Loving All that We Are: One Costarricense’s Dating Life
Posted on VidaAfroLatina.com on July 25, 2008

As far as I can tell, there are two reasons why I have such a hard time dating as an adult.

First, I wear my heart on my sleeve and believe in nothing more than the power of true love. I think it comes from all the telenovelas my mother watched when she was pregnant with me.

Second, I actually enjoy, in fact I love, being Afro-Latina. My hair, my nose, my lips, my smile, even my broken Spanish. I love it all.

But, unfortunately, as I’ve searched for the Latino man-of-my-dreams, I came across a very sad fact. They weren’t as interested in the “Afro” side of me as I was. In fact, they wanted me to keep it quiet.

It seemed that if I were African American, the Latinos I met could at least see themselves as open-minded and color-blind, as it were.

But to be Afro-Latina was too close to their own family histories. And since we all know how much our abuelas like to pretend there is “no sangre de negros o indios” (no blood of Blacks or Indians) within us, despite all physical evidence to the contrary, these men may just be following family tradition.

I first came across the phenomena when I fell in love with a man who was, to date, the love of my life. He identified as Hispanic in the New Mexican sense of the term (“We’re descended from Coronado, you know.”) and was very racially aware, to a point. He would openly defend the rights of illegal immigrants and African Americans persecuted by police. He was a soldier, exactly what I wanted, and I thought we would live happily ever after.

It quickly became clear to me, however, that he felt he was the true Latino in the relationship. He dismissed my own family history, questioned my own Spanish language usage, which, by the way isn’t perfect, and was terribly aware of what others thought of us, especially his own family.

When his mother regularly mentioned how she wanted her son to marry someone like them, I got the hint, even when I reminded her that I was more like them than they wanted to admit.

Of course dating is a two way street. We are attracted to different people for different reasons and this whole experience forced me to question my own “Latino man” search.

I knew if I were honest, that my love’s green eyes and light skin and hair were appealing to me. His attempt at connecting to Spanish royalty as opposed to my own Costa Rican roots seemed unbelievably sexy to me, especially since I, too, had succumbed to my own family’s desire for a lighter partner.

Finding your true love is hard enough without the social and familial pressures to find a novio o novia that fits in the right box. As long as we pretend that Latinos throughout the Americas have no African, Indian and Asian blood, there won’t be much progress in this arena.

We all search for someone who loves us for who we truly are, family background and all. But if dating teaches us anything, it’s that loving ourselves may be the most important step for each of us, family history and all. Then maybe our abuelas will understand that we actually do want loves that reflect all that our people are and continue to be.

A former high school teacher, Ivy Farguheson followed her passion for writing by entering the journalism field. A reporter for the Muncie Star Press, she covers class, race and economics in the East Central Indiana region. Ivy can be reached at ifarguheson@yahoo.com.