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Y tú, ¿por qué eres negro?
Edición popular de un imaginario particular que acaba convirtiéndose en un álbum colectivo dedicado a todas las personas negras.
"Capítulo I
La primera vez que alguien me llamó negro estaba en un mercado con mi abuela. Fue otro niño pequeño. Utilizó la palabra ‘negrito’. Nadie dijo nada; yo tampoco."
"Capítulo I
La primera vez que alguien me llamó negro estaba en un mercado con mi abuela. Fue otro niño pequeño. Utilizó la palabra ‘negrito’. Nadie dijo nada; yo tampoco."
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 14, 2017
1 person is currently reading
226 people want to read
About the author
Rubén H. Bermúdez
1 book12 followersRubén H. Bermúdez is a freelance photographer.
His book 'And you, Why are you black?' was published thanks to 'Fotopres' grant.
__
Rubén H. Bermúdez es un fotógrafo freelance.
Su libro 'Y tú, ¿por qué eres negro? fue publicado gracias a la beca Fotopres.
His book 'And you, Why are you black?' was published thanks to 'Fotopres' grant.
__
Rubén H. Bermúdez es un fotógrafo freelance.
Su libro 'Y tú, ¿por qué eres negro? fue publicado gracias a la beca Fotopres.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 26, 2020
Fantástica recopilación de imágenes y textos qué demuestran el racismo estructural de la sociedad española, donde "nadie es racista" pero donde resulta muy complicado ser o parecer diferente.
January 20, 2023
On the last day of the year, the New York Times published a piece on the perils of keeping too many digital photos. "By keeping so much, more than we want to sort through, which is almost certainly more than anyone else wants to sort through on our behalf, we may leave behind less than previous generations because our accounts will go inactive and be deleted. Our personal clouds may grow so vast that no one will ever go through them, and all the bits and bytes could end up just blowing away." Thus wrote Kashmir Hill. The director of archives at the Rockefeller Archive Center is quoted saying that less than 5 percent of the material in a collection is usually worth saving. And that computers will never be able to make those decisions for us.
I've been thinking about this a great deal lately as I work with my father, now old and with fading memory, on his memoirs. Better late than never. He is Palestinian, but now resides in Canada, offspring nation of the Empire that organised for the ethnic cleansing of people like my father from his own country. We have finished an outline and are at the stage of going through old black and white photos from the first half of the last century, a surprising number of them found in an old album that managed to get preserved over the years - throughout various wars and movements between countries, homes, and natural disasters. And yet, there are only 215 of them. There are 224 numbered pages in Why Are You Black. Most, although not all, contain an image.
So this is the first reflection provoked by this book: if going back to vinyl records is about aesthetics and sound, there ought to be even more of an argument for going back to analogue photos. The selection, the curation - and the way they collectively tell a story - is of huge value. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this book, how it sucked me in and took me along with it. The images are so well curated, each photo is individually strong an impactful, and all together and in order they speak without many words.
To see the face of Trayvon Martin so close in pages to the young face of the author himself and confront their striking resemblance. To see the archival front page of Spain's ABC newspaper declaring the Spanish national holiday (which is "dia de la Hispanidad," 12 October, the day Columbus discovered America) as "fiesta de la raza" (race party), contrasted with a contemporary front page from the same paper showing a large flag and the headline "Spain Celebrates Itself With Pride." To see the graphic of how slaves were stowed so many and so closely to one another in the hold of a slave ship. To see an 1846 clipping from a Cuban newspaper classified section, showing blacks for sale next to animals and books. It goes without saying that the newspaper published in Spanish, not English, but that this reminds us that Spain and France and the Dutch and Portuguese were all full participants in slavery and colonialism, not just the Anglos as portrayed by Hollywood movies. The mashup of contemporary images with their priors, shows how the present has a history that is not at all past - only obscured, denied or embraced at turns depending on what strategy is most convenient at any time to maintain and reproduce itself. I could go on, but the point is that one doesn't need to fill in the essay with words. The images speak so much more efficiently.
The second reflection is that I really read this book. I've been in a reading slump ever since covid lockdowns ended, and I thought this little picture book would be a quick one to add a notch to my belt. It was not! I often needed time to just sit an reflect, or set the book aside for a couple days as I carried the thoughtful echo of certain words and images with me until I was ready for more. I also often needed time to google certain names and histories to understand what the author was seeking to communicate by including a certain image that was less known to me. A curator at an art gallery would comment something postmodern here about the audience completing the work.
There was so much that I didn't know. I did not know that the forerunner to Caixabank was founded by a man whose family made their wealth off slaves in Cuba (Josep Xifré Downing). I did not know that one of Velasquez' most famous paintings is of his slave. I did not know why Angela Davis became famous, or that she had been in jail. I knew about the Spanish racial caste system in the new world, but I had no idea it contained so many racial variants! I did not know that Spain used to have a racist white supremacist anti-immigrant political party called Democracia Nacional. I had never seen before an image of Aimé Cesaire. I had never read "Aint I A Woman?" or even known who was Sojourner Truth - or that her first language was Dutch.
The third reflection is how much I enjoyed his writing style. There was very little of it. And yet without context, without character names, without description of emotions felt, Bermúdez has a knack of boiling down an interaction to its core knock-out emotional importance. Not quite Hemingway or Jelineck, but you get me - something broadly in common there. This may be due to the fact that I was reading the bilingual English-Spanish edition instead of the uni-lingual Spanish only original, and that Spanish is a much more visceral and emotive language. And yet, reading both versions of each page I would still attribute this to a deliberate choice of style by Bermúdez.
One thing that resonated with me, a Palestinian from Canada, was the anecdotes of coming into one's consciousness in a world that knows your race before you do. And imposing that race on you before you even know what race is. How we are made into racial objects by the rest of society. And how, after so much formative racism directed against us, when as adults we seek to inhabit the racialised selves we have been made into, we receive comments from the outside world seeking to deny this to us. For Bermúdez it's being told "You're not an actual black, Rubén."
Fourth, I was impressed by the evident intersection of US and Spain popular culture. Of course it seems obvious that US culture would have had global reach, even as far back as the 1980s. But to think that the Spanish dictatorship only ended in 1976, and to see this compilation of notable images from this man's youth in Spain was so marked by Magic Johnson, Ben Johnson, Steve Urkle, the Fresh Prince, Grace Jones, and Prince is to see how the black man has been made by American empire into the consummate 'other' not just at home but also across the world. A Nazi flag raised at Real Madrid's Bernabeu stadium in 1980 is many things. Franco did come to power with support from Nazi Germany. But to see that a Spanish neo-Nazi group from the 1980s and 1990s raised the US Confederate flag alongside the Spanish flag and a simplified Celtic cross (an evidently racist symbol that repeats throughout the book) still surprises me.
Fifth and finally I should say that I much appreciated the mix of personal images with personally resonant images from popular culture. The images from what was happening in the culture at the time situate the rest of the biography, provide entry points for the reader to connect, and also demonstrate the author's own growth journey. He begins the book as he begun his young life, responding to what was around him. As his life and the book progresses, we see him being introduced by others to black reference points, and then in the third section of the book he himself is actively investigating black history, knowledge, and thinkers. In the fourth and final section there is a sense of consolidation, transcendence, and action, as we see flashes of the author's active engagement with his own local community and advocacy for it. I also appreciate how all external references are explained, but not all personal photos are. Some are just for the author, and we are kept as if viewers of a private album.
When I first moved to Spain 13 years go I was working an office job, based right on the prestigious Colon Plaza. From my office window I could see the marble column supporting that famous statue of Christopher Columbus ('Colon' in Spanish), past which the military tanks, and planes drive and fly by every 12 October on parade. Once a week I would go for lunch with my colleagues. When we had time we would walk over to Calle Sagasta and go downstairs to a very good restaurant with a large dining room half below floor level. On the way down the stairs there was a life sized statue of a servant black boy, with jet black skin, big googly eyes, and plump bright red lips. Every bit the racist caricature. When I was shocked to see it the first time and it showed on my face, my colleagues merrily spoke up "what? it's history! Nobody's racist here. But isn't it nice? ha ha!"
I've been thinking about this a great deal lately as I work with my father, now old and with fading memory, on his memoirs. Better late than never. He is Palestinian, but now resides in Canada, offspring nation of the Empire that organised for the ethnic cleansing of people like my father from his own country. We have finished an outline and are at the stage of going through old black and white photos from the first half of the last century, a surprising number of them found in an old album that managed to get preserved over the years - throughout various wars and movements between countries, homes, and natural disasters. And yet, there are only 215 of them. There are 224 numbered pages in Why Are You Black. Most, although not all, contain an image.
So this is the first reflection provoked by this book: if going back to vinyl records is about aesthetics and sound, there ought to be even more of an argument for going back to analogue photos. The selection, the curation - and the way they collectively tell a story - is of huge value. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this book, how it sucked me in and took me along with it. The images are so well curated, each photo is individually strong an impactful, and all together and in order they speak without many words.
To see the face of Trayvon Martin so close in pages to the young face of the author himself and confront their striking resemblance. To see the archival front page of Spain's ABC newspaper declaring the Spanish national holiday (which is "dia de la Hispanidad," 12 October, the day Columbus discovered America) as "fiesta de la raza" (race party), contrasted with a contemporary front page from the same paper showing a large flag and the headline "Spain Celebrates Itself With Pride." To see the graphic of how slaves were stowed so many and so closely to one another in the hold of a slave ship. To see an 1846 clipping from a Cuban newspaper classified section, showing blacks for sale next to animals and books. It goes without saying that the newspaper published in Spanish, not English, but that this reminds us that Spain and France and the Dutch and Portuguese were all full participants in slavery and colonialism, not just the Anglos as portrayed by Hollywood movies. The mashup of contemporary images with their priors, shows how the present has a history that is not at all past - only obscured, denied or embraced at turns depending on what strategy is most convenient at any time to maintain and reproduce itself. I could go on, but the point is that one doesn't need to fill in the essay with words. The images speak so much more efficiently.
The second reflection is that I really read this book. I've been in a reading slump ever since covid lockdowns ended, and I thought this little picture book would be a quick one to add a notch to my belt. It was not! I often needed time to just sit an reflect, or set the book aside for a couple days as I carried the thoughtful echo of certain words and images with me until I was ready for more. I also often needed time to google certain names and histories to understand what the author was seeking to communicate by including a certain image that was less known to me. A curator at an art gallery would comment something postmodern here about the audience completing the work.
There was so much that I didn't know. I did not know that the forerunner to Caixabank was founded by a man whose family made their wealth off slaves in Cuba (Josep Xifré Downing). I did not know that one of Velasquez' most famous paintings is of his slave. I did not know why Angela Davis became famous, or that she had been in jail. I knew about the Spanish racial caste system in the new world, but I had no idea it contained so many racial variants! I did not know that Spain used to have a racist white supremacist anti-immigrant political party called Democracia Nacional. I had never seen before an image of Aimé Cesaire. I had never read "Aint I A Woman?" or even known who was Sojourner Truth - or that her first language was Dutch.
The third reflection is how much I enjoyed his writing style. There was very little of it. And yet without context, without character names, without description of emotions felt, Bermúdez has a knack of boiling down an interaction to its core knock-out emotional importance. Not quite Hemingway or Jelineck, but you get me - something broadly in common there. This may be due to the fact that I was reading the bilingual English-Spanish edition instead of the uni-lingual Spanish only original, and that Spanish is a much more visceral and emotive language. And yet, reading both versions of each page I would still attribute this to a deliberate choice of style by Bermúdez.
One thing that resonated with me, a Palestinian from Canada, was the anecdotes of coming into one's consciousness in a world that knows your race before you do. And imposing that race on you before you even know what race is. How we are made into racial objects by the rest of society. And how, after so much formative racism directed against us, when as adults we seek to inhabit the racialised selves we have been made into, we receive comments from the outside world seeking to deny this to us. For Bermúdez it's being told "You're not an actual black, Rubén."
Fourth, I was impressed by the evident intersection of US and Spain popular culture. Of course it seems obvious that US culture would have had global reach, even as far back as the 1980s. But to think that the Spanish dictatorship only ended in 1976, and to see this compilation of notable images from this man's youth in Spain was so marked by Magic Johnson, Ben Johnson, Steve Urkle, the Fresh Prince, Grace Jones, and Prince is to see how the black man has been made by American empire into the consummate 'other' not just at home but also across the world. A Nazi flag raised at Real Madrid's Bernabeu stadium in 1980 is many things. Franco did come to power with support from Nazi Germany. But to see that a Spanish neo-Nazi group from the 1980s and 1990s raised the US Confederate flag alongside the Spanish flag and a simplified Celtic cross (an evidently racist symbol that repeats throughout the book) still surprises me.
Fifth and finally I should say that I much appreciated the mix of personal images with personally resonant images from popular culture. The images from what was happening in the culture at the time situate the rest of the biography, provide entry points for the reader to connect, and also demonstrate the author's own growth journey. He begins the book as he begun his young life, responding to what was around him. As his life and the book progresses, we see him being introduced by others to black reference points, and then in the third section of the book he himself is actively investigating black history, knowledge, and thinkers. In the fourth and final section there is a sense of consolidation, transcendence, and action, as we see flashes of the author's active engagement with his own local community and advocacy for it. I also appreciate how all external references are explained, but not all personal photos are. Some are just for the author, and we are kept as if viewers of a private album.
When I first moved to Spain 13 years go I was working an office job, based right on the prestigious Colon Plaza. From my office window I could see the marble column supporting that famous statue of Christopher Columbus ('Colon' in Spanish), past which the military tanks, and planes drive and fly by every 12 October on parade. Once a week I would go for lunch with my colleagues. When we had time we would walk over to Calle Sagasta and go downstairs to a very good restaurant with a large dining room half below floor level. On the way down the stairs there was a life sized statue of a servant black boy, with jet black skin, big googly eyes, and plump bright red lips. Every bit the racist caricature. When I was shocked to see it the first time and it showed on my face, my colleagues merrily spoke up "what? it's history! Nobody's racist here. But isn't it nice? ha ha!"
April 30, 2024
impecable. me hace tan feliz cuando libros como este existen, que a pesar de tratar de algo tan cercano y vulnerable, pero al mismo tiempo complejo y violento como es el racismo y la identidad afro, sabe celebrar a la vez que concienciar. a veces en libros o relatos que nos tratan de mostrar la realidad de una opresión nos podemos perder del hilo conductor y no saber volver a él, pero en este libro es algo imposible: la verdad y la realidad están ahí, y son innegables. increíble recopilatorio sobre la evolución del racismo no solo en lo social sino también en el lenguaje escrito y visual, y más importante aun, no limitándolo al racismo hacia afroamericanos por el gobierno estadounidense, sino haciendo hincapié que aquí en españa siempre se ha sido y se sigue siendo racista. que no hay que mirar hacia otro lado.
February 14, 2019
A beautifully created book from the perspective of a Black Spaniard. I am an American living in Spain where racism is certainly alive and well. I hope this book gets into the hands of more Spanish people.
November 6, 2018
I've been waiting for this book.
May 10, 2024
Fe-no-me-nal.
August 16, 2020
Íntimo pero general, revelador.
February 18, 2020
A picture worths a thousand words. This is the one that I’ve got the strongest and most emotional impression left upon me as I left the bookshop having read a couple other books there today.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews