“Doing Race”

Abstract

For most Latino youth, Latinos constitute a separate, while diverse, racial group. Our study demonstrates that, when asked about their identities, Latino youth do not follow conventional U.S. racial categories. Although they prefer to identify by national origin or panethnicity, they consider themselves to be part of a racial group rather than an ethnic group, as the U.S. Census designates them. Using findings from in-depth semistructured interviews with two samples of young adults in Chicago and Central Florida, this research joins the long-standing debate on the conceptual division between race and ethnicity arguing that there is a mismatch between existing sociological understandings of race and ethnicity and the current racial ideas and racial practices among Latino youth. There is also a mismatch between institutional measures of “race,” such as those found in the U.S. Census, and Latinos’ self-understandings of where they belong in the U.S. racial hierarchy. We suggest that not being officially designated as a racial group leads to the erosion of perceptions of belonging among Latinos to a nation in which being a member of a racial group allows for visibility and claims-making in a multiracial society.

The Intellectual Structure of theAmerican Behavioral Scientist: Five Decades of Research

“…Cluster #6 researchers are focused on the sociology of organizations from an institutional approach (e.g., Coleman, 1990; Powell & Dimaggio, 1991; Scott, 1995). Cluster #7 is related to segmented assimilation (e.g., Flores-González, Aranda, & Vaquera, 2014; Gonzales, 2011), including debate on racialized inequality (e.g., Saperstein & Penner, 2012) and legal violence (e.g., Menjivar & Abrego, 2012). Cluster #8 researchers’ interest is in crime and how to handle it (e.g., Cohen & Felson, 1979; Wilson, 1975), and Cluster #9 concerns the confrontation between public policy and citizen attitudes (e.g., Bayley & Mendelsohn, 1969).…”

“I Was Born at the Border, Like the ‘Wrong’ Side of It”: Undocumented Latinx Youth Experiences of Racialization in the U.S. South

“…As noted earlier, the racialization process in their schools and communities constitute the "everyday interactions and experiences that single them out, conveying and reinforcing a sense of exclusion" (Flores-González et al 2014, 1835. Throughout the data, the youth react to, resist, and reclaim their Latinx immigrant undocumentedness.…”

“…The current study expands the literature on the racial/ethnic identity dynamics at play for Latinx undocumented youth by calling attention to how racialization occurs and how youth resist it at microlevels. Scholars such as Fergus (2009) and Flores-González and colleagues (2014) state that although Latinx youth are "assigned race" in school/by schools, they often come to understand their racial identities through "everyday interactions and experiences that single them out, conveying and reinforcing a sense of exclusion" (Flores-González et al 2014, 1835. As such, the youths' everyday identity experiences are fraught as they try to make sense of the U.S. racial structure all the while in contested spaces of schools.…”

Dreams Deferred

“…Sociolegal factors, including immigration laws, affect immigrant incorporation and mobility (Portes & Zhou, 1993;Zhou, 1999), membership (Johnson, 1996), identity and sense of belonging (Calavita, 2005;Flores-González, Aranda, & Vaquera, 2014), and even health (see Castañeda & Melo, 2014). The important work of Abrego (2006Abrego ( , 2008, Chavez (2008), Contreras (2009), Gonzales (2010, 2011), and Menjívar (2006a, 2006b highlight the challenges faced by immigrant youth and their families who must navigate the rocky terrain conferred by their status (Abrego & Gonzales, 2010;Gleeson & Gonzales, 2012; see also Menjívar & Abrego, 2009).…”