Yes, You Can Be White and Latino at the Same Time Despite White Supremacy

There is healing and clarity in the multiplicity of truth

This summer, I decided to visit a good friend of mine — I’ll call him Alejandro — who recently moved to the lovely and racially segregated city of Chicago. He lives on the white side of town and in a neighborhood known as ‘Boystown.’ This part of town is overflowing with white people, so it’s no surprise the majority of Alejandro’s friends are white.

His friends are not just white, though; they are Anglo-white. What do I mean by “Anglo-white?” Anglo-white people are not only those who have pale skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair. They are white people of varying ethnicities, including British, German, Irish, Jewish, etc., who’ve historically assimilated into Anglo-whiteness. In other words, they are the whites who are currently allowed into the country club of whiteness and don’t experience othering.

You see, though Latine people have varying races, we are homogenized as “Brown” and othered fiercely in the U.S. I experienced being othered again while in Chicago visiting my friend. Alejandro and I had dinner with one of his new Chicago friends, I’ll call him Skyler, and we organically talked about race and identity. When it came to the identity portion of our talk, I revealed to Skyler that I am not just “Latino,” I am white too. He had a confused look followed by a pause. Skyler asked me to clarify what I meant, and so I said the following:

“Yea, racially, I am white. I am ethnically a colonizer (Spanish and Portuguese), some Indigenous, and North African. Culturally, I am Mexican. So, I essentially identify as a white-Mexican or white-Latino.”

“But I don’t see you as white. I see you as Latino,” Skyler responds.

I can’t remember how the conversation ended that night because we ended up getting hammered at the restaurant, but we did revisit the conversation several times after. Though I am comfortable and confident in my identity work, I couldn’t help Skyler dismantle his own internalized white supremacy. Perhaps with time and more conversations, though.

Contrary to what white supremacy has taught us, you can be white and “Latino” simultaneously. I understand how upsetting this might be to many (unknowingly white and “light-skin”) Latinos. However, it is necessary to understand our racial identity to show up responsibly and ethically for Black liberation. As the amazing Black-Latine feminist Lutze Segu (aka: The Social Justice Doula) rhetorically asked of white-Latine, “how can you be my ally when you’re avoiding your whiteness?”

That brilliant question rings so true in its simplicity. Consequently, I think it’s essential to break away from the binaries that inevitably arise in this challenging identity work. So I’ll map out below what being a white-Latine means and doesn’t mean in the U.S. context.

Yes, some people will “other” you.

The U.S and Mexico have a long, contentious history of settler colonialism, racialization, Eugenics, and xenophobia. U.S. white supremacy has historically “othered” Mexican people and Latine at large. Therefore, it’s no coincidence that Americans (of all races) associate Brown with Mexicans and Latine in general.

So yes, some people will racialize you as “Brown.” And yes, that’s the reality of living in this particular settler-colonial state. Does that mean it’s true? No. Does that mean we don’t have white privilege? No. The internalized white supremacy of other people is not something we need to take on. That is their work, not ours. Our work is acknowledging our whiteness and standing firm and confidently in it while planting ourselves in Black Liberation — thus, our liberation from white supremacy.

“But I don’t experience my whiteness like Anglo-whites.”

Not everyone experiences white privilege in the same way. Whiteness will always be intersectional and attached to other intersecting identities like gender, class, ability, etc. For instance, Anglo-white women don’t experience their whiteness in the same way that Anglo-white men do because of the intersecting gender piece. Though the racial part is parallel, the cis-man piece trumps the cis-woman piece in terms of power.

Therefore, we white-Latine need to become better at holding the multiplicity of truth. Sure, we may not experience our whiteness in the same way as Anglo-whites do from time to time, and that’s because our ethnic and cultural identity intersects with our race. But we still hold the white privilege of negotiating what kind of experience we want and being advantaged over people of color and Black people in particular.

More importantly, I think we white-Latine need to ask ourselves what we are fighting for. Are we fighting for power, or are we fighting for liberation? If we can’t get past not experiencing whiteness in the same way that Anglo-whites do, what are the implications, and how does that inevitable resentment show up in our politics?

“Latino” is not a race. It is a political tool that inherently erases Black and Indigenous Latine people.

According to Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley and author of ‘Making Hispanics,’ Telemundo and Univision had a hand in ethnically homogenizing different cultural groups into “Hispanic,” commonly known as Latino/a/x/e today. Univision, Telemundo, and activists in the 1980s were interested in creating a powerful group with a powerful unifying identity.

When you have a sense of a robust community, you can create opportunities and organizations. Still, when you homogenize different cultural groups with people of varying racial backgrounds, you inevitably develop a container of inequity and erasure. And white supremacist capitalist media conglomerates have a particular kind of Latino they want to portray. I used to work for Telemundo, so I can verify that virtually all of the staff were white-Latine, and upper management were tan Anglo-white people. The terms Hispanic and Latino/a/x/e began with great intentions, but they ultimately erase our most vulnerable communities and their needs. Therefore, Latino/a/x/e is NOT a racial Identity. It’s a powerful political tool that has no real value on the individual day-to-day level.

Having clarity around my racial identity as a Latine person is healing and crucial in the fight against white supremacy and capitalism, among other oppressive systems. The clarity I’ve gained has allowed me to understand my positionality more clearly. For instance, I know that random people asking me, “what are you?” is not oppression. I know that I’ll have unpleasant experiences caused by some people’s internal biases. I understand that I experience my “Latino-ness” differently because of my whiteness. Therefore, I also know that I will generally have pleasant experiences when I walk around the world.

Coming in contact with people like Skyler is inevitable. However, our responsibility as white people of “Latino America” is to understand our positionality and do our identity work.

Joey Pierre is a race & class researcher, scholar, writer, and an amateur astronomer. You can also be in community with him on Instagram.