In the United States, a Black Hispanic or Afro-Hispanic (Spanish: Afrohispano) is an American citizen or resident who is officially classified by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other U.S. government agencies as a Black American of Hispanic descent."
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Hispanicity, which is independent of race, is the only ethnic category, as opposed to racial category, which is officially collated by the U.S. Census Bureau. The distinction made by government agencies for those within the population of any official race category, including "African American", is between those who report Hispanic backgrounds and all others who do not. Non-Hispanic Black Americans consists of an ethnically diverse collection of all others who are classified as Black or African American that do not report Hispanic ethnic backgrounds.
Demographic information
States like New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut have some of the highest percentages of Hispanics identifying as Black, where up to 25% of Hispanics identify as black, compared to 2.5% of Hispanics nationwide. Overall, the Northeast region has the largest concentration of Black Hispanics, this is partly because of the large Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other mostly or partly African descended Hispanic populations in the region.
Black Hispanics account for 2.5% of the entire U.S. Hispanic population. Most Black Hispanics in the United States come from within the Dominican and Puerto Rican populations. Aside from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, large numbers of Black Hispanics can also be found in populations originating from Cuba, northern South America, and the Caribbean coast of Central America as well, including the Cuban, Panamanian, and Colombian communities, among others.
The main aspects which distinguish Black Hispanics born in the United States of America from African Americans is their mother tongue Spanish or most recent ancestors' native language, their culture passed down by their parents, and their Spanish surnames. Of all Hispanic groups, Puerto Ricans have the closest relationship with the African American community, and because of this there is also increasing intermarriages and offspring between non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics of any race, mainly between Puerto Ricans and African Americans, which increases both the Hispanic ethnic and black racial demographics.
Since the early days of the movie industry in the United States of America, when Black Hispanic actors were given roles, they would usually be cast as African Americans. For those with Spanish-speaking accents that betrayed an otherwise presumed African American, they may seldom have been given roles as Hispanics, and the mulatto Hispanic and Latino actors of African appearance are mostly given Hispanic roles.
Those who claim that Black Hispanics are not sought to play Hispanic roles in the United States allege this unfairly leads the masses of viewers to an ignorance to the existence of darker skinned Hispanics. Further, some Black Hispanics who identify themselves as black but of also mixed race once affirming their Hispanicity may be deprived of their status as Black people among African Americans, and categorized by society as non-Black in the American historical context.
Same situation happens in U.S. Hispanic media; critics accuse U.S. Hispanic media, including Latin American media, of overlooking black Hispanic and Latino Americans and black Latin Americans in the telenovelas, mostly stereotyping them as impoverished people.
Black Hispanic culture
Although Black Hispanics are often overlooked or dichotomized as either "black" or "hispanic" in the United States of America, Black Hispanic writers often reflect upon their racialized experience in their works. The most commonly used term in literature to speak of this ambiguity and multilayered hybridity at the heart of Latino/a identity and culture is miscegenation. This "mestizaje" depicts the multi-faceted racial and cultural identity that characterize Black Hispanics and highlights that each individual Black Hispanic has a unique experience within a broader racial and ethnic range. The memoirs, poetry, sociological research, and essays written by the following Afro-Latino writers reflect this concept of mestizaje in addition to revealing the confusion and uncertainty about one's self-image of being both "Black" and "Hispanic". The psychological and social factors also prove to be central in determining how one ultimately defines him/herself.