Robert R. Alvarez

Jim and José Crow: Conversations on the Black/Brown Dialogue:

This paper explores the parallel experiences of Black and Brown Americans which are often regarded as mutually exclusive. In discussing the divergent but similar histories of Chicanos and Afro-Americans, I utilize the notion of ‘improvisation’, a re-examination of the 1930 desegregation court case, Roberto Alvarez v. Lemon Grove focusing on how Jim Crow laws also affected the Mexican American Southwest as José Crow custom. Utilizing George Bond’s critical narrative, I argue that the Black/Brown struggle is co-joined in history and the social justice movement. In the Bond tradition, my aim here is to refresh our historical understanding and also to reinvigorate the Black/Brown dialogue.

Applied Anthropology in the Mexico-United States Borderlands: Comparative Perspectives on Transborder Process

This issue of Human Organization is the result of the transborder conference Cultura y Comunidad held in Ensenada, Mexico (2014). Stemming from the “world-wide” incentive and trajectory of the SfAA, and the growing interest in “Applied Anthropology” in Mexico, Mexican and United States institutions joined with the SfAA in a collaborative conference to explore transborder themes affecting individuals and communities, social process, and social justice from the perspectives of transborder anthropologies. Applied vs. Activist anthropology and differences in Mexican and United States anthropology are explored. The conference proposed acknowledging the regional, transnational/transborder—the Southwest North America and Northern Mexico as a geographic and fluid human entity. Gender, indigeneity, education, health and cancer treatment, monetary exchange, violence, and ethnic representation are discussed from both Mexican and United States transborder perspectives. A principal goal is to engage “world anthropolog...