Black&Latino Relations--The Discourse
In a 2004 book entitled “The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conflict Between Latinos and Black and What it Means for America,” Harvard Law School graduate Nicolás Vaca, asserts that Latinos in the United States have long had an acrimonious relationship with African-Americans. He further states that because Latinos are now the largest racial minority in the nation with no responsibility for the plight of African-Americans, that the status of inter-ethnic race relations will change to reflect a dominance by Latinos at the expense of African-Americans. Whether or not Vaca’s predictions are prescient, they have received a public attention that warrants closer attention because of the way they play into a public discourse that has consistently presented African-Americans as the sole cause of discord in “Black-Latino relations.”To be specific, over the last four decades when the topic of Black-Latino relations has been broached, the discourse has often centered on just a few primary issues. These issues have repeatedly been: African-American fears of being displaced in the labor market by Latinos, African-American disenchantment with having the benefits of the civil rights movement extended to Latinos, African-American concern with the increased immigration of Latinos, African-American discontent with the growth of Spanish language usage in the United States, and African-American concern with the fear that bilingual education services divert resources from under-financed public schools in African-American areas. Similarly, discussions about the demographic explosion of Latinos and their desire to assume greater political clout has focused upon the presumed obstructionism and discontent of African-Americans who must “relinquish” their power to accommodate Latinos.
Absent from this list of favorite themes in the public discourse in the English and Spanish language media regarding the challenges to organizing Black-Latino coalitions, is any discussion of Latino agency. In fact, one is left with the simplistic impression that Latinos are the parties extending their friendship in solidarity, only to be consistently rebuffed by African-Americans. Black-Latino political turf wars in Dallas, Texas over the selection of a school superintendent in 1997, in Miami, Florida, over the 1996 mayoral election, and in Chicago, Illinois over the allocation of public housing units in 1994, have all been depicted as zero sum struggles to gain Latino political power by wrenching it away from the begrudging hands of African-Americans. Yet upon closer examination, the reality is much more complex and reveals Latinos to be agents of bias and racism themselves. (See Palgrave Macmillan press 2005 book “Neither Enemies Nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos”).
The sociological concept of “social distance” measures the social unease one ethnic or racial group has for interacting with another ethnic or racial group. Social science studies of Latino racial attitudes often indicate a preference for maintaining social distance from African-Americans. And while the social distance level is largest for recent Latin American immigrants, more established communities of Latinos in the United States are also characterized by their social distance from African-Americans. For instance, in a 2002 survey of Latinos and African-Americans, the African-Americans had more positive views of Latinos than vice versa (See “Black-Brown Relations and Stereotypes,” by Tatcho Mindiola, Jr., et al. UT press 2002). This same study found that 46 percent of Latino immigrants who live in residential neighborhoods with African-Americans report almost no interaction with them whatsoever. The social distance of Latinos from African-Americans is consistently reflected in Latino responses to other surveys.
Similarly, in a 1993 study of inter-group relations, Latinos overwhelming responded that they had most in common with Whites and least in common with African-Americans (The National Conference Survey on Inter-Group Relations). In contrast, African-Americans responded that they felt they had more in common with Latinos and least in common with Whites and Asian Americans. It is somewhat ironic that African-Americans who are publicly depicted as being adverse to coalition building with Latinos, demonstrate survey responses that are more in accord with all the socioeconomic data that demonstrates the commonality of African-American and Latino communities. While Latinos, in contradistinction provide survey responses that fly in the face of all the socioeconomic data demonstrating African-American and Latino parallels. The Latino affinity for Whites over African-Americans is part and parcel of the Latino identification with whiteness. Is There Racism in Latin America and What Does That Mean for Race Relations in the United States?. Indeed, in contrast to the many reports of a Latino preference for mixed-race census racial categories, there is a strong Latino preference for the White racial category and some Latino groups like Cubans disproportionately select the White racial category (See “Bleach in the Rainbow: Latin Ethnicity and the Preference for Whiteness” by William A. Darity, Jr., et al).
In short, the public discourse about relations between African-Americans and Latinos is problematic because is over-simplistic and factually skewed. The changing demographics of the nation requires that we expand the analysis of racism to include considerations of how groups of color can be complicit and even active agents in the discrimination against other groups of color. But to be a useful tool against discrimination, the examination of racism amongst groups of color cannot be unidirectional and focused on just one group.
posted by Henry A. Obispo @ 11:35 PM
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