...Raceiago?

I had an interesting conversation about race today.

The topic has come up many times since arriving in Chile amongst my program colleagues as we try to make sense of this cultural context we were dropped into.

When we selected to come to Chile for a research experience, I think we all had very different images of what Chile was and who Chilean people were. How they looked and talked. How they lived. How they danced. But in spite of a semester long course that was meant to introduce us to Chilean culture and history, none of us were prepared for what it is really like here. Particularly what it is like to be black in Chile.

I've mentioned in other posts about women asking (and not asking) to touch my hair and men whistling unwelcomed cat calls from their car windows at 8-o-clock in the morning (seriously guys, it's just too early for that; the sun isn't even up yet). Today was the first day I think I have been able to better articulate what I have been feeling about the interactions I have had here. 

First, let's take a step back.

I grew up in Ann Arbor, MI where most people are white and even the minority kids are often biracial with a white parent. I spent a lot of my life being too black for my classmates and not black enough for my black friends (and some family). Or at least that's how it felt. Being questioned about why I pronounce words the way I do (read: "you talk like a white girl"), if I tan in the summer time ("because your skin is, you know, already dark"). Girls asking me if I can teach them how to pop (I believe you youngins call it twerking these days). Adults asking me to read the welcome on Youth Day even though someone else volunteered to do it ("because you just speak so well"). 

I was often the only or one of two black students in my advanced placement classes (even though there were 4,000 students in my high school). Most of my teammates were white. For basketball, softball, track…you name it. By the time I got to college I was used to having people ask me about my black church, question if my black parents were still married, beg me to teach them how to “uh-oh” like Beyonce, show off their new cornrows from their trip to Cancun with their family for spring break. I was used to people being surprised to find out that I played in the orchestra at school, that I like knitting and that I read books for fun. Long books with no pictures. I am used to being an anomaly. I am not used to being novel.

I couldn’t figure out why I was so unusually bothered by Chilean women asking to touch my hair. Back home people ask all the time and I very promptly, but respectfully, say “No thank you, but I appreciate that you asked first.” Then I realized it wasn’t even the fact that they were inquiring about my hair that bothered me. It was the look of shock and awe that came along with the question that was, is, so unsettling.

Chile has had its fair share of political drama and social traumas. Race, as seen and interpreted by dominant culture here, has not been one of them. There are tense race relations between the indigenous people and euro-Chileans but for some reason it is not recognized as a race issue.

Today, I had an interesting conversation about race.

As native English speakers, a group of us were invited to talk with students in a graduate course practicing speaking in English in a scientific setting. The students came prepared with interview questions based on our individual bios. One question came up that sparked the race discussion:

“What do you think of Chile so far?”

One girl in our group opened her mouth, then shut it again, trying to gather her thoughts. Then she sighed and said, “let me preface my answer with, if you’re asking me if I’d come back to Chile, I would not.”

She went on to express the culture shock she and many of us have experienced; the ignorance we have experienced. Because of our skin and hair, people assume we are one of three things: Colombian, Brazilian, or Dominican. We are none of the above. There are very few black people in this country and the ones we see rarely are in a group larger than two people, very rarely make eye contact with us, and are even less likely to smile back when we try to acknowledge that we see them.

In the States, in my personal experience, black people in a mostly white community always acknowledge each other’s presence. With a smile, a nod, a handshake. If you don’t know what I’m talking about there is an episode of Blackish that explains “The Nod.” Needless to say, we were pretty sad when we realized we didn’t have a way to connect with the people who look like us. So our less than ideal situation got worse. (We left this part out of explaining our sentiments regarding this country.)

The professor of the class, who had studied in New Jersey and experienced race in the US and has a basic understanding for the history of race relations in the US was empathetic to our interpretation of Chile. Chile is very homogenous. To quote the professor, “everyone looks the same, everyone talks the same, everyone thinks the same, everyone is the same.” Thus, seeing anyone who does not fit the very narrow mold that is “Chilean” is very strange and new. Immigration to this country is very recent, not even 20 years have passed, and only about 5 years since black Latinos from other South and Central American countries showed up. So the comments about my hair and skin, although they are very annoying and frustrating, come from a place of innocence and curiosity. My blackness isn’t really a race thing, but more of a lack of exposure thing.

It makes me uncomfortable to be in a place where everyone is unaware that their well-meaning comments and questions would be seen as inappropriate where I’m from. It makes me uncomfortable to be in a place that historically has been so closed off to what has been happening in the rest of the world, heck the rest of the continent. It makes me uncomfortable to be in a position of teaching people about my people and my culture all the time. It’s exhausting.

On campus when I encounter white ignorance and when people expect me to speak for the entirety of the black race, I can point out how inappropriate that expectation is and refer them to Google to get their embarrassing race questions answered. In Chile even if I sent them to Google they have no frame of reference for what “black” and “white” mean for US Americans.

We went from a position of being mostly invisible at home, except for basketball players and musical entertainers, and being silenced when we speak out about racial injustices that are still happening today, to a place where we have the spotlight on us all the time. There is no place to blend in. There is no community of refuge. And we weren’t prepared for that. No one told us. This was not in our pre-travel seminars.