Dr. Maritza Quiñones-Rivera will present “Centering Blackness in Latinx: the Fallacy of a Raceless Latinidad” at 7 p.m. September 23, in the Felmely Hall of Science Annex, room 133.
The event, sponsored by Illinois State University’s Latin American and Latino/a Studies, is free and open to the public. The talk is part of the celebration of Latinx Heritage Month.
Conversations about the unspoken discrimination and erasure of Blackness within Latinidad have taken place throughout history in Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean countries. Those conversations gained a national platform with the highly anticipated TV adaptation of the hit Broadway musical In the Heights, highlighting a preference for and privileging of lighter skin tones at the exclusion of and violence against Blackness in the Latinx community.
Quiñones-Rivera is a Black Latina feminist, Afro-feminista, and communication scholar. Her work, “From Trigueñita to Afro-Puerto Rican: Intersections of the Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized Body in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Mainland,” represents a fusion of experiences, academic journey, and hope for continued sharing.
Quiñones-Rivera earned a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s degree from the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University
