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In this episode of ESSENCE Now's Kitchen Table Talk series, we gather a group of Afro-Latinas to discuss how they navigate being Black and Latina and handle the issue of colorism.
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00:00Welcome to Essence Now Kitchen Table Talk. I'm Essence Senior Editor Sharia Jackson filling in
00:17for our girl Mako. And remember, we always want to hear from you. You can sound off anytime using
00:22our hashtag EssenceNow or by emailing us at EssenceNow at Essence.com. All right. So y'all
00:29have all been watching Love and Hip Hop Miami, which is in all of our feeds. And you surely
00:33have heard the buzz around the word Afro-Latina, especially that scene where producer Young
00:40Hollywood asked Amara La Negra if she's Afro-Latina simply because she's wearing an Afro. Wow. So
00:46unfortunately, as he has illustrated, it seems there's a lot of confusion around what it means
00:51to be Black and Latina all at the same time. So joining us, we have an incredible group of Afro-Latina
00:58women who will be breaking it down for us. First up is Janelle Martinez. She's the founder
01:02of Ain't I Latina. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. Next, we have multicultural
01:08marketing consultant and professor Miss Arlene Peterson. Hello. Hello. Then we have Juliana
01:14Pache. Did I get it right? We have Juliana Pache, who is the social media manager for The Fader,
01:19and she's also the creator of the hashtag and celebration Black Latinx history. Hi. Hello.
01:26Thanks for joining us, Jules. And last but not least, we have the founder of Hugh LLC,
01:31Miss Jamila Aisha Brown. Hey, queso pa. Ah. Queso pa. I'm so kind of meaning to say what's up. Oh,
01:38you see me, I was stuck. I was like, hi, what's up? I don't want to offend you. No, I love it. Thank you,
01:44ladies. You all are Afro-Latina women and working in media. But before we go deeper, you have to break
01:50it down for us. What exactly makes someone Afro-Latina? Well, it's race. Essentially, you're just a
01:57Black person from Latin America. But I think it's deeper than that because, you know, racial integration,
02:04race mixing, as they actually called it by name, in Latin America was actually by design. So if you
02:10look historically after slavery ended, many countries were like, okay, you know, the way that we're going
02:15to get over this thing is like, everybody marry each other and have babies. And it didn't work
02:19because there's still quite a lot of racism. But you have a lot of people who have a Black
02:23grandparent or great grandparent. That's where the phrase comes from. So when somebody is being
02:29anti-Black towards you, you're like, oh, where's your grandmother? Because I know she's Black like me.
02:33So it's like, yeah, there's a lot of people. I need to learn that phrase. I use it very frequently.
02:40But the thing is, it's like you could have Black relatives, but you may not phenotypically
02:45show up as looking Black. You may look more like mestizo, as we call it, or mestiza, mestizaje.
02:51There's so many different words for it. Brazil has like 300 on their own. So yeah, it's about
02:56having a Black experience. Like are you treated like a Black person is part of what it, you know,
03:01breaks down to. And it's so important. I'm so glad you all are here. There's so much ignorance,
03:05even on my own part, that we're always getting over because the reality is when you look at, you bring
03:09up slavery, which was a huge part of the history of the world, the majority of the people who were
03:13taking out of the African continent did not end up in the United States. And so when you look at the
03:17Caribbean, when you look at South America, which have these huge populations of Black people,
03:21but we don't always talk about that at how that's included within the diaspora. So for each of you,
03:27any other identity pieces on Afro-Latina? And then you got to tell us, when did you realize
03:32I am too Afro-Latina? Yeah. I mean, for me, we're like so excited to talk about it. Jump in, I know.
03:40One of the biggest things for me was just even doing my own research. This magazine actually
03:47was one of the reasons why I even figured out there were more people outside of my own family
03:51that was Afro-Latina. Years ago, a fantastic author by the name of Veronica Chambers, who was
03:57also Panamanian, had an article in Essence. And Essence came in my house. And you know,
04:04we had Essence and we had Variedad. We had Hola. So we had the Spanish language magazines,
04:09but we also had Essence. And when I read that article by Veronica Chambers, I was just like,
04:13oh my God, there's more Panamanians that I'm not related to. And this experience she was talking about
04:19in her book that really showed like, oh wait, this is not odd. We're not, I'm not weird. You know,
04:26and I might've been like 12, 13. So at that stage of like learning even what this term was,
04:32but even going further back, Arturo Schomburg, the Schomburg Center, the reason the beginning of
04:41black history was by an Afro-Latino. Schomburg started in Puerto Rico going and doing research
04:49about black people because his teacher was like, black people don't have any history. There's no heroes.
04:55I don't know what you're talking about in Puerto Rico. So he made it his point and his mission
05:01as a child to start getting that information and doing that research. And then when he moved here,
05:06gathered more, started being more involved within the movement, the black movement that was starting
05:12in Harlem. That's how the Schomburg started. It wasn't because of anything more than an Afro-Latino
05:19started it. He called himself Afro-Puerto Rican. So this is not a term that just came out of the blue.
05:24This has been going on for centuries and centuries. We've been out here trying to be like, hi, we
05:28exist. Hi, it's not a, it's not a foreign concept to be black and Spanish or Afro-Latino. We clearly
05:36cannot deny where our heritage comes from. We're talking about history. Schomburg,
05:40you talk about kicked it off. Jules, you're continuing the conversation on Twitter with
05:44black Latinx history. Why was it important for you to make sure as we celebrate black history in
05:48February, we not forget the Afro connection? Yeah. So, um, I actually started the hashtag on
05:55the first day of black history month. I believe it was three years ago. It could have been two. I'm not
06:00sure. It's all blur. It all blends together. Right? Um, because it was the first day of black history month
06:07and everybody was really excited. Everybody was sharing, um, iconic figures that inspired them.
06:15And I went to various Latin publications. I went to their Twitter accounts to see if they had posted
06:22anything about, we have such a rich black history in Latina culture. So I went on this one particular
06:32publisher's Twitter account and they had no mention of any black Latina people. And, but they had actually
06:41posted a news post about a white actress from the U S. So I felt further insulted because it's like,
06:49you can't, you can't share our story, but you can share someone who's not even a Latinx person on your
06:57site. So from there, I started a thread where I wanted to just highlight like all of the iconic
07:03people from our history and somebody, I forgot who it was. Somebody tweeted me saying you should make
07:10a hashtag. And I was like, you're right. So after that, I was all just, I just kept tagging
07:20black Latinx history and all the posts. I love it. And you talk about media. You all work in media
07:25and you talk about sort of that experience with seeing a Latina outlet that would rather highlight
07:31a lighter hue. Really a lot of the colorism we see, even with Amara on the show and the issues around
07:36people wondering, is she making her skin darker, the reverse of bleaching and the ideas around
07:41colorism. So what have been your own experiences with colorism as Afro-Latina women's had, were you
07:47ever called names as a child and how did that impact you? Um, well, I can say in, in my family, um,
07:56so my dad's side, my, my Dominican side is the more Afro side. The Cuban side is like a situation where
08:02it's like your grandma is black and everyone is like Mestizo or whatever. Um, but I would hear
08:09from both sides of my family, um, you need to marry a white boy so your kids can come out with better
08:17hair, like things like that. So for me, it was more so like, I didn't really experience being light
08:24skin. I didn't experience like the same amount of colorism at all from that my peers face, but I felt it
08:32in terms of my hair. Got it. Yeah. And I know for you, Janelle specifically, you have a blog,
08:38Ain't I Latina, which is talking about that fusion of black and Latina experience. Yeah. And I think
08:45to be honest, growing up, um, it's so interesting, like the spaces that we are in, how that defines us,
08:50like you can define yourself a certain way and others will define you else, I guess another way.
08:56Um, but for me, um, I, my family and identifying as Garifuna from Honduras, I mean, that's a very rich
09:05African, you know, culture like food. And I think that could be said about a lot of the foods that we
09:12we all know where it comes from, despite if people recognize it or not. Um, and so it wasn't until
09:19leaving that safety of that space, um, through schooling where people started like the questions,
09:26because I do have, uh, what is considered a typical Spanish last name Martinez. Um, and so people would
09:33be like, and I remember actually one instance that I often talk about is, um, there was a student that's
09:40family was from Spain and he literally argued with me back and forth for like minutes on end about how
09:47I'm not, I was using Spanish, but really meaning Latina. Um, and I think that, you know, that's just
09:56one example of some of the colorism as we were talking about, like Amada, people like trying to
10:02decipher or dissect your identity to the point where they can negate it as a whole. And it's like,
10:08you don't have to prove that to anyone, but because of colorism, because media representation,
10:13and a lot of our, um, you know, Spanish language media, I think in particular, you know, we have
10:19to hold them accountable, um, oftentimes because you will never see anything resembling this on a cover,
10:28on their websites. And, you know, I know for myself in being within media, like, because I constantly
10:35was looking for that. And I saw that in other areas like essence. Um, I kind of, I was just like,
10:41you know, I'm, I'm done with waiting. I'm just going to create that, that space. And that's
10:46pretty much, I think what a lot of us have done is just like the waiting game, it can't happen.
10:51You know, we just got to- It's so powerful. And it's more, it's more about talking. Now we,
10:55now there's more space for us to kind of talk and that we're here and we, you know, we exist,
11:01you know, and this whole idea of we're an anomaly. It's like, no, we're not actually. And,
11:06you know. Y'all deep. Way deep. We have a whole festival. Yes. We're talking about that. Yeah.
11:12Like there's a whole festival, Afro-Latino festival that happens in July in Brooklyn.
11:17Bunch of Afro-Latinos in Brooklyn, hanging out, having a good time. Yeah. This, Amara has performed
11:23there. We've honored a lot of people. Like this is the whole point. And it's literally every shade
11:29you can think of. I love it. Let me ask you this, because I think spaces like that are so important.
11:33And probably what makes it super special, we see this, is because you don't often have those
11:37spaces where you're not having to choose a box of checks. So have you ever felt that you sometimes
11:42are leading with one culture over the other? Are there every day you're like, you know what,
11:45I'm just going to be black today, or I'm at this cookout, or is it like, am I just going to lean
11:49into my other cultural sides? I think every black person has to code switch. Like,
11:54it doesn't matter what culture you come from. And I know, you know, as a Panamanian person whose family
11:59comes from the Caribbean, like I feel equally Caribbean, as I do Latina, as I do black,
12:04right? Like none of those are separate. But I have actually a very painful and powerful story
12:10happened to me when I was in the sixth grade. I had a student teacher who had lived in Panama,
12:15she was like an older white woman, who would like live there with her husband when her husband was
12:19stationed in Panama. And she was supposed to teach us about what Panama was like. And she hadn't been there
12:25like 20 years. And I had just been there over the summer with my family. And she's telling us all
12:29these horrible things about Panama. It's like, oh, it's dirty. Oh, it's this. Oh, it's that. Like
12:34your typical, like those poor third world people. And at the end of the class, we actually had to vote
12:41whether who wanted to live in the United States or who wanted to live in Panama.
12:44So I didn't just like raise my hand, I actually stood up. And that was a, you know, that's when I
12:50actually decided I was like, okay, so I have to be at 11. I was only 11 years old. And I was like,
12:55I have to, I don't really understand what this whole Afro Latina thing is. Because also, you know,
13:01I think for a lot of us, we were growing up in a time where it was like, you're Dominican, you're Cuban,
13:06you're Puerto Rican, you're this, right? There was no kind of like pan Latin American identity.
13:11That's kind of new. Right. And then like Afro Latina, Afro Latino, Afro descendiente,
13:17like those are terms that are like millennial terms, really, like 2000s.
13:22Even Latinx. Yeah, Latinx, right?
13:24I had to read articles on that last year. I was like, wait a minute, I got to step my game on.
13:28And shout out to, you know, other Afro Latinx femmes and trans folks as well. Like the issue is that
13:34we get so stuck on the being Black and Latino that we don't talk about all of our other identities.
13:39Like people keep trying to paint us with the same brush. Like that's partly why Amara is so important.
13:44Yeah. You know, Amara is important because I know for me to see a Black woman who is my complexion
13:51from Latin America with my hair texture, if I had seen that as a little girl,
13:55that would have changed my life. I didn't get those images at all. And the thing about colorism
14:00is like the Black Latinas that are palpable are the ones who are in closest proximity to whiteness.
14:06They have looser textured hair, they're lighter skinned, like they have to pass a brown paper bag test
14:11Absolutely. In order to get on this, you know, like still like even our Latino publications,
14:16right? Who I will not name, they have not put an Amara on the cover. It's like we always get,
14:22you know, Lala, love Lala. Yeah. Love her. But it's always her. It's like a little rotation.
14:27No, it's so true. Because what happens then, it creates this lie that that's the only person
14:33who are coming from those countries. So then when you do have an Amara show up, it's like, oh,
14:36that's not your real skin. That's not your real hair. What do you think about people who are like,
14:39is she even being her true self? The fact is, this is just in the same conversation as do you
14:45choose to be Black? Yeah. Yeah. We don't, this is not a choice here. This is who we are.
14:52I, we're not denying. And the fact that, I mean, I've, I try not to, I really do not to argue with
14:57the folk on the internet. I try, but it's part of my teacher background of, I still want to teach you
15:04and have you learn something here. Like Juju is out here. She's Cubana. She is gorgeous. She
15:10literally looks like Gabrielle Union's twin and will rattle off Spanish quicker than anybody I've
15:15ever heard. But she's not Black enough. It's like, what does, what does that mean? That doesn't mean
15:22anything. You know, Amara, she's taking pills. No, she's not. Have you seen the girl's picture? She had
15:27to go and put up pictures to prove to people that she was Black, that her father was Black because her
15:33mother is a different complexion. Our, my mom is not the same complexion as I am. I look like my
15:37father, complexion wise. Everything else is my mother. But here in this space, you can't, you can't
15:44define me just because my complexion is darker and because my native tongue technically is Spanish.
15:52My parents chose to come to this country. You know, it wasn't a, we came off the boat. No,
15:57actually they happened to play. You know, they chose to come here. They wanted that better life
16:02for me and my sister. So how does, yeah. But for me, it's really frustrating because it's also a
16:08negation of Afro Latinos that live in the United States. Like Puerto Rico is a part of the United
16:13States, you know, and there are communities like Loisa, where there are 300,000 self-identified Black
16:21Latinos. And that community, this is why I say like, we can't get stuck on identity because that community has
16:26been so disenfranchised. Like segregation is real. The economic challenges they face is real. The
16:32police brutality that they face is the exact same things that Black Americans face on the mainland.
16:38But yet, because people don't want to acknowledge that there's a whole Black population here,
16:43that's the problem. Like people in Latin America and people in Puerto Rico are constantly reaching out
16:48to Black Americans in the United States and we're not getting a hand back.
16:52Mm-hmm.
16:53Yeah. And I was going to say, I think when we think of Blackness, a lot of times,
16:56again, it's like not, it can't be deciphered as global and that's part of the problem. Like,
17:01so sometimes there's like this level of ownership, like Blackness is only found in this hemisphere and
17:07that's it. And I think that that, yeah, specifically in the United States and there's people that really,
17:13exactly. And it's like, people just latch onto that. But the fact that like for Amada,
17:18you know, this idea that, or anyone having to like, again, validate their Blackness to whose gaze,
17:24it's kind of as if we go back in history, like again, validating identity, you know, it's just,
17:31it's not okay.
17:32You know, we have to be cognizant again of the history. United States had a very specific way
17:38that they dealt with their slaves. Where we come from, they dealt with their slaves differently.
17:44We weren't necessarily, we were slaves and then we were ingrained into the, into the society.
17:49So it was, it became a case system. That's why it's so hard for so many to even acknowledge the
17:56whole, I'm Black or I have Black ancestry. And it's like, oh, well, I have this. Believe me,
18:01I'm a mutt. We have everything checked off on here.
18:04You get an interesting point too, because with a white supremacy, with the white supremacist
18:11culture, it becomes a hierarchy, right? And so often if white is supreme, then at the lowest,
18:16it's Black and we're the most inferior of it. And so in some ways you understand from a caste system,
18:21you're just trying to survive, but what it costs us as a people, not to have that unity or that
18:26connection and see ourselves in our brothers and sisters that might have a different language.
18:30And I think even too with Amada, like, I also think there's a narrative that we don't see that
18:35there is not one of like, there's, there's a lot of pride. You know what I'm saying? There's Black
18:39pride. There's Black Lives Matter in Brazil. There's like all of these movements. And I think again,
18:45people are so fixated on what that looks like under the context of America that, or at least North
18:51America, that they're not thinking about other things. And I mean, identity, people are super proud to be
18:56Black everywhere. But that's part of the problem in terms of media is like, Black news outlets,
19:03when they tell the story of Afro-Latinos, it's like, when I discovered I was Black. And it's like,
19:09no, like there are millions of us who have always known we were Black, always known we were Latin
19:14American and are very proud of that. You know, like I, when I was little, I was like in elementary school,
19:20I was visiting Panama, my tia, she, I told her, I was like, I don't really like the word negra because
19:25it reminds me of the N word. And she nearly cussed me out and was like, we are negras. That's who we
19:31are. Like calling me morena washes down my blackness. Like I am proud to be negra. So, you know,
19:36that my family is Black, Black, Blackity, Black, Black. I love that. No, it's funny. I have a friend
19:41who's Dominican. She says, she's like, I love essence. I'm nerdita. And I want to ask you guys about
19:46language, right? Like you ladies about language, because you're saying like, for coming from,
19:51from an American standpoint, it's triggering because of what the N word and what words have
19:55been used here that might not have that same heaviness in other cultures. Well, there's certain
20:00words that throughout is still going to be a trigger, like mono, which is monkey. And like, that's
20:08actually a nickname. I believe in Dominican Republic. And I'm like, not, not do that. And I've had Dominican
20:14friends who think that, oh, that's cute. And I'm like, no, I don't vibe with that. But you know,
20:18morena, negra, there's, you know, there's certain way, and it's really the way that it's said,
20:24almost, because you can tell if somebody's saying it to you, like, oh, morena, come with that.
20:30Yeah. And then it's like, negra. Like, okay,
20:33really? That's what we're doing today? Well, negra is even like a term of endearment.
20:37Yeah. You know, so like, and even if you're not Black, like your boyfriend,
20:41your partner will say like, ay, ven acĆ” mi negra. So it's like, it really depends so much.
20:46Funny story. I had, when I was, well, not funny, it was horrendous. When I was in Guatemala,
20:52I was like living and working in an indigenous community. And I was walking down the street,
20:56and this man called me Morenaza. Morenaza is, it actually comes from like slavery. So it's,
21:03it's very loaded term, like in terms of how Black women's bodies were exploited. So it's like,
21:09you know, you're this Black treat, essentially, lost my mind. Like I went to, I think I channeled
21:16like all of my ancestors. I was like cursing him out in Spanish and English, like at the same time,
21:23like it was ridiculous. Yeah. And my, the person I was working with was like, what are you? And I had
21:27to do like a whole explanation. But it's exhausting. Like, that's the thing. Like we're being oppressed,
21:32and we still have to teach people about our oppression. Like I, for me, like, I, we have
21:38to put the onus on other people. Like all the people who are saying like, Amara is taking pills.
21:42Yeah. And you know, like, we don't understand how you can be Black and Latino. It's like,
21:48it's not our job to teach you. You know, Toni Morrison said that racism is a distraction.
21:53And like, so is all the rest of it, right? Like, this is all a byproduct of white supremacy,
21:57and we all have to do our learning. Like, or we're just not going to get free.
22:01And so much of that hinges on how do we create bridges, right? So how would you describe people
22:07who live at the intersection, the relationship between Black and Latin communities, and what
22:12will move it forward? Will it be women like you? What will move us forward?
22:16It's really both sides. Working in the multicultural marketing space, I've seen literally
22:23the exact same conversation happening on both sides of how do we help our people back home?
22:30How do we do things on the Spanish, on the Latin side? And then literally the same thing. How do we
22:34help our people on the Black side? I have literally been in a major city that had a divide, Latin and
22:43Black. And you know, the Latin store owners would be like, Oh, be careful. I would tell them I'm going
22:48over to the Black side of town. Oh, be careful over there because you know how they can get. And I roll my
22:52eyes at them. I go over to the Black side. I'm telling them I'm going to go back over to the
22:55Spanish side. Oh, be careful. You know how they can get. I'm like, what the heck are you talking
22:58about? It's the same thing. You are literally saying the same thing to me. And I'm telling you,
23:03we're the same group of people. The only thing that's different is that I speak Spanish and you
23:09don't. We have the crazy ghetto ass, you know, uncle, auntie, the ones you're not going to invite
23:15everywhere. We have that. You have that. We have the same thing. The only difference is language.
23:20That's powerful. Janelle, what do you think? As for someone who's consistently creating content
23:25for this audience, what progress have you seen and what you think will move it?
23:30Yeah, I definitely have seen. It's been amazing how we've demanded some of these conversations
23:35that are now finally getting to a VH1 or some of these other platforms. So I definitely feel like
23:42we're getting somewhere. But I think to what was mentioned earlier, we got to get past the same,
23:50like just identity. And let's talk about the inner working and even the issues that come with it.
23:55Because even when I think of conversations around the term black and Latino, I don't, to me,
24:04it's one and the same, at least for my identity. And so I think it starts with realizing that,
24:10you know, even when we talk about Latinidad and like Latinx, that's an ethnic, we're describing
24:16ethnic group and you can be anything within that. And then just simply know that like,
24:23we are the, we are the same. So let's, I will say this, our experiences can be different geographically,
24:31obviously globally, because in growing up in New York City, like I grew up in the Bronx,
24:36so Latinos, black, we were all together, we went to school together, like there was maybe some
24:43divisions, but like there was a lot, one in the same. But on a con, I guess a contextual level,
24:50I think we still have a lot of work to do. But I'm happy to see that this conversation is reaching
24:57a different, like a new height, but also knowing that that it's not a trend. This is a life,
25:04this is what people's lives are, you know, and the conversation has to happen responsibly, I feel too.
25:11That's wow. Juliana, you've been looking back at the history, what's the future looking like for us?
25:16Well, what I was thinking about just then in listening to Janelle was,
25:22I feel like, I was just thinking about how we got to this place where like we keep shouting and we
25:30keep like saying we're here, we exist, etc. And I was just thinking about like being in Latin American
25:37families, in countries, and like, just like the dynamics and how things are set up the structure of
25:44everything. And media representation, it feels like Black Latinx people are kind of in the back of
25:54everyone's minds from a larger population standpoint, specifically in Latin American countries. But
26:04it's almost like they don't want to acknowledge it. It's like this thing that haunts everyone,
26:10but they don't want to admit that we exist and that we're here. Therefore, we're not like represented
26:16in the media. Therefore, when we come to the US and people are casting for a role for a movie, and they
26:26need to cast a Latina woman, they're going to cast someone who looks like JLo, you know, so it's I'm just
26:33thinking about how all of these things are connected, and how hard we fought to be represented
26:40in every space. That's all I was thinking about. I was just like, my brain was just like,
26:46I don't really have a point. I was just thinking. No, it's I think this is how it starts. And you've
26:52been since what age 11 having these thoughts and conversations. And so for you, what has you
26:58excited? And what do you see as sort of pivotal to progress? Yeah, I mean, one big thing is we have
27:04the first Afro Latina anchor on, you know, Latino media, which is huge. Shout out to Elia Calderon.
27:09She's great. Like I jumped for joy when I saw that, like, that's huge. I mean, like so many Latino
27:16families watch, I think she's on Primer Impacto. It's like blanking right now. But every I grew up
27:22watching that show. I know so many people who do like watch it every single night. And the fact that they
27:27have a black woman giving them their news every single day is like life changing. But the thing
27:33that, you know, I'm concerned about us getting stuck, because the thing that people don't know
27:36about Amara, Amara used to be on Sabro Gigante as a child. So, you know, we've always been tokenized.
27:44So it's like not to just like throw a black person in there just, you know, for some sprinkle of
27:49decoration, but centering black people and centering black narratives. I think that folks, you know,
27:56millennials like myself, and then even generations underneath us are really thinking about black,
28:02you know, Latin identity, really understanding that, like, the dominant Latino culture is black
28:07culture. That's like the biggest thing that people don't know about Latin America, from the food,
28:12to the way we dance to like everything, like the dominant culture is not even just black, it's African.
28:18Absolutely. Right. So I do see a lot of hope in youth, but we have to have ownership.
28:23Like, that's the biggest thing, because if we're not in those spaces, the problem is like most of
28:28the media that is Latino, whether it be in the US or in Latin America are white, they're white owned.
28:34And, you know, part of the issue, I think where people get stuck in terms of understanding how
28:39black people are from Latin America is that they conflate ethnicity with race. Latin America is
28:44extremely diverse. We're not represented in the media, in Spanish language media. We're just not.
28:49Yeah. My face is not on anybody's cover or someone who looks like me. And even someone like Amara,
28:55who is hugely popular right now, and God bless her, that this is happening for her and she happens to
29:00be that catalyst right now. But right now, there is no, not one of these magazines have put her on
29:07their cover. And that makes no sense. She's getting more play in black media than she is in Spanish media.
29:12And that's bull. Y'all better come through. Well, we definitely will have to continue this
29:16conversation. Thank you all for joining us. Clearly, we could keep talking all day. There's
29:20so much more I want to talk to you ladies about. Let us know your comments below. That'll be a wrap
29:25for this edition of Essence Now's Kitchen Table. Thank you to these incredible women for joining us.
29:30And you can tune in next Tuesday at 3 p.m. for an all new Essence Now. I'm Sharia Jackson.
29:34Thanks for watching. And thank you, ladies. Thank you. Cheers. I think we're going to have to make some calls, Arlene.
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