I grew up in Newark, New Jersey – a city known for its heavy population of immigrants from every corner of the world. I grew up speaking fluent English and Haitian Creole in my household and a passive speaker of Spanish as my father was a fluent speaker – though we didn’t live together after I was five. By middle school, I was Mr. Corrales‘, my Spanish teacher from 4-8th grade’s, inner-city success story. He had finally taught una negrita how to speak Spanish and threw me into multiple conversations with native speakers who would just come to our school from countries like Honduras and Nicaragua. Of course, he and my schoolmates weren’t aware that I had been exposed to the language my entire life. But it didn’t matter to anyone, because for a black girl in Newark, New Jersey, speaking Spanish was impossible.

I attended Newark Arts High School the following year as a piano major – classically trained from the age of five. There was only one other black girl in my piano class – a Dominican who we’ll call Flor. Flor was the same complexion if not darker than me. She wore her hair pin-straight from chemical relaxers and swore to the classroom that her hair naturally grew straight. As expected, this proved to be false whenever her African roots would appear at the base of each strand of hair when she was late on a touch-up. Though born in Washington Heights, she communicated mostly in Spanish if possible and if she was speaking English, she was throwing in any Dominican reference she could find to throw into her sentence. It was honestly unbearable. I felt she was overcompensating for her Latina identity but interestingly enough, she was me looking into a mirror.

As time went on, we became very close friends. We even started to refer to each other as cousins because of how often people would mix us up and say we looked alike. We began to share our insecurities and realized we weren’t so different. It wasn’t her fault society had made being Latina synonymous with racial ambiguity, the ability to roll your double Rs and drop your Ss. It completely allowed for the erasure of our existence – on television, in magazines, in film. Flor didn’t fit the mold and to make up for that, she forced her Dominican and Spanish speaking identity wherever she could while straightening her hair to appear less black.

I, on the other hand, realized that maybe deep down somewhere I had only actually tried to learn Spanish to be accepted as Latina by other people in the community. Though my father and I didn’t have much of a relationship, I’d always invite him instead of my mom to come to my parent-teacher conferences knowing we’d run into some of my Hispanic schoolmates’ parents and that he’d speak Spanish to them. Almost every time after those instances, I felt a more welcoming environment with those classmates who would often say things like, “wow I didn’t know you were Hispanic,” “I didn’t know you were Latina,” or “Wow, your dad speaks Spanish so well – is he like Dominican or Cuban or something?” As for the Hispanic comments, I never corrected them. I felt life was made easier if people made the assumption that I was Hispanic even though I wasn’t. I was afraid of being back on the other side, ostracized from the community of people I felt the most at home with. The sharing of geographic location, music, dance, and food wasn’t enough if language – which was often the nail in the coffin – wasn’t Spanish. Once people discovered I spoke Creole too, they were often confused by me. Maybe she’s half Haitian? After all, Haitians, to many people, are not considered Latinos. Maybe it was that we were too black? But I then found out Brazilians were Latinos and didn’t face this ostracization despite having the largest population of black people outside of Africa. Was it that Portuguese was similar to Spanish? Or that Brazil was less homogenously black in comparison to Haiti? I didn’t realize until I met Flor that I was also overcompensating – by bringing my dad around to prove something to other people, by surprising people with my own Spanish knowledge whenever I was in a group of mostly Spanish speaking Latinos, or even the fact that I simply wanted lighter skin. In many ways, I realized, Flor and I were the same. She had the language natively – technically I didn’t. But we faced similar struggles because of our race and that it didn’t fit into society’s idea of what it meant to be Latina.

To date, there are numerous movements and projects now being made to showcase the Afro-Latin Diaspora. Activists such as Amara La Negra and Youtuber Monica Style Muse have been very vocal about black identity in Latin America. It is nice to see many of the pages and documentaries created include Haiti, Brazil, and other small island countries who do not speak Spanish in these conversations. However, I will say I am tired of the “afro-latina” label. Similar to African-American, people who share this identity are forever bound by this hyphen. They cannot be seen as just Latina because they are black, further pushing the narrative that blackness cannot reside within the bubble of latinidad. For African Americans, because we are black, we can never be seen as just Americans, because to be American means to not be black. These terms further push the agenda of erasure. If a black woman identifies as Latina – the word afro does not need to be in the front if she is visibly a black Latina in the same way that black Americans shouldn’t have to be put into some hyphenated category of Americans.

Through a lot of hard work, soul searching, and self-love Flor and I decided to shave our heads to start over – letting go of the weight our hair carried, the feelings of “otherness” we felt within our community. Today, I am proud to say I am black, I am Haitian, I am Latina, and I am American. Hopefully one day we can live in a world where these labels don’t hold the weight that they do in society but until then, I’ve said all I’ve had to say.