Scholars discuss use of ‘negrito,’ ‘negrita’ in Latin culture

It was one line in a song, but it gave a lot of people pause online. In the recently released song “Lonely,” by Colombian artist Maluma and Jennifer Lopez, Lopez sings “yo siempre seré tu negrita del Bronx,” which roughly translates to “I’ll always be your little Black girl from the Bronx”.

That’s when the social media storm began, with dissections of language and culture, literal versus figurative translations, personal intent and history, and evolutions in the ways that words are used and what they can mean over time.

“The track’s lyrics have been deemed controversial as negrita is a questionable Spanish language term of endearment often used to describe people who aren’t Black,” Lola Méndez wrote in a piece for Remezcla, a media company with content targeting Latino millennials. “It’s a nickname that should be phased out of the Spanish language as it’s extremely insensitive to Afro-latinx.”

Tanya Katerí Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches antidiscrimination law and critical race theory, among other courses. She’s also the author of numerous books, including “On Latino Antiblack Bias: ‘Racial Innocence’ and The Struggle for Equality.” Hilda Lloréns is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Rhode Island, where her research focuses on the Hispanic Caribbean and on Latinx United States, and has been published widely in academic journals and in the press. Both women took some time to discuss the history of the term “negrito/a” and how its use fits into the way race is understood in Latin America. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. )

Q:

There’s been quite a bit of backlash over Lopez referring to herself as “tu negrita del Bronx,” in the song “Lonely” with Colombian artist Maluma. When you heard the song, or learned of this line from the song, how did it come across to you? What was your reaction to her use of this term?

Tanya K. Hernández: When I learned of the line from the song, it angered me a great deal because it felt like a tone-deaf, opportunistic attempt to appear relevant in our #Blacklivesmatter social moment. At no other time has Lopez personally identified herself with Blackness. Dating Black people does not make you Black. Dancing with Black people does not make you Black. Being part of the urban popular culture and aesthetic, again, does not make you Black. Even more troubling, is that Lopez has a whole history of whitening her appearance and hair to pursue her Hollywood ambitions. Certainly, those are her choices to make, but it should then not be a surprise that her sudden gesture toward Blackness, from her perch of White privilege, would be received poorly by me and many others.

Hilda Lloréns: I was immediately struck by its staggering tone deafness. Not only is identifying as a “negrita” an insensitive move in the #Lasvidasnegrasimportan (the Spanish counterpart to #Blacklivesmatter) era, but in the music video, as if to add insult to injury, she does so from a jail cell. I am not surprised at this latest lapse because, time and again, J.LO has reminded us that she seems to have lost touch with the social, cultural and political realities facing minoritized people in the Bronx and other barrios throughout the United States, and in the Americas more broadly. For instance, if J.LO or her production team would have registered that Black, Afro-latinxs, Latinxs and Indigenous populations are overrepresented in the U.S. prison population, she could have, if nothing else, worn a #Blacklivesmatter or #Lasvidasnegrasimportan statement outfit in the video. This would have surely softened the blow that many Black Latinxs felt when they heard her claiming to be a “negrita.”

Q: In the back-and-forth over this particular topic online, some members of the Latinx community explain that “negrito/a” is a term of endearment that has little or nothing to do with race. That it can be used to describe someone who is the most tanned in a group or family, someone with the darkest hair or eyes, or someone with dark skin who would be seen as Black. Can you help us understand the origins of this term and how it was used early on in Latin culture? What was the term rooted in? And how has the use of the term evolved into one of endearment?

Hernández: The term has its origins in the colonial slave societies of Latin America and the Caribbean.

It is important to note that the vast majority of African slaves were forcibly brought to Latin America and the Caribbean, while what is now the United States only received approximately 3 percent (of enslaved Africans). Because White Europeans were often outnumbered, the threat of Blackness was managed in several ways. One of the management tools was the use of a rhetoric of socially acceptable “little” Black, as in “my little Black, is one of the good ones.” The diminutive infantilizes Blackness, and conditions social acceptance with the imposition of a hierarchical paternalism. Extending the phrase to those who do not phenotypically look Black occurred with the Latin American refusal to build racially inclusive democracies and economies. Rather than acknowledge the legacies of slavery and continued racism, Latin American countries deflected with the premise that widespread racial mixture made racial categorization too imprecise for true racism to exist. With such a social construct, anyone can be “a little Black” intimate, while simultaneously fleeing any direct identification with Blackness or responsibility for racial equality.

Q:

Others have offered that the way race is understood in Latin America is different from how Americans have come to understand and define it. That, specifically in regard to Puerto Rico (Lopez is of Puerto Rican descent), people understand and are proud of the mixture of African, Indigenous and European in their ancestry. What kind of role does this understanding of race play in how these kinds of descriptors are used, and how they’re received?

Lloréns: The way processes of racialization are experienced in Latin America have their own particular inner workings, but what remains the same throughout the American Hemisphere is that Black and/or Afro-descended populations experience worse living conditions and life outcomes than non-black populations. In other words, anti-black racism exists and is alive and well, throughout Latin America. Many in Latin America and the Caribbean tout racial mixture as a source of pride, and as a reason why they cannot be called racist, even as they perpetrate anti-black microaggressions and racism. What is important to understand is that racial mixture is seen positively as long as people fit the light skin, classic Latinx look. In other words, racial mixture as a source of “exoticism” is touted largely by people who don’t look Black and who thereby don’t experience anti-black racism in their everyday lives.

lisa.deaderick@sduniontribune.com