When I was first learning Spanish, I started hanging out with a Hispanic student who had a young child. She kept referring to her daughter as “mi negra.” My Spanish wasn’t fantastic back then, and my cultural competence was even worse. I assumed that the Argentinian woman had a black child and never thought of it again.
One day, my friend called me to say that she was going to bring her daughter to campus, and I would finally meet “la negrita.” I was befuddled when she presented to me a blue-eyed Scandinavian-blonde little girl.
That’s when I realized why her nickname for me was “la flaca”.
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