Activist Calls for Unity, Acceptance Within Afro-Latino Community

Roland Roebuck, activist and advisor of the Afro-Latino Student Association at Howard University, lamented the rigid attitudes of African-Americans toward their ethnic and racial backgrounds at a speech for Hispanic Heritage Month on Wednesday. Roebuck focused his lecture in White Gravenor on the topic of Afro-Latinos living in Hispanic communities and said that denial is the negative consequence of interracial social interactions. "Many people are not comfortable with their black identity and use their geographical identification to feel comfortable," he said. Discrimination against the African minority encouraged the notion of racial inferiority and the pressure to assimilate discouraged individuals from celebrating their identity, he said. "In Puerto Rico alone, 89 percent of the population identified itself as white. This means that my cousins are calling themselves white and yet they are not calling themselves Afro-Puerto Rican." [more ]