Black-Latinos are “Part of the African Diaspora”

Growing up, I rarely saw Afro-Latinx people on television, in film, or in the books I read. I also didn't see them in beauty. The Spanish colonizers' Eurocentric standard of beauty left its imprint on the Latinx community. The message has permeated the culture: It's not just that Afro-Latinx people aren't considered beautiful — they practically don't exist.

Latininiad in the U.S. is often equated with Eurocentric markers of beauty (being fair-skinned with dark, mostly straight or wavy hair), or being of Mexican heritage. Typically, Latinx people are presented as white-adjacent, which has led to the erasure of anyone who does not fit that narrow mold.

But Black Latinxs are literally all over Latin America — the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, the list goes on. Fortunately, we're living in a time where people from the Afro-Latinx community are not just celebrating that they're Black and proud but they're also creating spaces, brands, and content to address their unique beauty needs.

Afro-Latinxs are just as much a part of the African diaspora, but America's misconceptions of race and ethnicity also often excluded them from dialogues surrounding Blackness and beauty.

Thankfully, perceptions are changing and Afro-Latinxs are finally finding their place in the beauty world, catering to people like themselves, and using their platforms to combat the anti-Blackness and internalized racism that still very much exists in our communities.

Read rest of story here: https://www.allure.com/story/afro-latinx-beauty-owners-influencers-antib...