Blaxicans of Los Angeles

"I've been in New York for twelve years now and one of the first things I noticed was the lack of good Mexican food and the lack of a visible Mexican community. I very quickly realized that I was often mistaken for someone from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or Cuba. I often had to educate people about my background and it really challenged me to think about my own black and Mexican identity because I was constantly mistaken." 📷: @mychivas

"I identify as black and Mexican. My experience here in New York has taught me that there others like me and there’s a lot for me to learn and a lot I can appreciate about myself and a lot that I can accept. Being able to explore myself in New York City with others who are like has been an incredible experience that I was never able to have growing up. Growing up in a Mexican household gave me different experiences and views on life and I look at myself now I get to appreciate the things that I experienced because it did give me a wider range of thought and perspective. Coming to New York, I was often mistaken for a Dominican or a Cuban, which kind of also was an interesting perspective. It made me kind of wonder how people viewed me in New York City with how I was viewed in Texas. But being able to be a part of two minority groups has been incredible." 📷: @mychivas

"I have more experiences than explanations.” 📷: @mychivas

"The biggest challenge in raising a multicultural bilingual child in Los Angeles for us has been making sure that we find and engage in events that will reinforce the Spanish language to our son and that will emphasize his being a part of the black community at large. We speak primarily English at home and even with the amount of Spanish that we do speak, my wife and I fear that he won't pick up on it enough to be bilingual. So we supplement with a bilingual daycare in the neighborhood and when we visit my wife's family in Inglewood, Spanish is mostly spoken in the home. Likewise, we don't live in a black neighborhood and don't have as much daily exposure and we are concerned that he will have a more difficult time understanding what it means to be black. Neither my wife nor I have much of our family from the black side out here, so that remains a challenge for us, as we have each other and supplement with family out of town to help shape that part of his identity."

"My parents were 18 years old in this photo and it was taken just after they eloped across the border in Juarez, Mexico. My mother still lived at home in El Paso, Texas and went off to the University that day with her wedding dress stuffed into her backpack. My father followed his older brother to the University from San Antonio, Texas, and through their civil rights work, my folks met and fell in love. My grandparents wouldn't have approved of nor supported the union, as my grandparents were Mexican American and Native American and disapproved of my mother dating outside of those races, let alone marrying outside. Knowing this, my parents made up their young minds and decided to elope and forgo the typical pomp and circumstance that generally accompanies a wedding. My grandparents' best friends from their time in the Army had gotten wind of what was happening and my parents feared they would tell my grandparents and the whole thing would be called off. Instead, they opened up their home and hosted a reception for my parents and never mentioned what they did to my grandparents. My folks got to have wedding cake and celebrate among their friends and a progressive Irish American couple proudly hosted everyone. This was 1968 and a year after the Loving v Virginia decision had finally been reversed and people across the country were now legally allowed to marry people of different races."

"My wife and I would get that second look often when we spoke Spanish because we looked the way we do. Once we established ourselves as residents, and those business owners understood that we are also Latino, the second looks stopped and we were accepted as just another set of residents patronizing local businesses. Outside of the neighborhood, we have never been made to feel anything other than regular Los Angelenos."

"I was born in East Los Angeles to Phillip & Mercedes Reeves. Phillip is an African American WWII veteran and grew up in Fort Worth, TX. Mercedes is Salvadorian and was born and raised in Zacatecoluca, El Salvador. My parents met at work. He was a foreman in a factory in Inglewood and my mother came to this country illegally looking for work to send money back home to take care of her 3 children. Super long story short; They met, fell in love, had me, got married, had my sister, brought the 3 children from El Salvador here to live with us and we slowly became one big happy family."

"I identity as Black and Mexican depending on where I am. I sometimes identify as black and black-Latina, sometimes I identify as Chicana, sometimes I identify as Afro-Mexicana depending on my environment. But being in New York has let me be myself. I arrived here when I was eighteen and it’s been my home since. I lived in Mexico for five years. Growing up in Connecticut I only knew people who were mixed with black-white but the longer I live here the more normal it is. I don’t know a lot of other blaxicans, but I feel like I can at least feel normal. I feel really proud and grateful for my identity. I’m proud that my parents raised me in a way where we could talk about it because race is always sloppy and our dad would tell us that we had to accept our blackness and he was kind of aggressive about us accepting our blackness before we accepted anything else but I appreciated that there was an effort made – that my mom learned how to do black hair when I was kid and that my dad appreciated my mom’s chicananess and her history.” 📷: @mychivas

"I was born in East Los Angeles to Phillip and Mercedes Reeves. Phillip is an African American WWII veteran and grew up in Fort Worth, TX. Mercedes is Salvadorian and was born and raised in Zacatecoluca, El Salvador. My parents met at work. He was a foreman in a factory in Inglewood and my mother came to this country illegally looking for work to send money back home to take care of her three children. Super long story short; They met, fell in love, had me, got married, had my sister, brought the three children from El Salvador here to live with us and we slowly became one big happy family." 📷: @mychivas

“Our father was born in Honduras and is Garifuna. He doesn't really identify as that but when he was growing up, we always knew that he was. He would speak a certain dialect and play certain types of music. He wouldn't really talk about it though because his parents died when he was really young, so we learned about our family history through aunts and uncles. Today, we find ourselves not knowing what box to check. We want to check the Latino box but we know have African heritage. It's obvious that we're not African American but it's also obvious that we're not fully Latino. It's pretty complicated.”

“It’s all about empathy. I want to know what she’s feeling. I want to know what she’s felt. I think that’s been the base of this progression and to this point. Now, we can talk about anything and things are cool. It is kind of amazing to think back to where we started and where we are now. If we have a kid one day, our individual identities are important, but they are about to merged and melded into this one thing that is going to have a little bit of her and a little bit of me so it’s easier for me to put myself and my shit up on a shelf somewhere and really just look at the bigger picture at where we are going and it helps us focus on what really matters.”

“I think being 34, I care less about what people think and so the people who show me love, I show them love right back. I’m like that’s your issue, that’s not my issue. But it’s interesting to navigate that especially with my family. I come from a family of very proud black people and I am of that tradition and I am one of those proud black people too but I just don’t feel like my blackness is lessened at all by loving a woman who is not black, per se.”

“My family has been very positive because both of our families have been very embracing of one another. My mom was the first person to date outside of the Salvadoran community. And not just another Latino – it was Asian. It was very unheard of. So they really embraced him. I remember the first time I talked to my grandma about it; I was a little bit nervous because she has been the more conservative person in our family and I thought about what her reaction would be but it was nice because I’m in my thirties and I’m at an age where she respects me as an adult and trusts my judgement and they’ve gotten to know him and they see what I love about him and so they have been very embracing about it.”

“I tell people that I'm an Afro-Latina because I am both and I feel strongly about that. I'm not just going to say that I'm Puerto Rican or I'm black. No. I'm an Afro-Latina and you got to know that I'm mixed with both. I'm not sure what it means to be an Afro-Latina in LA. That's a hard question. My dad and mom separated when I was two so I was basically raised by my Latino side. I would go visit my dad but my first language was Spanish. I grew up in a house of Spanish speakers, food, and culture. Growing up I was catholic and my grandma would take me to church to rezar and todo eso. But as I grew older I chose my own path and that's how I became Muslim; I converted. We share a lot of the same concepts, you know? Jesus, the Virgin Mary. I converted because of the Virgin Mary, I'm trying to follow in her footsteps and be pure and modest and dedicate myself to God. Being Latina and Muslim is a struggle though. It's a struggle because you're raised catholic and my Latino side would always ask me questions about it but they are getting it now. I found my peace. I pray to one God. I respect everything and it's part of my blood.”

“She is really young so for the most part we've been teaching her about language, which is English and my wife and her family have been teaching her Spanish. We always tell her that she is black and Mexican but when she gets older, I think we'll integrate more and more culture.”

“Hair has always played a part because unless she's with her dad then people have no clue. I try to speak to her in Spanish because it's important to be able to speak different languages so we have her in bilingual classes and I hope that her schools will be able to facilitate the language for her. And we have a lot of books to let her know that it is a part of who she is. It's interesting because a lot of the books in English are about identity and about these little girls who are black or African American and different shades but when it comes to books in Spanish, they aren't about culture -- at least the ones I have.”

“We will explicitly teach her to be proud of the fact that she is Mexican and to be proud of the fact that she is black.”