Blackness in a White Nation

I had someone comment that they wanted to know what I felt like being black in Uruguay so I thought I would address it. I haven't spoken about it before because this didn't seem to be the right audience for it, but now that someone has asked I have no problem doing it. I already talked a little bit about it in my post titled Afro-Uruguayans, but I'll expound a little.

Uruguay is one of the most homogenous populations in South America, if not the most homogeneous, where the population is majority caucasian. Naturally I stuck out like a sore thumb and my afro wasn't helping matters either. To be honest though, I live in Nowhere, North Carolina where there isn't a well represented population of African Americans either so its not like it shocked me. Although, I would say that in comparison Uruguay has less blacks than here in Nowhere, NC.

Fortunately, I was never hassled or talked down to or anything because of my skin color, which is always great, but I did notice that people treated me a little different sometimes. I feel like people would look at me longer and in a way that made sure I wasn't trying something sometimes. I even had a few kids point me out to their parents which I just thought was cute. Some subtle things happened, of course, where people would jerk their kids away from me or like the example I gave in the other post a guy in McDonalds saw me and pushed his wife to his other side away from me, put his arm around her, and would keep looking at me every few seconds. It was pretty rude, but, hey, what could I do?

Just like in the US there is still some ignorance from people who have never come into contact with people of color, but you just have to learn to take it in stride, especially when you're in other countries. In situations like that I would just try to not give them any reason to think of me as a sketchy character by taking my hands out of my pockets, not looking at them, and just being polite. I would say that 98% of the time though I was treated just like any other person/ foreigner and even like a regular Latin American from the times people thought I was from Brazil or somewhere else.

I would definitely say to not let your skin color keep you from going though. I never met a mean Uruguayan (do they even exist?) and they treat you like a regular person. Just be prepared to stick out a little.

By the way, I plan to research this topic of Afro-Uruguayans because it has really drawn my interest since I can't seem to find more information on it through Google search. I was looking up an Afro-Latin American textbook for a class I'm taking with a similar name and found a book titled Blackness in a White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay by George Reid Andrews that I plan on starting with. You know, in case you're interested as well.