Afro-Mexicans and the Chicano Movement: The Unknown Story

Abstract

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Troubling the Essentialist Discourse ofBrownin Education: The Anti-Black Sociopolitical and Sociohistorical Etymology of Latinxs as aBrownMonolith

“…For example, racial democracy in Cuba is appended to the politics of the revolution (Clealand, 2017), whereas in Puerto Rico, racial democracy is grounded in dominant ideas of nationalism, or the “great Puerto Rican family” (Godreau, 2015; Llorens, 2014; Rivera-Rideau, 2018). However, for the purpose of this article, we take up Brazil and Mexico that are assigned regional significance due to the historical currency of their transnational projection (Hooker, 2017) as well as their adoption in anti-racist U.S. Latinx political formations such as the Chicanx movement (Banks, 2006; Haney López, 2003; Hernández, 2004; Hooker, 2017; Jones, 2018; Rivera-Rideau et al, 2016).…”

“…However, we can glean two aspects regarding the relationship between South–North Latinx political theory, race, and educational discourse in the United States. First, Latin American notions of mestizaje, especially The Cosmic Race , were adopted in the Brown Power and Chicanx movements in addition to more nascent claims among U.S. Latinx legal theorists who champion hybridity as a form of racial fluidity that the Black–White binary cannot apprehend (Banks, 2006; Haney López, 2003; Hernández, 2004; Hooker, 2017; Jones, 2018; Telles & Bailey, 2013). The anti-imperialist nuances and promotion of non-White race mixture in Vasconcelos’s The Cosmic Race were especially key in this appropriation.…”

“…This form of discursive racial identification is not unique to educational institutions; it is also commonplace in historical and contemporary political discourses relevant to anti-Latinx racism (Morales, 2010). For example, critical race legal scholars such as Banks (2006), Hernández (2004), and Haney López (2003) noted the Chicanx movement’s embrace of Brownness to “distinguish themselves from blackness and the black experience in the United States” (Haney López, 2003, pp. 211–212).…”

“…Resultantly, Brown locates discourses of race and ethnicity around notions of skin color and biological race-making that can wrongly obfuscate the anti-Black and anti-Indigenous colonial logics constitutive of U.S. Latinx and Latin American ethnoracial formation (Banks, 2006; Laó-Montes & Buggs, 2014; Milian, 2013; Telles & Paschel, 2014; Wade, 2016, 2017). Second and relatedly, scholarly conversations salient to U.S. Latinxs as uniformly Brown isolates racialization to the United States while failing to underscore its relationship to processes of racialization, racial politics, and colonial logics in Latin America (Banks, 2006; Dzidzienyo & Oboler, 2005; Haney López, 2003; Hernández, 2004, 2016; Hooker, 2014, 2017; Urrieta, 2003; Urrieta & Calderón, 2019). Third, the discursive reference to U.S. Latinxs as monolithically Brown has implications for determining who matters and, reciprocally, who does not matter within social and political discourses of U.S. Latinidad (Afro-Puerto Rican Testimonies, 2010; Jones, 2018; Jorge, 1986/2010; Rivera-Rideau et al, 2016).…”

The Representation of Latin@s in Media: A Negation of Blackness

“…In Puerto Rico, expressions like mejorar la raza or "improve" the race by marrying whiter or referring to African hair as pelo malo or bad hair undermine Afro descendants. In Mexico, phrases such as "working like a black" 4 , "getting black" 5 or "a supper of blacks" 6 (Hernández 2004) are racially offensive, yet are common and accepted.…”