African American

I don't know why being a new employee, as the manager said, had to do with her awful racism but the resort did refund their guests the entire stay. My experience in Mexico is from neutral - no racist encounters, strange looks, et cetera - to absolutely wonderful.

I apologize for the length of this account.

The wonderful part is when years ago, I took my parents, visiting me here in SoCal, on a day trip to Tijuana. My Mom was in a colorful African dress and we were speaking our language as we wandered about. We weren't wandering for 10 minutes before a restaurant owner outside his establishment stopped us immediately to ask where we're from. My parents told him and he squealed in delight. It was too funny. Before we knew it, we were ushered into his place with him saying one of his great-great-great...grandmoms was an African and asked, "Please, could you tell me where she was from." He sent someone to retrieve a family photo album saying, "I'll prove it to you," I guess because he looked totally white though we didn't doubt him at all.

Because of a particular foodstuff that his grandma prepared and the recipe remained in the family, my parents figured right away where his ancestor was kidnapped - Togo, my parents said, they're our neighbors! They're the only ones who prepare whatever the dish was that way.

Wandering again when the same thing happened with another restaurant owner. And once again it was food that pinpointed location of origin. It was a crazy day and we were drunk from Tequila and food, heading back home earlier than expected. Neither men wanted any payment for all the food and drinks. This was in the early 2000s before the popularity of genetic testing and the connection for those men to their ancestor after centuries was precious and priceless.

I've had the same encounter since then, the most touching was with a couple who were managers at an apartment building my husband and I lived. The couple both spoke Spanish. The wife was from a Central American nation, clearly of African descent, a lovely super friendly lady who was not fluent in English. Her husband was a gorgeous very dark, Mexican-American dude, also very pleasant. One day, they both approached me, he asking the origin of my hyphenated last name. I told him my maiden name is Nigerian and the surname Belgian. She started speaking quickly in Spanish and he translated saying that one of her ancestors was definitely from West Africa, could I please tell her where she was from. Of course, I contacted my parents and got back to her saying that ancestor grandma was from Senegal. Good grief, she started crying her eyes out and I couldn't help myself and wept with her from deep frustration and, of course, joy.

By the mid 2000s, Prof. Gates produced the PBS series Black in Latin America. I was stunned by part of the title of one of the episodes - The Black Grandma in the Closet, a photo album one of the speakers went thru with Gates and all the food she laid out to identify in her experience the connections to African origin from Cuba, Puerto Rico to Mexico.

Ignorant waitress who probably doesn't know herself. In one part of the episode, Gates said that if the one-drop rule applied in Mexico, all of them would be considered black