Filmmaker Dash Harris is the brainchild behind the ‘Negro’ docu-series which examines, through a series of interviews, what it means to be black and Latino within the Americas. Dash Harris is blurring the color lines and shedding a much needed light on the experiences of peoples of African descent around the world. Her docu-series Negro explores the interplay between race, color, and self-identification among Latinos in the Americas. By delving into the history of Afro-Latinos and giving them a platform to share their stories, Harris questions the structures that are in place to label people and attempts to shatter them.
Black and Afro-Latinxs have been doing their own organizing for generations, but in this current iteration, have shown extreme solidarity with U.S. Black people because it is our struggle as well – Dash Harris
Negro exposes the racism present in Latin American, challenges the lack of information that many people posses about blackness, as it pertains to countries outside of the United States, and directly challenges the idea that “beauty” and “white” are interchangeable concepts. Ultimately, by interviewing people of African descent in many different countries, including Panama and the Dominican Republic, Harris is able to get a large view of the identity crisis that Afro-Latinos deal with.
Our society has made it easy to categorize people broadly without understanding the history and roots of different ancestries. It’s become common to assume that how “black” you are is directly related to the amount of melanin in your skin. Instead of educating ourselves about our history and how complex and beautiful it is, we group people together and assume that we all have the same backgrounds. Conversely, while our differences have separated us and created a color complex between us, our similarities have commonly been forgotten. Most, if not all, of us are of African descent, whether we know it or not. As it was beautifully stated in Negro, if we get to a place where we see ourselves in each other, some of the hate will be dismissed.
I have so many memories of the way NYC looked in the 80s, it was a wild place y’all. My mother would love to take us to the Museum of Natural History so we took the bus there on the weekends. As soon as you get off the bus you can smell the piss and funk coming off the street. Right in front of the Port Authority there was garbage everywhere, you had to watch your feet. Walking down 42nd street was fun. My mother hated it, because there were so many porn shops and sex shows all over. I loved it. (lol) As bad as the city looked, we enjoyed ourselves. NYC has a personality of it’s own, New York is like that crazy family member who always make the party fun. Over time they cleaned up the area, but we lost some of the flavor NY had. I believe crime is lower than it used to be, which is good. People would get robbed and beat up on the trains everyday. Even with all of this crazy shit going on, we loved to go there for the culture, the food and to see something totally different from New Jersey. I did not take these photos, but this is the style of street photography I love. Play the music when you view the photos, it helps the experience.
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