Ethnic Authenticity, Class, and Autobiography: The Case of Hunger of Memory

PMLA ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Staten
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Mexican Descent ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Chicana Literature ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Culture Of Origin ◽  
Race Ideology

Richard Rodriguez's autobiographical Hunger of Memory (1982) is assigned to Chicano-Chicana literature because the book tells a story of growing up the child of Mexican immigrants, but Rodriguez rejects the term Chicano for himself and denies that it is possible or desirable for Americans of Mexican descent to retain an identification with their culture of origin. Rodriguez has been widely criticized as a sellout to white bourgeois culture, but his life narrative shows that his rejection of Chicano identity is rooted in the class-and-race ideology of his Mexican parents and thus in the contradictions of Mexican history. Chicano-Chicana nationalism assumes a simple dichotomy between the proletarian mestizo or mestiza and the bourgeois white oppressor. Rodriguez's family history, however, points toward race and class divisions within the population of Mexican descent that call into question the monolithic conceptions of Chicano-Chicana identity on the basis of which Rodriguez has been attacked.

Presumed Mexican Until Proven Otherwise: Identity Work and Intersectional Typicality among Middle-Class Dominican and Mexican Immigrants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Browne ◽  
Katharine Tatum ◽  
Belisa Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Positive Traits ◽  
Negative Stereotyping ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract Non-Latino natives often conflate “Latino” with “Mexican,” treating Mexican as a stigmatized group. Latinos often engage in “identity work” to neutralize this stigmatized identity. We link these micro processes of identity work with macro structures of stratification through “intersectional typicality.” We argue that the selection of which positive traits immigrants highlight to avoid stigma is systematic and tied to intersecting dimensions of race and class stratification at the macro level. We argue that this process is context-specific. We use the case of middle-class Dominicans and Mexicans living in Atlanta. Our findings show that both groups perceive that the pervasive image of the typical Latino in Atlanta is that of a working-class Mexican. While both groups perceive this image to be low-status, they diverge in their strategies for countering this presumption. Mexicans emphasize their middle-class status and often try to change the typical image of Latinos. Dominicans emphasize that they are not Mexican and highlight their atypicality. Interview data show that Dominicans are concerned about the Mexican label because of embedded working-class assumptions. We argue that although many respondents successfully avoid negative stereotyping, their identity work actually reaffirms the low-status meaning of the typical Latino category.

Free/Libre Open Source Software for Bridging the Digital Divide

2009 ◽  
pp. 95-101
Author(s):  
Yu-Wei Lin
Keyword(s):  
Digital Divide ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Approaches To Study ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
System Designs

As some scholars claim, the digital divide, referring to the perceived gap between those who have access to the latest information technologies and those who do not, entails that not having access to this information is an economic and social handicap (Compaine, 2001). In software design, structured inequalities operate along the main axes of gender, race/ethnicity and class. Each of these in turn generates its own structure of unequal practices giving rise to institutionalised sexism, racism or class divisions/conflict. “Gender, race and class also crosscut each other in various complex ways, sometimes reinforcing and at other times weakening the impact of existing inequalities” (Cohen & Kennedy, 2000, p. 100). For instance, Webster’s research (1996) employing feminist approaches to study computer system designs addresses the issue of a male-dominated system design field, which continuously excludes female users’ needs, requirements, interests and values in the innovation process. She criticises that, “Human factors may be bolted onto existing methods of systems design, local and contingent knowledge of work and information handling processes held by users in an amorphous sense may now even be incorporated into the systems design process, but this does not create an awareness of the way in which skills and knowledge are defined in gender-divided terms” (p. 150).

Women on South African Farms: Empowerment Across or Along Race and Class Divisions?

1998 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrienetta Kritzinger ◽  
Jan Vorster
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Class Divisions

Exclusion in Upscaling Institutions: The Reproduction of Neighborhood Segregation in an Urban Church

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 747-770
Author(s):  
Erick Berrelleza
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Urban Church ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Catholic Churches ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Neighborhood Segregation

This paper examines the intersection of neighborhood change and parish reconfiguration in Charlestown, MA. The merger of two Roman Catholic churches has unsettled the congregational cultures, just as gentrification is unsettling broader neighborhood dynamics. Based on findings from 28 in–depth interviews and participant–observation, I examine the spatial reproduction of neighborhood segregation in the sanctuary of St. Mary's church. Affluent newcomers and “Townies”–stalwart residents who have weathered earlier waves of neighborhood upscaling–form power alliances that result in the exclusion of the poorest residents in the shared space of this urban church. By paying attention to the seating arrangements and other social interactions of churchgoers, I discover that the new parish vision of the merged church–albeit one that purported to celebrate the diverse residents of the neighborhood–resulted in the cultural exclusion of Latinos. Institutional decisions, the desire to maintain ethnic enclaves, and tacit messages of group exclusion reify the race and class divisions of the neighborhood within the walls of the church. I conclude with an exploration of the strategies of resilience to gentrification and merger evident in this case by attending to the actions of the disadvantaged in relation to the changing institution.

Living in a Promiseland?: Mexican Immigration and American Obligations

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rogers M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Mexican Descent ◽  
Lead Free ◽  
Mexican Immigration ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Meaningful Lives

Controversies over Mexican immigrants and undocumented aliens in Arizona and elsewhere show the need for fresh approaches to immigration. The “principle of constituted identities” holds that the more a government has coercively constituted the identities of non-citizens in ways that have made having certain relationships to it fundamental to their capacities to lead free and meaningful lives, the greater the obligations that government has to facilitate those relationships–all else being equal. The U.S. has coercively constituted the identities of many persons of Mexican descent, inside and outside its boundaries, in ways that have fostered aspirations for dual economic, cultural, and political “citizenships.” It has also shaped the identities, values, and interests of many whites in immigrant-receiving states in ways that make Mexican immigrants seem threatening, even as it has made those states pay most of the costs of absorbing immigrants. In consequence, the U.S. should adopt policies that give priority to Mexicans in immigration and that facilitate dual citizenships, while providing more aid to immigrant-receiving states.

Undocumented Critical Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 152-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Aguilar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Descent ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Tribal Critical Race Theory ◽  
Liminal Experiences

Despite an increasing body of literature on undocumented immigrants and an improved access to academia by DACAdemics and undocumented scholars, the need for theories about undocumented experiences in the United States persists. In this article, I introduce the central tenets of a developing theory that I call Undocumented Critical Theory (UndocuCrit). Rooted in Critical Race Theory (CRT), Latina/o Critical Theory (LatCrit), and Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit), UndocuCrit introduces the lens to better understand the nuanced and liminal experiences that characterize undocumented communities in the United States. Although this initial rendering focuses on the experiences of Mexican immigrants and individuals of Mexican descent, UndocuCrit exhorts DACAdemics and undocumented scholars to contribute to this emerging framework by applying it to their experiences and those of other undocumented communities. As a theoretical framework, UndocuCrit challenges an immigrant binary rhetoric as well as embarking on a journey toward social justice and the empowerment of our communities.

Forging a Gender Path in Modern Mexican History

2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-266
Author(s):  
Mary Kay Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Mexican Women ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Association Meeting ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Science Association ◽  
Social Science Association

In 1975, Richard Graham asked me to give a paper on Mexican women at the Southwestern Social Science Association meeting. Surely, he asked me only because he thought that as a woman I would know something about women—I am sure that was my only qualification in his mind. Thankfully, he also asked Dawn Keremitsis, who had done work on Mexican women workers. Fortunately, I had included in my 1973 dissertation a chapter on women's vocational education. I wrote my entire dissertation on José Vasconcelos's educational crusade in a state of shock at the race and class biases I encountered in the documents. In the case of women, my outrage soared, propelled by my second-wave-feminist conviction that women had to be liberated from the slavery of the home. So I had written a dogmatic chapter and paper on how revolutionary educators wanted to remove women from the workforce, restore them to domesticity, train them to work in small, badly paid, home-based industries, and subordinate them to men and motherhood. Middle-class women prescribed class practices of motherhood and domesticity as if, I argued, women of the subaltern classes knew nothing of homemaking and mothering.

Solomon, Sheba, and the haunting of race in the Church and biblical interpretation

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-232
Author(s):  
Ron M. Serino
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Subtle Racism ◽  
Racial Polarization ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
1 Kings ◽  
The Church ◽  
Society Today

In order to counteract racial polarization within and among US churches and society today, this article proposes remembering, confessing, and repenting of traditions of racialized biblical interpretation that have been complicit with traditional, hierarchical gender, race, and class divisions. Alternative interpretations of the Solomon and Sheba narrative in 1 Kings 10 offer ways to reconsider how race continues to haunt society and Christian churches in the United States. The author suggests that the moral imperative of whiteness is for white US Christians to embrace white racial particularity as a first step in dismantling the subtle racism of assumed white cultural normativity. As part of multiracial, multicultural, multifaith, global communities, white US Christians need more than ever to ponder the cultural consequences of our biblical interpretations.

scholarly journals Fire typer ungdomsliv: Ressurser, relasjoner og stedets betydning

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-86
Author(s):  
Ingunn Marie Eriksen ◽  
Kari Stefansen ◽  
Guro Ødegård
Keyword(s):  
Local Environment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
The Self ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Future ◽  
Relational Resources ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Self Presentations

This chapter investigates how young people’s “projects of the self” – their self-presentations and orientations towards the future – are shaped by economic, cultural and relational capital, as well as place. What does growing up in families with different access to important resources entail, and what does place mean for young people’s experiences of themselves and their future opportunities? Based on an ongoing qualitative longitudinal study of 81 youths from four widely different communities, we describe a typology with four projects of the self: the assured optimist, the local thriving youth, the youth on a narrow path and the loosely anchored youth. These projects are closely linked to the youths’ family resources, and to a large extent they map onto traditional social class divisions. However, although the way that resources are linked to different projects of the self has the potential of shaping classed trajectories, they are not determined by class. Our analysis adds nuances to the general finding in youth research that lack of economic and cultural capital is associated with more limited future possibilities. We find that emotional and relational resources in the family also play a vital role in shaping young people’s projects of the self – which sometimes cross traditional class divisions. Moreover, we find that when young people’s projects of the self align with resources in the local environment and in the family, this greatly enhances their well-being and surety of the future. Youths who experience a rift between their projects of the self and the resources around them experience a shakier foundation from which to carve out their life projects.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document