I knew this blog would have to get a little serious
eventually, so here’s my first real meaty blog entry.
To put it simply, Ecuador, like the rest of the world, has
some race issues. I don’t know enough yet to talk about it on a country
scale, so I will just focus on how my own experience has been here. I’ll get a
little intellectual for just a second and say that I’m really feeling my intersectionality right now, as a
young American woman of color.
First thing, just like in the US, everyone is curious about
my hair. They stare at it, they ask me questions about it and, most of all,
they want to touch it. Except that here no one has considered asking me before
they grab it. Here’s
it’s called “sambo,” which, the first time I heard it, gave me that
“I-don’t-know-what-that-means-for-sure, but-I-don’t-like-the-way-it-sounds”
feeling. For those who don’t know, sambo, in English, is a really offensive
word to call someone of mixed-race. Here it definitely doesn’t seem to carry
that connotation.
Then there is the question of race and region. Both of my
host parents are originally from the coast, where the majority of the
Afro-Ecuadorian population is concentrated. My host father is quite white and
recently his mother came to visit. She and I developed an interesting friendship,
chatting frequently and linking arms to go for walks. This is an excellent
example of how I am trying to develop relationships of trust, affection and
exchange of ideas here but constantly hit with the question of how to face an
unfamiliar racial terrain.
One of her favorite topics was talking about house employees
and how before Correa’s presidency middle class people could afford one and now
people can’t because there are rules about paying fair wages and social
security. She liked to refer to her “empleada negrita” in a way that I found
paternalistic and racist. Since I’m especially racially ambiguous here, people
don’t realize that I will react strongly to their subtle racist comments.
(Although, I should be able to react strongly to any sort of oppression, not
just when it’s based on my own identity.) So, she assumes that I will laugh at
her story about the fat, black housemaid her family had when she was younger,
and doesn’t seem to notice when I frown instead. I’ve had enough of the mammy
stereotype bullshit. (Aunt Jemima’s and “The Help” anyone?)
The night before my host grandmother left, she came into my
room to invite me to her eightieth birthday this weekend and I asked her when
she was leaving the next morning. She said that her driver (she’s too old to be
driving), a “moreno, como ti” [dark, like you] was going to pick her up around
9am. Then she asked me if I knew him. Since, clearly, all people of color
everywhere must know each other.
And then there is the constant talk about ladrones negritos
(little black thieves). The stereotype of black people as thieves is rampant
here. In almost every single family I have visited, this stereotype has been
articulated in one way or another. With one family, that I felt closer to, I
decided to push back a little, telling them that even though I don’t look like
it to them, I do identify as black. (Which felt strangely like revealing some
dark secret.) I told them that the only people I have known to get robbed here
have been robbed by mestizos and asked them if that meant I should consider all
mestizos to be ladrones?
It is hard to have these race conversations here for so many
reasons. There is the language barrier, which really matters when words like “sambo” carry intense connotations
for me that are not the same in Spanish. There is the very important fact that
I am a student at a super liberal university in the United State trying to have
conversations with people who may not have gone to high school, or, like my host
grandmother, who grew up in a different time period. Furthermore, I cannot deny
my own privilege in this context. Of
course here I will be seen, by families who know me, as American first and
a person of color second. My identity as an American is the identity that gives
me power, the puts me in the oppressor class, and that mainly defines me here.
And yet, sometimes people don't fully understand how I can be an American. A typical question goes like this -
“Where are you from?”
“The United States.”
“…Hmm…Your parents?”
“My mami is from the south of the US and my papi from the
north west.”
“But both are from the US?”
“Yes.”
“And your grandparents...?”
The unasked question here is pretty basic. It’s not where
I’m from, it’s “Why do you have black hair?” Since here the idea is that all
Americans are blonde and blue eyed. If I’m feeling generous I’ll just answer
their true question and say, “My mom is white, my dad is black.” If I’m feeling
frustrated I’ll just keep saying, “Yep, all my family is from the US” and let
it mess with their mind a little.
My skin and appearance do make some things easier for me
here. I am light skinned enough that I am not pegged as black and therefore
don’t get suspicious glances, but I’m dark-skinned and dark-haired enough that
I don’t get pegged as an American as quickly either, so I’m less likely to get
stolen from and more likely to have people speak to me in Spanish.
I was not expecting to encounter all these personal, racial
issues here and especially not so soon. Perhaps it is partly being outside my
super liberal college environment and suddenly in the “real world” in which no
one cares about politically correct lingo, but I think it's mostly that I need to learn how to navigate these new ways of seeing race. And, as a result, seeing myself.
