Color Matters: Latina/o Racial Identities and Life Chances

What are the connections between racial formation and racial identities in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the identities of those societies' emigrants and their descendants in the United States? How do Latina/os “fit” in studies of race and racialization in the US? How does gender intersect with the legacies of conquest, genocide, colonialism, slavery, and racialization that frame Latinidad hemispherically? How do those historic and disciplinary intersections inform Latina/o racial identity theory and political projects? Drawing on insights offered by key texts in each discipline, this essay will offer a model for approaching the study of Latina/o racial identity in the US. Due to space constraints, I will necessarily offer broad brush strokes rather than fine detailing in that modeling. Whatever may be lost in the particulars will hopefully be gained conceptually.