Blacks may be second class, but they can’t make them leave: Mexican racial formation and immigrant status in Winston-Salem

Posted in Latino Studies, Social Science, United States on 2012-12-30 03:31Z by Steven

Blacks may be second class, but they can’t make them leave: Mexican racial formation and immigrant status in Winston-Salem

Latino Studies
Volume 10, Issue 1 (Spring/Summer 2012)
pages 60-80
DOI: 10.1057/lst.2012.7

Jennifer A. Jones, SBS Diversity Post Doctoral Fellow
Ohio State University, Columbus

In this article, I investigate how race is produced by looking at the reception experiences of Afro and Mestizo Mexican migrants to the new South. Despite the fact that Afro and Mestizo Mexicans are both phenotypically and culturally distinct from one another, they assert a shared racial identity as minorities and as Latinos. On the basis of ethnographic field work in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I argue that their perceived similarities with African Americans and pervasive discrimination owing to status drives Afro-Mexicans to assert a race-based Latino identity that is shaped by their understanding of African American experiences.

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Who Are We? Producing Group Identity through Everyday Practices of Conflict and Discourse

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-06-22 04:10Z by Steven

Who Are We? Producing Group Identity through Everyday Practices of Conflict and Discourse

Sociological Perspectives
Volume 54, Number 2 (Summer 2011)
pages. 139-162
DOI: 10.1525/sop.2011.54.2.139

Jennifer A. Jones, SBS Diversity Post Doctoral Fellow
Ohio State University, Columbus

Multiracials have the flexibility to opt out of multiracial identity, to shift identities depending on context and are characterized by in-group diversity. Given this fluid space, how do multiracials come to see themselves as a collective? This article describes an empirical example of collectivization processes at work. Specifically, the author observed the process of collective identity-building though ethnographic research in a mixed-race student-run organization. This case study indicates that group identity formation is a negotiated process involving strategies to achieve a sense of belonging and cohesion. The author shows that overtime, by using experiences of social conflict to construct shared experiences, the members of this mixed-race organization developed collective identity In so doing, their experience underscores how collective identity development is socially constructed and how micropractices are essential components of group formation.

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