Afro Latinidad: An Ethnography on Liminality and the Possibilities for Coalition Building

• In Event: The Problematics of Racial and Ethnic Coalition-Building in an Era of Explicit Threat

Abstract

This work draws on auto and ethnographic fieldnotes based on interactions with Latinx asylum seekers and African American unhoused individuals in one unique public setting. I explore how these individuals make sense of Afro Latinidad in a space where indigeneity and Hispanicity are privileged, assumed and centered. The auto and ethnographic fieldnotes that inform this writing are derived from my vantage point as an Afro Latina of Dominican descent and native Spanish speaker, conducting volunteer work with newly released asylum seekers who stop in Atlanta, GA while en route to their sponsors. Fieldnotes from my years as a bus station volunteer are illustrative of a) Latinx asylee’s earliest impressions of racial formation in the United States and b) the distancing and centering strategies Latinx asylees and African Americans used to build racial/ethnic alliances with me. The findings illustrate that Latinx asylees and African American descendants of U.S. slavery employ strategies with the potential to build bridges but only if these groups recognize their parallel transience as a shared oppression and as a product of carceral surveillance. The findings further the theorization of Afro Latinidad's potential for racial solidarities, collaboration and racial meaning making while simultaneously attending to its limitations.

Author

• Katie Linette Acosta, Georgia State University