Boundary Claims and Comparison Work in Early “Asian” and “Hispanic” Panethnic Movements

• In Event: 2176 - Beyond the Civil Rights Paradigm: Inter-sectional Dynamics in Movements for Racial Justice (Cosponsored with Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities)

Abstract

This paper provides one of the first systematic comparisons of the Asian and Hispanic panethnic movements of the 1970s to understand how stakeholders substantiate emergent group boundaries. We examine over a decade’s worth of early Asian and Hispanic social movement publications to show how the trajectories of these movements evolved. Our findings show that panethnic Asian organizations used more racially radical discourse than “Hispanic” organizations did, a finding that suggests that panethnicity, as a movement tactic, does not have an inherent political bias. Despite these political differences, however, we also find that Asian and Hispanic movements use the same discursive tool – group comparison – in strikingly similar ways. We elaborate on these comparisons and show how the strategy helped to reinforce panethnic claims making. In sum, our work provides insights into the practices and patterns that racial and ethnic minority leaders use to reinforce claims about difference. Studies often examine racialization processes from the top down to understand the emergence of new categories; here, we highlight the ways in which minority communities themselves grapple with new categories and identities in an effort to develop new forms of racial politics.

Authors

• G. Cristina Mora, University of California-Berkeley

• Dina G. Okamoto, Indiana University