This Might Offend You: Ethnicity Before Race P.3

Welcome to 'This Might Offend You', a series where we dive deep into conversations about topics that often go unspoken within the Afro-Latina community.

We explore sensitive and sometimes controversial subjects around identity, culture, privileges, and the challenges we face as Afro-Latinas. My goal is to break taboos, raise awareness, and encourage open dialogue. Subscribe to the channel and join me on this journey of self-discovery and empowerment.

[CreoleLadyMarmalade]

I love this! I’m American but I’m a mixed race Louisiana Creole so our identity is a bit more complex and VERY controversial in the states. Historically we’d always prioritized our Creole ethnicity and claimed our mixed race heritage but we were demonized for that (much like what they now do to Dominicans). So over time it became very taboo to identify as Creole or mixed. Doing so meant you were “denying your blackness” & you’d be ridiculed & ostracized for doing so so here we are today and the majority of Creoles have abandoned their unique culture and pretend to have the exact same history, background & genetic make-up as African Americans. We came about during French & Spanish rule as the French & Spanish mixed much more frequently than the British and we developed our own culture and had our own Mulatto racial class but once Louisiana became part of America, this distinction became more and more lost and taboo over time. There are a hand full of us Creoles who hold on very tightly to our ethnic identities and I very much so prioritize my ethnicity over my race especially with me being mixed race. It makes more sense to identify with an ethnicity that’s synonymous with being mixed race over choosing to only identify as one race. I have a video asking whether it’s “anti-black” to identify primarily as Creole and I explain how identifying ethnically doesn’t erase anyone’s race. But an African American and a Nigerian and a Haitian are all 3 very different people despite all being racially “black” and it erases people’s cultures and identities when we force people to only identify by race. Colonizers saw a bunch of black faces and didn’t care about what individual tribes they came from or what languages they spoke or traditions they had. All they saw was “black” so it’s a very colonial mindset to strip black people and those mixed with black from having their own beautiful and unique cultures and ways of being. Doesn’t mean that any of us are better than the rest. Just means we come in various, beautiful cultural flavors