Why I Took To Instagram To Share The Blaxican Experience
My job is to study race, identity, and migration. I spend my days reading dense texts and writing papers as a researcher in the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at the University of Southern California (USC). I will begin my PhD in Chicana/o studies at UCLA this fall.
Born to a Mexican mother and Black father, I’m also deeply invested in researching the experiences of Afro-Latinos in the U.S. and Latin America. I feel very connected to my field, but when I first started telling my friends and family about my research, I found myself really struggling to share the material on a human level. So I started an Instagram account called Blaxicans of L.A. last spring to address this.
The goal? To share stories and photos from people in my hometown of Los Angeles who, like me, identify as Blaxican (part Black, part Mexican). I’ve since featured pictures and stories of more than 50 Blaxicans, built an engaged community of 9,000 followers, hosted an exhibit, and had the opportunity to share the project with outlets ranging from NPR to BuzzFeed.
How do you respond when people ask you what you do?
I’m a writer, a photographer, and a researcher who is really invested in telling people’s stories.
How and why did you start sharing your academic research on Instagram?
I started the @BlaxicansofLA Instagram account in the spring of 2015, but my research on the subject began when I was a graduate student at Stanford University trying to understand people who identify as Blaxican in the Los Angeles area. I was interested in the question through a very academic lens, but I really wanted to integrate photography to make the subject more relatable. As I began to compile interviews, meet with folks, and take their photos, I realized that I also wanted a way to engage a larger audience about race, identity, and Blaxicans. The conversations I was having were almost always strictly academic. That’s when I thought about Instagram. It’s a very accessible social media platform with a wide range of users. It’s not only for academics. I can post these photos and caption them with excerpts from my interviews. Blaxicans of L.A. is inherently a very visual project, so Instagram is the perfect medium.
Why is this project important to you?
I’m the son of an African-American father and a Mexican mother. I grew up in South L.A. at a time when my community was wrapped up in political, racial, and economic turmoil – an era when Black and Brown tensions were very real. This didn’t help the confusion that I was already experiencing when trying to navigate my own Black and Mexican identity. As a researcher and writer, this project has been my way of making sense of the world.
How did you decide to pursue academia and study racial identity?
I’ve always been interested in these questions of race and identity from a personal standpoint, but it wasn’t until I read a book called The Afro-Latino Reader that my personal and academic trajectory really changed. It features stories, essays, and photographs that really encompassed the Afro-Latino experience. It motivated me to consider academia. Before that, I didn’t even know it was possible to make a living studying this field.
What makes Blaxicans of L.A. meaningful to you?
The project is an amazing opportunity to highlight and share the experiences of people who identify as Blaxicans in Los Angeles. This is a story that is so integral to what L.A. is. The city was founded in 1781 by a group of Black Mexicans who created the political, racial, and economic structure.
In a sense, this is a story about Blaxicans today, but it’s also an ode to L.A. It’s a way of honoring the city and expressing my gratitude and love for it. Yet at the same time, it’s not just about L.A., because the experiences of Blaxicans in L.A. today are happening in other cities across the country too. Understanding the experiences here can help inform our understanding of the future of African-American-Latino relations and of this country.
I also hear from a lot of Blaxicans I haven’t interviewed or ever even met. People just reach out and share their own stories. For a lot of people, it has been a healing process for them to see the Instagram and be able to understand that, in all of their confusion, struggles, or even triumphs, they haven’t been alone. Just knowing that there are other people simultaneously navigating these experiences creates a really gratifying emotional connection.
Can social media create social change?
I think it does. When we think about social change and social impact — even activism — we really have to think about the power of the Internet and social media. Ideas, ways of seeing the world, and messages can now be spread at these incredible rates. The volume of and access to information that people have is amazing. Social media today can be a tool to do a lot of good. It has the power to impact the cultural, racial, and political fabric of cities, states, and nations.
