Theorizing Intersectional Racial and Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-first Century

• In Event: 376 - Regular Session. Race and Ethnicity

Abstract

This article develops an intersectional approach to the study of racial and ethnic relations. We consider four separate cases that have been conceptualized by the ethnicity paradigm as assimilation projects and by the race paradigm as structural racism projects, respectively: 1) African-American entrepreneurs; 2) the Mexican-origin middle class 3) black immigrant deportees; and 4) intermarriage between unauthorized immigrants and US-born whites. The analysis reveals the shortcomings of the ethnicity paradigm to consider race as a structural force that is distinct from ethnicity, or to acknowledge that structural racism and racial exclusion condition assimilation trajectories in marked ways; and the limitations of the race paradigm to take seriously group members’ agency in fostering social capital resources and support that can mediate or in some cases even transcend racial inequality. By connecting two separate threads of sociological knowledge -- the ethnicity paradigm, with its focus on group dynamics and inclusion, and the race paradigm, which underscores structural racism and exclusion -- the intersectional approach reveals instead how systems of oppression and privilege based on race and ethnicity condition members’ life chances within the highly stratified American social structure.

Authors

• Zulema Valdez, University of California-Merced

• Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, University of California-Merced