Tanya Kateri Hernandez

The Intersectionality of Lived Experience and Anti-discrimination Empirical Research

Working from the perspective of critical race theory, this chapter provides an empirical illustration of intersectionality theory in the context of employment discrimination complaints. Based on original research and other published data, I demonstrate that African-American women are more likely than their white female counterparts to file charges of sexual harassment at work. I then explore whether the difference is attributable to different levels in amount or severity of harrassment against black women. I conclude by calling for more intersectional research that can better address the lived experience of women who make harrassment claims, both women of color and other groups.

Envisioning the United States in the Latin American myth of ‘racial democracy mestizaje’

ABSTRACT Transnational comparison is relevant both to how racial hierarchy is obscured and elucidated. This Essay traces how the Latin American ‘racial democracy mestizaje’ depiction of the US as blind to racial mixture and color distinctions mistakenly misrepresent the Southern Jim Crow history as the only US experience of racism. It suggests that, in turn, such a limited frame for comparison cloaks not only the more extensive terrain of racism in the United States that is separate from the Jim Crow reality but also parallels to the Latin American context. Moreover, the circumscribed view of US racism adversely affects those who critique the ‘racial democracy mestizaje’ myth of Latin American post racialism. This is because the standard Latin American story of US racial history hinders the ability to fully countermand the attack that portrays racial justice activists as inappropriately applying overly restrictive US binary perspectives on race. With the fuller explication of the complete US racial history, and its contemporary manifestations, it will not be so easy to dismiss the comparisons of racial subordination across the Americas, as the imperialist imposition of ill-fitting US notions of race.

Racially-Mixed Personal Identity Equality

A growing number of commentators view discrimination against multiracial (racially-mixed) people as a distinctive challenge to racial equality. This perspective is based on the belief that multiracial-identified persons experience racial discrimination in a manner that makes it necessary to reconsider civil rights law. This article disputes that premise and deconstructs its Personal Identity Equality approach to anti-discrimination law and demonstrates its ill effects reflected in Supreme Court affirmative action litigation.

Revealing the Race-Based Realities of Workforce Exclusion

Abstract Advocates in the fight against poverty in Latin America often center class above race as the factor that most determines Afro-descendants’ life-chances. But a growing movement is setting the record straight.