DOCSLIB.ORG

De-Conflating Latinos/As' Race and Ethnicity

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
De-Conflating Latinos/As' Race and Ethnicity UCLA Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review Title Los Confundidos: De-Conflating Latinos/As' Race and Ethnicity Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9nx2r4pj Journal Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review, 19(1) ISSN 1061-8899 Author Sandrino-Glasser, Gloria Publication Date 1998 DOI 10.5070/C7191021085 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California LOS CONFUNDIDOS: DE-CONFLATING LATINOS/AS' RACE AND ETHNICITY GLORIA SANDRmNO-GLASSERt INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................71 I. LATINOS: A DEMOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT ..............................................75 A. Latinos: Dispelling the Legacy of Homogenization ....................75 B. Los Confundidos: Who are We? (Qui6n Somos?) ...................77 1. Mexican-Americans: The Native Sons and D aughters .......................................................................77 2. Mainland Puerto Ricans: The Undecided ..............................81 3. Cuban-Americans: Last to Come, Most to Gain .....................85 II. THE CONFLATION: AN OVERVIEW ..................................................90 A. The Conflation in Context ........................................................95 1. The Conflation: Parts of the W hole ..........................................102 2. The Conflation Institutionalized: The Sums of All Parts ...........103 B. The Conflation: Concepts and Definitions ...................................104 1. N ationality ..............................................................................104 2 . Race ........................................................................................10 5 3. O ther D efinitions ....................................................................107 III. DE-CONFLATING RACE AND NATIONALITY IN U NITED STATES SOCIETY .................................................................108 A. The Conflation in the Nineteenth Century: The Roots of Constructed Hispanic Homogenization .........................................111 1. From Natives to "Cholos," "Greasers" and Mustachioed Banditos: Early Portrayals of Mexican-Americans ...................111 a. Californianos/as: The Mexicans of California .......................111 b. "Good Women," "Bad Women": The Californianas .............117 t Associate Professor of Law, California Western School of Law. J.D., Harvard Law School 1984; B.A. with Highest Honors, Rutgers College 1981. This Article is dedicated to my family, who has given me love and encouragement every step of the way, and to all Latinos/as, who have given me inspiration and motivation to research and write on this topic. I received more encouragement and assistance inthe preparation and completion of this Article than I could possibly acknowledge. I am indebted to those who undertook the vast and unpromising task of commenting on earlier drafts of this Article. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues Robert Chang and Frank Valdes for talking through the inception of this Article with me. In addition, I owe special thanks to Stephen Glasser for his encouragement, support, and suggestions. Finally, I thank my research assistants, Aimee Caso, Bethany Caracuzzo, Rick Hartman, Kelly Langford and Dale Montpelier; the librarians at California Western, Jane Petitmermet, Linda Weath- ers, and Bill Bookheim; my secretary, Mary-Ellen Norvell; and photocopying specialist Vicky Pfeffer, all whom have been indispensable to this Article. CHICANO-LATINO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 19:69 2. "Boricuas" and Natives: Images of Puerto Ricans .................... 120 B. The Conflation in the Twentieth Century: Formal Confusion of Race and N ationality, ............................................................... 123 1. Examples of Conflation in the Early Twentieth Century ........... 123 a. Los Angeles County Health Department Statistics ................ 124 b. California's "Mexican Fact Finding Committee ................. 125 2. The National Census ............................................................... 125 a. The Censuses: 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1970: Conflation by A nother Race .................................................................. 126 b. The 1980 Census ................................... ........................... 128 IV. THE CONFLATION IN CONTEMPORARY JURISPRUDENCE .................... 131 A. Judicial Constructions of Race and Nationality ............................. 131 1. R ace ........................................................................................ 13 1 2. Nationality/National Origin ..................................................... 133 a. "National Origin" and the Equal Protection Clause ............... 134 b. "National Origin" and Title VII ........................................... 135 B. The Conflation, the Equal Protection Clause and "National Origin": Language as a Surrogate for Race ................... 137 1. Hernandez v. Texas ................................................................. 138 a. The Conflation and the Court's Construction of Race ........... 138 b. Perpetuating the Construction of Race Through Black/W hite Paradigm ......................................................... 139 c. Marginalized by the Intersection of Ethnicity and Race ........ 140 2. Soberal-Perezv. Heckler .................................... ... 141 C. The Conflation, Title VII and "National Origin .......................... 142 1. Manzanares v. Safeway Stores, Inc.......................................... 144 2. O lagues v. R ussoniello ............................................................ 145 3. Cardonav. American Express ................................................. 146 C. The Conflation, Bilingual Education and Language Rights ........... 147 V. THE AFTERMATH: THE LEGACY OF THE CONFLATION IN LAW AND SOCIETY ................................................................. 150 A. The Conflation in Society: Lessons and Beyond ........................... 151 1. Latinos as the Foreign Other: Exclusion From the Imaginary Nation .................................................................... 151 2. Latinos in the "White/Black" Racial Paradigm ......................... 153 3. Formalized Conflation: The "Hispanic Label" ................. 155 VI. CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND LATINOS: PERSPECTIVES AND NEW D IRECTIO N S ....................... : ............................................................ 157 A. Critical Race Theory: An Overview .............................................. 157 B. Critical Race Theory and Diversity: "Talking Across Our Spaces" ................................................................................159 C. Latino Voice and Storytelling ....................................................... 160 V II. C ON CLU SIO N ................................................................................... 16 1 19981 LOS CONFUNDIDOS INTRODUCTION I am not African. African waters the roots of my tree, but I cannot return. I am not Taina. I am a late leaf of that ancient tree and my roots reach into the soil of two Americas. Taino is in me, but there is no way back. I am not European, though I have dreamt of those cities. Europe lives in me but I have no home there.' As the poem above illustrates, the Latino/a2 identity in the United States consists of multiple national and racial identities, which are often conflated or fused, but nevertheless essential parts of the whole. The conflation's residue is confusion: to isolate, to disempower, and oppress. Its Legacy: Los Confundidos.3 In the poem, two Latinas, a mother and daughter, affirm and construct their Latina identity, with its rich racial and cultural mix, while deconstructing the popular myths of the dominant culture. The conversation illustrates the conflation of Latinos' race and na- tionality, with one woman referring to race and the other to nation- ality. The confusion is obvious; but the conceptual and ideological mixtures that underlie the confusion are powerful. As Suzanne Oboler notes, "reading [this] poem, one is struck by the ways in which both self (I am what I am) and other (I am not what I am not) are fundamental to the construction of the identities of these individ- ual Latinas- and, one might say, to the ethos of the (Latino) 1. AURORA LEVINS MORALES & ROSARIO MORALES, GETTING HOME ALIVE 50 (1986). 2. 1 prefer to use the term Latino/a for three reasons. First, I see it as an alterna- tive collective designation, which recognizes the Latin American origin of the Latino subpopulations. The "Latino/a" term, derived from "Latin America," links the Latin American origin groups in the United States to Latin America. As such, it preserves the flavor of national origin and political relationship between the United States and Latin America. In that respect, it is culturally neutral. Moreover, it is racially neutral. Sec- ondly, it is a Spanish-language word and as such it is a unifying term for an otherwise diverse group of people. Thirdly, it embodies cultural pluralism as opposed to assimila- tion. Although I would prefer to use the term "Latino/a" throughout this Article, for practical purposes I will most often use "Latino" to refer to both sexes. It is my belief, as a Latina whose first language is Spanish, that despite the "o" ending, the term Latino is sex neutral. By rules of Spanish orthography, all collective terms when used on a grouping containing both sexes, utilize the masculine ending. 3. I use the term "los confundidos," meaning "the confused ones," deliberately because it connotes
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Global Latin(O) Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas And
    DEBATES: GLOBAL LATIN(O) AMERICANOS Global Latin(o) Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas and Regional Migrations by MARK OVERMYER-VELÁZQUEZ | University of Connecticut | [email protected] and ENRIQUE SEPÚLVEDA | University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut | [email protected] Human mobility is a defining characteristic By the end of the first decade of the Our use of the term “Global Latin(o) of our world today. Migrants make up one twenty-first century the contribution of Americanos” places people of Latin billion of the globe’s seven billion people— Latin America and the Caribbean to American and Caribbean origin in with approximately 214 million international migration amounted to over comparative, transnational, and global international migrants and 740 million 32 million people, or 15 percent of the perspectives with particular emphasis on internal migrants. Historic flows from the world’s international migrants. Although migrants moving to and living in non-U.S. Global South to the North have been met most have headed north of the Rio Grande destinations.5 Like its stem words, Global in equal volume by South-to-South or Rio Bravo and Miami, in the past Latin(o) Americanos is an ambiguous term movement.1 Migration directly impacts and decade Latin American and Caribbean with no specific national, ethnic, or racial shapes the lives of individuals, migrants have traveled to new signification. Yet by combining the terms communities, businesses, and local and destinations—both within the hemisphere Latina/o (traditionally, people of Latin national economies, creating systems of and to countries in Europe and Asia—at American and Caribbean origin in the socioeconomic interdependence.
    [Show full text]
  • Latino Unemployment Rate Remains the Highest at 17.6% Latina Women Are Struggling the Most from the Economic Fallout
    LATINO JOBS REPORT JUNE 2020 Latino Unemployment Rate Remains the Highest at 17.6% Latina women are struggling the most from the economic fallout LEISURE AND HOSPITALITY EMPLOYMENT LEADS GAINS, ADDING 1.2 MILLION JOBS In April, the industry lost 7.5 million jobs. Twenty-four percent of workers in the leisure and hospitality industry are Latino. INDICATORS National Latinos Employed • Working people over the age of 16, including 137.2 million 23.2 million those temporarily absent from their jobs Unemployed • Those who are available to work, trying to 21 million 5 million find a job, or expect to be called back from a layoff but are not working Civilian Labor Force 158.2 million 28.2 million • The sum of employed and unemployed people Unemployment Rate 13.3% 17.6 % • Share of the labor force that is unemployed Labor Force Participation Rate • Share of the population over the age of 16 60.8% 64.1% that is in the labor force Employment-Population Ratio • Share of the population over the age of 16 52.8% 52.8% that is working Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Status of the Hispanic or Latino Population by Sex and Age,” Current Population Survey, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf (accessed June 5, 2020), Table A and A-3. www.unidosus.org PAGE 1 LATINO JOBS REPORT Employment of Latinos in May 2020 The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reported that employers added 2.5 million jobs in May, compared to 20.5 million jobs lost in April.
    [Show full text]
  • Puerto Ricans at the Dawn of the New Millennium
    puerto Ricans at the Dawn of New Millennium The Stories I Read to the Children Selected, Edited and Biographical Introduction by Lisa Sánchez González The Stories I Read to the Children documents, for the very first time, Pura Belpré’s contributions to North Puerto Ricans at American, Caribbean, and Latin American literary and library history. Thoroughly researched but clearly written, this study is scholarship that is also accessible to general readers, students, and teachers. Pura Belpré (1899-1982) is one of the most important public intellectuals in the history of the Puerto Rican diaspora. A children’s librarian, author, folklorist, translator, storyteller, and puppeteer who began her career the Dawn of the during the Harlem Renaissance and the formative decades of The New York Public Library, Belpré is also the earliest known Afro-Caribeña contributor to American literature. Soy Gilberto Gerena Valentín: New Millennium memorias de un puertorriqueño en Nueva York Edición de Carlos Rodríguez Fraticelli Gilberto Gerena Valentín es uno de los personajes claves en el desarrollo de la comunidad puertorriqueña Edwin Meléndez and Carlos Vargas-Ramos, Editors en Nueva York. Gerena Valentín participó activamente en la fundación y desarrollo de las principales organizaciones puertorriqueñas de la postguerra, incluyendo el Congreso de Pueblos, el Desfile Puertorriqueño, la Asociación Nacional Puertorriqueña de Derechos Civiles, la Fiesta Folclórica Puertorriqueña y el Proyecto Puertorriqueño de Desarrollo Comunitario. Durante este periodo también fue líder sindical y comunitario, Comisionado de Derechos Humanos y concejal de la Ciudad de Nueva York. En sus memorias, Gilberto Gerena Valentín nos lleva al centro de las continuas luchas sindicales, políticas, sociales y culturales que los puertorriqueños fraguaron en Nueva York durante el periodo de a Gran Migracíón hasta los años setenta.
    [Show full text]
  • Racism Is a Virus Toolkit
    Table of Contents About This Toolkit.............................................................................................................03 Know History, Know Racism: A Brief History of Anti-AANHPI Racism............04 Exclusion and Colonization of AANHPI People.............................................04 AANHPI Panethnicity.............................................................................................07 Racism Resurfaced: COVID-19 and the Rise of Xenophobia...............................08 Continued Trends....................................................................................................08 Testimonies...............................................................................................................09 What Should I Do If I’m a Victim of a Hate Crime?.........................................10 What Should I Do If I Witness a Hate Crime?..................................................12 Navigating Unsteady Waters: Confronting Racism with your Parents..............13 On Institutional and Internalized Anti-Blackness..........................................14 On Institutionalized Violence...............................................................................15 On Protests................................................................................................................15 General Advice for Explaning Anti-Blackness to Family.............................15 Further Resources...................................................................................................15
    [Show full text]
  • Los Veteranos—Latinos in WWII
    Los Veteranos—Latinos in WWII Over 500,000 Latinos (including 350,000 Mexican Americans and 53,000 Puerto Ricans) served in WWII. Exact numbers are difficult because, with the exception of the 65th Infantry Regiment from Puerto Rico, Latinos were not segregated into separate units, as African Americans were. When war was declared on December 8, 1941, thousands of Latinos were among those that rushed to enlist. Latinos served with distinction throughout Europe, in the Pacific Theater, North Africa, the Aleutians and the Mediterranean. Among other honors earned, thirteen Medals of Honor were awarded to Latinos for service during WWII. In the Pacific Theater, the 158th Regimental Combat Team, of which a large percentage was Latino and Native American, fought in New Guinea and the Philippines. They so impressed General MacArthur that he called them “the greatest fighting combat team ever deployed in battle.” Latino soldiers were of particular aid in the defense of the Philippines. Their fluency in Spanish was invaluable when serving with Spanish speaking Filipinos. These same soldiers were part of the infamous “Bataan Death March.” On Saipan, Marine PFC Guy Gabaldon, a Mexican-American from East Los Angeles who had learned Japanese in his ethnically diverse neighborhood, captured 1,500 Japanese soldiers, earning him the nickname, the “Pied Piper of Saipan.” In the European Theater, Latino soldiers from the 36th Infantry Division from Texas were among the first soldiers to land on Italian soil and suffered heavy casualties crossing the Rapido River at Cassino. The 88th Infantry Division (with draftees from Southwestern states) was ranked in the top 10 for combat effectiveness.
    [Show full text]
  • Code-Switching and Translated/Untranslated Repetitions in Nuyorican Spanglish
    E3S Web of Conferences 273, 12139 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202127312139 INTERAGROMASH 2021 Code-switching and translated/untranslated repetitions in Nuyorican Spanglish Marina Semenova* Don State Technical University, 344000, Rostov-on-Don, Russia Abstract. Nuyorican Spanglish is a variety of Spanglish used primarily by people of Puerto Rican origin living in New York. Like many other varieties of the hybrid Spanglish idiom, it is based on extensive code- switching. The objective of the article is to discuss the main features of code-switching as a strategy in Nuyrican Spanglish applying the methods of linguistic, componential, distribution and statistical analysis. The paper focuses on prosiac and poetic texts created in Nuyrican Spanglish between 1978 and 2020, including the novel Yo-Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi and 142 selected Boricua poems, which allows us to make certain observations on the philosophy and identity of Nuyorican Spanglish speakers. As a result, two types of code-switching as a strategy are denoted: external and internal code-switching for both written and oral speech forms. Further, it is concluded that repetition, also falling into two categories (translated and untranslated), embodies the core values of Nuyorican Spanglish (freedom of choice and focus on the linguistic personality) and reflects the philosophical basis for code-switching. 1 Introduction Nuyorican Spanglish is a Spanglish dialect used in New York’s East Side primarily by people of Puerto Rican origin, many of who are first- or second-generation New Yorkers. This means that Spanglish they use is rather the most effective way to communicate between English and Spanish cultures which come into an extremely intense contact in this cosmopolitan city.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Introduction Frederick Luis Aldama Scholar, playwright, spoken-word performer, award-winning poet, and avant-garde fiction author, since the 1980s Giannina Braschi has been creating up a storm in and around a panoply of Latinx hemispheric spaces. Her creative corpus reaches across different genres, regions, and historical epochs. Her critical works cover a wide range of subjects and authors, including Miguel de Cervantes, Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Antonio Machado, César Vallejo, and García Lorca. Her dramatic poetry titles in Spanish include Asalto al tiempo (1981) and La comedia profana (1985). Her radically ex- perimental genre-bending titles include El imperio de los sueños (1988), the bilingual Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), and the English-penned United States of Banana (2011). With national and international awards and works ap- pearing in Swedish, Slovenian, Russian, and Italian, she is recognized as one of today’s foremost experimental Latinx authors. Her vibrant bilingually shaped creative expressions and innovation spring from her Latinidad, her Puerto Rican-ness that weaves in and through a planetary aesthetic sensibility. We discover as much in her work about US/Puerto Rico sociopolitical histories as we encounter the metaphysical and existential explorations of a Cervantes, Rabelais, Did- erot, Artaud, Joyce, Beckett, Stein, Borges, Cortázar, and Rosario Castel- lanos, for instance. With every flourish of her pen Braschi reminds us that in the distillation and reconstruction of the building blocks of the uni- verse there are no limits to what fiction can do. And, here too, the black scratches that form words and carefully composed blank spaces shape an absent world; her strict selection out of words and syntax is as important as the precise insertion of words and syntax to put us into the shoes of the “complicit reader” (Julio Cortázar’s term) to most productively interface, invest, and fill in the gaps of her storyworlds.
    [Show full text]
  • Immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean: a Socioeconomic Profile
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 413 157 RC 021 297 AUTHOR Rumbaut, Ruben G. TITLE Immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean: A Socioeconomic Profile. PUB DATE 1996-03-00 NOTE 11p.; In: Immigration and Ethnic Communities: A Focus on Latinos; see RC 021 296. PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070) Numerical/Quantitative Data (110) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Acculturation; Demography; Educational Attainment; Employment Level; *Geographic Distribution; Higher Education; *Hispanic Americans; *Immigrants; Income; Latin Americans; *Limited English Speaking; Population Distribution; Poverty; *Socioeconomic Status; Tables (Data) IDENTIFIERS *Caribbean Americans; Latinos ABSTRACT This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversity in the United States, with a focus on immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. Some key facts and figures about contemporary immigrants are presented, looking at their patterns of settlement and comparing their distinctive social and economic characteristics to major U.S. racial-ethnic groups. The discussion is centered on information conveyed in four detailed tables, drawn from 1990 census data. The tables address:(1) states and counties of principal Hispanic settlement for the total Hispanic population and for Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and other subgroups;(2) population size, nativity, educational attainment, occupational level, poverty, welfare recipients, income, and percent female-headed households for Hispanic subgroups and non-Hispanic racial-ethnic groups;(3) decade of immigration, U.S. citizenship, and settlement patterns by world region and selected Latin American and Caribbean countries of birth; and (4) English proficiency, percentage of college graduates, percent in labor force, occupational level, poverty, and older adults for immigrant groups by world region and selected Latin American and Caribbean countries of birth.
    [Show full text]
  • GERMAN IMMIGRANTS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, and the RECONSTRUCTION of CITIZENSHIP, 1865-1877 DISSERTATION Presented In
    NEW CITIZENS: GERMAN IMMIGRANTS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CITIZENSHIP, 1865-1877 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Alison Clark Efford, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2008 Doctoral Examination Committee: Professor John L. Brooke, Adviser Approved by Professor Mitchell Snay ____________________________ Adviser Professor Michael L. Benedict Department of History Graduate Program Professor Kevin Boyle ABSTRACT This work explores how German immigrants influenced the reshaping of American citizenship following the Civil War and emancipation. It takes a new approach to old questions: How did African American men achieve citizenship rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments? Why were those rights only inconsistently protected for over a century? German Americans had a distinctive effect on the outcome of Reconstruction because they contributed a significant number of votes to the ruling Republican Party, they remained sensitive to European events, and most of all, they were acutely conscious of their own status as new American citizens. Drawing on the rich yet largely untapped supply of German-language periodicals and correspondence in Missouri, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., I recover the debate over citizenship within the German-American public sphere and evaluate its national ramifications. Partisan, religious, and class differences colored how immigrants approached African American rights. Yet for all the divisions among German Americans, their collective response to the Revolutions of 1848 and the Franco-Prussian War and German unification in 1870 and 1871 left its mark on the opportunities and disappointments of Reconstruction.
    [Show full text]
  • Hispanic/Latino American Older Adults
    Ethno MEd Health and Health Care of Hispanic/Latino American Older Adults http://geriatrics.stanford.edu/ethnomed/latino Course Director and Editor in Chief: VJ Periyakoil, Md Stanford University School of Medicine [email protected] 650-493-5000 x66209 http://geriatrics.stanford.edu Authors: Melissa talamantes, MS University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Sandra Sanchez-Reilly, Md, AGSF GRECC South Texas Veterans Health Care System; University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio eCampus Geriatrics IN THE DIVISION OF GENERAL INTERNAL MEDICINE http://geriatrics.stanford.edu © 2010 eCampus Geriatrics eCampus Geriatrics hispanic/latino american older adults | pg 2 CONTENTS Description 3 Culturally Appropriate Geriatric Care: Learning Resources: Learning Objectives 4 Fund of Knowledge 28 Instructional Strategies 49 Topics— Topics— Introduction & Overview 5 Historical Background, Assignments 49 Topics— Mexican American 28 Case Studies— Terminology, Puerto Rican, Communication U.S. Census Definitions 5 Cuban American, & Language, Geographic Distribution 6 Cultural Traditions, Case of Mr. M 50 Population Size and Trends 7 Beliefs & Values 29 Depression, Gender, Marital Status & Acculturation 31 Case of Mrs. R 51 Living Arrangements 11 Culturally Appropriate Geriatric Care: Espiritismo, Language, Literacy Case of Mrs. J 52 & Education 13 Assessment 32 Topics— Ethical Issues, Employment, End-of-Life Communication 33 Case of Mr. B 53 Income & Retirement 16 Background Information, Hospice, Eliciting Patients’ Perception
    [Show full text]
  • Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies G
    Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies G. Reginald Daniel, Laura Kina, Wei Ming Dariotis, and Camilla Fojas Mixed Race Studies1 In the early 1980s, several important unpublished doctoral dissertations were written on the topic of multiraciality and mixed-race experiences in the United States. Numerous scholarly works were published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By 2004, master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, books, book chapters, and journal articles on the subject reached a critical mass. They composed part of the emerging field of mixed race studies although that scholarship did not yet encompass a formally defined area of inquiry. What has changed is that there is now recognition of an entire field devoted to the study of multiracial identities and mixed-race experiences. Rather than indicating an abrupt shift or change in the study of these topics, mixed race studies is now being formally defined at a time that beckons scholars to be more critical. That is, the current moment calls upon scholars to assess the merit of arguments made over the last twenty years and their relevance for future research. This essay seeks to map out the critical turn in mixed race studies. It discusses whether and to what extent the field that is now being called critical mixed race studies (CMRS) diverges from previous explorations of the topic, thereby leading to formations of new intellectual terrain. In the United States, the public interest in the topic of mixed race intensified during the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, an African American whose biracial background and global experience figured prominently in his campaign for and election to the nation’s highest office.
    [Show full text]
  • America's Invisible Children
    AMERICA’S INVISIBLE CHILDREN Latino Youth and the Failure of Justice By NEELUM ARYA with FRANCISCO VILLARRUEL, CASSANDRA VILLANUEVA, and IAN AUGARTEN Foreword by JANET MURGUÍA and JUAN SÁNCHEZ www.campaignforyouthjustice.org www.nclr.org POLICY BRIEF RACE AND ETHNICITY SERIES VOLUME 3 The Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) is a national organization dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under the age of 18 in the adult criminal justice system. CFYJ gratefully acknowledges our funders who support our work, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Chasdrew Fund, the Eckerd Family Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Public Welfare Foundation, and individual anonymous donors. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, working to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans. NCLR gratefully acknowledges funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation which supports NCLR’s participation in the Models for Change initiative and the development of the Latino Juvenile Justice Network. May 2009 AMERICA’S INVISIBLE CHILDREN LATINO YOUTH AND THE FAILURE OF JUSTICE This policy brief is dedicated to the thousands of Latino youth and families across America who have been harmed by laws and policies that allow youth to be tried in the adult criminal justice system and incarcerated in adult jails and prisons. FOREWORD The face of America is changing. The num- ber of Latino youth in this country has almost doubled in the last decade, and on any given day close to 18,000 Latino youth are incarcerated in America.1 Youth who dream of becoming the teachers, doctors, and mayors of our communities are instead arrested and locked away – their dreams shattered.
    [Show full text]