2214 - Feeling Race, Feeling Erased: The Politics of Racial Identity amongst Caribbeans in the United States

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

This session will examine the politics of racial identity among Caribbeans in the United States. Despite their long trajectories of migration to the United States, and numerical weight, this group has not been at the center of dominant theorizations of race in the U.S. With presentations from scholars working on communities with roots in the Anglophone and Hispanophone Caribbean, this panel will analyze how these communities make sense of themselves within, through and outside of U.S. racial classification systems and U.S. racial politics. In focusing on these communities, each with their own unique histories of migration and colonization, this thematic session seeks to understand the emotions surrounding ethno-racial identity and experiences for U.S.-based Caribbeans and their descendants. In this, the panelist will address some of the questions raised in sociology for decades around how these communities identify, how they experience race and racism, the extent to which they feel close to other ethno-racial groups, and if/when they mobilize around ethno-racial identities. This question around political participation is particularly salient today as these processes of racial formation are unfolding amidst the increasing politicization of race with the emergence of the movement for black lives and movements against the criminalization of immigrant

Sub Unit

• Thematic Sessions

Session Organizer

• Tianna S. Paschel, University of California-Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Structural Racism, Criminalization and Pathways to Deportation for Dominican and Jamaican Men in the United States - Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, University of California-Merced

• Rethinking Black Ethnic Relations: The Culture of Distance and Jamaican Immigrants in Chicago - Marcelle Mandisa Medford, University of Chicago

• Feeling Racial Identity, Experiencing Color: How Dominicans and Puerto Ricans Resist U.S. Color Lines - Wendy D. Roth, University of British Columbia

• Black Model Minorities? Afro-Caribbean Youth Negotiating Race, Ethnicity and Belonging in New York City - Derron O. Wallace, Brandeis University

Discussant

• Tianna S. Paschel, University of California-Berkeley