Racism, Identity, and Latinos: A Comment on Alcoff

There are in fact three binaries that Alcoff suggests that we need to transcend if we are to develop more accurate descriptions of current social realities and more productive analyses to inform political practice.1 There is the familiar black/white binary, which she argues misleads us into thinking that colorcoded racism is the model for all forms of racism. There is a race/ethnicity binary, which she says cannot do justice to the lived experience and social identity of Latinos living in the United States. And there is the promise/threat binary, which she maintains offers us a distorted depiction of the political situation of Latinos. Alcoff sketches three proposals for getting beyond these problematic binaries. Anti-Latino racism, she argues, is a type of racism that is distinct from antiblack racism and cannot be modeled on it. Ethnorace is a hybridized identity category that more accurately represents the Latino situation than does the categories of race and ethnicity. Identity proliferation is the forthright acknowledgement and embrace of differentiation— along the lines of class, national origin, language, color, and so on—within social groups defined by race, ethnicity, or ethnorace. I accept Alcoff ’s compelling arguments in favor of “identity proliferation” (though I am not entirely happy with the somewhat misleading term she has chosen to designate her proposal). Recognizing the internal differences and potential sources of conflict between the members of a marginalized group is imperative, on both theoretical and practical grounds. In fact, this is, fortunately, the trend of recent scholarly research on racial and ethnic politics. So I will not say more about this aspect of Alcoff ’s proposal. The focus of my remarks, then, will be on the ideas of anti-Latino racism and ethnorace.