Opinion: Being Latina in Asheville; Latiné community is growing, but still marginalized
Recently, I was asked a question that gave me a deep pause.“What is your experience being Latina in Asheville?”
Answering this question adequately would take far more than the 750 words allotted for this op-ed. But I can certainly offer you some insight into the experience.The first day I moved to Asheville from Los Angeles, California, in 2015, I was so happy to see a store named “Ingles” which I automatically pronounced Ing-GLESS. I thought it was a giant Spanish store, like the ones you find in LA. Then I went in.
Unwilling to be deterred, I looked for the Spanish section where I hoped to find ingredients for my family recipes. To my dismay, the Spanish section was a half-aisle section labeled Hispanic.HIS PANIC? Whose panic?
It’s Latino, Latina and Latiné. And don’t even get me started with Latinex, ai yai yai.The first week of living in Asheville, my family and I went to a Mexican restaurant bustling with Latiné workers. Finally, I could speak Spanish with someone! Much to my surprise there was obvious resistance. I was getting serious “we-don’t-speak-Spanish-here” vibes. How could people whose first language was Spanish feel uncomfortable speaking Spanish with each other? In a Mexican restaurant, of all places?During my first few years here, there were long periods in which I didn’t hear any Spanish spoken in Asheville. If I saw someone who looked Spanish, I would go out of my way to acknowledge their presence –– “Hi,” I see you, I’m here too, you're not invisible.
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When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, two local Puerto Ricans organized a fundraiser at Highland Brewery to collect emergency supplies for the island. To see the Latiné community in Asheville show up was healing beyond measure. There are more Latiné people in Asheville than I realized. By the end of the day, an organizer arrived in a big truck to take the countless donations of food and supplies away. It was a proud moment. The love and support for my people was palpable.In recent years, I’ve seen the Latiné community of Asheville grow in numbers, strength and visibility. Spaces that used to include no more than one Latiné person now have more than a few. The majority of Latiné people moving to Asheville aren’t undocumented migrants. Many of the Latiné people I encounter here are young, professional, first or second generation Americans.Even Ingles has upped its game to reflect the growing Latiné demographic by renaming the “Hispanic” section “Latino,” now a full aisle where you can now find ingredients that fit just about every Latiné cooking style. After all, we are far from a monolith.Today, I can go to Latiné restaurants and hear Spanish being spoken. Of course, I keep a sharp ear out for anyone that dares to bellow “We speak English here” as they will get a swift education from me. Spanish was the first European language to be spoken in Appalachia. Not English.
When you see someone you identify as Latiné, please say “hi.” Acknowledge their presence. Offer them a seat. The Latiné community –– a community that predates Anglo European settlers by 106 years –– has since that time been marginalized, invisibilized and erased. Despite our growing numbers, Latiné people continually experience microaggressions, discrimination and implicit bias from both the white and the Black populations. We’re not even considered a race by the U.S. government, but rather an ethnicity that gets lumped in with white. Yet somehow we’re not white enough, not Black enough, and not native enough to be embraced by any other group.
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There are many efforts for healing between the Black and white communities here, often led with a binary in how community collaboration conversations unfold. In nearly every one of those conversations I’ve participated in, Latiné people who are a complex blend of European colonizers and those they enslaved, Indians and Africans, are consistently marginalized. As such, there can be no real healing without inclusion of the Latiné community. We are the bridge.
I’m not sure that adequately describes what it’s like to be Latina in Asheville, but perhaps if we just accepted that none of us are actually from here, except for the Cherokee, we could open our hearts to understanding our cultural differences along with the complex history that connects us all.
Tanya Rodriguez, Executive Director, National Institute for Racial Equity, Commission Chair, Human Relations Commission City of Asheville, Educator, NC Notary
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Latiné community of Asheville is growing still marginalized
