DaSilva agreed that nuances separate African Americans and Afro-Latinos, but he also believes that seeing Latin America through African American eyes gave him a better perspective. Unfortunately, he said, it also made him angrier and more stressed.
When DaSilva returned to Brazil for a visit, he asked questions he had never asked, and got answers that shocked him.
His mother told him why her father didn't speak to her for 18 years: "It was because she married a black man," he said. One day, DaSilva's own father pulled him aside to provide his son some advice. " 'You can play around with whoever you want,' " DaSilva recalled his father saying, " 'but marry your own kind.' " So DaSilva married Martins, the morena of his dreams.
She is dreaming of a world with fewer racial barriers, a world she believes she left in Brazil to be with her husband in Washington.
As Martins talked about the nation's various racial blends in her living room, her 18-month-old son sat in front of the television, watching a Disney cartoon called "The Proud Family," about a merged black American and black Latino family. The characters are intelligent, whimsical, thoughtful, funny, with skin tones that range from light to dark brown.
The DaSilvas said they would never see such a show on Latin American TV.
Martins said her perspective on race was slowly conforming to the American view, but it saddened her. She doesn't understand why she can't call a pretty black girl a negrita, the way Latin Americans always say it, with affection
