ok, so english isn’t my first language so it might be difficult for me to properly explain this. but, just as the us, latin america was colonized by european countries (specially spain and portugal, but england, france, the netherlands and other countries came as well). they slaved our natives (some, bc they didn’t know all the tribes that lived here) and later they brought africans as slaves too (idk why this is so hard to understand since a similar thing happened in north america). over the years, people got pretty mixed and today is difficult for us to know 100% of our ethnicities (and honestly, we don’t care if we are 12% portuguese, for example). but the thing is, natives, africans and other persons of colors were always discriminated by white people. we (i’m saying we bc i’m a white latina) are very privileged (for ex, i studied in a private school and in over 150 people in my year, only 2 were black) in our society and this is something that always happened, unfortunately. around 50% of Brazilians consider themselves as white, even they don’t know if they are 100% white. for us, what matters the most is our skin color (i’m NOT saying that ethnicities don’t matter to us, bc they do). we still have native tribes that cultivate their traditions, there are some cities that are almost entirely italian or german, for example (and they actually speak those languages and have their own traditions) and there are lots of african-brazilian religions and traditions that are cultivated by african-brazilians.
i can’t speak about other latinos, but people saying that all latinos are persons of color drives me crazy, bc to say this erase ALL of our history of discrimination, slavery and white privilege.
— @winterhelps
