Color-blind, Color-visible or Color-frustrated? Dominican Immigrants in Atlanta Accepting and Rejecting U.S. Racial Ideologies

• In Event: 452 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Immigration and Assimilation

Abstract

Recent research shows that contemporary racism appears under the guise of colorblind discourse in which racial inequality is justified in non-racial ways. Bonilla-Silva’s seminal book highlights four key frames that Whites use to downplay the importance of race in social life. Research also shows that nonwhite immigrants quickly learn to deploy colorblind ideology to obtain social advantage and create distance from African-Americans. We build on this research, using in-depth interviews to investigate whether and how Dominican immigrants in Atlanta deploy colorblind ideology. Consistent with the literature, we find evidence of all four colorblind frames among our respondents; first generation Dominican immigrants downplay experiences of discrimination and profess belief in equal opportunity to signal their endorsement of mainstream American ideology. We also uncover a fifth colorblind frame -- frustration with the U.S. racial system – that has not been discussed in the literature. While respondents adopted a colorblind approach, they often framed this perspective as a form of resistance to American racial ideology rather than an endorsement of it. Respondents expressed frustration with being boxed into ill-fitting categories, exasperation at the race question, and often rejected the very concept of race. Our research contributes both to the colorblind literature and to the literature on Latino racial identification. In particular, we show how first-generation immigrants, given their distance from the U.S. racial system, represent an important and understudied group in colorblind discourses. We also underscore, through our fifth colorblind frame, the consequences of ill-fitting pan-ethnic categories for Dominicans.

Authors

• Katharine Tatum, Emory University

• Irene Browne, Emory University