Reply #4: A lot of it's probably racism

[cgrindley]

In my experience from working in the Bronx, I have seen first hand that there is an awful lot of tension and outright racism between Latinos and African Americans--actually it's way more complex than that with competing levels of animosity between Africans whose countries were colonized by England vs those whose countries were colonized by France or other European powers and the both of them look down on African Americans and then pretty much all of the above look down on West Indians, particularly Jamaicans. And then there's hardly unity among Hispanics--Puerto Ricans don't really get along well with Dominicans, Cubans don't really get along well with either... then there's all the Central and South Americans and then there's the Mexicans. Then there's the matter of how Black a person is as a Hispanic and there's a huge amount of weirdness there. So far the only time I've actually heard the N-word being used for real and in anger was by a Dominican man putting down a woman whose father was an African American and whose mother was white French lady. He thought she was Hispanic but when she said she couldn't speak Spanish, he swore at her. It's crazy.