Every single time I set foot in every store/restaurant/plac…

Every single time I set foot in every store/restaurant/place of business in Latin America. Only if they are not completely ignoring me from jump. Or following me bc obviously I came to carry out my plans to rob a store that is approximately 2 sq ft. big.

That \u201chere\u2019s a White customer, they\u2019re automatically more important\u2014despite the fact neither have you spent money yet so I can\u2019t even claim a paying customer is more important than a browsing customer\u2014so lemme interrupt helping you to go to them\u201d thing just happened to me again.
— \U0001f183\U0001f181\U0001f184\U0001f173\U0001f188 (@thetrudz) January 8, 2021

The part that’s also relevant is I’m oftentimes viewed as respectable-negro adjacent in the dominant culture imaginary. So what of those who are never identified as such? I always think about that. I get surveyed & harassed bad...yet and still there’s levels to the profiling.

When I have to do errands in Panama City, I make sure to apply makeup, perfume, an outfit with cleavage, or booty emphasis, heels and an “expensive” purse. There are STARK differences in the service and treatment I get when I do this vs. when I don’t. STARK. Pero, *STARK.*

LatinAmerica is psychotic in identifying who has money and who doesn’t based on how they are dressed, and how they imagine, carrying themselves. An “elegantly dressed” Black person will face less violence on an errand-run versus one who isn’t. This isn’t absolute so sit down plis

And then the times when I am dressed super-revealing. All of the help and care in the world from male workers. The same white mestizo men who would ordinarily follow me to “prevent theft” are happily helping me find things. Again, race, color, gender, class and more.

I literally do these social experiments to see something real quick. (In addition to these things just always happening in anti-black daily life anyways) And it is always as suspected. And those are some real ass privileges for access to even move like that.

I say I am “respectable negro adjacent” bc I oftentimes “go looking for trouble” in the minds of dominant-culture aligned Black folks. Why would I elect to put on a T-shirt that says “orgullosamente Negra” and wear an Afro instead of just mimicking white mestizo vapid conformity?

I completely understand the *why* Black folks in Latin America straighten their hair to smithereens, change how they talk, walk, act. It is survival. Going along to get along, even if they know good and damn well they remain shackled to the impossible task of white acceptance.

I get it. I have an easier time when I conform to those roles as I mentioned, when doing errands. Pleasantly-dressed, pleasant to look at Black, but not too-Black. This is why I have no patience for y’all’s refusal to locate yourself & lies abt your positionality. It tf matters.

And that habit of “clothing signifying social class/access to money” is direct from the casta system. The colonial period never ended in the region.