Faultless Whites and Everyday Racism in Urban Latin@ América: Building 'Negra Acomplejada' Epistemologies

• In Event: Revisiting Race and Conceptualizing Whiteness in Latin America

Abstract

Claims of racism among Latin@s Americans, and the naming of “white” privilege or “whiteness” are often met with resistance or innocence; a “complex”/complejo imputed on Blacks who claim it and resist it. This paper examines empirical evidences of everyday codified modes of anti-BlackLatin@ urban racism in Latin@-America. The forms of everyday urban racial violences against Blacks are many and varied, ranging from the mundane and imperceptible to the paramount and undeniable. The “American” urban built landscapes and practices, reproductions of conquest and colonial racialized capitalism, are especially adept at hiding and excusing the mechanisms and workings of racism against Black-Latin@s while distributing benefits to non-Black Latin@s. I investigate how a “faultless whiteness,” which includes racial privileges, color-blindness, racial democracy claims, xenophobia, and ideas of racial mixture mute and deny Afro/Black-Latin@ experiences of racism in the city. I consider how Non-black/White-Latin@ experiences and responses—emotional, physical, identificatory, epistemological—are complicit in reproducing these very urban racisms. I ultimately argue for scholarship and policy to center “negra acomplejada” epistemologies in its examination of and fight against racism in Latin@ América.

Author

• Zaire Z Dinzey-Flores, Rutgers University