Once, a casting director told me I wasn’t acting “Latina enough,” and I asked if he wanted me to do the lines in Spanish, and he said, “No, just act more Latina.” Which likely to him meant being loud and having an attitude and a quick temper. Which I certainly have, but not all Latinas have. Some are quiet and soft-spoken, and it doesn’t make them any less Latina. I know several of my African American friends have been told in auditions that they need to “black it up” or be “blacker,” as if this white casting director even knows what “being black” means.
