Gina Rodriguez must embrace her Afro-Latina roots to understand her ‘Black’ racial blunders.

I read Gina Rodriguez’s tweeted apologies for using the ’N’ word while she sang a Lauryn Hill song and then stupidly posted on Instagram. My stomach tightens and my anger rises at another one of her racial blunders. My mind reverts to memories of the seventies and eighties, when Latinx and Afro-Latina weren’t even on the verbal landscape.

I grew up as an African-Caribbean in the Bronx, with a Taino Puerto Rican father and a chocolate skinned, natural-haired Dominican mother. “Power to the people” was on a poster in my dining room and I knew about the Black Panthers and Angela Davis, before entering kindergarten. Identifying as a Black woman was never an issue for me. My ‘Africanness’ was more of a problem to the light skinned, almost white, straight haired Latinos, similar to Gina Rodriquez. Many of the negative racial comments I heard in my youth were from Puerto Rican family members who hated my mother because of the color of her skin. They thought she was too dark and would cause regression within the family with her Afro-Haitian-Dominican roots.

She would purposefully comb my afro into the highest crown before visits with my father’s family. It was the style of the day and I loved it, but I could see my grandmother wince when she glanced at my hair. Over time, I stopped seeing that side of the family. My grandmother would only ask for me to attend family gatherings and leave my brother behind, who was darker skinned and had a…