Christina A. Sue

Assimilation and gender in naming

This article examines the naming practices of Hispanic parents who gave birth to children in Los Angeles County in 1995. The authors find that greater exposure to U.S. culture increases the chances of naming a child in English. However, they find that by giving children English names that are translatable into Spanish, U.S.‐born Hispanic parents are able simultaneously to assimilate while maintaining a connection to their ethnic origins. In addition, the authors find that attitudes favoring assimilation are particularly great when naming daughters. Immigrant Hispanic couples tend to give sons Spanish names, but they often give daughters English names without Spanish referents. These gender differences persist even among U.S.‐born Hispanics paired with non‐Hispanics. Among intermarried couples, father’s ethnicity has a disproportionately large influence in naming, especially for sons’ names. These findings have implications for how the assimilation process is gendered.

An assessment of the Latin Americanization thesis

Abstract In 2004, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva published an article in which he proposed a provocative thesis – he argued that the US system of race is beginning to resemble that of Latin America. Despite the attention received from the US side, there has been no response from scholars of race in Latin America. This article is a critical reply to Bonilla-Silvas Latin Americanization thesis. In the article, I move the debate forward by introducing a Latin American perspective. I begin by outlining and addressing various claims made by Bonilla-Silva regarding the Latin American system of race. I then discuss how his thesis is put to the empirical test and briefly comment on the models ability to explain the future of race in the United States. I conclude with a discussion of how the racial terrain is rapidly changing in Latin America and the implications that this has for Bonilla-Silvas theory. Finally, I suggest ways in which the Latin Americanization thesis can be improved.

Comparative racisms: What anti-racists can learn from Latin America

There has been extensive debate about the putative imperial dimensions of critical race studies in Latin America. The concern is that US racial discourses, identities and anti-racist strategies are being incorrectly applied to, if not forced upon, Latin America. Those who disagree with this position, including ourselves, argue that it is legitimate to take insights and understandings gleaned in the USA as tools for understanding and challenging racism in Latin America. However, we also believe that the exchange of ideas regarding effective anti-racist strategies should flow in both directions. Therefore, in this article we change the direction of the traditional dialogue by discussing ways in which research in Latin America can inform the theoretical foundation of antiracism in other countries, such as the USA. Specifically, we discuss the implications of current strategies of race mixing, minimization of racial consciousness, colorblindness, multiculturalism and racism literacy for current theories of anti-racism.

Raceblindness in Mexico: implications for teacher education in the United States

The demographic make‐up of US public schools indicates an increasing divergence between the racial background of teachers and that of their students: Whites represent approximately 90% of all public school teachers whereas 40% of students are of color. Further complicating the situation is the fact that many of the students of color are first‐generation immigrants. The US education system is struggling to adapt to the changing nature of America’s classrooms. Many have pointed out how the US educational system has become dysfunctional, especially for children who are not part of the linguistic and racial mainstream. Some scholars blame an inconsistency between the racial frames held by White teachers and those embraced by their students of color. It is argued that Whites are oftentimes colorblind whereas students of color are usually color conscious. However, this assumption may not hold for first‐generation immigrants who bring their racial discourses from their home countries. For example, Mexican immigrants may bring color‐blind frameworks which are common in Mexico. In this article I outline the predominant racial frames used by mixed‐race Mexicans. I draw on 109 semi‐structured interviews and focus group data collected over the course of one year in Veracruz, Mexico. In discussing racial frames in Mexico, I seek to provide teachers and educators in the US with conceptual tools to work with the Mexican immigrant population. Finally, I propose that we should address issues of racial frames from a broader, global perspective, incorporating the experiences of various racial and ethnic groups into teacher education.

Racial Ideologies, Racial-Group Boundaries, and Racial Identity in Veracruz, Mexico

Recent scholarly interest in the populations of African descent in Latin America has contributed to a growing body of literature. Although a number of studies have explored the issue of blackness in Afro-Latin American countries, much less attention has been paid to how blackness functions in mestizo American countries. Furthermore, in mestizo America, the theoretical emphasis has oftentimes been placed on the mestizo/Indian divide, leaving no conceptual room to explore the issue of blackness. This article begins to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on blackness in the western Caribbean cities of Port of Veracruz and Boca del Río, which lie in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Specifically, it looks at the racial-based and color-based identification of individuals of African descent, societal construction of the ‘black’ category, and the relationship between national and racial identities. This article relies on data from participant observation conducted over the course of one year and 112 semi-structured interviews.

Hegemony and Silence Confronting State-Sponsored Silences in the Field

State-sponsored silences cloak topics, such as inequality, that are of considerable social significance. However, hegemonic processes protecting current power structures drive these subjects underground, making them resilient and resistant to exposure. This poses both methodological and epistemological dilemmas. The social forces that perpetuate these silences do not yield easily to researchers; scholars thus know little about the complex hegemonic mechanisms underlying these powerful social forces. In this article, based on my experience conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the context of Mexico’s state-sponsored silence on racism, I illustrate how silence and silencing discourses function as mechanisms to reproduce hegemonic social relations. I detail the numerous barriers I faced when attempting to penetrate the silence on racism, and how these seemingly unproductive encounters ironically resulted in exposing various silencing mechanisms. I address the bigger question of why the Mexican populace goes to great lengths to keep racism hidden: in maintaining the invisibility of racism, they reaffirm their national and moral identities. I conclude by sharing my “methodological toolkit” for studying state-sponsored silences.

More than ‘A Hidden Race’: The Complexities of Blackness in Mexico and Peru

In the PBS film series Black in Latin America, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes on the ambitious task of depicting blackness in six countries – the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru – to a primarily ‘American’ audience. Given that Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest concentration of persons of African descent outside Africa, the documentary is an important one. Gates’ coverage of ‘blackness’ in these countries is comprehensive, spanning from the time of slavery to the present, with a primary focus on the cultural contributions, social experiences, and identities of individuals of African descent in these regions. However, Gates’ research traditionally has not focused on race in Latin America and, as scholars positioned more centrally in this field, we found some of his characterizations and treatment of the topic to be problematic. In this and the following commentary articles, scholars of race in the featured countries engage in a critical analysis of the documentary. We begin with an examination of Gates’ presentation of blackness in Mexico and Peru. In contrast to the other countries featured in the series, Mexico and Peru fall within mestizo America; their populations are mainly comprised of mestizos and Indigenous peoples and they have relatively small populations of African descent. Moreover, blackness is marginalized in the historical narratives and national ideologies (state-sponsored belief systems) of these countries. Consequently, many people are unaware of the nations’ African heritage. The film endeavors to expose this hidden history. Replete with rich visual displays, the Mexican portion of the documentary addresses a range of issues that contextualize the Afro-Mexican experience. Gates discusses the historical context, cultural influences, and the contemporary situation of this population. Regionally, he focuses on the two areas of Mexico with the largest concentration of Afro-Mexicans – Veracruz and the Costa Chica, a region that runs along the coasts of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Also incorporating dynamic visual imagery, the Peru segment delves into the Afro-Peruvian experience, placing substantial emphasis on the history of slavery. Gates highlights the fact that at least 100,000 African slaves were brought to Peru and that, in colonial times, Africans and their descendants made up between 30 and 40 percent of Lima’s population. The film makes note of the urban character and more relaxed nature of slavery in Lima, as Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2013 Vol. 8, No. 1, 76–82, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2013.768462

U.S. racial and ethnic relations in the twenty-first century: are old divisions prevailing?

ABSTRACT In this response to Valdez and Golash-Boza’s article, U.S. Racial and Ethnic Relations in the twenty-first century, I commend the authors for raising critical issues about the traditional lack of integration of race and ethnicity paradigms. However, I argue that, in an effort to make their claim about the distinction between the ethnicity and race paradigms, they end up oversimplifying some of the literature and overlook the ways in which race and ethnicity scholarship from the twenty-first century has made important advances towards paradigm integration. In my response I provide an alternate reading of some of the literature that the authors critique, focusing on the Mexican middle-class case. I then highlight scholars who are working towards race–ethnicity integration, moving past old paradigm divides. I conclude my response by introducing the concept of the “ethnoracial core”, which I believe moves us in the direction that Valdez and Golash-Boza are proposing.

The influence of social networks, social capital, and the ethnic community on the U.S. destination choices of Mexican migrant men

ABSTRACT Compared to the overwhelming emphasis on the causes of international migration, less attention has been paid to immigrant destination choice. Studies which have addressed destination outcomes are generally quantitative in nature and have focused on macro-level explanations. In this article, we adopt a qualitative approach to examine undocumented Mexican male migrants’ decision-making processes about the destination, demonstrating how the interplay between social networks, social capital, and individual circumstance influences their U.S. destination choices, both when migrating from Mexico and when relocating within the United States. Based on seventy semi-structured, in-depth interviews with primarily undocumented Mexican migrants residing in Colorado, we detail the specific mechanisms that guided them to particular destinations. Our findings illustrate the importance of the geographical diversity of social ties, the type of migration (international vs. internal), the kind and strength of ties, and the form of interpersonal interactions with ties, for respondents’ destination outcomes. In addition, our findings challenge the notion that the presence of a co-ethnic community is consistently viewed by migrants as a destination incentive.

Unforeseen Roads to Antiracism

Books of this caliber are few and far between. Moreover, it is rare to find a study that so deeply engages questions of the relationship between race, immigration policy, and form of government. In this truly pathbreaking book, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas, David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martı́n meticulously document and analyze the immigration laws of 22 major countries in the Americas from 1790 to 2010. The authors’ rigorous comparative and multi-method approach, which includes close attention to socio-historic context and the domestic and global dimensions of policy making, has resulted in an unprecedented study. In the book, FitzGerald and CookMartı́n engage in a broad regional analysis to illustrate how immigration policies travel across national borders. Specifically, they explain how and why policies of overt immigrant selection based on race, ethnicity, and nationality became unpopular and were consequently dismantled across the region toward the latter half of the twentieth century. The authors diligently track the sequence of events associated with this regional policy shift, which began in Latin America and then spread to North America through policy diffusion. In a surprising twist, they reveal how the most liberal-democratic countries were the last to shed their racist immigration policies, challenging conventional wisdom that liberalism and racism cannot coexist. FitzGerald and Cook-Martı́n complement their regional story with an in-depth qualitative analysis of six well-chosen case studies: the United States, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Each of these cases contributes a unique angle on understandings of policy diffusion and of the interaction between domestic and foreign politics. The case of the United States illustrates how the world’s longest-standing democracy promoted racially selective immigration policies for a longer period than other nations within the Americas. Ultimately, it was an investment in global relationships that pushed the United States toward the eradication of such policies. Canada represents the clearest case of how involvement with multilateral institutions can shape immigration selection policies. However, the Canadian case also illustrates how, in a democratic society, anti-immigrant citizen groups can shape national immigration policy. The Cuban story is one of policy diffusion directly influenced by the United States. It also exemplifies how state-sponsored anti-racist rhetoric can comfortably exist alongside practices of overt racism in immigration policy. The negative case of Mexico is particularly fascinating in that leaders implemented raciallyrestrictive immigration laws despite the country’s lack of success in attracting immigrants. The Brazilian case demonstrates the power of its national myth of racial democracy to contextualize debates over immigration policies. Finally, Argentina was faced with a unique demographic situation that resulted in a lack of racially discriminatory policies. The Argentine case also shows how racism among elites is not always a sufficient condition to stimulate the imposition Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas, by David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martı́n. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. 512 pp.