Black Is a Working-Class Color 

The Latinx Politics of Wearing Black 

In his memoir book Solito, the celebrated Latinx writer Javier Zamora recuperates his story as an unaccompanied Salvadoran nine-year-old migrating to the United States. He takes the reader across several borders and the journey’s many difficulties, fears and small triumphs, as he struggles to reunite with his parents in the United States. One of the details that caught my attention was Zamora’s attentiveness to the dressed migrant body in darker, mostly black, clothing. “I’m showered, but already sweating because Don Dago [the coyote] told us to sleep with our clothes on. ‘Dark clothes,’ he said. I have my dark-blue jeans, my dark T-shirt, my belt, my black shoes, Grandpa’s handkerchief.” When describing the multiple border crossings, Zamora frequently insists on the central place of wearing darker and black clothes as a way to render the body almost undetectable, blending the migrants with the dark nights of their travel. 

Nevertheless, wearing black clothing has been largely considered a symbol of elegance. In any global city, black clothing is ubiquitous in art, fashion and design scenarios. The color has a special aura of timeless elegance. Although no color possesses a single meaning, Western cultures have tended to connect black with mourning rites or with performances of sobriety and distinction. In his book, The System of Objects, Jean Baudrillard describes black as opposed to nature, to “instinctual” life. “Black, white, grey—whatever registers zero on the color scale—is correspondingly paradigmatic of dignity, repression, and moral standing,” Baudrillard observes. Anthropologist Daniel Miller suggests that the black color, ubiquitous in the fashion industry and in the consumer landscape, is the epitome of modern dress. He argues that the condition of modernity and the adoption of black as an automatic default in which the color emerged as a secure choice resulted from a long genealogy of the color tied to notions of control, as in the case of mourning or in dressing black as a sign of rectitude, piety and decency. 

Such an approach is just the hegemonic account of wearing black. Although those associations are certainly true, wearing black may have different meanings in relation to power and the body that uses the color. To propose an alternative approach to black that unsettles or at least challenges the elite associations with wearing black, I’d like to expand the cultural meanings of black clothing by centering Latinx, migrants, working-class people and racialized bodies in terms of ongoing migration and Latinx lives in the United States. As Zamora recounts in Solito, wearing black can also be a means of survival, a mandate to remain invisible in a society divided by the lines of class, race and immigration status. For working-class Latinx, wearing black has a long history of politics and style.  

The migration of Latin Americans to the United States has a long and complex history in which a pattern of precarious labor is still visible. For the most part, migrants and established Latinx residents in the United States, regardless of whether they are citizens or undocumented migrants, have been historically seen as undesirable yet a fundamental racialized cheap labor for economic prosperity. At the same time, migrants from the south of the continent move north for myriads of reasons: the wounds and legacies of U.S. interventionism in Latin America, the political and climatic realities of the region, all entangled with the economic migration experience in the region, in El Salvador and for Javier’s parents.  

Although Solito is the unique personal journey of Javier Zamora, it is also a social document that speaks of the shared experience of migrants. Zamora’s attention to remembering through clothing is striking. He activates the memories of his family when describing his aunt Mali back in El Salvador elegantly dressed in a black dress, the dark clothing of migrants who traveled with him, the instructions of the coyote and the threatened border patrol officers through their clothing. When preparing for the journey, Javier, the writer and the boy he was, recalls. 

Mali irons my clothes. The outfit has been picked out: a nice dress shirt, dark blue. Dark-blue jeans. A black belt. Black dress shoes. 

Next to the hard-boiled eggs, avocado, queso duro, and tortillas, a black backpack. Even the brand name has been crossed out. Inside it: a dark T-shirt, black pants, two pairs of underwear, an extra pair of shoes, the plastic toothbrush, a comb, soccer shorts, Colgate toothpaste, a bar of Palmolive soap, Head & Shoulders shampoo, and another dark-blue, short-sleeved dress shirt. There’s a notebook, Bic pens, pencils, and the assignments my teachers gave me. 

“Everything has to be dark colors,” Mali explains. “Don Dago’s orders.” 

Javier Zamora actively and purposefully emphasizes the significance of clothing and colors, mostly black, merging dressing, remembering and migrating. Black became not only a color but also a pervasive sentiment amid the obscurity of a mangrove at night, where he found himself gripped by fear. Despite feeling like a lonely boy in the darkness, he was cared for by the adults accompanying him on the journey, who instructed him to wear black as a protective armor. The outfits became a predictable part of his new routine, offering a sense of familiarity amidst uncertainty. Zamora wrote, “I know their outfits: dark-blue sweatpants and a dark-gray shirt with English written on it for Patricia. Dark-green soccer shorts for Carla and a black T-shirt without any writing. This is my cue to do the same and change into my dark-blue shirt with English and black soccer shorts before they come back.”  

In the United States, the enduring history of wearing black intertwines with the aesthetics of the working class and the politicized fashion of Latin American descendants, a legacy stretching back to World War II. Amidst the wartime racial tensions, with its imposed ethos of austerity and patriotism, Mexican-Americans identified as Pachucos and Pachucas in California opted to wear the Zoot suit: a rich and flamboyant outfit that evolved from the 1930s Zoot suit first donned by Black men in Harlem. The Pachuco/a Zoot suit, however, was swathed in darker shades, a contrast to the lighter tones preferred by Black Americans.  

Through what Catherine Ramirez calls “style politics” in her canonical book The Women in the Zoot Suit, Pachucas embraced excess and resistance through their style, though fashion still does not replace direct political action. With their heavy makeup and dark lipstick, Pachucas represented aberrant femininity that defied not only U.S. whiteness but also masculine Mexican-American nationalism. As Latinx scholar Anthony Macías describes, their iconic look—“black huaraches, short black skirt, long black stockings, sweater, and high pompadour”—captured a risqué, provocative allure. Macías also credited Mexican-Americans as the ones who originated the postwar “rebel without a cause” cool style, adopting it ten years before it became popular in mainstream fashion. 

As the violence of the Zoot Suit Riots subsides, young people congregate in downtown Los Angeles on June 11, 1943. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Chicano movement also developed some politics of style, though less conspicuous than that of Pachucos/as. Nevertheless, the black color emerged in the black skirt of the Chicanas affiliated with the Brown Berets, the political organization that echoed the militant stance of the Black Panthers by adopting a look resembling a military uniform. Also, many Chicanas highlighted their long black hair as a physical rendering of their brownness and Indigenous heritage. Similarly, the prominent farmworkers’ leader César Chávez adopted this visual language. As Latinx fashion expert Michelle McVicker observes, his black satin polyester bomber jacket, reminiscent of military garb, was far more than a mere garment—it was a deliberate political statement. However, the political stance was not only the jacket but also the color. Thus, the act of wearing black became a façade for resistance, a working-class armor woven with threads of identity, solidarity and defiance. 

Yet it may have been the Cholas and Cholos of the 1990s who most consistently embodied black clothing, their attire bound inextricably to their working-class conditions, criminalized and racialized experience in the United States. Scholars Víctor Ríos and Patricia López-Aguado suggest that Cholo style is a visible response “to racial stigmatization, class subordination, and criminalization,” generating a look meant to produce fear rather than productive availability and exploitable bodies. Cholos/as promoted a minimalist fashion of cheap and durable clothing such as black or khaki Dickies pants, black shirts and tank-tops, black flat shoes or imitation black Dr. Martens shoes. Cholas, with their heavy dark makeup framing eyes and lips, made black a statement of presence, an assertion of their place in the world. A quick internet search of Cholos and Cholas will attest to the centrality of wearing black, as is visible in digital archives such as Veteranas and Rucas on Instagram, and in the prominent use of black clothing by contemporary Latinx fashion designers. 

Images from the film 1994 Mi Vida Loca, about chola Latina teenagers in Los Angeles. Black clothing are predominant in the film. Source: Flickr, Creative Commons license. 

In this way, wearing black weaves a continuous thread through Latinx history, a visible marker that endures in subcultural expressions and in lives shaped by migration and the working-class struggle. In the city of San Jose, California, where I carried out my fieldwork, black attire became a quiet but persistent presence among Latinx workers, often employed in service jobs that remain largely unseen by the public eye. A staffing agency, which provides labor to prominent companies and venues across the Bay Area, mandates that its workers wear black. I will refer to this agency as “the Company.” For many recently arrived undocumented migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala, the Company is their first workplace. These migrants work primarily as servers in coffee shops, restaurants, sports venues or private high schools, depending on the Company’s clientele.  

The orientation, provided mostly in Spanish, outlines the uniform: black shirt, black pants, black shoes, and black socks—a somber palette that blends invisibly into the backdrop of labor. Workers are advised to wear comfortable shoes to endure the long hours spent on their feet. Black clothing is necessary regardless of where the service may be performed. Wearing black, therefore, functions as a uniform that allows servers to be easily identified and switchable while performing their duties. Black, then, is a working-class color. 

The Company’s instructions for server orientation, 2022. Image by the author.

I used Google Maps to locate the address on the flyer. In contrast to the colorful houses and surrounding buildings, the Company has an entire dark gray facade. Instead of the warmth evoked by pastel colors, the building exudes a sense of coldness, functionality and a lack of adornment. In a way, the building mirrors the black uniforms required by the Company for its workers: the austere and impersonal architecture parallels the flat and impersonal clothing, suggesting a common thread between the dark building and the invisible immigrant labor. 

The Company’s black façade, 2023 captured using Google Maps

My observations of Latinx workers in underpaid positions revealed that wearing black is omnipresent. In a high-end and always busy shopping mall in the city, I encountered Spanish-speaking workers mopping floors dressed in black from head to toe; two male workers behind the counter of a popular restaurant, speaking in both English and Spanish, wearing black uniforms; and a group of Latinx workers at an elegant pastry and coffee shop, laughing in their black pants and black polo shirts, contrasted against the shop’s immaculate white countertops. I am not claiming that all workers wearing black are Latinx; indeed, other populations share similar living conditions. However, black undeniably functions as a working-class color, especially within the contours of racialized labor, as seen in the reclamation of working-class aesthetics by Cholos and Cholas. 

Black also appears in the meticulously curated spaces of luxury brand stores within the mall, where it evokes elegance and mystery. Mannequins wear dark clothing with a visible distinction in material, sensibility, and politics. Latinx workers wear black not only to blend with the aesthetics of the mall and the fashionable ambiance of the stores but also to serve as another visual element of the space, rather than to emulate the looks of the consumers of these brands. Other workers, such as doormen or salespeople, also wear black, albeit in more formal pieces like blazers and well-ironed pants. Yet, like the cleaning workers, they all unmistakably wear black. 

In these experiences, black clothing does not reflect style or personal choice. Rather, it functions as a form of surveillance and control—a convention to enforce uniformity and a certain degree of invisibility imposed by employers. On the bodies of Latinx workers, the color black achieves a dual purpose: it renders labor both invisible and interchangeable, while also providing a functional sense of sobriety. Yet, these workers find subtle ways of personalizing their uniforms through small gestures: wearing a pin on their shirts, choosing a distinctive pair of shoes, or opting for wide or skinny pants. Women insist on beautifully decorating their nails despite some homogenizing policies prohibiting painted nails at work. Style emerges even in limited conditions, as Latinx people have consistently proven. 

Centering the working-class and Latinx use of black clothing serves to enrich the cultural meaning of the color by adding a political and embodied connotation, while demonstrating how wearing black is a common thread in Latinx visualities, beyond specific styles. Now, every time I wear black, I have a new understanding of the color. It reminds me of those Latinx citizens, migrants, undocumented and racialized workers, adding an emotional layer to the burgeoning meanings of black clothing. I hope the reader remembers this the next time they pick a black piece from their closet. 

Edward Salazar Celis is a writer, cultural critic and educator, specializing in Latin(x) American arts, fashion and visual cultures. He is the author of the books Nostalgias y Aspiraciones and Estudios de la Moda en Colombia.Edward is pursuing his Ph.D. in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Instagram @elpintordelavidamoderna