LATINO IMMIGRATION and RACIAL STRATIFICATION by JUAN PABLO BLACK ROMERO UTZ MCKNIGHT, COMMITTEE CHAIR SIMANTI LAHIRI DANIEL LEVI
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
LATINO IMMIGRATION AND RACIAL STRATIFICATION by JUAN PABLO BLACK ROMERO UTZ MCKNIGHT, COMMITTEE CHAIR SIMANTI LAHIRI DANIEL LEVINE DANA PATTON KATHRYN OTHS JENNIFER SHOAFF A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2014 Copyright Juan Pablo Black Romero 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This dissertation addresses the problem of racial stratification of the Latino community in the United States from the theoretical position of critical race theory. Racial stratification for Latino residents and Latino immigrants is possible in the everyday through a series of practices that allow for persons of the community to contribute to the proliferation of race in American society by rendering race very difficult to address politically. The theoretical analysis of friendship as a form of moral aesthetics in the works of Aristotle, Kant, and Rousseau allows for a theory of race that addresses the invisibility and the transcendence of race constitutive of American society and, therefore, constitutive of the racial stratification of the Latino community in the United States. In this theoretical development, race is thought as an aesthetic of both the citizen and the immigrant subjects or, in other words, as a race-aesthetics. McKnight’s (2010) theory of the conditionality of race, Hall’s (New Ethnicities 1996, Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance 1996) theories of cultural representation and hegemonic domination, Gilroy’s (1995) theory of Black Atlantic counterculture, and Mills’ (1997) theory of the hegemony of the racial contract are critically engaged and expanded with the theory of the race-aesthetic. ii DEDICATION Dedicated to my parents Ciana and Pio, to Carmen my beloved wife, and to Asiri my daughter. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to express my profound gratitude to Dr. McKnight for his support and guidance in my academic and professional development during my eleven years at the Political Science department of The University of Alabama. As an International student I owe greatly to Dr. McKnight the fact that I could embark in the process of writing this dissertation in the last three years in spite of the limitations imposed to student visa holders; he actively contributed to my search for the necessary funding in order to complete the development of my career at the University of Alabama. Finally, I am very grateful for his profound influence on my views on politics; his teachings and his politics have helped greatly in my formation as a critical theorist and as a person. I also want to thank the members of my committee Dr. Simanti Lahiri, Dr. Daniel Levine, Dr. Kathryn Oths, Dr. Jennifer Shoaff, and Dr. Dana Patton for their contribution to the conclusion of this dissertation. I would like to thank my whole family. First of all, and with all my love, I want to express my thankfulness to my mother for her teachings, for the intellectual discussions, for all the support, and for all her dedication to my success as a person. Thanks to her for the courage of raising me and my siblings by herself, and thanks to her for all the love and toughness that she had to show while doing it. Muchas gracias mi madrecita querida. Second, thanks to my dad. He has supported all my personal and professional pursuits and shared few, but quality time with me. Some of those few moments are now my good memories of childhood, but the moments I iv consider the most important are those that I shared with him for a year back in 1996; they changed my life. Grazie tante a te mio babbo. Thanks to my sisters Ana María, María Cristina, and María Verónica for their support and for teaching me how to be responsible for somebody else. Thank you all for the support during the hard times that became an intrinsic part of the development of my career; thank you all for being part of the good moments too. Thanks to my beloved wife Carmen for being patient and supportive during the three years that took me to finish this dissertation. I can’t thank her enough for the decisions that brought her close to me. There are few words and phrases that I know would express the gratitude I have for her because I know that it would have been very difficult for me be here without her presence and love in my life. I also want to thank Asiri, my daughter, who became part of the family at the time of writing this dissertation; she has made my work more meaningful. Thanks to you Carmen and Asiri for reminding me why I do what I do as a political theorist; thank you Carmen and Asiri for showing me the tremendous importance of dealing with race and immigration in theory. Lastly, I want to thank my friends for their support and for what they have shown me about politics and theory. Thanks to my friend Luis Ordóñez for introducing me to Marxism and to the politics of social justice during my engineering years in Ecuador, and thanks to my friend Darren Surman for keeping me on this path during my years at the University of Alabama. Thanks to my friend Pacha Terán for showing me the problems of racial politics in Ecuador and, therefore, the problem of the politics of mestizaje. Thanks to my friend María Luisa Maldonado in Ecuador for introducing me to the practice of solidarity in the everyday of local politics. And thanks to the persons that are not friends with me anymore but shared some of the most v important moments and achievements of my personal life and career; they influenced the way I am and the way I think. vi CONTENTS ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION............................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER 1: Introduction to the Present Work............................................................................. 1 Mestizaje and Racial stratification in the United States.............................................................. 1 Outline of this Project ................................................................................................................. 8 CHAPTER 2: Immigrant Stratification and the Racial Politics of Mobility ................................ 24 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 24 Ethnic Absolutism and Social Stratification ............................................................................. 25 The Expression of Stratification in the Latino and Latino Immigrant Community .................. 27 Immigration and Racial Mobility.............................................................................................. 33 Performance of Racial Mobility................................................................................................ 39 Racial Anxieties: Working Out the Intelligibility of Race........................................................ 44 Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 51 CHAPTER 3: The Moral Materiality of Friendship ..................................................................... 53 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 53 vii Resource Allocation and Presentation of Racial Mobility........................................................ 54 Aristotelian Friendship: Facilitating the Process of Learning Race.......................................... 58 The Morality of Race ................................................................................................................ 67 Being an Ecuadorian Immigrant ............................................................................................... 72 Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 74 CHAPTER 4: Aesthetics, Race, and the Problem of Theoretical Absolutes: Introduction to Race- Aesthetics...................................................................................................................................... 76 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 76 Moral Friendship, the Black Atlantic, and the Mirror of Post-Colonial Theory....................... 77 The Language of the Other as the Aesthetic Contract of Race ................................................. 83 Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 91 CHPATER 5: From Kant: The Complicit Indifference of Race................................................... 93 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 93 The Conscious absence of Interest of Race..............................................................................