How Latino anti-Blackness upholds racism in the United States: A counterstory book review of Tanya Katerí Hernández’s Racial Innocence

Abstract

In this piece, the author uses counterstorytelling as a research method to write a book review of Tanya Katerí Hernández’s recently published book, Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality. Specifically, in this counterstory, the author created two composite characters, Alberto and his mother, Lola, made up of arguments from the book to engage in a real and critical dialogue about the anti-Blackness amongst Latinos in the United States. Drawing on Hernández’s argument that Latino anti-Blackness upholds racism, the author uses this counterstory to illustrate the various ways Latinos enact anti-Black ideologies and practices to deny Black people good experiences in public spaces, a quality education, work opportunities, housing, and physical and psychological safety. The author argues that counterstorytelling allows him to make research accessible—digestible and understandable— to his community and other Communities of Color who continue to be systematically excluded from academia and knowledge production in higher education.