Aída Hurtado

Cycles of Pain: Risk Factors in the Lives of Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children

This study extends the risk factors model of background or social history analysis to the lives of incarcerated mothers. Interviews were conducted with a sample of incarcerated mothers. The presence of a number of criminogenic influences such as poverty, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and witnessing violence in the lives of women incarcerated for primarily nonviolent—largely drug-related—offenses and in the lives of their children were identified. The implications of these findings for understanding female criminality and breaking the so-called cycle of crime are discussed.

Social Identities—A Framework for Studying the Adaptations of Immigrants and Ethnics: The Adaptations of Mexicans in the United States

Past treatments of immigration and ethnicity (and of the relationship between them) tend to ignore processes by which the effects of history and social structure occur at the individual level. Many scholars call for social psychological analyses that show how history and macro-social features of the environment produce individual modes of adaptation to immigration, including the construction and reconstruction of ethnicity as one of the modes. We use a social psychological analysis to tie macro-social characteristics to micro-social characteristics of immediate social contexts to examine how two groups of Mexicans in the United States—Mexicanos and Chicanos—differ in their social identities and in their cultural adaptations. Our results from the analyses of the data in the National Chicano Survey indicate that, as predicted by social identity theory, the differences in the structural and historical conditions experienced by immigrants and ethnics result in a more differentiated identity structure for Chicanos than for Mexicanos. The content of the social identities of the two groups also shows important differences according to outgroup comparisons through mastery of the English language. Also consistent with social identity theory, the most problematic social identities—for example, class and race—are the most psychologically powerful in determining cultural adaptations for both groups. In conclusion, differences between immigrants and ethnics are largely the outcome of shifts in reference groups as they compare themselves to a wider array of people who either promote acceptance of devalued social categorizations or in feelings of discontent about ones social identity.

Group Contacts and Ethnicity in the Social Identities of Mexicanos and Chicanos

Factor analyses of social identity labels between two subgroups of the Mexican-descent population supported the prediction that the identities of English-dominant persons born in the United States (Chicanos) would be more differentiated than those of Spanish-dominant persons born in Mexico (Mexicanos). The content of their identities also differed. As predicted, because of differences in length of residence, language facility, geographic dispersal, and likelihood of working in ethnically diverse settings, Chicanos and Mexicanos had different patterns of intra-group and intergroup contacts. Chicanos had less contact with other persons of Mexican descent and more contact with members of other ethnic groups. Predicted relationships between group contacts and social identities were better supported for Chicanos than for Mexicanos. Overall, the study supports the general framework offered in which macrosocial conditions set up particular microsocial conditions (group contacts) that, in turn, influence the formation of social identities.

“Modern” death qualification

We report on the results of a comprehensive statewide survey of death penalty attitudes in which respondents were categorized in terms of their death-qualified or excludable status under several different Supreme Court doctrines governing the death-qualification process. We found that although changes in public opinion with respect to the death penalty in general have altered the relative sizes of the death-qualified and excludable groups, significant differences remain between them on a number of attitudinal dimensions, no matter which doctrines are employed to define these groups. We discuss the implications of these recent data, especially with respect to the Supreme Courts continued reference to the death-qualified jury as an index of community standards with respect to the death penalty itself.

Ethnic Identity and Bilingualism Attitudes

Attitudes toward bilingualism among a national sample of persons of Mexican descent are cast in a set of social psychological forces in which structural integration and childhood linguistic environment influence ethnic identity, which in turn influences bilingualism attitudes through its impact on political consciousness. Support is provided by evidence that ethnic identity, specifically a politically-framed conception of self as Chicana/Chicano and as part of la raza, fosters positive views of bilingualism both directly and indirectly through political consciousness. Ethnic identity also influences bilingualism attitudes through a different and contradictory path. Traditional self-conceptions as Mexican and Spanish-speaking directly encourage support of bilingualism but, at the same time, engage conservative political attitudes that discourage it.

The jurisprudence of race and meritocracy

This article examines the jurisprudential interrelationships between the concept of “merit,” the tradition of legal individualism, and various doctrines of employment discrimination law. Specifically, we review evidence of continuing racial disparities in income and employment that have persisted despite decades of litigation to reduce or eliminate them. We argue that the unique jurisprudential role played by the concept of merit has undermined legal attempts to address the structural causes of racial discrimination in the workplace. We further suggest that the use of standardized employment tests and the nature of the legal doctrines that govern their use reflect certain outmoded meritocratic assumptions that, by individualizing the nature of racial disparity, contribute to continuing group disadvantage in the workplace.

Language as a social problem: The repression of Spanish in south Texas

Abstract In this paper we examine schools’ ‘claims‐making activities’ of defining Spanish use by students as a social problem. Spector and Kitsuses (1977) social problems framework is used to analyse data from the 1983 Language Opinion Survey conducted at Pan American University with a sample of college students. We focus on a qualitative analysis of the students’ open‐ended responses to the question of how the schools they attended prior to college reacted to their use of Spanish. The results indicate two major justifications for suppressing Spanish. One, the schools make a direct link between the students’ English assimilation and their economic as well as social mobility. Two, the schools assert that English is the public medium of discourse and Spanish should only be used in the private domain. We conclude that language is selected because it is a mutable characteristic, unlike skin colour, gender, religion or culture. Of all the distinctive attributes possessed by Mexican descendants, Spanish is not...

Cultural, Media, and Peer Influences on Body Beauty Perceptions of Mexican American Adolescent Girls

Social and cultural values are believed to play a role in the types of bodies that adolescent girls consider beautiful and desirable. In this article, the authors analyzed qualitative interviews from 27 Latina mid-adolescent girls (ages 14 to 16) regarding their perceptions of what body shapes and sizes are valued in Latino culture and European American culture, the nature of their conversations with friends about appearance, and whether boys and the larger community consider large body sizes to be acceptable. There was an overwhelming consensus that a slender but curvy figure is the ideal body type in Latino culture and that European Americans value unnaturally thin physiques. Themes drawn from the adolescents’ responses point to their friends’ opinions, perceptions of boys’ dating preferences, norms in their communities, and body shapes of female celebrities in Latino media outlets as sources of beauty and desirability. These findings have implications for body image intervention programs that expose Latina girls to multiple possibilities of beauty when their physical body shapes exclude them from attaining the ideal that they perceive is appreciated in Latino culture.

The transformative power of Chicana/o Studies: social justice and education

This essay responds to Professor Aguirre’s article in this issue that explores through personal narrative the trials and tribulations of being a faculty member with an expertise in Chicana/o Studies. The author joins his exploration by introducing the structural disadvantages that Chicana/o Studies suffers as a field. She then expounds on what we have gained by developing a new field with an explicitly political focus that includes putting student interests at the center of its development while fighting for economic and social justice as an integral part of its intellectual agenda. Her conclusion explores the challenges that the field of Chicana/o Studies faces as we confront changing demographic and societal conditions.This essay responds to Professor Aguirre’s article in this issue that explores through personal narrative the trials and tribulations of being a faculty member with an expertise in Chicana/o Studies. The author joins his exploration by introducing the structural disadvantages that Chicana/o Studies suffers as a field. She then expounds on what we have gained by developing a new field with an explicitly political focus that includes putting student interests at the center of its development while fighting for economic and social justice as an integral part of its intellectual agenda. Her conclusion explores the challenges that the field of Chicana/o Studies faces as we confront changing demographic and societal conditions.

VI. Restriction and Freedom in the Construction of Sexuality: Young Chicanas and Chicanos Speak Out

Michelle Fine’s important article ‘Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire’, examined sexuality as a multi-positioned, multi-sited phenomenon – that is, she looked at sexuality as a complex social process and social relation that is salient in specific ways during adolescence. One of her key points was the importance of positioning young women not only as victims, but also as active agents in the construction and embodiment of their sexual practices. Fine urged us to move away from simplistic dichotomies of victim/victimizer, oppressed/oppressor, powerful/powerless, and to take seriously the simultaneity of intersectionality according to race, class, gender, sexuality, and physical ableness. If young women, as Fine posits, are not just victims, then neither should young men only be victimizers. They, too, should experience vulnerabilities as they are socialized into a hegemonic masculinity that is psychically brutalizing to all who try to fulfill it. Adherence to hegemonic masculinity oppresses at the same time that it provides privileges (Messner, 1997). Thus, my work (Hurtado, 2003) and that of my students (Roa, 2003; Sinha, 2003) has examined the construction of sexuality among young women, but also among young men. We present some results of one study conducted by Hurtado (2003) with young Chicana participants, and a second study now in progress (Hurtado and Sinha, 2003) conducted with young Chicano participants. Hurtado (2003) interviewed 101 Chicanas, who were between the ages of 20 and 30, and had some education beyond high school. The respondents were contacted through networks in institutions of higher education in various cities in the five southwestern states of Arizona, Colorado, California, New Mexico, and Texas, and in New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington, DC. Seventy-four respondents were