#pan-afro

idk that anyone will see or care for this but idc. the shame is long past for pan-Afro voices. call me "extra" or stereotype me as an angry Black woman. once i can bring up my own Afrolatinidad, my culture & my Black caribbean roots without having others, especially latinos, go full anti-Black on me, be they white latino Pacific-Atlantics or even fellow self-hating Caribbeans, then that's the moment i can well & truly say my Blackness & the experience of the life in it as is brings me all the joy & not also pain, & even then thats a weight to be healed. my degree of biracial-ness included. because why must so many pan-Afro people across the diaspora be made to carry their Black roots like a cross? aren't we free of the chains yet? when images are reproduced for me with whips as the punchline, am i supposed to find them funny? i think the fuck not. why do we latinos get brought up with "Blanco" as a compliment & the approximation to the peak beauty ideal, and "Negro" as an insult or the object of pity? why was i compelled to laugh as a kid whenever it was brought up that my great-grandfather, a stern but sensible hard-working man who faithfully married a dark-skinned woman, hated Black ppl & refused to meet his own Black grandchildren? i still carry the anti-Black slurs i got called as a child as is. "negrata" with Spaniards, the hard-R with the rest of the world... there also seem to be issues in common with those of us biracials who grew up with a white or even just white-passing mum, even if mine has some Afro roots as well, just not as many as my dad. but really, enough with the Black suffering. it can be a crazy upbringing, and with crazy i mean desolating & confusing. i need to integrate myself with some more hopeful stories of Black Excellence & success when everything that's thrown at me is Black trauma, or else that's how we inadvertently fall into self-loathing.