El Sangre Negro.

“And my wish for the child is to feel the blood of her people flowing through her veins and remember that where she comes from is sacred, and that ​she ​is sacred, because her bones are white, but her blood is Black.”

I was working at JCPenney last winter. I liked that job. I liked my coworkers. Every now and then I saw someone from my high school—that part I didn’t like. I could have done without those awkward encounters.

One afternoon, an older woman asked me to assist her in choosing an outfit for her granddaughter. She was likely Puerto Rican—everybody is where I’m from—and she was translating for her daughter, the child’s mother, I presume, as we went back and forth about what might fit her granddaughter and what might not. She was describing her figure to me, a little taller than the average eight or nine-year-old girl, a little extra skin around her stomach. Too small for this, too big for that.

When we found the perfect outfit, joy spread across the grandmother’s face as she said: “I love her. She’s Black, but I just love her.”

I nodded, smiling. I understood—I too love Black people. People that are Black. El sangre negro. “Ella es negra, pero la amo.” She’s Black, but I still love her. Despite that little—well, big—flaw.

I was never raised to recognize my Black blood as a stain on my being—my mother is the African-American matriarch of our family, my father, a loud Jamaican man—carries his Blackness on his back with so much strength you’ll never miss him coming. I do, nonetheless, understand that this is not the experience of many people who look like me.

This isn't going to be sad. I promised myself that, because no one hates talking about Black trauma more than Black people, however necessary. Instead I want to talk about that woman with the Black granddaughter—how unfortunate—and why she would look at that little girl’s smiling face when she gives her her new outfit and know that she loves her deeply, but that she has to fully accept her. I imagine it’s difficult.

I’ve recently done some research on anti-Blackness in the Latin Caribbean given my own background and close proximity to the culture. On the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, being Black is often deemed one of the worst identities to have. Blackness is a stain, and many individuals will work as hard as they can to distance themselves from contamination. 

Regardless, one cannot ignore the fact that the African blood buried in the grounds of those islands are what keeps the soil fertile enough to grow grass for Cubans to walk on. That blood breathes through the giant leaves of the palm trees that Puerto Ricans tend to for American tourists in San Juan. That blood strengthens the feet of Dominicans as they dance bachata in the streets which, by the way, is a music genre that would not exist without African rhythms. Black blood is the secret ingredient to the fruits that grow not only in the West Indies, but also in the world. There is nothing that exists without Black blood. Nothing.

When I think of my ancestors, when I really think, all that appears in my mind is power. Power through everything the world has put my people through, still we exist in every realm of the universe. How annoying then, it must be for those who hate Black people to acknowledge that Black people are the reason they exist as they do. Black people grow the food they eat, died for the history they teach, built the building in which the leader of the free world lives—unless of course, he lives in Florida. In that case, I’ll have you know that my people made up half the state before the whole segregation thing. There is nowhere we haven't been.

That grandmother will look at her granddaughter one day and will not understand why she dances the way she does, why her hair defies gravity, why her skin is some combination of honey and cocoa and coffee and soil, the Black soil that grows the fruit she buys at the bodega in the afternoons. My hope though, is that in all of her misunderstandings about her kin, she realizes that her blood has kept her alive. Her blood is not a stain, but rather is a reminder of the way we move: in power, in strength, in love, in light, in pain; it whispers, “there’s nowhere we aren’t. There’s nowhere I will never be.”

And my wish for the child is to feel the blood of her people flowing through her veins and remember that where she comes from is sacred, and that she is sacred, because her bones are white, but her blood is Black.