Skip to main content

Is The Term ‘People of Colour’ A Thing?

Hey!!! Welcome to my travel journal, or travel blog, or whatever you wanna call it. I decided to do something different on my blog site and document my experiences abroad. I’m gonna be telling you guys about different things that I’ve learnt, places I’ve been to, food to try out etc in which I think would be a cool places to go & things try out if you travel to that specific country!

California, Los Angeles  Friday the 31st of October 2019 - I was chilling with my friend and we were speaking about many different things. He’s Latino. Half Mexican & half Salvadorean and tbh (to be honest) before I moved to Cali I had never even heard of Salvador before! Me being nosey & interested in finding out things I don’t know, he begins to enlighten me about his culture and colonisation of the now Mexico. We spoke about colorism within the Latino community, him being a ‘light skin Mexican‘ he feels pushed out by the Mexican community because he’s not ‘brown enough’ (funnily enough I wrote a poem about this in regards to the black community, check it out lol). He’s seen as a white boy and feels like he constantly has to validate himself by speaking Spanish to prove he’s Latino, so sad!! It’s mad to me because personally, being black you don’t really think that the discrimination we face within our community, goes on in other communities. I always see tweets on Twitter about the phrase ‘people of colour’ is bullshit but coming to California, specifically Northridge in LA, I realised that it’s really not.

Being a darker skinned Latino vs a lighter skinned Latino and the disadvantages/advantages that come with that really is a thing and it’s very sad. A couple ignorant, racist Latinos shouldn’t allow other people’s place & title in society to be erased. Did you know about the caste system in colonial Mexico??? This is basically a legal race system that the Spanish imposed on them which determined someone’s social status. 

 The main races were: Peninsulares: Spanish born (the ones in positions of power e.g government & the Church), Indias: The indigenous Indians (they weren’t allowed to be enslaved), Mestizos: Half Spanish & half Indian, Mulattos: Half Spanish & half Black, Zambas: Half Black & half Indian & Negras: Pure African descent. The black people being at the bottom of the hierarchy, were the only race allowed to be enslaved and the Spanish bought over 200,000 people from Africa to Mexico. The Caste system was abolished (on paper) in 1821 when Mexico gained independence from Spain. Madness. 

 Anyway enough of the deep stuff, I met his friend that lived in London for 3 months, she went Kings College and lived in Stratford, Newham, in East London which is the exact borough I live in!!! Such a small world it’s crazy. What are the odds btw?! (by the way). We ended the night with a trip to Carl’s Jr, which is actually the first fast food restaurant I went to when I came here (the one near LAX)! Try it out, I got a cheeseburger & fries which was around $5. The fries were amazing. Oh and earlier in the day we went to a Mexican restaurant and honestly I forgot what it’s called but the meal I had was Chile relleno (stuffed pepper) and enchiladas, which was around $13, nice but oily. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don’t Be A Slave To Social Media.

'It's better to be realistic and come out of the virtual world. The moment you do this. You will come to acknowledge the worthy connections of your life’ - Aayush Verma I was reading the blog I wrote last year about social media not being real life and I was there scrolling through thinking damn, factsss 😂 . So it’s only right I do an updated version and drop a few gems for you lot. My title pretty much says it all. Don’t.be.a.slave.to.social.media. PLEASE don’t do it. Social media should not be able to dictate your life, your decisions and who YOU are but sadly for majority of people this is the case and it shows. Social media is an infectious disease that controls the mind. If you participate in at least 1 of the 4 points below then you know social media is pulling your strings. How to know when you’re a slave to social media? -   Living life for social media - People literally feel the need to post every single detail of their life, I'll go on snap and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Self Love Is True Love

‘Find the love you seek by first finding the love within yourself – Ravi Shankar’. This 2018 we’re practising self-love!   No one has the time and the mental capacity to be treated below what they’re worth. That guy/girl is putting in 25% and your putting in 100%? Cut them off. There’s going to be many more people who are willing and waiting to give you what you need, don’t waste your time on one sided friendships and relationships. One of my mates asked me how they should put self-love into practise and it got me thinking a lot of females & males want to better themselves and learn how to love themselves properly, but they don’t particularly know how to, so I decided to write my opinions on how to do just that. I personally think to learn how to genuinely love yourself you must: - KNOW your worth then add tax and that way you won’t tolerate others that treat you anything less than what you believe yourself to be. - Surround yourself with positivity and people tha...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Truth About Uni

'Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself ‘ - Gail Devers The end of the academic year is here now, this means the time has come where people have to  make a decision, whether to continue with education or stop. One thing people need to remember is that university is not for everyone, don’t ever let someone put you down or make you feel worthless because you decided you don’t want to attend. 1,180 people dropped out of uni in 2014 due to mental health issues. University can get very lonely, it’s relatively easy for your mental health to be affected , so it’s beneficial to ensure ur interacting with people. Also, get involved in things as you could fall into the habit of not branching out and keeping to yourself, despite you going to the same uni with a countless amount of people. Although, If this does happen to you, your university will assumedly have things in place in order to support and help you through it so make sure you take advantage of the...
Post a Comment
Read more