By: Kerstan Nealy (’22), Staff Writer
National Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual month-long celebration, beginning September 15, of the contributions and cultural legacy of Hispanic and Latinx people. While a time where the achievements of Hispanic and Latinx people are more broadly recognized is a cause for celebration, coverage of Hispanic Heritage Month often falls into familiar patterns of representation that work to perpetuate the narrative that Hispanic and Latinx people look a certain way– not black. This removal of blackness from Hispanic and Latinx identity in the mainstream particularly impacts the ways in which Afro-Latinx experiences between the African diaspora and Latinx community is shaped. I spoke with Dorothy Colon to better understand how being Afro-Latina has influenced her understanding of self and the world around her.
Motivated, insightful, intellectual: Dorothy Colon personifies black girl magic. She is a psychology major with a minor in Hispanic studies on the possible pre-med track (as we all are). The founder and president of Afro-Latinx (ALX), a recent organizational addition to the campus of UNC, Colon has been an active part of the creation of a space for Afro-Latinx members of the UNC-Chapel Hill community. As the daughter of Honduran immigrants, Colon was raised with an understanding that her Honduran identity was as much a part of her as her blackness, and that these two identities were not inseparable within her identity. Yet, she says that her physical representation often leads people to look at her as, “Oh, she’s just a black woman”, and that when she expounds upon her Afro-Latina identity, it is often met with questions of “Which parent is Latino and which one is black?” Colon expressed that for her, being an Afro-Latina was “Like living in two worlds at once of being a black woman but also being a Latina woman.” She expressed that being a black woman easily allowed for her to feel part of the black community here in the US, but that parts of her “felt like she didn’t quite necessarily belong” in regards to the white Latinx community. This feeling was the result of the perception that there was a lack of acknowledgment of people who looked like her in the mainstream Latin consciousness. Therefore, part of what ALX seeks to do is to not only provide a space for Afro-Latinx people to form community, but a space for them to create a voice here on campus that can expound on the multitude of experiences that characterize what it means to be part of the Afro-Latinx community.
As we move beyond Hispanic Heritage Month, it’s important to sustain continued support and interest in broadening our understandings of the plethora of identities contained within blackness. So, go to an ALX event, learn more about the Afro-Latinx community here at UNC, and take part in your own deepening of knowledge of what blackness can mean past the “common” US narrative.
