Framing Race: Making Sense of Criminalization in a Colorblind Era

• In Event: 301 - Section on Latino/a Sociology Paper Session. Theorizing New Directions in Latina/o Sociology

Abstract

High rates of incarceration and police abuse captured has renewed attention to the criminalization of urban, young men of color. We draw attention to the criminalization of Latino young men in urban neighborhoods as a long-standing “racial project,” reinvigorated in an era of mass incarceration that functions to racialize the group. We examine how inner city, Latinos experience criminalization and make sense of this process, specifically the extent they adopt a racial framework. We draw on interviews with forty-two Latinos from two neighborhoods in Los Angeles conducted in 2007 and a follow-up study with half of these respondents in 2012. We find Latinos’ hypersegregation structures their criminalization and racialization, while paradoxically sustaining a defensive “colorblind” ideology. Holding strongly to meritocratic ideals and framing racism as blatant acts of interpersonal prejudice, most respondents disregard criminalization as a function of race. Internal dynamics in urban neighborhoods further obscures racialization. Gang-related violence in these communities justifies police presence in the minds of many residents, while moral boundaries drawn against the “gang” label reinforce a dichotomy between criminal/non-criminal. A race framework emerges for young men that step out of their urban neighborhoods, particularly into white spaces, who discover they are uniformly categorized and “othered” as a function of their association to the “iconic ghetto.” The most upwardly mobile respondents are more likely to adopt a racial framework, whereas the most economically stagnant, “locked in place” and most subject to criminalization, normalize this process and sustain a colorblind lens minimizing the role of race.

Authors

• Maria G. Rendon, University of California, Irvine

• Adriana Aldana, California State University, Dominguez Hills

• Laureen Hom, University of California-Irvine