Business

food has the power to bring people together. Abdirahman believes food has no borders but has the power to convene people in meaningful ways. Since the first location opened in 2010, Afro Deli has expanded to four total locations across the Twin Cities, with the goal to continue expanding and open Afro Deli’s in more cities across Minnesota and eventually across the country, becoming the first national African restaurant chain in the United States. National Small Business Week 2023 is taking place the first week of May and is a national multiday virtual event open to all. The conference will feature numerous educational panels providing retooling and innovative practices for entrepreneurs as our nation’s small businesses look to

Race in Latin America, 18701940: https://utpress.utexas. edu/9780292738577), advertised in the early 20th Century for Europeans and whites from Latin America to come and whiten the population of enslaved (Afrodescendants), indigenous people and mestizo, the latter a direct result of the Spanish mixing. Venezuela, often viewed as a “white” Latin American country is a good example of the steps taken to whiten the population and leaving those with African ancestry at the bottom.

Wright’s [Café con leche] research suggests that, contrary to popular belief, blacks in Venezuela have not enjoyed the full benefits of racial democracy. He finds that their status, even after the abolition of slavery in 1854, remained low in the minds of Venezuelan elites, who idealized the European somatic type and viewed blacks as inferior. Indeed, in an effort to whiten the population, Venezuelan elites promoted European immigration and blocked the entry of blacks and Asians during the early twentieth century.

And Graham explains in his Introduction,

The idea of race also made it possible, paradoxically, for mestizos and mulattos—by identifying themselves with white elites as against Indigenous and black majorities—to accept theories that justified white domination over “colored“ populations.

These books provide a description of the reality of pervasive and ongoing discrimination that exists throughout Latin America where total mestizaje never occurred and significant percentages of pivot and recover toward a stronger economy. It also will recognize the national award winners, including the naming

Afrodescendantes are found in Brazil (the largest population of people of African descent outside of Africa—over 50% of Brazil has African ancestry in their DNA), Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Panama. But there are also Black people in Argentina, Ecuador, Columbia, Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. Sheila Walker, Black anthropologist, as well as many others, have documented that “[The] … fundamental roles [of Africans and their descendants] in the creation and definition of the new societies of the “new world,” and their significance in the development of the Atlantic world, have not been acknowledged.” But the efforts to become visible and heard by Afrodescendentes are historic and ongoing. Changing Hispanics/ Latinxs/Latin Americans into a “race” in the U.S. Census will simply aid the practice already in place in throughout the history of Latin American to erase Blackness, to make people with African ancestry disappear while espousing a false myth of racial tolerance or racial democracy. But Afrolatinos refuse to remain hidden or rendered invisible, and are protesting this U.S. Census change, while simultaneously of this year’s National Small Business Person of the Year.

For registration and additional information on National Small demanding recognition at home.

So this is my warning— Hispanics/Latinxs/ Latinos Beware. Having white people decide who and what you are is heading into dangerous terrain, and puts whites once again into positions of enormous powers. Race is NOT Real. Don’t be suckered into this fake social categorization; things will only go downhill.

Black people in America know. We have been trying to remove the stigma and shackles of being defined as a “race,” and its collateral damage of individual, structural, and systemic racism, for almost 400 years.

Take it from us Hispanics/Latinxs/Latinos/ Latin American, becoming a “race” is NOT all that.

Additional Readings:

Ignatiev, Noel, How the Irish Became White: https://a.co/d/d56IY6j

Brodkin, Karen, How

Jews Became White Folks and What that says about Race in America: https://a.co/d/fHA0GSm

Roediger, David,

Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants

Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs: https://a.co/d/1HgZhAl

©2023 Irma McClaurin Irma McClaurin (https://linktr.ee/dr.irma /https:// twitter.com/mcclaurintweets) is the Culture and Education Editor for Insight News, a columnist named “Best in the Nation Columnist” by the Black Press of America in 2015, and a commentator on “The Conversation With Al McFarlane” (https://bit.ly/TCWAM). She is a past president of Shaw University and former Associate VP at the University of Minnesota and founding ED of UROC. This activist anthropologist was a recipient of the 2021 American Anthropological Association’s Engaged Anthropology Award, is author of Women of Belize and Editor of the award-winning Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics, as well as a former Fulbright Specialist. A collection of her columns, JustSpeak: Reflections on Race, Culture & Politics in America, is forthcoming in 2023. She recently appeared in the 2023 PBS American Experience documentary, Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space and is working on a book-length manuscript entitled Lifting Zora Neale Hurston from the Shadows of Anthropology.