Nancy López

Race-Gender Experiences and Schooling: Second-Generation Dominican, West Indian, and Haitian Youth in New York City.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, a gender gap in education has emerged in the USA. Women from all racial ethnic groups attain higher levels of education than men. This study examines the race-gender gap in education among the children of the largest new immigrant group in New York City--second-generation Caribbean young adults. While previous studies of the second generation focus on assimilation, this study places intersecting race and gender processes at the center of its analysis. Drawing on life history interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, it examines how the cumulative race-gender experiences of second-generation Dominicans, Haitians and anglophone West Indians influence their outlooks toward schooling. It was found that women maintained optimistic outlooks, while men expressed worries about their prospects for social mobility.

Antiracist Pedagogy and Empowerment in a Bilingual Classroom in the U.S., circa 2006

How can teachers and administrators improve the educational environment for Latino/as and other racially stigmatized youth? What does antiracist pedagogy for Latino/a immigrant youth look like? This article describes the thought, action, and reflection employed by a bilingual 9th grade teacher in the Southwest. Antiracist pedagogical strategies include creating an empowering classroom physical space, articulating an antiracist discourse, and encouraging students to resist oppression through civic participation and activism. The author argues that antiracist pedagogy that is anchored in empowering Latino/a immigrant youth is a key part of creating welcoming school spaces that nurture the resilience of Latino/a youth and their families.

The School to Work Transition of Second Generation Immigrants in Metropolitan New York: Some Preliminary Findings

We believe the time has come to undertake a detailed study of the school experience, labor market outcomes, and social incorporation of the leading edge of the second generation as it enters adulthood. Specifically, we are now in the early stages of study which will include a) a large scale telephone survey, b) in-depth, open-ended, in-person follow-up interview with a subsample of survey respondents, and c) strategically positioned ethnographies.

What’s Your “Street Race”? Leveraging Multidimensional Measures of Race and Intersectionality for Examining Physical and Mental Health Status among Latinxs:

Using the 2015 Latino National Health and Immigration Survey (N = 1,197), we examine the relationship between physical and mental health status and three multidimensional measures of race: (1) street race, or how you believe other “Americans” perceive your race at the level of the street; (2) socially assigned race, or what we call ascribed race, which refers to how you believe others usually classify your race in the United States; and (3) self-perceived race, or how you usually self-classify your race on questionnaires. We engage in intersectional inquiry by combining street race and gender. We find that only self-perceived race correlates with physical health and that street race is associated with mental health. We also find that men reporting their street race as Latinx or Arab were associated with higher odds of reporting worse mental health outcomes. One surprising finding was that for physical health, men reporting their street race as Latinx were associated with higher odds of reporting optimal physical health. Among women, those reporting their street race as Mexican were associated with lower odds of reporting optimal physical health when compared to all other women; for mental health status, however, we found no differences among women. We argue that street race is a promising multidimensional measure of race for exploring inequality among Latinxs.

QuantCrit: Rectifying Quantitative Methods through Critical Race Theory.

Abstract Critical race theory (CRT) in education centers, examines, and seeks to transform the relationship that undergirds race, racism, and power. CRT scholars have applied a critical race framework to advance research methodologies, namely qualitative interventions. Informed by this work, and 15 years later, this article reconsiders the possibilities of CRT applications to quantitative methodologies through ‘QuantCrit.’ We ask the question: Can quantitative methods, long critiqued for their inability to capture the nuance of everyday experience, support and further a critical race agenda in educational research? We provide an abbreviated sketch of some of the key tenets of CRT and the enduring interdisciplinary contributions in race and quantitative studies. Second, we examine the legacy and genealogy of QuantCrit traditions across the disciplines to uncover a rich lineage of methodological possibilities for disrupting racism in research. We argue that quantitative approaches cannot be adopted for racial justice aims without an ontological reckoning that considers historical, social, political, and economic power relations. Only then can quantitative approach be re-imagined and rectified.

A Public Ethics Approach Focused on the Lives of Diverse LGBTQ Homeless Youth

How can an ethical-analytical framework focused on social equity help illuminate the challenges faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth of color, particularly those who are homeless? The purpose of this article is to engage in just such an analysis of the complex analytical and ethical challenges presented by homelessness among LGBTQ youth. The authors take as our point of departure the premise that trans youth who are also visible minorities may be among the most marginal and most likely to experience homelessness and other threats to well-being. The authors argue that society needs to be concerned with the lives of diverse LGBTQ youth, and particularly those navigating multiple, intersecting forms of marginalization, including homelessness, because they present us with a limit situation that demands an ethical response.

Assessing racial differences in lifetime and current smoking status & menthol consumption among Latinos in a nationally representative sample

ABSTRACT Objective: To examine the relationship between race and smoking behaviors among Latinos/Hispanics. Design: Using data from the National Adult Tobacco Survey (NATS), we implemented Log-Poisson regression models for each dependent variable (smoking pattern and menthol cigarette use). Each analysis adjusted for age, gender, marital status, employment status, and socioeconomic status (SES). Final pooled cross-sectional sample included 505 Black-Latinos and 9078 White-Latinos. Results: While no racial differences were found in lifetime smoking status among Latinos, Black-Latinos had a 16.6% (95% CI: 0.274, 0.057) increased risk of menthol smoking compared to White-Latinos. Conclusions: The results indicate that menthol consumption is influenced by race among Hispanics/Latinos. To comprehensively address racial disparities among Latinos/Hispanics, further attention needs to be given to racial differences in smoking-related risks among Latinos/Hispanics.

Intra-Ethnic Racial Differences in Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking among Latinos?

ABSTRACT Background and Objectives: This study examined differences in waterpipe smoking (both lifetime and current) by race and ethnicity. More specifically, we evaluated intra-ethnic racial differences among Latinos using a nationally representative sample. Methods: Pooled data from the National Adult Tobacco Survey (NATS) [2012-2014] was used, in which Log-Poisson multivariable regression models were deployed to determine the prevalence of waterpipe smoking behavior. Models were stratified by gender and we further investigated acculturation, controlling for relevant sociodemographic characteristics. Results: In fully-adjusted models assessing lifetime WTS, Black Latinos and White Latinos exhibited an increase prevalence of lifetime WTS compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts. Once stratifying by gender, Black Latino men (PR = 1.49; 95% CI = 1.16, 1.90) exhibited increased prevalence of lifetime WTS compared to their non-Hispanic white men counterparts; although white Latino men (PR = 0.88; 95% CI = 0.80, 0.98) exhibited decreased prevalence compared to their non-Hispanic white male counterparts. Similar trends were found for current WTS among men. In fully adjusted models assessing lifetime WTS, among women, only white Latinas (PR = 1.23; 95% CI = 1.04, 1.46) exhibited increased prevalence compared to their non-Hispanic white women counterparts. When evaluating current WTS, Black Latinas (PR = 2.19; 95% CI = 1.32, 3.65) and white Latinas (PR = 1.28; 95% CI = 1.00, 1.63) exhibited increased prevalence of WTS compared to their non-Hispanic white women counterparts. Conclusions/Importance: Among the U.S. general adult population, intra-ethnic racial differences in WTS behaviors exist among Latinos; and is shaped by gender. Future efforts to eliminate racial disparities in WTS should be attentive intra-ethnic racial differences among Latinos.

Making the Invisible Visible: Advancing Quantitative Methods in Higher Education Using Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality.

Abstract We appeal to critical race theory and intersectionality to examine achievement gaps at a large public university in the American southwest from 2000 to 2015. Using white, high-income women as our reference group, we report linear combinations of marginal effects for six-year graduation rates and developmental course taking across 20 distinct social locations varying according to race-ethnicity, gender, and class. We find substantial achievement gaps that remain unseen in conventional models treating such characteristics as independent. Nearly every group has a significantly lower likelihood of graduation compared to the reference group, and there is substantial variation in estimated achievement gaps. Low-income, American Indian men are approximately 45 percent less likely to graduate within six years relative to the reference group. For high income, black men this gap is approximately 30 percent. Our paper proposes a method and praxis for exploring the complex, interdependent relationship between race-ethnicity, gender, and class.

Gender in Latin America

This collection benefits from the depth of analysis of the power of signification that marked certain sexualities as deviant. As a case in point, many of these essays argue that the number 41 gained a new symbolic meaning in Mexican culture due to the November 1901 events—through folk conversations, the development of masculinity in relationship to nationality, press coverage, and governmental discourses of permissible behavior. Even now, a Mexican person may use the number 41 to emasculate another man, also suggesting his homosexuality. Another significant aspect of this collection is the analysis of differences in homophobia’s reproduction by upper and lower classes in Mexico. While some newspapers considered Los 41 a “low class” behavior, the Mexican working class, according to penny press coverage, positioned itself against bourgeois social domination. Did Los 41 invent, or rather uncover, same-sex desire in Mexico? Or, did the famous dance of 41 men challenge the meaning of same-sex desire? These are some of the questions that The Famous 41 raises, and adds to an increasing body of literature discussing the relationship between gender and sexuality. In fact, some of the readings study sexuality through gender: gender roles, sexual roles interpreted through gender, and gendered language. Yet there are some limitations to the study of sexuality through gender. For instance, homosexuality is privileged in many of the accounts; as a result, cross-dressing—and its potential meanings— loses itself within the sexual arena of samesex desire, when the possibility of gender bending could have been re-articulating sexuality and gender codes altogether. Historical research of this kind necessitates the suspension of all categories. The use and imposition of homosexuality, as we know it in present time, to define erotic codes of that era may be misleading. This collection of essays is a selection of a 2001 symposium on the 100-year anniversary of the dance and raid that followed. While the editors frame the introduction rather nicely, they overemphasize that their work is not a celebration of the oppression of the era, but rather, of sexuality’s “new visibility.” Illustrating Los 41 in an obligatory oppression-domination framework politicizes the investigation in more ways than needed. Politics aside, this 100 year-old story and its resulting research addresses a gap in Mexican studies, historical studies of sexuality, and most important, in looking at the profound layers of social control at the turn of the twentieth century. It also names not only the eruption of some deviant male sexualities, but of most female sexualities that by their mere presence challenged certain codes of order in the Mexico of the 1900s. This book is certainly focused, sharp in its social analysis, and provides an otherwise disparate set of articles as a cohesive and detailed collection of essays that study sexuality and social control from a sociohistorical perspective. The Famous 41 can be a supplemental text for courses on Mexican history, Latin American studies, gender and sexuality studies, criminology, institutions of social control, and the history of sexuality in an international context. It may also be a good resource for Queer Theory courses, the relationship of masculinity to Mexican racial perceptions and nationality, and the medicalization of sexuality.