The Hispanic Heritage Foundation hosts a panel on how Latinos can be better allies to the Black community

Maria Salmeron, a senior economic and government and law student at Lafayette College, discusses her journey as an Afro-Latina at a panel with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, June 9, 2020 via Zoom. (Jasmine Boykin/The Black Explosion)

A panel led by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF) analyzed how the Latinx community can be a better ally to the Black community through the personal narratives of several Black panelists on Tuesday afternoon on Zoom.

This panel is part of the HHF’s “LOFT Charla” series. The series highlights different topics and are “local, self-organized discussions led by community leaders across the country,” according to the organization’s website.

The two-hour panel showcased Black speakers of different age groups, genders, backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations. Each speaker was allotted five minutes to share their perspectives and narratives. 

Youth advocate Romell Cummings defined the verb  “ally” as “to combine or unite a resource or commodity with another for mutual benefit.” Furthering this definition, he provided 20 different ways non-Black supporters can help their Black peers, with some of those actions including checking on your Black friends and colleagues, signing petitions and donating to organizations that give back to the Black community and voting. 

“In being an ally, it is okay not to know everything — an ally is not a spokesperson. Allyship is not you speaking on behalf of Black people — but being able to open doors and facilitate,” Cummings said.

Another panelist, Elizabeth Boney, senior associate at Whiteboard Advisors, a strategic consulting and communications firm in Washington, D.C., shared her definition of allyship by using an analogy of planting a flower.

“It is like you are taking seeds and putting them into soil ... the first layer is knowing what is at stake for you in this conversation,” Boney said.

She cited the best way to be a true ally is through education, which was a recurring concept from other panelists as well. Boney mentioned the vast number of books written by Black voices that allies can read to further understand what they might be missing from the Black perspective. 

“From [American authors] Ta-Nehisi Coates to Austin Channing Brown to Ibram X. Kendi’s piece on ‘How To Be An Antiracist’ — there are so many and great resources,” Boney said. 

Michael Echols, CEO of Max Cybersecurity, a computer security service in Washington, D.C., echoed the importance of educating yourself and not to give in to misinformation on social media.

 Echols believes that to truly make change, you must educate yourself on the issues and mechanisms within society that allow these problems to persist. A meme that was sent to him with Black protesters wearing shirts that stated “I am protesting but I will not vote” upset him because some of the education he is advocating for includes researching politicians running for office and voting. 

“All of the talks and all of the marches — that’s great because that shows passion and you have to have passion, but at some point you have to stop and get some education,” Echols said.

The panelists were not all African-American, but some who were Afro-Latinx or first-generation American also spoke on the panel about the similarities between their two communities. 

Maria Salmeron, an economic and government and law student at Lafayette College and an Afro-Latina from Honduras, shared her story about navigating predominantly white spaces upon arriving in the United States. 

“On one hand with my white peers, I have been suffering through the phenomenon of color blindness ... that I do not see color and that there is only one race — the human race. Yet on the other hand with my Latinx peers, I stumbled upon the sentiment of colorism,” she said. 

She then recalled experiences as being perceived as inferior by her peers because of the color of her skin. People only believed she was Black and nothing more.

“[The Latinx community] needs to debunk the misconception that is somewhat grounded on the ignorance that race and ethnicity are mutually exclusive,” Salmeron said.

Marco Davis, president and CEO of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute,(CHCI), is also Afro-Latino, having a Mexican mother and a Jamaican father. He spoke about how the two communities both have a stake in this conversation of anti-racism and injustice in this country. “[CHCI and other organizations] have helped build solidarity between the two communities. We have not allowed the anti-Black sentiment or racism that is deeply embedded within the Latino community to paralyze us ...[The Latinx community] needs to interrupt [anti-black sentiment] but we cannot only stop there,” Davis said.

He also cited the importance of forgiving those who are on a journey of enlightenment and “who want to do right.” By looking to those before us who have made mistakes and tried to forge a path for us to follow stating “we do not have to reinvent the wheel,” Davis said. He believes that through supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, struggles and injustices in other disenfranchised communities will also be shifted into a positive light. 

“But we must start within all of our communities to say that Black Lives Matter. Period.”  Davis said.