Blanco y Negro: Anti-Blackness and the Language Practices of 1.5- and Second-generation Puerto Ricans and Dominicans

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 23. Migrant Generations

Abstract

In 2000, Latinos first outnumbered African Americans to become the largest minority group in the country. This population growth has led race and immigration scholars to question the place of Latinos in the U.S. racial hierarchy. Existing research among race scholars has shown that Latinos’ preference for the “white” racial category and the “some other race” category on Census forms reflects a coming change in how race is understood in the U.S., where there exists a less fluid Black-white racial binary. Further, ethnographic and interview-based research has argued that Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, who are often categorized as Black by others in the U.S., are changing how race operates culturally in the U.S. by eschewing U.S. racial labels in favor of nationality (“my race is Puerto Rican”) or pan-ethnicity (“my race is Latino”). I argue these assertions ignore similarities in the nature of racism and anti-Blackness across the Americas, while theorizing race as an individual trait or identity, rather than a product of racism. To provide evidence of these ideological commonalities, I draw from the emerging field of raciolinguistics to analyze the racialized language practices 1.5- and second-generation Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Central Florida. Preliminary findings show that anti-Blackness in the U.S. and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean allows respondents to merge racial classificatory systems across these regions. Further, I find that second-generation Latinos’ lessened use of Spanish, and sparse knowledge of Latin American racialized terms, provide further evidence that Latinos are not changing how race operates in the U.S., but rather acclimating to U.S. racial norms.

Author

• Shantee Rosado, University of Pennsylvania