Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: An interdisciplinary debate is currently taking shape regarding the usefulness of pan-ethnic identities; scholars in the field of Political Science as well as fields focused on the study of people of color such as Black Studies, Latino/Chicano Studies, and/or Asian Studies are involved. They are asking and responding to questions surrounding the value of this type of ethnic self-identification. Whereas it is clear that there is evidence supporting the arguments for as well as against encouraging pan-ethnic identifiers, prior research has shown that a small number of Latino/as in the United States choose pan-ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Hispano, or Hispanic to classify their ethnic identity. This pan-ethnic identity has been named latinidad. While this paper forgoes the debate concerning the value of latinidad, it does ask questions about this group that represents approximately 34% of Latina/o respondents of the National Latino Political Survey (NLPS): do they comprise a politically, socially, or economically distinctive sub-group within the Latino population? If so, what specific characteristics or variables set them apart? Does the use of latinidad have significant political implications?

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: U.S. television has been populated by white representations and much latter by a smattering of Black. Only recently has there been the steady inclusion of Latina/os and other ambiguous ethnics who fall somewhere in between the two binary poles of racial representation. This is also the case in children's television world wide. The introduction and rise of Disney Channel in children's television programming means that many of their shows circulate globally and contribute to the representation of diverse children across the globe. However the global circulation is based on national paradigms and politics. Once these shows are globally distributed, that sharp attention necessary to discern Latinidad might be altogether to ask of global audiences who are not likely to possess the knowledge to interpret the ethnicity of these girls. Further research is necessary to explore whether global audiences can even tell that these light brown are ethnic at all.

Publication Type: Internal Paper
Abstract: In 1972, the United States Supreme Court in Spencer v. Kugler affirmed New Jersey’s statutory scheme compelling school district boundaries to coincide with those of the State’s political subdivisions. In writing a dissent to the Court’s affirmation of the lower court opinion that such segregation was “de-facto” and not subject to a constitutional violation, Justice William O. Douglas highlighted the pernicious influence of metropolitan boundaries in creating unequal and inferior education for the nation’s Black, Latino, Asian American, and American communities. As Justice Douglas dissent suggested, the tremendous ability of local municipalities to control the racial and ethnic composition of their local and sub-local communities through seemingly neutral and “de-facto” means put into question the Supreme Court’s post-Brown v. Board of Education condemnation of the inferior education received by a large majority of the nation’s increasingly multiracial student body.
Over 30 years after Justice Douglas’s dissent in Kugler, over one-hundred local municipalities across the country have enacted so-called “anti-illegal immigration” ordinances to prevent largely Latin America migrants in the United States from moving into, settling, and living in their communities. Through the prohibition in the leasing or sale of real property to an undocumented immigrants, sanctions for employers who hire undocumented immigrants, and or English-only provisions in the provision of municipal services; such ordinances have racialized municipal, and by extension school boundaries in profound ways. As one Mayor of a Wisconsin community fundamentally transformed by Mexican migration made clear: “I would like to inform you of what is coming. If you employ illegal immigrants or rent or house illegal immigrants, there will be consequences. They are not welcome here.”
Accordingly, I explore the impact of such ordinances on the racialized reproduction, concentration, and ultimate exclusion of Latino students from equal educational opportunities in metropolitan schools. As my research has discovered, the desire for “better” and more “exclusive” schools animates much of the political will behind the enactment of such ordinances. Though such ordinances have been carefully crafted not to run afoul such decisions as Brown v. Board of Education or Plyler v. Doe, I suggest that the time is ripe to revisit the “de jure”/“de facto” distinction in American constitutional and educational jurisprudence. Indeed, disturbingly akin to many of the “sundown” ordinances enacted by many Midwestern communities in the first-half of the 20th century in response to an African American diaspora from the American South, today’s “anti-Immigration” ordinances promise to render more impermeable and more pernicious residential segregation and educational inequity in an increasingly “brown” America.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper is a critical theoretical of the gendered, heteronormative construction of ethnicity – Latinidad- by the Latina/o community in the United States and the consequent exclusion of queer Latinos from Latinidad. Queer Latina/os experience a triple jeopardous existence being race-ethnic and sexual minorities within the context of American society, the American (predominantly white) gay culture and the Latina/o community. However, the reification of patriarchal ideologies that privilege men in Latinidad and its embrace by both heterosexual and queer Latinos, positions queer Latinas in a particularly marginalized and excluded location as they are perceived as challenging heteronormative norms, thereby betraying their ethnicity. Queer Latinos and Latinas in particular are however challenging their marginalized positions within their ethnic community by becoming visible and developing a voice through the organizations that they are spearheading, the scholarship that they are creating and by talking about their lives. In so doing, they challenging constructed Latinidad and re-appropriating it to create spaces for their lives and realities as “legitimate” rather than “sell-out” Latina/os.