“What Are We?”: Latino Politics, Identity, and Memory in the 1983 Chicago Mayoral Election

The 1983 Chicago mayoral election, which polarized Black and white voters, left the nascent Latino electorate in an uncertain position. A reevaluation of this election clarifies the impact of Black mayoral candidate Harold Washington, whose candidacy laid bare significant political divisions and anti-Black sentiment among Latinos as they grappled with their relationship to whiteness. Divisions aside, Washington's effort to court the Latino vote helped legitimate a monolithic, panethnic label in Chicago politics, as evidenced by organizational records, campaign advertising, electoral data, and bilingual media coverage. Reframing the 1983 election as a dual process of race making and panethnic labeling bridges scholarship on Black mayors, Latino politics, and urban history, and questions an enduring political memory of 1983 that has obscured both Latino anti-Blackness and the fragility of Latino unity.

Political (Mis)behavior: Attention and Lacunae in the Study of Latino Politics

The field of Latino politics has developed rapidly over the past decade, but some areas within the field have received more attention than others, with some topics remaining relatively overlooked. This article begins by reviewing three primary strands of the recent literature on Latino civic engagement, identity politics, and institutions. It then pivots off the 2016 election to highlight three additional lines of inquiry that are either understudied or where the findings in the literature remain conflicted: the effects of threat on Latino mobilization, the entry of new Latino voters into American politics, and Latino conservatism. Assessing the field, the article concludes by arguing for greater attention to understudied questions and against facile assumptions about Latinos in American politics.