As the semester comes to a close, I’m thinking again of how we talk about Latin American identity, particularly in terms of bodies and physical characteristics. The following two lists, from Latina.com, sets the readers up against their own expectations and preconceptions about the physical signifiers of Latino/a heritage.
The first, “101 Stars You Never Knew Were Latino!” presents us with a (lengthy) list of celebrities who are not commonly known to be of Latin descent. Underneath a number of the slides is a poll asking the reader, “Were you surprised?” In most cases, the answer is overwhelmingly “Yes.”
The second list presents the same basic concept, in reverse: “30 Stars You Thought Were Latino—But Aren’t!” Again, the list stretches on, the captions often speaking to a sense of surprise on the behalf of the reader.
Admittedly, I don’t watch much television and I’m not terribly informed on pop culture outside of a certain subset, so after the first few better-known celebrities in each list, I didn’t recognize many names or faces. But obviously, the trick of these lists is the assumption that most people do not know much about the lives and personal histories of these celebrities. Rather, they are both playing off of the visual cues we use to categorize people – allowing us to see the workings behind our own processes for determining who a person is by a few surface-level signifiers.
Click through the list of stars you aren’t expected to know are Latino/a, and you will see people that at a glance appear to be either conventionally Caucasian or African American, with names like “Gallagher,” “Carpenter” or “Keegan.” The first face on the list is the comedian Louis C.K., who is apparently white, with reddish hair and a Hungarian last name (Szekely.) The blurb attached helpfully points out that C.K. is half Mexican, and lived with his father’s side of the family in Mexico until he was eight years old. The caption for actress Majandra Delfino includes her recounting of the people’s hesitance to categorize her as Latina:
“People here are very limited in their exposure to South Americans,” she says. “They say, ‘But you’re white!’ and I say ‘yes we come in pale too.’ Then they go, ‘but you have green eyes!’ and I’m like, ‘Yup we have that too.’ And then they go, ‘but you don’t look Mexican!’ and I’m like, ‘Because I’m not.’
On the list of “Latino/as” that aren’t, we can see a similarly simple pattern: names like “Esposito,” “Sabato,” and “Quinto” appear, and the captions make frequent references to their “tanned” complexions, which are not actually the result of Latin heritage but often various mixes of Italian, Filipino, African-American descent (just to name the few most commonly repeated).
So, what are we left with here? Clearly, these lists are playing with our preconceived notions of Latino/a identity based on external indicators. They make rather apparent our dependence on established conventions of identity based on an individual’s body. So then, are these lists just perpetuating a relatively static (and superficial) conception of what it means to appear Latino/a? Does emphasizing reactions of surprise reinforce stereotypes and categorization? Or do these lists, by representing the boundaries of ethnicity as vague and resistant to immediate interpretation, allow for a destabilization of these preconceived set of ethnic categories?