Taller Puertorriqueño’s annual Arturo A. Schomburg Symposium will address the impact of racism and trauma on Afro-Latinos

Evelyne Laurent-Perrault was hired as director of the bookstore at Taller Puertorriqueño in 1996.

She is a Black woman of African descent, born to Haitian parents in Venezuela. After her mother died, her father then remarried to a Black Venezuelan woman.

But when she spoke Spanish to people who visited the North Philly bookstore, they often asked her where she learned to speak Spanish so well. Others were not merely curious about her language skills.

“I had people walk past me and go to the light-skinned receptionist and ask, why had Taller hired a Black woman to work in the bookstore,” said Laurent-Perrault, now an emerita assistant professor at University of California at Santa Barbara. She holds a doctorate degree in history and is a scholar of the Atlantic slave trade.

Laurent-Perrault said when Black Americans met her, they immediately recognized her accent and that she had an identity from another country. But it was frustrating when light-skinned fellow Latinos did not believe that she was also from Latin America.

“I was appalled at the level of prejudice, discrimination and also ignorance, even when people would see that I had an accent and that I spoke Spanish,” she said. “It was other Latinos who would come up to me and act as if they never saw a Black person speaking Spanish before, I said to myself, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’”

She started her job at Taller in January 1996, and by September, after she had talked with others experiencing the same frustration, she went to Taller’s then-director, Johnny Irizarry. She proposed developing a program for February 1997 to discuss the Afro-Latino identity as part of Black History Month.

Irizarry was immediately supportive, she said, and told her that he had always thought that Taller should do more about Afro-Latino experience. Irizarry suggested the symposium be named for Arturo A. Schomburg, an Afro-Puerto Rican man who amassed a history of African peoples across the diaspora that became known as Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

When the first Schomburg Symposium at Taller began in February 1997, Laurent-Perrault said she was astonished to see the auditorium “packed.”

“We ran out of space before the event began,” she recalled. It was so successful that the Taller board decided to have the symposium the next year. It continues until today.

This weekend, Taller Puertorriqueño is presenting the 28th Annual Arturo A. Schomburg Symposium. A reception was scheduled for Friday evening and panel discussions and workshops will take place at Taller from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, .

The theme of the symposium this year is “Repairing and Reparations, Healing from Racial Wounds.”

Onaje J. Muid, an adjunct assistant professor at LaGuardia Community College who holds a doctorate in social work, will be on a panel discussing why it is important for both reparations and healing from the trauma of racism.

There are several components of reparations and the one most people understand is when the government pays compensation for harms that were committed against humanity, said Muid, who is Black, but not Afro-Latino.

However, he said it was just as important to discuss the healing part of reparations where groups that have been oppressed learn how to not only strengthen themselves internally, but also to strengthen the bonds they have with their community members as well.

“Racism attempts to confine, control and to exploit. But that exploitation can only happen when someone has accepted the role of being exploited,” Muid said. “Oppression can only exist when the collective consciousness and the collective will of the people is controlled.”

By that, he explained, that community healing groups are important for people to heal from racial wounds together and strengthen each other.

“Racism makes you think that you are nothing, and you don’t count, and whatever happens to you, you deserve it,” Muid said. “One begins to doubt your own worth as a human being. But that worth can most effectively be restored through having healthy relationships with other people.”

Laurent-Perrault, who is now back in the Philadelphia area doing consulting work at Penn, said she is pleased that Taller has continued the symposium that addresses the issues of Afro-Latinos.

“I have been experiencing [the frustration of having her identity questioned ] since I was a child, even in Venezuela,” she said. “People didn’t think I was from Venezuela. It’s being told you don’t belong where you are. I’m a Black woman born and raised in Latin America and I have lived in places all over the world.”

Taller Puertorriqueño is at 2600 N. 5th St., Philadelphia, Pa., 19133. Tickets, are free for students and range from $20 to $25 to $40 for others. They can be purchased here. Or call 215-426-3311 x1003.