as a Black girl. A lot of them would see me, then hear me speak and say, “But you’re not Black, because you speak Spanish.” Back then, we didn't have the same understanding or language we have today. We weren’t “woke” yet.
Later, I went to college in Gainesville, Florida, smack in the middle of nowhere. The population there is mainly white—and a lot of those white people had Confederate flags on their porch. People there had never even heard of Dominicans. That was when I first really began to understand the intersections between my race—as a Black woman—and my ethnicity as a Latina.
Now as an adult, I identify as Afro-Latina. But I only more recently began embracing that label. I first heard the term maybe 6 years ago while living in Los Angeles, and I’ll be honest: Initially, I wondered: Is this just yet another subdivision of a division? Do we really need another label to help white people understand who we are? But the more I thought about it, the more I thought hey, if this is a phrase that makes my identity more clear—that my race has African roots, and I am also proudly Latina—and if it's going to take people out of their ignorance and educate them of the many layers of Latin heritage, then so be it.
I didn’t get there overnight, however. I had to do my research. I read stories about Latinas who look like me, like Rosie Perez or my idol, Celia Cruz. I’d watch interviews with Celia where she’d talk about being a proud negra, or Black woman. I had to be curious, I had to want to learn, and when I finally did, I was like, "I identify with this. I think embracing Blackness and terms like Afro-Latina is a great thing for so many Latinos who for years have lacked the language to describe their complex identities." And sure enough, here we are in 2020, and “Afro-Latina” is such a common term now.
So much of understanding how we can and should do better begins with education—and a willingness to learn and understand. We also have to remember that the responsibility is not on Black Americans to educate us; we need to do the work ourselves. Now that I have a platform, I try my best to use it to teach. But people also have to recognize that these lessons will not happen overnight; people cannot unlearn an entire lifetime after just one conversation or social media post. Cancel culture has to stop. We're human, bro. We make mistakes. But it's up to us to understand our mistakes, and to fix them. If we just rush to cancel everybody, one day we’re going to be left standing with no one left behind.
I also don’t think shoving things down people's throats or screaming at them is going to help anybody. Even me: My thoughts now are not what my thoughts were 10 years ago. If you had screamed at me “You’re Black!” back then, I might not have gotten it. These conversations can’t happen without love, empathy, and understanding. I know that I have a long way to go, and that not everyone in my community is where I am right now—but that doesn't mean that they can’t get there, if they choose to.
I salute the younger generations right now, because in the past, it’s always been the older generations teaching us—and that’s how the cycles have continued. But now, I’m seeing so many young people educating us—and educating their parents, and their grandparents. Since George Floyd died, there have been so many videos on social media from young people explaining what’s going on in Spanish, so that the message can be shared with the older generations—so that even your abuela can watch, understand, and be able to relate. We have social media and the internet now. We have no excuse not to educate ourselves.
So for anyone in the Latin community who might feel overwhelmed at the idea of trying to have these uncomfortable conversations with family—or even yourself: Don’t be afraid, and don’t feel hopeless. Many of us are already fighting, protesting, learning, talking...and it’s working. I know that it's working, because I've had so many conversations with my own family recently that are unlike any that we've ever had before, and I’m hearing that from so many of my friends.
So something is working, and we cannot stop now. We still have so much work to do.
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