Chapter 5 - Afro-Latinx Identity and Media

Keara K. Goin (University of Virginia)

Hegemonic ideas concerning race in the US are, quite literally, black and white. Historically, US racialization has been structured in a Black/White binary opposition that designates any person with traceable or observable African descent as Black. (I use the words traceable and observable as there is a long legacy of racial passing where those of African descent have been perceived as white. These individuals who “passed” did so strategically as a device to combat US racism). Referred to as hypodescent, or more colloquially as the “one-drop rule,” this racial paradigm has its roots in British colonial and early US African enslavement and has continued to shape legal code as well as social understandings of blackness (Khanna, Davis, Hall). This process of developing “racial formations” in both British and Spanish colonial contexts is covered extensively in Chapter 4 of this book.

Race in the US has also been marked by process of hegemonic negotiation and incorporation; where we have seen evolving negotiations involving the construction of blackness where, in order to reclaim their own racialized identities, African Americans have embraced the hypodescent paradigm (Khanna 99). As such, it is not only the framework for dominant notions of US racialization, but has been incorporated into self-racialization practices within the African American community. (To clarify my terminology, I use the term “African American” when referring to those whose blackness is rooted in the US sociohistorical context. The terms “Black” or “African descent” apply to “African Americans,” but also apply to those whose heritage is not exclusive to the US, i.e. those people who come from one of the dozens of other countries that participated in African enslavement or more recent voluntary immigrants from African countries). Therefore, as a construct, hypodescent permeates all US racial discourses, including individuals whose blackness originates outside of the country. In application this means, a person “of African descent has little choice but to identify as Black” (Davis 317).

When investigating the influence discourses of hypodescent and Black subjectivity have on those people of African descent who do not fit within the African American heritage narrative, it is important to note that blackness in the US is based on assumptions of the “essential Black subject.” While an assumption long contested, most vigorously by Stuart Hall, it relies on the assumption that there is an essence within blackness that has an almost spiritual resonance for all those of African descent. In other words, all those of African descent, regardless of their individual history, heritage, and experiences, are often thought to share a kind of essentialized notion of what it means to be Black. When dealing with Afro-Latinx racial negotiations, we should avoid the trappings of the essential Black subject and the one-drop rule which would place Afro-Latina/os as analogous to African Americans, as this could potentially erase the context and specificity of their blackness. For instance, those that argue that Dominicans suffer from a simple complex of refusing to acknowledge their “true” African descent de-historicize the Dominican subject. The potential result of this conflation could be the loss of the specific context and plight of Dominicans when they are mis-appropriated into US blackness.

However, blackness itself is constructed in a relational manner. While historically this relation has been positioned in opposition to whiteness, it nonetheless is a fluid category that can and does bend. On reflecting on the work of Stuart Hall, who argues that race is not a fixed and essentialized category but instead a floating signifier, emerges not only the potential for Afro-Latinx inclusion in constructions of blackness, but also the inclusion of Black bodies in constructions of Latinx/a/o that have categorically excluded them. As such, the room for, and more accurately, the demand for negotiation becomes evident when Afro-Latina/os in the US are forced to make sense of their racialization in a system that categorizes them within discourses of blackness. As a result, Latinx African descent is not necessarily denied, but it is qualified in relation to the blackness of African Americans and various notions of latinidad.

Latinidad and Blackness

Among the most salient concepts of identity, latinidad has emerged as a framework articulating Latinx subjectivity in the US Deriving from an identification with the term Latino and its variants, latinidad can be conceptualized as the “processes where Latino/a identities and cultural practices are contested and created in media, discourse, and public space” (Guidotti-Hernandez 212). In application, latinidad becomes a flexible and ambivalent association with Latinx identity, culture, and community on a pan-ethnic level. Yet, there is not a singular or monolithic latinidad. Therefore, the more nuanced articulation of latinidades better acknowledges the diversity and hybridity among those commonly identified as Latina/o/x. Frances R. Aparicio and Susana Chávez-Silverman assert that latinidad is not an all-encompassing category including all things related to Latin America, but a far more complex notion that is “contestatory and contested, fluid, and relational” (15). It is through US homogenizing pan-ethnic discourses that all those who would be categorized as Hispanic/Latino become consolidated into one identity category: an identity category that fundamentally ignores and erases ethnoracial, national, and cultural specificity. Consequently, there is not one singular umbrella latinidad, but rather multiple latinidades.

While latinidad by its very nature challenges racialized binary thinking in the US, afrolatinidad problematizes this thinking even further by complicating what becomes acceptably included within the boundaries of latinidad, blackness, and/or whiteness. Ultimately, what this speaks to is the contentious relationship between blackness and afrolatinidad that is rooted in colonialist history and a complicated relationship with African descent.

Afrolatinidad

Popularly imagined as a homogenous “brown” race with a mixed Indigenous and Spanish ethnoracial heritage, the extreme diversity within the Latinx population is systematically flattened, ignored, and erased. Furthermore, regardless of the fact of significant African descent among many Latin American and Caribbean populations, blackness is obscured in multiple ways. A common phenomenon in the Spanish Caribbean is to suggest non-European features and heritage are not from African descent, but Indigenous. Examples would include the mestizaje-based nationalistic discourse of la gran familia puertorriquena in Puerto Rico and how antihatianismo manifests in the Dominican Republic through those of African descent being referred to as indio (Rivero 13-15, Candelario 2, Sagás 35). In many countries of Central and South America, blackness tends to be rendered invisible through lack of acknowledgment altogether, or the suggestion that any population of African descent in their countries have their origins in immigrants from the Caribbean. Others, like Brazil or Cuba for instance, are politically celebratory of their African heritage, while in practice their claims of racelessness or racial democracy coverup the reality of anti-Black discrimination. Such heritages of anti-blackness do not disappear within a US context, they merely enter into a dialogue with one another.

The result of internalization of US racial ideology is a collective distancing among those in the pan-Latinx community from connections to blackness (Cruz-Janzen, Román & Flores). In application this means the Latinx community, and those who represent it, often implicitly reinforce anti-Black racism through their hesitance to acknowledge the Afro-Latina/os that make up part of their community. According to Marta I. Cruz-Janzen “The more Latinos become immersed in the racial ideology of the United States,…the more powerful is their need and desire to free themselves of any and all vestiges of African ancestry” (286). Without explicit acknowledgement and inclusion of Afro-Latina/os within the Latinx community, it is no surprise that, as standard political and representational practice in the US, Latina/os are consolidated under the label “Latino” and their heterogeneity masked by a generic representation. Pan-ethnic latinidad, while it has been beneficial in terms of alliance politics and solidarity, privileges certain experiences, representations, and identifications over others. Certainly, many Afro-Latina/os claim a Latino/Hispanic identification; however, this identification is more appropriative or assimilationist than organic. Their association with this identity category is more nuanced than current articulations of “Latino” allow for and results in a desire to qualify where they fit within this pan-ethnic conglomeration.

One particular manifestation of the complex relationship between latinidad and blackness is the prevalence of colorism. The various expressions of this in Latin America and the US is fully nuanced in Navitski’s chapter. In practice this means that the lighter one’s skin, the more legitimate the claim to latinidad. The manifold impact of colorism among Latina/os is the abjection and marginalization of dark-skinned Afro-Latina/os. Yet, Afrolatinidad is much more palatable, both within and outside the Latinx community, if it is subtle (i.e. an ambiguous brown skin tone, curly hair that has been relaxed or straightened, more “European” facial features, etc.). Furthermore, colorism swings the other way as well. Afro-Latina/os often have their blackness put into question among other groups of African descent (African Americans, Continental Africans, West Indians). For these groups, Afro-Latina/os are often not Black enough. They are seen as culturally distinct and, therefore, are marginalized among Black communities as well.

Even in the face of these multiple and contradictory approaches to minimalizing Latinx blackness, there are many who have emersed themselves in US Black politics and culture. Alliances between African Americans and Afro-Latina/os have a legacy dating back to the Haitian Revolution in 1791 and many enslaved Africans worked on Caribbean plantations before they were sold in the US Afro-Latina/os have played key roles in some of the most significant periods of Black cultural influence—for example Arturo Schomburg during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and Jazz virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie—collaborated with African American Civil Right leaders, and were key members of the alliance based movements—such as the feminist Third World Women’s Alliance—that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. It was the cultural collaboration of Puerto Ricans and African Americans in the 1970s that created hip-hop culture and music, a subject Raquel Rivera has written a book about.

Regardless of varied and hegemonic processes of symbolic annihilation, contestation, and acceptance of African descent, afrolatinidad not only exists, but is thriving. Movements celebrating and promoting the various articulations of afrolatinidades can be found in almost every part of the Americas. Afrolatinidad, like latinidad and latinidades, is about articulating identity and subjectivity. It is a way of both distinguishing and centering blackness within the Latinx imaginary. Its continued visibility actively works against the contradictions within amorphous constructs of “Latino” (Román & Flores 2). Influenced by the identity politics of Black Power and Afrocentrism, Afro-Latina/os have become increasingly vocal about and attentive to their African descent. Activists, scholars, artists, musicians, and everyday people are finding empowerment in not just acknowledging their blackness, but in understanding it as a weapon for post-colonial identification. For example, in his discussion of (Afro)Antillanismo, Juan Flores contends that what separates “caribeños” (those that situate their identities within the Spanish Caribbean) from Latinx pan-ethnicity is blackness and an Afro-Atlantic imaginary. His analysis suggests that people from the major Spanish Caribbean countries (Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic) engage with US notions of blackness, nationally constructed racial ideologies, and constructions of race articulated through pan-Caribbean/Antillean discourses. Afro-Latina/o conferences, festivals, research institutes, websites, student groups, social media hashtags, etc. have become productive spaces to establish and enrich the “foundational historical and cultural connection to Africa, an affirmation that simultaneously defies the Eurocentric ideologies that have characterized Latin America and the Caribbean” (Román & Flores 2). While these phenomena are encouraging, they are not reflected in media representation.

Afro-Latina/os in the Media

With such a complex ethnoracial terrain to contend with, it should be a surprise to no one that inclusion, acknowledgement, and adequate representation of Afro-Latina/os and afrolatinidad in media is at best negligible. The politics of media representation has made one thing quite clear: “as far as the mainstream media are concerned, Latin@s are not black and Blacks are not Latin@” (Román & Flores 10). Due to a legacy of blackness “tainting” anything it mixes with, afrolatinidad is rendered invisible, even as Afro-Latina/os have long participated in the industry.

In a visual medium, the way actors look is not only important, but significantly influences the frameworks within which audiences interpret the characters they portray. And in a society where race matters, ethnoracial categorization is assigned based on what an actor appears to be. As blackness is not included within the parameters of the mediated “Latin look,” Afro-Latina/os rarely appear Latina/o to mainstream audiences. Even for audiences familiar with a star’s Afro-Latina/o background, their latinidad is made marginal in the presence of blackness. This not only limits Afro-Latina/os to roles already signified with blackness, but often prohibits them from portraying Latina/o characters all together. Actors like Christina Milian and Zoe Saldana have dark enough skin tones that casting them as African American seems appropriate, if not the only option. (Milian is of Afro-Cuban descent and Zoe Saldana is Dominican-Puerto Rican). While Michelle Rodriguez, who can better embody a typical Latina look, can easily play a Chicana (Mexican American) although she is of partial Dominican descent. Casting agents therefore rely on dominant conceptions of racialization to construct a racial understanding of racially “ambiguous” actors (Warner 49). What becomes important is not how the actor self identifies, but how a mainstream audience would racialize them playing a given character. Essentially, do they have “the right look.”

Furthermore, the various US English media avenues and industries mis- and under-represent Afro-Latina/os in a way that marginalizes their identities and shapes the way mainstream US society reads their racialization. Representations of Afro-Latina/os are extremely rare in US mass media and regularly limited to certain narrative locations (New York City for example). In Spanish-language media such representations, while sustaining a more visible presence, are secondary, limited, and “negative,” usually seen in their positioning as background characters or domestics in telenovelas, the trivializing of Spanish Caribbean interests in news coverage, and an almost total lack of cultural representation based in afrolatinidades (Román & Flores 10-11).

The phenomenon of invisible afrolatinidad in media is a historical and contemporary one. To demonstrate this, I will examine three Afro-Latina/o actors—Juano Hernández, Gina Torres, and Rosario Dawson—and the ways in which they have navigated a media industry that sees Black and Latina/o as mutually exclusive.

Juano Hernández (1896-1970)

<Fig. 5.1 here.> Juano Hernández as Wesley in The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz, 1950).

Born in Puerto Rico, Juano Hernández was a boxer, circus acrobat, vaudeville performer, script writer, theater actor, and radio performer before 1949, when he was cast as Lucas Beauchamp in the major Hollywood film Intruder in the Dust (Brown)—a role that would earn him a Golden Globe nomination and BAFTA win. Hernández was among the first actors of African descent to be cast in a leading role along with big name white Hollywood stars, including Kirk Douglas, Steve McQueen, and Doris Day (Wartts). Along with actors like Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, the lesser remembered Hernández took part in a period of Hollywood history that dealt with changing racial politics by including “dignified” and “respectable” African American characters (Bastién, A. Vargas). In addition to a couple earlier 1930s “race films,” Hernández also appeared in a handful of Black-cast films in the 1950s and 60s with actors like Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Eartha Kitt (Wartts).

Everyone knew Hernández was from Puerto Rico, but the ways in which his blackness was represented never affirmed his afrolatinidad. Instead, he was hailed as a great “Negro” actor. Brian Eugenio Herrera uses the term “Stealth Latinos” to refer to Latina/o actors whose latinidad was not denied, but also not reflected in the roles they played in film and television. While this usually manifested in the ability to play white characters, in Hernández’s case, this meant he was almost exclusively cast as either African American or African (Rodriguez, Herrera). Shortly before the release of The Breaking Point (Curtiz), a piece in Ebony magazine said of Hernández’s success: “It is a symbol of the changing pattern of race relations in motion pictures since in every role Hernandez has played a dignified, understanding Negro character” (“Hollywood’s ‘Hottest’ Negro Actor”). The fact that Hernández was so often written about in Ebony, a publication explicitly rooted in the African American experience and dedicated to a mission of Black racial uplift, is quite telling. It reveals just how extensive is the reach of hypodescent, as well as a hesitation to distinguish one form of blackness from another. In the same piece from Ebony, the film’s director, Michael Curtiz, is quoted as saying “Hernandez is the 'new Negro' in our movies. No longer do we have the janitors and shoe shine boys. Now we have a dignified, intelligent, big man" (ibid). Yet important to note for this film in particular is the fact that the character Hernández played, Wesley Park, was not originally written as a Black character (both in the source material of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not nor the original film script). As such, it is an apt media text to discuss a little further.

The Breaking Point is a film noir style production that focuses on the moral challenges its protagonist, Harry Morgan (John Garfield), must navigate in order to support his business and family. Harry is a boat captain and Hernández’s Wesley is his firstmate. Wesley is the moral compass Harry turns to as he starts to head down a path of illegal activities and human smuggling. When things go wrong, Wesley is killed, to the horror of Harry. While the film shows a level of Black and white coexhistance that is still relatively anomolous for a film made during segregation America, it is nonetheless “emblematic of a recurring motif in liberal white films, which often recruited black partners to help white protagonists learn more about themselves” (Civille 9). The film ends in the bleak and tragic vein so common of film noir, with most of the main characters dead and hope destroyed. Poignantly, the last scene of the film shows Wesley’s son waiting on a pier for a father that will never return, completely unaware that his father has been killed and dumped in the ocean. A suitable metaphor for the devaluing of Black lives, as well as the lack of cultural memory of an early and well-respected Afro-Latino actor.

Gina Torres

<Fig. 5.2 here>. Gina Torres at a press conference promoting the television show The Catch (ABC, 2016-2017). Walt Disney Television, CC BY-ND 2.0).

Finding more success in television than film, Gina Torres’ career exemplifies the contemporary invisibility of afrolatinidad within US media. The Afro-Cuban Torres has been very candid about her experience as an Afro-Latina who is only cast as Black/African American characters. In the Mun2 (now NBC Universo) network’s short documentary Black and Latino, Torres says “When I became an actress, I quickly realized that the world liked their Latinas to look Italian, not like me. And so I wasn’t going up for Latina parts, I was going up for African American parts.” Torres’s blackness has affected her career the most in terms of role opportunities. In fact, many audiences are completely unaware of her Cuban heritage, even considering her Latinx surname. In many ways a cult star, Torres has starred in or been featured in many science-fiction and fantasy television shows. Known best for her roles in Cleopatra 2525 (2000-2001), Firefly (FOX, 2002–2003), Serenity (Whedon), and the last two installments of The Matrix trilogy in 2003 (Lana and Lilly Wachowski), she appeared in reoccurring roles in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Angel, 24, Alias, and Suits.

While her career has been mostly on television, she has been cast in a handful of African American Cinema films. Torres has played a Black/African American character in films like the Mo’Nique vehicle Hair Show (Small) and the Black-cast film Fair Game (Whaley). In the film I Think I Love My Wife, directed and staring Chris Rock, Torres plays Brenda Cooper, wife of Richard Cooper (Rock) who is caught between staying loyal to his wife and family and the seductive former crush Nikki (Kerry Washington). While not a film necessarily targeted towards the African American audience, race is far from invisible and the film does retain a watered-down version of Rock’s racial comedy sensibility. Brenda discusses a desire to find an African American “mocha mothers” support group and the narrative trades in discourses of middle-class African American politics of respectability. (The politics of respectability emerged during racial segregation within the African American community as a way to improve their social situation and emphasized acting “respectable” [Higginbotham]).

Torres’s casting does not raise any eyebrows and her afrolatinidad is rendered invisible in the process. When asked how she feels about playing African American characters, Torres told Latina magazine “I don’t feel like I’m living a lie, because the fact is the world sees me as an African American woman unless they ask the question. Therefore my experience in the world, outside of my family, is that of an African American woman” (Trivino). Not much has changed since the time of Juano Hernández. Appearance of blackness is enough to preclude any meaningful inclusion in representational latinidad.

Rosario Dawson

<Fig. 5.3 here>. Rosario Dawson at the Streamy Awards in 2009. Photo by Bui Brothers, courtesy of Streamy Awards. CC BY-ND 2.0.

Among the three actors discussed in this chapter, Rosario Dawson has found the most mainstream success. She is probably also the most racially ambiguous. Having Puerto-Rican, Afro-Cuban, Irish, and Native American heritages, Dawson’s racialization is often ambiguous and even flexible (Beltrán Latina/o Stars in US Eyes, Hensley). Her mixed heritage is frequently credited for her good looks and is something she is asked repeatedly to comment on during interviews. Consequently, in the majority of her films and television shows, race must be implied by various markers, including: darkness of skin, presence of accent, language spoken, location of character origin, fashion and styling, and the ethnic quality of the character’s name (Beltrán "The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle,” Valdivia). Audiences’ ethnoracial readings of Dawson are highly context/narrative specific and, at times, reflect ideological challenges to normative racial thinking in the United States.

Unlike Hernández and Torres, Dawson’s career is marked by more casting flexibility; the characters she portrays are often racialized as either African American or Latina (Beltrán Latina/o Stars in US Eyes). As an example, in the Adventures of Pluto Nash (Underwood), Dawson seems to be racialized as vaguely Black in relation to Eddie Murphy’s unquestioned racialization as African American. Beyond the pairing of Dawson with an African American leading man, a strategy that harkens back to the discomfort towards miscegenation for a US audience, she is depicted as an R&B singer, a designation that, in turn, potentially races her as African American. Similarly, in Josie and the Pussy Cats (Elfont & Kaplan) Dawson portrays Valerie Brown, the African American band member of the Pussycats, based on the Archie Comics animated series character from the 1970s. As a continuation of a previously racialized character, her “café au lait” skin tone is read as light skinned African American. Furthermore, the character’s non-ethnic name distances Dawson from an alternative Latina reading. She is, additionally, regularly represented in this film with hairstyles that are associated with an African American aesthetic, such as “afro-puffs,” braids, and salon styled tight curls. Both these films represent Dawson as African American in a way that would rule out a connection to a Latina identity.

However, this racialization as African American is not as common in her other films. As the character of Mimi in the film Rent (Columbus), one of her most famous roles, Dawson is the epitome of the New York City Latina. She has a Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican) accent, darker skin tone, long dark hair with some texture, and works as a stripper. In any other location outside of New York City, her racialization would be difficult to read, however, in the context of the city she is unmistakably Latina of Caribbean heritage. Similarly, in the film Side Streets (Gerber), a story that is meant to reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the individual boroughs of New York City, the audience is presented with two couples of arguable Caribbean origin: one West Indian and one Puerto Rican. The West Indian couple in Brooklyn are of clear primary African descent and are therefore Black. However, the Latinx couple, Marisol (Dawson) and Ramon (John Ortiz), are generically depicted as Latinx. Here we see an overt depiction of a conceptualization of Spanish-speaking Caribbeans as not Black in comparison with more explicitly Black West Indians. In fact, Dawson’s African descent is downplayed in her character by placing her within a family of lighter skinned Latinas (her mother and sister) which helps negate a connection to African descent within her character. Moreover, the sub-narrative of the Bronx utilizes spoken Spanish to further mark Dawson as primarily Latina. While the sole use of English within the sub-narrative of Brooklyn suggests that the couple’s origin is from an island that was colonized by the British and therefore rules out any possible connection to the Spanish Caribbean. Admittedly, there might be an unspoken understanding that Puerto Ricans have varying degrees of African descent, yet the juxtaposition of Dawson’s character to those uncritically racialized as Black prevents a mainstream reading of her character from being anything but Latinx in general and maybe, more specifically, Puerto Rican for those who are familiar with the specific Latinx populations in New York City.

Re-Centering Blackness within Latinidad

One clear result of Latinx pan-ethnicity is the marginalizing of blackness within a system of representation that gives preference to Latinx whiteness. This is a representational cycle that must be broken, and not just by lighter-skinned and more ambiguous Afro-Latina/os like Rosario Dawson. While Afro-Latina/o actors are occasionally represented as Latina/o, that latinidad is a marginalized and contextualized one. Significantly, each actor’s public acknowledgment of their African descent negates the polarity of US media racialization that attempts to place characters in an either/or construction, in this case either African American or Latinx. Afrolatinidad threatens to deconstruct long held racial ideologies, in both the US and Latin America.

One might ask if this dearth of representation is on the verge of a revolution. Of note is the award buzz around the Afro-Latina Ariana DeBose, who plays the role of Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Yet, when seen in relation to the claims of colorism for the film In the Heights (Chu)—which is discussed in more detail in Javier Rivera’s “Digital Media” chapter of this book—it is too early to tell. Regardless, Latinx African descent is not an outlier, it is just as central to latinidad as Spanish and Indigenous heritages. Consequently, a re-centering of blackness demonstrates the potential of Afro-Latina/o subjectivity to blur the boundaries of racial binary as well as pan-ethnic latinidad.

Bibliography

Aparicio, Frances R. & Suzanne Chávez Silverman. Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1997.Bastién, Angelica Jade. "Juano Hernández Should Have Been the First Afro–Puerto Rican Screen Legend." 7 January 2020. Vulture.com. 14 October 2021.Beltrán, Mary. Latina/o Stars in US Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.—. "The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Constructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s "Cross­over Butt”." Quarterly Review of Film & Video (2002): 19, 71–86.Candelario, Ginetta E.B. Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity From Museums to Beauty Shops. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.Civille, Michael. "“Ain’t Got No Chance”:The Case of The Breaking Point." Cinema Journal (2016): 56 (1), 1-32.Cruz-Janzen, Marta I. "Latinegras: Desired Women—Undesirable Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, and Wives." Eds. Román, Miriam Jiménez and Juan Flores. The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.Davis, Angela. "Interview with Lisa Lowe, Angela Davis: Reflections on Race, Class, and Gender in the USA." Eds. Lowe, Lisa and David Lloyd. The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.Flores, Juan. The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning. New York: Routledge, 2009.Guidotti-Hernández, Nicole M. "Dora The Explorer, Constructing “LATINIDADES” and The Politics of Global Citizenship." Latino Studies (2007): 5 (2), 209-232.Hall, Stuart. Race, the Floating Signifier Featuring Stuart Hall. Media Education Foundation: Produced by Sut Jhally. Northampton, 1997. [Filmed Lecture].Hensley, Dennis. "Rosario Dawson: From Tenement to Tinseltown." 31 October 2005. marieclaire.com. 2014.Herrera, Brian Eugenio. Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century US Popular Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015.Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994."Hollywood’s ‘Hottest’ Negro Actor: Dynamic Juano Hernández Gets His Fourth Important Role in Single Year in ‘The Breaking Point'." Ebony August 1950: 20-26.Khanna, Nikki. "‘If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black": Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule." Sociological Quarterly (2010): 51, 96–121.Ovalle, Priscilla Peña. "Framing Jennifer Lopez: Mobilizing Race from the Wide Shot to the Close-­Up." Ed. Bernardi, Daniel. The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. London: Routledge, 2007. 165–184.Rivero, Yeidy M. Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.Rodriguez, Clara E. Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2004.Román, Miriam Jiménez & Juan Flores. "Introduction." Eds. Román, Miriam Jiménez & Juan Flores. In The Afro­Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.Sagás, Ernesto. Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.Smith, Carol A. "Myths, Intellectuals, and Race/Class/Gender Distinctions in the Formation of Latin American Nations." Journal of Latin American Anthropology (1996): 2, 148-169.Torres, Gina. Black and Latino Mun2. 2015.Trivino, J. "Gina Torres Talks About Being Afro¬latina in Hollywood." April 2013. Latina.com. 2014.Valdivia, Angharad N. "Is Penelope to J. Lo as Culture is to Nature? Eurocentric Approaches to ‘Latin’ Beauties." Ed. Mendible, Myra. From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.Vargas, Andrew S. "A Look Back at the Films of Juano Hernández, Hollywood’s Very First Afro-Latino Movie Star." 5 February 2015. Remezcla.com. 14 October 2021.Vargas, Lucila. Latina Teens, Migration, and Popular Culture. New York: Peter Lang, 2009.Warner, Kristen. Colorblind TV: Primetime Politics of Race in Television Casting. PhD diss. Austin: University of Texas, 2010.Wartts, Adrienne. "Hernandez Juano (1896-1970)." 8 September 2009. Blackpast.org. 14 October 2021.

Filmography

Adventures of Pluto Nash. Directed by Ron Underwood, performances by Eddie Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Randy Quad, and Jay Mhor, Warner Brothers, 2002.I Think I Love My Wife. Directed by Chris Rock,performances by Chris Rock, Gina Torres, Kerry Washington, and Steve Buscemi, Fox Searchlight, 2007.Josie and the Pussy Cats. Directed by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, performances by Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, and Rosario Dawson, Universal Pictures, 2001.Rent. Directed by Chris Columbus, performances by Tay Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, and Tracie Thoms, Columbia Pictures, 2005.Side Streets. Directed by Tony Gerber, performances by Valeria Golino, Rosario Dawson, Shabana Azmi, Jennifer Esposito, Shashi Kapoor, Miho Nikaido, David Vadim, Art Malik, Leon, Merchant Ivory, 1998.The Breaking Point. Directed by Michael Curtiz, performances by John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter, and Juano Hernandez, Warner Brothers, 1950.

For Further Study

Hall, Stuart. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Social Justice, vol. 20, no. 1/2 (51-52), Social Justice/Global Options, 1993, pp. 104–14.

Hall, Stuart, David Morley, and Kuan-Hsing Chen. “New Ethnicities.” Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, 1996.

In the Heights. Directed by Jon M. Chu, performances by Anthony Ramos, Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace, Melissa Barrera, Olga Merediz, Jimmy Smits, Stephanie Beatriz, and Dascha Polanco, Warner Brothers, 2021.

Rivera, Raquel Z. New York Ricans From the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.

West Side Story. Directed by Steven Spielberg, performances by Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Rita Moreno, and Mike Faist, 20^th Century Studios, 2021.