Controlling Images, Restraint, and Resistance: Latinos Typecast as Athletes and Gang Members

• In Event: 199 - Regular Session. Latinos

Abstract

“Controlling images” are central to the reproduction of racial, class, and gender inequality (Collins 1991: 68), yet there is a dearth of knowledge concerning the images that aim to constrain Latinos and how subjects respond to these negative stereotypes. Drawing from 102 in-depth, life history interviews with Latinos in California and Kansas, this article answers two research questions: First, how do controlling images of Latinos as gang members and sports athletes regulate opportunities, impose constraints, and channel emotions? Second, how do Latinos emotionally and behaviorally respond to these imposed controlling images? Controlling images have been elaborated for blacks but not for Latinos and their function of blocking opportunities such as educational success has been examined. Yet controlling images not only sanction behavior but channel emotions, a less-investigated theme. Racialized and gender-based stereotypes aim to control dominated groups yet attending to subordinated groups’ emotional and behavior reactions returns agency to oppressed populations. This article argues that controlling emotions projected onto Latinos code emotions as only permissible within gang or sports, harnessing subjects’ emotion and foreclosing other aspirations. Analyzing reactions to these stereotypes, which range from acquiescence to resistance, demonstrates that Latino men were more saddled by controlling images and more likely to assiduously protest them than women, revealing an intersection of race and gender. The regional comparison reveals that a sizeable Latino population and continuing immigration makes salient stereotypes of Latinos in California whereas controlling images exist but circulate more abstractly in Kansas.

Authors

• Jessica M. Vasquez, University of Oregon

• Kathryn Norton-Smith, University of Oregon