Carmelo Anthony Is Surprised People Know He’s Boricua

Carmelo Anthony was pleasantly surprised to find himself on Hispanic Business magazine’s list of 100 most influential Hispanics. Not only because he isn’t particularly influential, but because he didn’t realize that people were aware of his Puerto Rican background. 

Says Carmelo:

A lot of people are surprised when they hear about it or when they see my tattoo [of a Puerto Rican flag]. I don’t think a lot of people know that side of me

Carmelo’s girlfriend, La La Vazquez, is also Puerto Rican. He says he “didn’t know” she was Puerto Rican at first.

It’s always interesting to us when people are surprised at the fact that anyone who doesn’t look like George Lopez is Latino, or how people who don’t meet people’s expectations of what a Latino looks like navigate the course of their public images.  

If Sonia Sotomayor looked more like Cameron Diaz or Zoe Saldaña, would there have been so much talk about her being Latina? Would she have made her “wise Latina” speech? We’ll venture to guess that when you “look the part,” it becomes nearly impossible to ever be allowed to forget your ethnic identity or not have it be a defining factor in one’s image. 

Anyway, this comment, about Carmelo’s childhood home in Red Hook, was also interesting to us in terms of defining one’s own identity:

It was mostly black, but as the years went on, Brooklyn— well, New York period — is filled with Puerto Ricans and Spanish. I grew up around all that.

We’re not even going to deal with the label of “Spanish,” because that’s exhausting and we’re aware that people don’t really care, but… since when are “Puerto Rican” and “black” mutually exclusive categories? It’s interesting because we’re aware of many Latinos, who happen to be black, who avoid defining themselves as black because they find it synonymous with American, non-Latino black individuals.

Is that what’s going on here, maybe?

NBA star Carmelo Anthony treasures his heritage [NY Daily News]