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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. 

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