The Making Of Latino Identity: An American Story

01:05:14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FvM3NceahM

Sintesi

TLDRIn a recent Commonwealth Club program, Ian Haney López and Laura Gómez discussed key themes from Gómez's book, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism." They delved into the intricate history and current dynamics of Latino racial identity in the United States, emphasizing how Latinos have been racialized against the backdrop of both Spanish colonialism and U.S. imperialism. The conversation highlighted the complexity of race versus ethnicity, and how the U.S. census has grappled with measuring Latino identity. ♻️Event reflections pointed out that Latino identity is often perceived through the lens of ethnicity, yet operates significantly within racial classifications, leading to societal misconceptions and policy challenges. 📊Gómez emphasized the importance of acknowledging power relations and historical trends to understand and address discrimination faced by Latinos. 🌐She proposed moving toward better recognition in systems like the census to reflect Latinos' diverse racial realities accurately. 📚The discussion also covered the political and social implications of these identities, including issues like anti-black racism within Latino communities and the varied support for political figures such as Donald Trump among Latinos. ☝This dialogue aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Latino racial identity, encouraging deeper consideration of its historical and social dimensions.

Punti di forza

  • 📖 The book "Inventing Latinos" addresses the racialization of Latinos in the U.S.
  • 🗺️ Latino identity is shaped by both Spanish colonialism and U.S. imperialism.
  • 📊 Many Latinos select 'other' on the census, reflecting inadequate racial options.
  • 🤝 Latino racial identity is crucial for understanding power and discrimination.
  • 🔍 Distinction between race and ethnicity is often blurred and misunderstood.
  • ⚖️ Racial identity impacts political and social power dynamics in the U.S.
  • 🔄 Mestizaje represents a mix of indigenous, African, and Spanish ancestries.
  • 📚 Understanding Latino racialization aids in addressing historical injustices.
  • 🔗 Recognition of racial diversity is needed in official systems like the census.
  • 🗣️ Anti-black racism exists within Latino communities, impacting identity politics.

Linea temporale

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    The program introduced by Ian Haney Lopez features Laura Gomez discussing her new book 'Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism.' The conversation revolves around the historical and contemporary racialization of Latinos in the United States, alongside Gomez's personal insights into Latino identity through family history.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:10:00

    Laura Gomez shares her personal history growing up with a strong Chicana identity in Albuquerque, likening her understanding of her racial identity to both historical and political influences from her family. The discourse challenges viewers to consider how racial identity and cultural identity blend.

  • 00:10:00 - 00:15:00

    Gomez critically examines the notion of Latino racial identity, differentiating ethnicity from race. She emphasizes how Latinos have been racialized in macro ways, shaped by institutions rather than just individual or cultural identification. This reflects broader American ideas around race and ethnicity.

  • 00:15:00 - 00:20:00

    The discussion turns towards social construction and racial categories, with Gomez highlighting that Latino identity often resists easy categorization within American frameworks. This resistance is shown by the high number of Latinos who mark 'other' in the census, signifying their racial identity is not adequately captured.

  • 00:20:00 - 00:25:00

    Gomez criticizes the census distinctions between race and ethnicity, explaining how the separation impacts Latinos, causing many to mark 'other' due to a lack of clarity and relevance in the categories offered. She emphasizes that this has practical effects on political representation and resource allocation.

  • 00:25:00 - 00:30:00

    The conversation examines mestizaje as a pivotal concept in Latino identity, historically used to erase indigenous and African influences. Later discussion highlights blanqueamiento, a cultural process aiming to whiten societies. Laura Gomez argues these concepts shape both personal identities and broader social perceptions.

  • 00:30:00 - 00:35:00

    Gomez and Lopez discuss the politics behind racial categorization, including the role of mestizaje and blanqueamiento in both Latin American identity and Latino identity in the United States. These terms underscore significant aspects of identity formation and social stratification.

  • 00:35:00 - 00:40:00

    Raising the issue of Latino complicity in racism, especially anti-black sentiment, Gomez stresses how historical and ongoing dynamics place Latinos in complex positions within racial hierarchies. The conversation critiques how concepts like mestizaje have facilitated complicity while discussing potential for solidarity.

  • 00:40:00 - 00:45:00

    Exploring identity politics, the conversation questions the support some Latinos show for Trump, suggesting that varying self-identification and socioeconomic status underlie political leanings. Gomez argues for examining the Latino electorate with nuance, considering diverse sub-groups and their different experiences.

  • 00:45:00 - 00:50:00

    A deeper dive into Latino political identity addresses how Latinos may internalize or resist dominant racial hierarchies. Gomez suggests this positioning impacts broader societal issues, emphasizing the influence of regional and demographic differences within the Latino community.

  • 00:50:00 - 00:55:00

    Returning to racial identity, Gomez contrasts the recognition of Latino identity in places like California versus former Confederate states. Here, the notion of defending whiteness is highlighted, showing how regional contexts can influence racial self-identification and the resulting social dynamics.

  • 00:55:00 - 01:00:00

    The panel debates the role of Latinx as a term that reflects gender fluidity and rejects traditional gender binaries in Latino identities. The importance of inclusivity in language is balanced against potential trendiness, as Gomez reflects on how these terms evolve within academic and social discourses.

  • 01:00:00 - 01:05:14

    Concluding the discussion, the importance of redefining Latino identity within future census categorizations is emphasized to better reflect lived experiences. Gomez highlights inclusivity, especially for young Latinos, while navigating the political landscape, suggesting a shift towards acknowledging and acting on racial inequality.

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Mind Map

Domande frequenti

  • What is the main focus of Laura Gómez's book?

    The book focuses on the racialization of Latinos in the United States, providing both historical context and contemporary commentary.

  • Who is Laura Gómez?

    Laura Gómez is the director of the Critical Race Studies Program and holds the Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair at UCLA Law School.

  • What does the book "Inventing Latinos" explore?

    It explores the historical and contemporary racialization of Latinos in the U.S., including topics like colonialism, U.S. practices, and current implications.

  • What does Laura Gómez say about the term 'Hispanic' in relation to race?

    Gómez argues that the classification of Latinos as an ethnicity rather than a race has contributed to their racialization and can obscure the reality of racial dynamics.

  • Is the term 'Latinx' used in the book?

    Gómez mentions 'Latinx' in the book but uses it sparingly, acknowledging its appeal in terms of inclusivity while also noting its trendiness.

  • How did Spanish colonialism influence Latino identity?

    Spanish colonialism established a racial hierarchy with Spanish as the ideal at the top, influencing Latino identity with its legacy of mestizaje, or mixing of races.

  • What role does U.S. imperialism play in Latino racial identity?

    U.S. imperialism has further shaped Latino identity by imposing racialization through interventions in Latin America and influences on immigration and socio-economic dynamics.

  • Why do some Latinos choose 'other' on the census?

    Many Latinos find that the existing racial categories do not adequately represent their identity, leading to a significant number selecting 'other'.

  • What is 'mestizaje'?

    Mestizaje refers to the mix of indigenous, African, and Spanish ancestry that characterizes many people from Latin America.

  • How does Gómez propose Latinos should think about their racial identity?

    Gómez emphasizes understanding Latino racialization as important for recognizing power dynamics and historical context while fostering inclusivity and accurate representation.

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  • 00:00:22
    hello and welcome to the commonwealth club i'm  ian haney lopez i'm the chief justice earl warren
  • 00:00:27
    professor of public law at the university of  california berkeley and it's my pleasure to be the
  • 00:00:33
    moderator for today's commonwealth club program  the making of latino identity an american story
  • 00:00:40
    and i'm so pleased to be joined with my friend  and colleague laura gomez she's the director of
  • 00:00:46
    the critical race studies program uh and also the  holder of the rachel f moran endowed chair at the
  • 00:00:53
    university of california los angeles law school  she is the author of this amazing and important
  • 00:00:58
    new book inventing latinos a new story of american  racism this is a critically important book uh for
  • 00:01:07
    the for the moment um this is telling the story  of how latinos have um been racialized in the
  • 00:01:15
    united states it's both a historical it offers  a historical perspective but also insightful
  • 00:01:21
    contemporary commentary and we're going to turn  to a conversation about that book right now
  • 00:01:27
    before we do uh a reminder um please do feel free  to ask questions in terms of posing your questions
  • 00:01:36
    you can post them in the youtube chat box um or  you can post them in the facebook comment section
  • 00:01:43
    the commonwealth club will uh forward those  questions to me and we'll turn to your questions
  • 00:01:49
    uh in just a little bit but first i want to begin  with laura um laura you know um one of the things
  • 00:01:57
    that you do in this book is you're really you're  telling a lot of the history and you're telling
  • 00:02:02
    um this sort of colonialism and u.s practices  um and then it's contemporary ramifications
  • 00:02:11
    but one thing you don't do and so this is like  this is like i'm coming in i'm not sure if this
  • 00:02:16
    will if you'll be comfortable with this and if  you're not we'll we'll go to the more academic
  • 00:02:20
    side but you don't locate yourself in the book  and this is like this is like the scholars versus
  • 00:02:27
    the trade press you're telling such an important  story but we don't gain a sense of your own family
  • 00:02:34
    um and i wonder let me invite you um if you care  to to to start this story by saying well where are
  • 00:02:43
    you in this um what's your family history where  did you go grow up how do those things give you
  • 00:02:50
    insight into uh the the racial identity  of latinos oh i love that question ian
  • 00:02:58
    thank you so much for that opportunity and it's  funny because in the writing process my editor
  • 00:03:04
    and i went through a little bit of back and forth  and i wanted to actually insert more of that and
  • 00:03:09
    it was you know it it's always what you put in  and what you don't is always a a challenge right
  • 00:03:16
    because you can't do everything in a book but um  so i will i guess i'll start out by saying that
  • 00:03:24
    i grew up in albuquerque in the 1970s and at  the time that that i was was coming of age or or
  • 00:03:32
    you know just going through schooling albuquerque  was a pretty segregated city in the following way
  • 00:03:40
    um the the hispanics which was the terminology  that's a little bit more often used there
  • 00:03:48
    mexican americans were were in the valley either  the south valley or the north valley along the
  • 00:03:54
    rio grande river and the whites were in what  we call the heights which was as you kind of
  • 00:04:00
    got closer to the mountains the sandia mountains  in albuquerque that was you know wider area and
  • 00:04:07
    and that division is actually not nearly what it  is one because the north valley has become more
  • 00:04:14
    desirable and and you know uh for for affluent  folks and because the kind of lower heights has
  • 00:04:22
    become you know less desirable but in my world  of growing up until i went to harvard i was
  • 00:04:32
    surrounded by uh by mexican americans in schooling  and and my family and such and so i grew up with a
  • 00:04:40
    um a strong identity as chicana um but i didn't  have as much of a sense of the world around me
  • 00:04:50
    and you know i had this chicano chicana identity  because my father had gone to college as a as a
  • 00:04:59
    parent um in the 60s and been you know activated  and and part of creating the chicano movement
  • 00:05:08
    and both of my parents were involved  in political activities and and we you
  • 00:05:13
    know i was taught to be very proud of being a  mestiza and um you know brown is beautiful and
  • 00:05:20
    and uh very much a family where we celebrated  african-american civil rights heroes and victories
  • 00:05:29
    and you know this was kind of my my world and i  didn't have that much sense of of you know how
  • 00:05:37
    how necessarily how everybody else saw the world  until i went to college and then that was a shock
  • 00:05:42
    um so let me i'm just going to come in um partly  because i think that you know for for you and i
  • 00:05:51
    talking about a chicano identity or a mestiza  identity as opposed to hispanic identity those
  • 00:05:56
    things may make sense to us but let's unpack them  a little bit for our audience and one way i want
  • 00:06:01
    to start is by saying okay you're saying you grew  up in a basically a basically a mexican-american
  • 00:06:08
    world and i guess i want to start there by  saying so did you have a sense of yourself as
  • 00:06:16
    did you have a racial sense of yourself or  was that more of a cultural conception of
  • 00:06:23
    being mexican-american and then i suspect that  the answer is going to be they kind of blur
  • 00:06:30
    but why they blur in your father's role in a  political vision of race i i suspect the answer
  • 00:06:35
    is going to go in that direction but i thought  i'd just like sort of probe a little bit more
  • 00:06:38
    deeply yeah actually i would say that it was it  was a pretty strong racial identity um probably
  • 00:06:47
    unlike most of my classmates you know who had a  more cultural identity but i think because of our
  • 00:06:53
    uh the politics and the fact that you know every  day at the dinner table we were talking about
  • 00:06:58
    politics and we were talking about history and  and we were talking about black politics uh uh
  • 00:07:04
    you know i remember that i have one one  brother who's a year younger than me miguel and
  • 00:07:09
    you know we all voted for jesse jackson you know  twice right in the in the primaries and this is
  • 00:07:14
    just kind of our our our sense of ourselves  was as another quote-unquote minority group
  • 00:07:23
    along with african-americans um to the point that  when you know my big my intellectual roots really
  • 00:07:32
    stem from from in college trying to figure out  well how are mexican-americans different from
  • 00:07:38
    african-americans what is the you know what is the  the story um there right and it's kind of still
  • 00:07:45
    been you know all these these decades later still  been what i'm yeah driven by yeah that makes sense
  • 00:07:52
    let me let me come back and say you know to answer  the question about race you talk a lot about
  • 00:07:57
    politics and history um and and you talk about  your father being politicized um and this and a
  • 00:08:05
    chicano identity can you can you say a little  bit more about how you understand race itself
  • 00:08:11
    because you're you're writing this book called  inventing latinos a new story of american racism
  • 00:08:17
    you're you're saying to the audience hey i want to  tell you about latino racial identity so maybe we
  • 00:08:23
    should but so what do you think race is yeah well  let's let's step back one one level and just talk
  • 00:08:31
    about um the kind of conventional wisdom about  latinos right the conventional wisdom is well
  • 00:08:37
    we're talking about many different ethnic groups  and these ethnic groups are mexican-americans
  • 00:08:43
    and puerto ricans and cuban americans and so  forth and those are national origin groups they're
  • 00:08:48
    they're immigrant groups and we think about them  in ethnic terms but but what i'm suggesting is is
  • 00:08:56
    is in fact not that it's invalid to think about  these groups in terms of ethnic terms that is
  • 00:09:02
    that is you know that's a reality right and part  of how people think of themselves but that there's
  • 00:09:09
    also a racial dynamic operating and that racial  dynamic is one that that um it really happens
  • 00:09:20
    much more at the macro level at this the level  of institutions and you know historical trends
  • 00:09:27
    and government policy and so forth and so i'm  interested in kind of bringing these two things
  • 00:09:35
    together um and you know you and i both you  and i both share a passion for writing about
  • 00:09:42
    race and racism and um i guess in that sense you  know thinking about how race becomes um how race
  • 00:09:56
    changes and how notions of race changes um you  know these things don't set in stone they're
  • 00:10:03
    influenced by how things have been in the past but  then they're also dynamic and you know that's the
  • 00:10:10
    social construction of race yeah so so you're  talking about and i noticed early in your book
  • 00:10:19
    you're a little bit more critical about ethnicity  saying ethnicity is sometimes as serbian as
  • 00:10:24
    an evasion of race and there's a there's a a  sense of latino racial identity that you want
  • 00:10:31
    people to to confront um that you want people to  understand that latinos have been racialized as
  • 00:10:38
    not white right as a non-white race can you can  you say more about that both this sense that
  • 00:10:45
    there is a specific racial identity that applies  to latinos however complex it'll be and we'll talk
  • 00:10:50
    about a lot of that complexity and then also i  want to push you a little bit more again like
  • 00:10:56
    what is race yeah yeah well let me let me let me  respond in three parts one is to say that that
  • 00:11:05
    the thinking of of latinos in terms of ethnicity  is part of the racialization of latinos
  • 00:11:14
    right and and that serves particular functions i  think especially with respect to african americans
  • 00:11:21
    right so when you have a situation where um  hispanics have been presumed to be sort of
  • 00:11:33
    ethnics like white ethnics who will over time  assimilate and therefore can kind of live the
  • 00:11:43
    american dream you know as opposed to this  notion of african americans even though there
  • 00:11:49
    are immigrants right but the stereotypical notion  of african americans as well they're they're not
  • 00:11:57
    succeeding and it's their own fault because  we've solved all the law the legal problems
  • 00:12:01
    and we've made ourselves our laws fair right  so so that those that that there's a play there
  • 00:12:08
    right a kind of a connection between ethnicity and  race um the second thing i'll say is that yes my
  • 00:12:18
    my hope is that people will engage this book and  come to understand oh well if we understand you
  • 00:12:26
    know that we can't talk about african-american  racialism racialization without talking about
  • 00:12:32
    segregation without talking about slavery then  we will actually realize that to talk about
  • 00:12:38
    racialization of latinos we have to talk about u.s  imperialism in latin america and we have to talk
  • 00:12:45
    about the links between that imperialism which is  not it's in the past but it's also in the present
  • 00:12:53
    we have to therefore think about immigration  in a different way and we have to think about
  • 00:12:58
    segmentation at the the bottom of the  the job market in that that way as well
  • 00:13:04
    and that leads us to think about covet  in a certain way and right all these
  • 00:13:09
    all these kind of things that flow from that um  and then the third thing i would say is coming
  • 00:13:15
    back to how we understand race right and try not  to get too kind of wonky in the way that you and
  • 00:13:22
    i could by talking about um the all of the the  kind of nuts and bolts or or you know details um
  • 00:13:33
    race is my preferred way of of thinking  about latinos because it emphasizes power
  • 00:13:43
    right it emphasizes uh white  supremacy and white dominance and by
  • 00:13:51
    by making that shift and talking about power then  we can understand both going backward and forward
  • 00:13:59
    in a different way we can look at historical  trends and we can say ah aha and we can look
  • 00:14:07
    at the future and say let's not repeat the past  for example right so i think that's the shift
  • 00:14:14
    i love this i love this i'm gonna i'm gonna sort  of say back to you what i heard um but i'm gonna
  • 00:14:19
    start with this idea right you're writing this  incredible book about latino racial identity and
  • 00:14:27
    the place to start is with the insight that  race is not first and foremost about biology
  • 00:14:34
    that that's a mistake to think about it as biology  and i think that a lot of times when people think
  • 00:14:39
    about race and they think white and black  white and black seem obvious as racial groups
  • 00:14:45
    because people continue to accept uncritically a  sort of a biological foundation to race and a sort
  • 00:14:53
    of like okay well people of european descent kind  of look alike so that makes sense that they're
  • 00:14:58
    arrays and people of african descent right but  just pushing on that just a little bit will reveal
  • 00:15:04
    incredible heterogeneity among people of european  descent incredible heterogeneity among people of
  • 00:15:10
    of african-american descent and now of course  there's incredible heterogeneity of people who
  • 00:15:15
    trace their roots to latin america partly because  latin america saw a mixture of people not only
  • 00:15:21
    from the americas but from europe and from africa  none of that disqualifies groups from being a race
  • 00:15:28
    because races are first and foremost products of  society right and and i and i love the the way in
  • 00:15:35
    which you invoked power it's not races aren't like  these social ideas that are that are invented kind
  • 00:15:44
    of willy-nilly they reflect power relationships  they reflect um uh capitalism and exploitation um
  • 00:15:53
    so is so if we start there you know that's the  that's where we're that that's the starting point
  • 00:15:58
    i think for your analysis to say okay this is what  race is race is a cultural product that reflects
  • 00:16:04
    power and in particular things like slavery  capitalism expropriation of land colonialism
  • 00:16:14
    and its current manifestations and we start from  there and then i think you go on to say so to
  • 00:16:20
    understand the the racial racialization of latinos  let's understand the history of u.s imperialism
  • 00:16:27
    in the past and as sort of contemporary and to  me what you're really pointing at there is this
  • 00:16:32
    important insight that race is often external to a  community right that that that u.s imperialism was
  • 00:16:39
    not something that latinos could control but then  you also say um to understand latino racialization
  • 00:16:46
    we have to think about it in relationship to the  racialization of african-americans to anti-black
  • 00:16:52
    racism and partly there too that's external  but partly that's starting to gesture toward
  • 00:16:58
    okay what if latinos done in order to push it to  position themselves in the united states right so
  • 00:17:04
    we're going to all these levels um uh in that  context i think um uh well you know i want to
  • 00:17:13
    go to the imperialism i want to go to the the  sort of that that history but maybe before i do
  • 00:17:19
    i'm trying to think about what what our audience  is gonna hear um and i think a lot of our audience
  • 00:17:25
    so so i would say hey audience this is amazing  conversation here's how we're gonna understand
  • 00:17:30
    race and now we're gonna apply it to latinos  but i suspect a lot of our audience will also
  • 00:17:34
    be drawing on a common sense of latino racial  identity informed by the census and that's a
  • 00:17:40
    really important topic in your book and it's and  it's really sort of a contemporary phenomena we
  • 00:17:46
    can return to it again at the end but before but  before we really launch into some of the history
  • 00:17:52
    can you say more about what's happening with  the census what's the understanding of latino
  • 00:17:57
    racial identity it promotes why is it wrong  um you know i love i love the fact that i love
  • 00:18:04
    that you you point out that after the 2020 census  the second largest racial group in the united
  • 00:18:11
    states is likely to be other so could you say  more about the census and latino racial identity
  • 00:18:19
    absolutely absolutely um yeah um so sorry i was  distracted because i was getting some kind of
  • 00:18:28
    weird error message on my on my screen but we're  good um i'm sure it related to something i said
  • 00:18:36
    no i'm sure not i'm sure not some techie thing but  um not to blame the tech guys who are wonderful um
  • 00:18:43
    but but let me let me step so i do absolutely  want to talk about this phenomenon of sort of
  • 00:18:50
    other race latinos right but but to get there let  me just kind of follow up on something you said
  • 00:18:58
    in your intro that is i think worth emphasizing  and that is well i talk about u.s imperialism
  • 00:19:04
    but before u.s imperialism there were these four  centuries of spanish colonialism in latin america
  • 00:19:11
    which is also part of the legacy of latinos in  in the united states right and so there were 80
  • 00:19:19
    80 000 an estimated 80 no sorry  80 million indigenous people in
  • 00:19:30
    latin america when the spanish uh colonized  it 10 million were left after spanish contact
  • 00:19:37
    right after death within just a few decades i  know yes and that was you know disease but also
  • 00:19:43
    you know the the military conflict um uh forced  labor and death through through that kind of
  • 00:19:51
    abuse um so the spanish brought in african  slaves and they brought in maybe 11 million right
  • 00:19:58
    and so in latin america what resulted  was a a mestizo population that was
  • 00:20:07
    you know part spanish relatively small part  part african and part indigenous right and so
  • 00:20:14
    that um that mixture kind of comes into the united  states then right in a way in which we can say
  • 00:20:21
    things like the census says well hispanics can be  of any race they say and you know that is true to
  • 00:20:28
    a point right so so the census took that seriously  and when they first counted latinos in 1980 they
  • 00:20:35
    said oh let's have a hispanic ethnicity question  and so we all filled out our census forms recently
  • 00:20:42
    hopefully so so we have we remember answering that  question are you hispanic or latino yes or no but
  • 00:20:49
    then we all had to fill out another question that  said what is your race and that's the part that
  • 00:20:54
    drives many latinos including myself crazy because  you know you have these options white i think oh
  • 00:21:01
    i'm not white i don't identify white people don't  see me as white i have black well i probably have
  • 00:21:08
    some african ancestry but i'm not gonna i'm not  gonna say that i'm black that would not be right
  • 00:21:14
    um native american well i have a lot of indigenous  ancestry but that's not i'm not claiming to
  • 00:21:20
    be native american that seems wrong um i'm not  asian american right so then i get down to other
  • 00:21:27
    you know and about 40 percent uh a little bit  more probably in 2020 will choose other um and
  • 00:21:36
    to me it is mind-boggling that for 40 years this  has been happening and we haven't yet addressed
  • 00:21:45
    it it suggests to us that there's something  wrong with those racial categories and that
  • 00:21:50
    maybe the census categories haven't caught up to  the processes that people experience in daily life
  • 00:21:58
    other other people acknowledge saying that they're  not white um which is not to say that latinos
  • 00:22:04
    haven't sometimes said that they're white and that  some latinos actually you know do believe that
  • 00:22:10
    they're white and and check white on that box yeah  i mean i think when you look at the census there's
  • 00:22:17
    um i think you'll you'll remember  the numbers better than i but there's
  • 00:22:21
    um a significant number that check white there's  a there's a not in substantial number that
  • 00:22:27
    check black but the numbers of latinos checking  other are something between 30 and 40 consistently
  • 00:22:35
    over the last 40 years and turned around looked at  the other way when you say well what which racial
  • 00:22:45
    groups are checking others it's overwhelmingly  latinos like 95 more or more of the other category
  • 00:22:55
    are latinos right so one of the things that  you're that you're that you're pointing out is
  • 00:22:59
    yes there is this there's this tremendous uh  diversity of the ways in which latinos understand
  • 00:23:05
    their own racial identity but one of the ways  they seem to understand their own racial identity
  • 00:23:10
    is that it's not captured by the census um you say  the senses kind of had a solution to this but then
  • 00:23:17
    rejected it yeah yeah so let me just clarify those  numbers because they're even more extreme right so
  • 00:23:23
    it's actually 98.8 percent of those in the united  states who say they're other are latino right
  • 00:23:32
    so there's virtually no one else is saying that  they're other everyone else can find themselves
  • 00:23:37
    and remember since 2000 we've been able  to check more than one category right um
  • 00:23:44
    yeah so this has been 37 to 43 of latinos  in all this time so the census has basically
  • 00:23:50
    tried different ways of of trying to to solve  this problem the latest thing that they did
  • 00:23:56
    was was after probably about five  years of research they recommended oh
  • 00:24:02
    we should do away with this separate hispanic  ethnicity question and we should fold latinos
  • 00:24:08
    into the race question and based on the research  they did which was quite exhaustive they found
  • 00:24:14
    that that that 40 plus percent of latinos  were very happy with that they chose latino
  • 00:24:21
    and and so you didn't get that other and that a  huge proportion of this the people who chose white
  • 00:24:28
    also checked latina that the six percent who chose  black still chose black but added black and latino
  • 00:24:37
    and that the three percent of latinos who  chose native american were comfortable with
  • 00:24:41
    that still being native american and latino right  so that was the solution the trump administration
  • 00:24:48
    um rejected the proposal um saying  that it was too late to make changes
  • 00:24:55
    to the 2020 census and then a month later  they said let's change the 2020 census
  • 00:25:01
    by adding a citizenship question um which uh  well you know we we kind of know what that
  • 00:25:08
    story went like um the supreme court denied that  that um request or that change as um arbitrary
  • 00:25:18
    um and really implied that it was uh  motivated by other factors um which we can
  • 00:25:25
    we can talk about but i think you know one  of the things that you say in your book is
  • 00:25:30
    those two moves by the trump administration  are related the trump administration
  • 00:25:34
    so the census has struggled to understand and  to measure accurately latino racial identity
  • 00:25:43
    um uh in large part because the census has  tried to distinguish between what are implicitly
  • 00:25:51
    real races white black asian american native  american and this other thing called hispanic
  • 00:25:59
    that the census has been telling americans  for the last 40 years is not a real race but
  • 00:26:04
    is instead something different an ethnicity such  that these people can be of any other race and
  • 00:26:12
    and latinos a lot of latinos the plurality of them  have said that this makes sense to us right and so
  • 00:26:18
    the census figured out okay well stop  making a sharp distinction between
  • 00:26:23
    race on the one hand and ethnicity on the other  allow you know what ask people what group are you
  • 00:26:28
    associated with and then you can have white  black native american asian american latino
  • 00:26:33
    and that took care of it right latinos are  like now i can find myself now i see myself
  • 00:26:38
    trump administration rejects that and i think  um rejects it for the same reason they also try
  • 00:26:45
    and introduce a citizenship question both  are designed to drive down the number of
  • 00:26:51
    latinos that are actually counted by the census  right both are designed as a politics that um
  • 00:26:59
    suppresses information about the extent to  which latinos are a significant presence
  • 00:27:05
    in the u.s polity and should be represented  politically it should be represented in terms of
  • 00:27:10
    allocation of government funding and and  government programs um one thing i want to
  • 00:27:15
    pick up on and use this as a segue to the  to the historical conversation this idea
  • 00:27:22
    that there are real races white black asian native  american and that hispanics are not a real race
  • 00:27:29
    but there's something else going on and and there  i i think that the important point here is to say
  • 00:27:36
    um at the level of biology like at the level  of nature created these races and not others
  • 00:27:43
    there are no real races none whites don't exist as  a real race blackstone is if we're talking biology
  • 00:27:52
    there are no real races at the level of social  construction it might be tempting to say hey
  • 00:28:01
    you know latinos are as real a race as any other  group because all groups are socially constructed
  • 00:28:09
    but i actually think you know you're  talking about in inventing latinos
  • 00:28:12
    a new story of american racism and i think partly  the well correct me if i'm wrong what is the new
  • 00:28:20
    referring to like and it could be it could be  that all you're saying is hey this is a story
  • 00:28:24
    that really hasn't been told in a lot of detail  before so it's i'm just telling a new something
  • 00:28:30
    that's new in terms of the new information but  it could be that you're also saying latinos
  • 00:28:36
    are um still in the process of being turned  into a race right that in that in that sense
  • 00:28:43
    we're less real a racial group in the united  states not as a matter of biology but because
  • 00:28:49
    the social practices of racialization have less  firmly constructed a concrete latino racial
  • 00:28:57
    identity than say a seemingly concrete white  identity or a seemingly concrete native american
  • 00:29:02
    or african-american identity well i can see ian  how you you might come to that point of view
  • 00:29:10
    especially given you know some of your own work  right but but honestly it was not that it was not
  • 00:29:16
    that uh considered it this was another instance  i had a wonderful relationship with my editor
  • 00:29:22
    and at the new press but this was another instance  where you know she really wanted new in the title
  • 00:29:30
    and i think because it was new to people who  didn't know about latinos right and i was like
  • 00:29:36
    wait but this is historically rooted that's the  whole point of what i'm saying you know right but
  • 00:29:41
    anyway so so it's not quite although i think  what you say is is compelling it certainly is
  • 00:29:47
    happening because it keeps happening right none of  us even how we think about um how we think about
  • 00:29:54
    you know african-americans there's it's dynamic  it's changing and it's it's really political it's
  • 00:30:00
    political choices and political events that drive  how racial categories change and evolve right and
  • 00:30:07
    so even the category of whiteness right so who is  white well you know in in uh 1900 it wasn't always
  • 00:30:17
    the case that italians were white in all contexts  uh certainly or that you know eastern european
  • 00:30:25
    jews who were new migrants were white it wasn't  it wasn't the case and in fact it interestingly
  • 00:30:32
    um with respect to say irish americans you know  i talked about this in in an earlier book that
  • 00:30:38
    i wrote manifest destinies when sometimes it  was the fact that irish americans were going
  • 00:30:44
    to places like the southwest and being side by  side with mexican americans that made them quieter
  • 00:30:50
    right so that was you know those dynamics are  are always in play as well as is like these
  • 00:30:58
    none of these categories are stable um they're not  certainly as you as you say not rooted in anything
  • 00:31:05
    real but they they have real effects because  they they don't go away right they become kind
  • 00:31:12
    of sedimented into our common sense say a  little bit more than that because you know
  • 00:31:19
    one of the questions that's popped up in the  chat is one of the you know the sort of um uh
  • 00:31:25
    hey only racist care about race you know and and  you can kind of that response on the one hand
  • 00:31:32
    seems a little goofy but on the other hand  you can see it coming out of this conversation
  • 00:31:36
    saying you know if somebody in the audience  is saying well you guys are saying this is all
  • 00:31:41
    invented but aren't you you know just giving it  more weight by talking about it all the time maybe
  • 00:31:46
    why don't we just stop talking about this thing  that is after all on one way of seeing races it's
  • 00:31:52
    a it's all a massive fraud all of these ideas are  terrible lies why don't we stop talking about it
  • 00:31:58
    yeah that's that's you know i hear this from  my students a lot right um uh because if we
  • 00:32:04
    we take seriously this idea that there's no  real race there's nothing in biology you know
  • 00:32:10
    uh that is that is you know inherently racial um  so so we should be colorblind right we shouldn't
  • 00:32:19
    we shouldn't see race you know we should aspire  not to see it and to get to aspiring not to see it
  • 00:32:26
    then we should not talk about it right we  shouldn't should not harden these categories
  • 00:32:31
    but i'm i'm advocating something different  which is no actually this has become a category
  • 00:32:37
    um and so we should mark it as such  because race is important in our society
  • 00:32:43
    and i don't see a contradiction in that because  we again it's it's not as if we start on a clean
  • 00:32:52
    slate so if we say okay we're just going to  pretend that race doesn't exist right now um
  • 00:32:56
    you know uh i'm just going to go out in the world  and you know someone needs to tell donald trump
  • 00:33:03
    exactly or you know i mean i have people here  in l.a people shout out at me different things
  • 00:33:09
    from time to time based on the way i look uh you  know and and i you know i have it good i'm sure
  • 00:33:16
    compared to to most people right i i  live very comfortably in a you know
  • 00:33:22
    overwhelmingly white part of los angeles right and  and you know i don't i have so many privileges but
  • 00:33:29
    i still get marked in a certain way and um and  that's because of these larger dynamics that we
  • 00:33:37
    can't make go away by not talking about them i  think that that i think that's exactly right and
  • 00:33:42
    i think it ties back to what you were earlier  saying racism is fundamentally about power and
  • 00:33:49
    um in our society you can't solve problems of  power unless you can name them and if right it's
  • 00:33:57
    no solution to say power manifests itself this  way so let's all just ignore it right it's like
  • 00:34:03
    we know that like ignoring problems doesn't solve  right so so um but let's talk about that then
  • 00:34:09
    um um where does race come from what is the  history of um of power relations that that sort
  • 00:34:17
    of um provide the foundation for latino racial  identity today and um i want to invite you back to
  • 00:34:24
    talk about you talk about a double colonialism the  colonialism of spain and then the colonialism of
  • 00:34:29
    the united states and i wonder if you want to you  know offer some insights about how that influences
  • 00:34:35
    latino racial identity well i think that the  primary way that i would would invoke is that
  • 00:34:44
    we had so the spanish the spanish colonial  rule was also racist it was also a regime
  • 00:34:54
    of racialized power and one in which uh a  proximity to spanishness as whiteness was
  • 00:35:04
    was the ideal and the kind of uh higher  in the hierarchy the the top right and
  • 00:35:12
    the proximity to indians and the proximity  to blackness was at the bottom right so
  • 00:35:20
    so if we layer on to that american imperialism  where latin americans were told oh the us is um
  • 00:35:29
    the us that white americans are are more powerful  and that we're looking at you whether we're
  • 00:35:35
    looking in puerto rico or we're looking in cuba  or we're looking in guatemala we're looking at
  • 00:35:40
    you through our lens that says that africans  african descended people are at the bottom
  • 00:35:47
    you know for example when you look  when you go back and you look at
  • 00:35:52
    newspapers and uh congressional debates about  the how to manage the territory of puerto rico
  • 00:36:00
    and how to manage um uh uh the the lands that came  out of mexico for example the new mexico territory
  • 00:36:08
    which didn't become a state until 1912 and arizona  what you see are these kind of comments about the
  • 00:36:15
    mongrelization and how that itself that mestizahe  itself was a signal that these people are inferior
  • 00:36:25
    but bringing that up to a to kind of the  more a more recent period we can see some of
  • 00:36:33
    this playing out in the 20th century in places  like texas where you look at mexican americans
  • 00:36:41
    fighting under a regime of de facto school  segregation but not de jure or segregation by law
  • 00:36:51
    that african-americans experienced right and  so you see these these ways in which mexican
  • 00:36:57
    americans were able to position themselves as  better off and above in that racial hierarchy
  • 00:37:04
    african americans you know so the proximity  to whiteness was the goal i want to i want
  • 00:37:10
    to explore that more but before we do that can i  ask you about mestiza because i think that that's
  • 00:37:17
    a that's a concept that's really important  in terms of um the racial identity as it's
  • 00:37:24
    developed in latin america then it's very often  offered as a way for latinos to conceptualize
  • 00:37:30
    their racial identity in the united states um  when you say mestizae what does the word mean
  • 00:37:38
    what work is it doing well that's a big question  um you know the next hour uh yeah exactly i i will
  • 00:37:48
    go back just just briefly to what i said at the  very beginning response to your first question is
  • 00:37:53
    you know i i grew up with i think a uh a frank  in in our family a frank notion that we were
  • 00:38:02
    indigenous you know as that that was part  of our our ancestry right um that that
  • 00:38:09
    our ancestors were indigenous you know because  of colonialism we didn't have any particular
  • 00:38:14
    tribal affiliation right so it wasn't that kind of  notion but it was kind of like oh yeah that's why
  • 00:38:20
    we that's why we look the way that we are we you  know and and of course in any family you see that
  • 00:38:27
    that range of of um of variation because there  is that mixture of the indigenous and the
  • 00:38:34
    african uh uh ancestors and the spanish  ancestors right um but it wasn't really until
  • 00:38:43
    later and and fairly recently in my life that i  began to look back at some of the ideology of ms
  • 00:38:50
    nisaj as promulgated for example in mexico of  the 1920s post-revolutionary mexico which was
  • 00:38:59
    all wrapped around this notion of la raza  cosmica the cosmic race right that from all
  • 00:39:05
    the different races mexico would be this great  fifth race because mexicans true mexicans were
  • 00:39:12
    mestizos only recently could i go back and look  at that history and see oh that actually was a a
  • 00:39:22
    ideology of white supremacy and the reason  is because it it presumed the disappearance
  • 00:39:31
    of indigenous people and the disappearance  of black mexicans right and so sort of
  • 00:39:38
    now i have i think a much more you know critical  view of some of that that notion of mestiza
  • 00:39:44
    especially because this idea that was happening  in mexico was influencing other latin american
  • 00:39:49
    countries because mexico had has long been  one of the dominant countries of latin america
  • 00:39:55
    yeah right so so you know i have a really  different view now i think about that yeah that's
  • 00:39:59
    so it's so interesting so we can think of mestiz  you know coming out of the word mestizo coming
  • 00:40:05
    out of a sense of racial mixture and i think  you know you're making such an important point
  • 00:40:12
    it becomes elevated in certain latin  american countries in particular in mexico
  • 00:40:17
    as a as a as a biological claim that is aimed at  um promoting mixture as a denial of indigenous
  • 00:40:29
    populations as a denial of afro-descended  populations it's like we're all going to mix
  • 00:40:36
    and you also say that that mestiza has  also uh connected to blanche miento blanche
  • 00:40:43
    what is what does that mean what's going on there
  • 00:40:46
    well blanquiamiento as as uh practiced by  those countries that were colonized by spain
  • 00:40:55
    was the idea it's sometimes translated as  bleaching or whitening but it was the idea that
  • 00:41:02
    you know to better yourself you could make  yourself whiter well what would that involve you
  • 00:41:08
    know it's it's not as if this is entirely foreign  to what people do today in the united states
  • 00:41:13
    um you know and there are historical records  about this in actually all racial groups um
  • 00:41:19
    but you marry somebody who's lighter skin  than you are to and you have children with
  • 00:41:23
    that person right and then you hope that your  children have you know marry somebody who's
  • 00:41:28
    lighter skin so individual choices but also as a  society and this is more powerful i think right
  • 00:41:35
    certain societies like uh cuba argentina colombia  just to name a few when they became independent of
  • 00:41:42
    spain they said we want our countries to be whiter  and so we're going to give homesteads to europeans
  • 00:41:50
    to come to our countries right and to make our  countries whiter in that way and those those
  • 00:41:56
    countries as well as others very deliberately and  mexico too they didn't do it with homesteads but
  • 00:42:03
    they deliberately incentivized european  migration in the early 20th century and so
  • 00:42:10
    that actually added more sort of white  white um people to the population and then
  • 00:42:17
    added this kind of sort of solidified that white  layer right and so we still we still see that
  • 00:42:23
    it we see that in latin america but we also see  it in the latino population here where there's
  • 00:42:29
    a color hierarchy yeah and a lot of colorism  you know one of the one of them so so one so
  • 00:42:36
    this way of understanding mestiza is really mestiz  erasure right like oh we're all mixed but when you
  • 00:42:43
    say we're all mixed it becomes a way of saying and  therefore we're not gonna we're not gonna actually
  • 00:42:47
    focus on the differences um you know my own vague  hope is that we can reclaim the word mestizo not
  • 00:42:55
    as in we're all mixed and therefore differences  don't matter but as in there are a lot of
  • 00:43:00
    differences among latinos just as there are a lot  of differences among other groups and the fact of
  • 00:43:06
    difference is something that we can celebrate um  but you know a question that comes up in the chat
  • 00:43:13
    is really connected to this idea of erasure and  it actually goes to the term latino itself like
  • 00:43:21
    is there is there an aspect you're talking about  inventing latinos is there an aspect of erasure
  • 00:43:26
    and even the term um and for example you know um  many activists now many latino activists now are
  • 00:43:33
    using the term latinx um you know are you worried  a little bit about the erasure of the term latino
  • 00:43:40
    would latinx have been better why didn't you use  that term so so i i want to absolutely get to that
  • 00:43:47
    because it's a really important question but i  just want to come back and make one final kind of
  • 00:43:51
    point about the conversation we were having before  about la raza cosmic on this notion of of the the
  • 00:43:58
    kind of complete mixture and elevating that that  mixture right as a as the ideal as opposed to the
  • 00:44:04
    pure white ideal that we might have in the united  states it's it's it's important to understand that
  • 00:44:10
    as an ideology of race meaning that it's about  power and politics just the way that the notion
  • 00:44:17
    of color blindness in the us is about power  and politics right and so i think i think
  • 00:44:23
    we understand mestiza in that way as a political  tool right to enforce racial hierarchy that just
  • 00:44:31
    helps us i think understand how that operates so  yeah i really did do some soul searching about
  • 00:44:39
    terminology and i do use latinx and some  uh i use it in the book a little bit um
  • 00:44:46
    and i have a long footnote on on why i don't use  it exclusively and the reason that it's appealing
  • 00:44:53
    is because it is is not gendered right which means  it's it's it's able to talk about people who are
  • 00:45:01
    gender fluid and non-binary it's it's a way for us  to not emphasize the the the linguistic gendered
  • 00:45:10
    nature nature of spanish in the word latino versus  latina for example and that has a lot of appeal
  • 00:45:18
    for a lot of reasons right it's it's it's embraces  a lot of people and you know it it is gaining some
  • 00:45:25
    currency in particular i don't know if you're  experiencing this but around my students you know
  • 00:45:30
    it's gaining a lot of currency um at the same time  i feel like it's i feel like it's a bit trendy and
  • 00:45:38
    maybe this is just you know me in my 50s sounding  old i don't know how how you feel about it ian
  • 00:45:44
    being also in your 50s no come on now you didn't  need to go there the audience did not know that
  • 00:45:52
    it's true i look i look much older you're right  my gray hair i'm i'm prematurely gray i'm 26 yes
  • 00:45:59
    that's right that's that's the oh no wait a  minute that that's how long i've been in academia
  • 00:46:07
    we we we actually both started when we were 12.  that's why it's been so long in academia but
  • 00:46:14
    uh but no i feel like it's i guess i do sound a  little fuddy-duddy when i think of this but i just
  • 00:46:19
    feel like it's it's it's trendy and i don't know  if it's gonna i don't know if it's gonna last so
  • 00:46:24
    so i didn't you know i feel like you write  a book and that book is there and it's there
  • 00:46:30
    for posterity and so you know i i i chose not to  use that that term widely but i have no i do i i
  • 00:46:42
    i find it you know i i want to have that kind of  embrace that that term um invites right so i'm
  • 00:46:50
    i'm not um i'm i'm not denying it's it's appeal  yeah i think that's right i mean i think that um
  • 00:47:01
    any term when you try and use a single term  to encompass a really diverse population
  • 00:47:07
    group it runs the risk of erasure that's  just an occupational hazard i mean there's
  • 00:47:11
    always that tension between categorization  and specificity um but i think that the
  • 00:47:18
    you know just as with mestizo i'm  hoping we can reclaim it in a way
  • 00:47:23
    that emphasizes difference and connections across  difference rather than an asserted homogeneity
  • 00:47:32
    um but in that context let me you know i  guess i want to also ask you about um like
  • 00:47:39
    how have latinos position themselves in terms  of race in the united states and i think
  • 00:47:45
    we could understand you could you could address  that either as the sort of you know here's the
  • 00:47:49
    history 1930s 1950s um or now right we're in  this contemporary move moment in which there's
  • 00:47:59
    um a tremendous and and warranted and incredibly  like important uh hopefully trend you know it's
  • 00:48:07
    a sort of um dynamic recognition of anti-black  racism where do latinos fit in in this moment
  • 00:48:16
    yeah no i thank you for that that question and i  think i will even though we could talk about some
  • 00:48:23
    of the 20th century moments i will leave that  to people who can buy the book um and and let's
  • 00:48:29
    talk about this thank you let's talk about the um  you know this where we are especially after this
  • 00:48:38
    amazing summer of course this book was written  before um before um it was written before covid
  • 00:48:46
    and it was written before the the i think  the real crisis um that was we kind of our
  • 00:48:54
    attention was very appropriately galvanized by  the the police murder of george floyd on memorial
  • 00:49:01
    day and you know here we are now in october and  in some cities those protests have not stopped
  • 00:49:07
    right and so and and i was just thinking about  it because there was a vote by the um los angeles
  • 00:49:13
    unified school district to defund its police you  know and basically say look that's that's millions
  • 00:49:20
    of dollars let's take that money and let's put  it somewhere else right and so the reverberations
  • 00:49:27
    from this summer in which black lives matter has  been at the the forefront of the conversation
  • 00:49:35
    talking about reparations for slavery you know  just so important it's such an important overdue
  • 00:49:41
    moment and i think that um you know some latinos  are sort of saying well why aren't we talking
  • 00:49:47
    about you know latino lives matter and you know  that just really frustrates me because i don't
  • 00:49:53
    think that's the the way to intervene in this  conversation you know i think that instead i
  • 00:49:59
    would like us to you know and i talk about  in the book like how do we understand how
  • 00:50:06
    latinos have been complicit in policing um the  white over black uh racial oppression um and how
  • 00:50:16
    that some of that still continues today right um  so let's take a city like chicago where there is a
  • 00:50:26
    a there has been a latino population there  mexican-american um since the early 20th century
  • 00:50:33
    but the bulk of that that latino population came  between 1960 and 1980 puerto ricans and mexican
  • 00:50:41
    americans and it came because of white flight  from black school integration right and so latinos
  • 00:50:49
    play this kind of buffer rule and in that regard  they are policing that color line and working to
  • 00:50:58
    distinguish themselves basically saying you know  i'm not i'm not black i may not be white but i'm
  • 00:51:04
    definitely not black right and so we have to kind  of interrogate i think our role um you know at a
  • 00:51:12
    at a community level um if not an individual  level of perpetuating anti-black racism
  • 00:51:20
    i wonder and so this is um an uncomfortable  question but but one we have to deal with
  • 00:51:26
    when we look at levels of support for donald trump  among latinos those levels seem pretty surprising
  • 00:51:35
    i mean it you know they vary between depending  on the pool somewhere between 20 or 30 percent
  • 00:51:41
    but we we might think well listen you know  trump has um spent much of his time since 2015
  • 00:51:48
    demonizing latinos how can perhaps a quarter of  latinos support this candidate uh is the do you
  • 00:51:55
    do you have some insight there absolutely yeah i'm  i'm glad that you brought that that up and i don't
  • 00:52:03
    necessarily find it an uncomfortable conversation  i mean i i would rather it not be the case but i
  • 00:52:11
    don't find it uncomfortable to to talk about um so  so i guess i guess i i do i mean i do think that
  • 00:52:25
    there will always be some portion of americans as  well as mexican americans who peel off for trump
  • 00:52:35
    now that is it's not going to be as large for  african americans as for mexican-americans but
  • 00:52:42
    it's going to be you know it's it's it's a it's  a kind of we could look at it at a gradient level
  • 00:52:48
    right we could see okay african americans  maybe it's going to be 10 right but but of
  • 00:52:53
    african-american men it's going to be higher than  that for latinos maybe it's going to be you know
  • 00:52:58
    between 20 and 30 but it's gonna be higher among  men right we can see these these patterns you
  • 00:53:04
    know there was a survey that came out um yesterday  that was showing in florida that it was getting up
  • 00:53:14
    pretty high and that it was particularly high  among latinos with a four-year college degree
  • 00:53:22
    well that's a tiny proportion yeah that may be  true but that's a tiny proportion of latinos right
  • 00:53:29
    you have of course the dynamic of um 29  of latinos in florida being cuban-american
  • 00:53:36
    and cuban-americans being disproportionately  republican right so you're going to see
  • 00:53:40
    in certain places you're gonna see  certain trends now i'm not saying that
  • 00:53:45
    you know uh all cuban americans support trump  i'm not saying that i'm not saying that only
  • 00:53:51
    cuban americans support trump right there  are nuances in here and what what i guess
  • 00:53:55
    i would really like us to do is be able to  look at the latino electorate with as much
  • 00:54:03
    precision and kind of care to see the differences  in that electorate as we do with white voters
  • 00:54:09
    so we could say oh well let's look at latino  suburbanites and let's look at latinos who are
  • 00:54:16
    over 50 and latinos who are under 50. let's  look at latinos in florida and realize that
  • 00:54:22
    puerto ricans are actually 27 of the state's  population just 2 less than cuban americans
  • 00:54:29
    and you know when you go from there the next  biggest population in florida this is going to
  • 00:54:34
    surprise you and and others maybe not you because  you're so savvy about it but mexican americans
  • 00:54:41
    are 10 of latinos in florida you know that's  that's probably not something that everybody
  • 00:54:49
    knows venezuelans who are talked about as as  being a large part of the electorate often
  • 00:54:56
    they're two percent of florida's latino population  what about race though i mean i think that that
  • 00:55:03
    i think a lot of the things that you're pointing  at are super important in terms of okay what's
  • 00:55:07
    the the history of cubans in florida and why might  they be more supportive what's the role of being
  • 00:55:12
    college educated we see a big gender gap do you  see differences in the way latinos are thinking
  • 00:55:21
    about their racial identity that also corresponds  and you know and it connects to this to the to
  • 00:55:27
    the prior conversation we are having about latinos  and anti-blackness and and how we and how latinos
  • 00:55:34
    different latinos position themselves in various  ways in the american racial hierarchy do you see
  • 00:55:39
    connections between that well i i definitely  see connections i can't say that they're
  • 00:55:45
    verifiable empirically because and that's part  of the problem right is you look at these surveys
  • 00:55:51
    and they just don't have enough latinos in the  survey to do that kind of breakout right and
  • 00:55:56
    sort of say how do latinos who identify as  other for example in the senses how do they
  • 00:56:03
    uh how are they polling for biden or trump right  now we don't have that kind of kind of uh texture
  • 00:56:11
    right in the data um but here's something that  i think is interesting so when you look at the
  • 00:56:19
    proportion of latinos who  define themselves as other
  • 00:56:26
    it is less in states that are part of the  former confederacy texas and florida than
  • 00:56:34
    otherwise so if you look at mexican americans in  texas compared to mexican americans in california
  • 00:56:41
    those who are closer to the border in  texas are more likely to say they're white
  • 00:56:46
    than those in california if you look at dominicans  and puerto ricans in florida versus dominicans and
  • 00:56:53
    puerto ricans in new jersey and new york  they're more likely to say they're white
  • 00:57:00
    in florida and less likely to say they're  white more likely to say they're other
  • 00:57:04
    up north to me what i take from that is  that there's a the closer that you are to
  • 00:57:14
    um kind of a a very visceral uh discrimination  and racism and a kind of white superiority the
  • 00:57:24
    more that you're gonna say that you're white to  try to protect yourself right it's like a shield
  • 00:57:31
    yeah that's so yes um a claim of whiteness  i i think you have a phrase in here um
  • 00:57:38
    a claim of whiteness that is defensive rather  than possessory right like it's like it's okay
  • 00:57:44
    defending yourself um we've now reached that  really tragic moment in the conversation where
  • 00:57:50
    we need to wrap up um so this is going to be  the last question i thought it'd be a small
  • 00:57:56
    question so something that you just you know very  easy to answer succinctly in 30 seconds or less
  • 00:58:05
    this you know and and um um this would be  something that as an academic you're not
  • 00:58:12
    inclined to do which is you know a lot of the  book is saying hey here's how we've got here
  • 00:58:17
    i'm here hear all these dynamics but if you could  be prescriptive if you could be if if you could
  • 00:58:24
    say what sort of a racial identity would you  want latinos to have what sort of an orientation
  • 00:58:31
    towards race would you want latinos to have going  forward well uh yeah and i love how how classy
  • 00:58:40
    you are as a moderator to give me that subtle hint  okay we don't have a lot of time left we actually
  • 00:58:44
    do we actually do take your time right but it's  such a huge question but but do take your time
  • 00:58:49
    you know i think absolutely and i think that you  know i've kind of showed my cards on this already
  • 00:58:55
    right is that as we as we think about say the  2030 census that we have to make that move to to
  • 00:59:08
    do away with the hispanic ethnicity question  and put that hispanic latino category in the
  • 00:59:14
    race question so that people can find themselves  in this in this you know so that we have a better
  • 00:59:24
    match between how people are seeing themselves  and how they're seen right um by the by the state
  • 00:59:32
    in essence um but that is only going to be  effective if we have then a kind of more more
  • 00:59:43
    genuine than we've had at least for 2020  effort to count people right which means oh
  • 00:59:48
    if we have a pandemic we should be counting  for longer and we should not be cutting off
  • 00:59:53
    our accounting in the census you know not  having a citizen citizenship question and so
  • 00:59:58
    forth and i think it's particularly important  because latinos are such a young population
  • 01:00:04
    and it's about that inclusiveness that we we  see in a term like latinx for example right
  • 01:00:10
    what is it that makes these young people feel  included and invested in this system of governance
  • 01:00:19
    in our democracy right that is i think how  we how we do that how we sort of manage
  • 01:00:29
    latino racialization is going to be very uh  impactful right now in terms of what those next
  • 01:00:38
    five say decades look like for those young people  who are now just aging into the voting population
  • 01:00:45
    so the so so it doesn't count if i ask the same  question a second time that's it this really is
  • 01:00:51
    still the last question i'm just asking it  again but because you know you kind of talk
  • 01:00:56
    about the census and i think what you say is  so important but i'm really interested like
  • 01:01:02
    i can imagine people saying well how  should latinos think of their racial
  • 01:01:07
    identity and if latinos center a strong  latino racial identity as a basis for
  • 01:01:14
    conceiving of themselves and structuring their  relations to others does that foster inclusion
  • 01:01:20
    or exclusion and i guess that's really the  question i'm driving at do you have a sense like
  • 01:01:25
    if you could say to folks if you could say for  example even to the latinx folks to your students
  • 01:01:29
    hey here's how you should think about latino  racial identity what would you say yeah it's not
  • 01:01:35
    that i'm it's not that i'm reluctant to have that  conversation i just don't see that even though
  • 01:01:41
    you're asking it in a different way a second  time i just don't see that necessarily as the um
  • 01:01:47
    as the primary question because i think it's i  think it's kind of i think we're already past that
  • 01:01:53
    you know i think we already see ourselves in those  terms you know and i mean i talked to to my son
  • 01:02:00
    who's 23 i mean he's not ambivalent about he how  he sees himself racially and how others see him
  • 01:02:09
    you know i mean it's it's distinctively  not white but he's not in any way saying
  • 01:02:16
    i'm native american or i'm black right you know  he's not you know he's so i think it's very
  • 01:02:22
    i think it's very you know it's very clear  and there's a i think as a i guess i'm more
  • 01:02:29
    prone to think about it in terms of political  terms right how does that you know how do we
  • 01:02:36
    if if we're a political party or a political  candidate how do we harness some of that that's a
  • 01:02:42
    different kind of question right that's one that's  pretty concrete and that certainly you and i have
  • 01:02:48
    talked about a bit could talk about for a lot  longer maybe they can invite us back and we can
  • 01:02:53
    we can talk about that in the context of of your  latest book which is it was nicely framed behind
  • 01:02:58
    us merge left um but but you know i think it's  more about about that it's more about our society
  • 01:03:08
    catching up to how people do see their lives  you know the lived reality that they experience
  • 01:03:15
    as latinos is one that is about racial inequality  and racial discrimination and also racial affinity
  • 01:03:24
    right you know in a positive sense yeah that's  so helpful and and laura thank you so much
  • 01:03:32
    um really incredible and i just really  want to emphasize what you were last saying
  • 01:03:36
    this this is an effort to to reflect back on  people's lived experience and then to provide
  • 01:03:43
    some incredibly important context and i really  just want to emphasize um inventing latinos a
  • 01:03:50
    new story of american racism it's providing the  context it's providing the framework to understand
  • 01:03:57
    where we are how we got here where we might  be going i urge all of you to buy this book
  • 01:04:03
    to read this book to reach out and contact laura  but for now i'm ian haney lopez of uc berkeley
  • 01:04:10
    and unfortunately i have to conclude this  program of the commonwealth thank you
  • 01:05:14
    you
Tag
  • Latino Identity
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Census
  • U.S. Imperialism
  • Spanish Colonialism
  • Latinx
  • Racialization
  • Inclusivity
  • Power Dynamics
  • American Racism