The Politics of Ethnic Construction: Hispanic, Chicano, Latino...? || U.S. Ethnic Politics: Implications for Latin Americans

U.S. Ethnic Politics: Implications for Latin AmericansAuthor(s): Martha E. GimenezSource: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 4, The Politics of Ethnic Construction:Hispanic, Chicano, Latino...? (Autumn, 1992), pp. 7-17Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2633841 .

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U.S. Ethnic Politics Implications for Latin Americans

by Martha E. Gimenez

Unlike most countries, which recognize the existence of social classes and class struggles in both commonsense understandings of social reality and legitimate political discourse, the United States is silent about class and obsessed with racial/ethnic politics. While other dimensions of stratification such as, for example, gender and age also enjoy political legitimacy, the politics of race/ethnicity has displaced class politics on the American political scene. This hegemony of race/ethnicity in the perception and discussion of most social conflict and political struggle is the result of the complex interaction of many factors. Perhaps most important is the heterogeneous origin of the population, whose composition is continuously affected by the changing nature of immigration flows. Demographic factors alone, however, cannot have such powerful political effects; one must take into account the heritage of slavery, the presence of "colonized minorities" (Native Ameri- cans, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans), and the lasting political effects of McCarthyism, which eradicated the left from American politics and defined class politics as un-American. Equally important are the effects of deindustrialization, economic recession, steadily increasing unemployment, and the erosion of the st-andard of living of the American working class.

A key determinant of the salience of race and ethnicity in American politics is the role of the state in legitimating the labeling of people in racial terms, thus creating, despite the heterogeneity of the populations thus labeled, "races"1 and "ethnicities" that presumably can be described on the basis of real and identifiable common traits. The current definitions of Asians, blacks, and Hispanics are exceedingly broad,' and they have the objective effect of minoritizing the entire world (Gimenez, 1988). These labels ignore social- class and national-origin differences among people, thus blurring the differences between U.S. "minority groups" (populations historically oppressed in the United States) and immigrants. In the "social reality" created by these

Martha E. Gimenez teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and has been a participating editor of LatinAmericanPerspectives for the past 18 years. She thanks John Horton and Fred L6pez for their helpful suggestions on this article.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 75, Vol. 19 No. 4, Fall 1992,7-17 ? 1992 Latin American Perspectives

7



8 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

labels, Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans are automatically perceived and labeled as minorities upon entering the United States.

In this essay, I will briefly review some of the theoretical, methodological, and political problems entailed by the use of these labels.2 My main focus, however, will be the objective implications of the Hispanic label for Latin Americans who immigrate to or visit the United States. It is my contention that this label, far from being merely descriptive and neutral, has negative social and political connotations that are important for an eventual assess- ment of the social, political, and scientific usefulness of this and other racial labels for classifying the U.S. population.

GENERAL THEORETICAL AND POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

These broad labels identifying the population's "majority" and "minority" components have several important drawbacks. First of all, they erase the qualitative differences between U.S. minority groups (i.e., populations with a common history of oppression and exploitation) and newly arrived immigrants, who, whatever their social class, have never been oppressed or exploited in this country. U.S. ethnic minorities are thus deprived of their history (which is crucial as a basis for grass-roots collective organization and political action) and reduced to statistical categories capable of indefinite expansion through legal and illegal immigration.

An important corollary of this situation is the assumption that, regardless of their historical identities, people can be reduced to interchangeable units that can be counted for political and administrative purposes. This entails the denial of the historically developed identities and cultures of members of U.S. ethnic/racial minorities and of immigrants. The racism inherent in this practice is obvious, and the fact that it goes unnoticed is a powerful indicator of the pervasiveness and strength of racism in the United States.

These labels are racist in that (1) they reduce people to a set of stereotyped, generally negative traits which presumably define their culture and identity and predict a given set of negative behaviors (e.g., high rates of crime, drug addiction, out-of-wedlock child-bearing, welfare dependency, etc.), (2) they reduce people to interchangeable generic entities, negating the qualitative differences between, for example, persons of Puerto Rican descent who have lived for generations in New York City and newly arrived immigrants from Chile or some other South or Central American country, and (3) they reinforce racism in the society as a whole by encouraging the perception of



GimEnez / U.S. ETHNIC POLMCS 9

people in racial/ethnic terms rather than in such terms as social class or national origin.

Another important set of problems associated with these labels has to do with the meaning that can be attributed, in social research and in commonsense interpretations of available information, to comparisons among populations identified only in racial/ethnic terms. These comparisons are encour- aged by the mass media's tendency to report data (e.g., infant mortality, test scores, income, unemployment, etc.) primarily in terms of racial/ethnic differences. What does it mean to compare, for example, white and Hispanic fertility? Or white and black test scores or crime rates? Because the populations included in these labels differ in terms of national origin, social class, and socioeconomic status, such broad comparisons can only contribute to the creation or the reinforcement of stereotypes about white superiority and minority inferiority, lack of self-control, lack of social responsibility, lower intelligence, etc.

Politically, because these labels are used to identify minority individuals for affirmative action purposes, they have important consequences. Civil rights struggles in this country were fought to protect the rights of historically defined groups that have been subject to economic exploitation and social oppression for generations. Civil rights laws protect individuals against job discrimination on the basis of national origin, gender, religion, race, etc. More recent affirmative action policies were designed to compel state and private employers to comply with the broad goals of existing civil rights legislation. The fact that the labels used to identify minority individuals make no distinctions based on social class and national origin means that it is legal for employers to treat foreign workers as minority workers and hire them in compliance with affirmative action directives. Given that nonwhite workers are overrepresented in manual and poorly paid jobs, it is in the context of the upper strata of white-collar and professional employment that affirmative action guidelines are most relevant for insuring that minority workers are given a fair chance. But the use of these labels makes it legal for employers to benefit from the "brain drain" from the Third World while the conditions under which U.S. minority workers live not only remain relatively unchanged but may have worsened because of the current economic recession. The hiring of foreign professionals and technical workers creates the statistical illusion of progress in minority recruitment and overall improvements in the life chances of U.S. ethnic minorities when in reality no significant positive changes can be documented. Objectively, this situation creates a conflict of interest between U.S. minorities and foreigners besides leading to the pro- duction of statistics that are meaningless at best and a source of scientific and political mystifications (Gimenez, 1989a).




U.S. MINORITIES, LATIN AMERICANS, AND THE HISPANIC LABEL

The Hispanic label was created by the federal Office of Management and Budget in the 1970s (Hayes-Bautista and Chapa, 1987: 64). Because ethnic enumeration is an important political issue in the context of affirmative action and other laws intended to remedy the effects of historical economic and political discrimination, minority leaders have always been concerned with means to improve the Census Bureau's ability to identify and count minority populations. That the Hispanic label automatically produces greater numbers than identification by historical and political criteria (e.g., Puerto Rican, Mexican-American, Chicano, etc.) led Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban leaders to lobby for its adoption (for a full account of this process, see Choldin, 1986). The inclusion in the census of a self-identification question that forces Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Central and South Americans, and Spaniards to identify themselves as "persons of Spanish/Hispanic origin" has resulted in the political and statistical construction of a new minority "group," a group whose origins can be traced to statistical manipulation and the pursuit of immediate political advantage rather than to historical foundations (for a detailed critique of the label, see Gimenez, 1989a).

The uncritical acceptance of the label by majority and minority populations, as well as by demographers and other social scientists, is in my view revealing of a racist or, at best, ethnocentric understanding of the character- istics of Latin Americans and of the populations of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent forcibly brought under U.S. hegemony. The tacit assumption of a Hispanic ethnicity or a "Hispanicity" common to Latin Americans and people of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent who have lived in this country for generations reflects not only a shallow concept of culture but a pervasive racism. Hispanics are not a minority group in the historical sense of the concept but an extraordinarily heterogeneous population whose members differ in terms of nationality, race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, and social class. An outspoken critic of this label has said that it "has hardly any relation to the real world" (Petersen, 1985: 110). Although the heterogeneity of the population subsumed under it is generally acknowledged, it continues to be widely used by social scientists, policymakers, politicians, and the mass media. This is indicative, in my view, of the existence of an unacknowledged belief in an underlying cultural and even racial sameness that justifies the collection of data using this rather than more appropriate categories of analysis.



Gimenez / U.S. ETHNIC POLITICS 11

Even though in fine print it is usually noted that Hispanics may be of any race, the concept and its usage have racial connotations. For example, in a recent New York Times article, the results of the 1990 census are discussed as indicating a profound change in the racial composition of the United States, with almost a quarter of Americans having African, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American ancestry (Barringer, 1991). In the same article it is acknowledged that the white population, which comprises 80.3 percent of the total population, includes most Hispanic residents, who might be of any race; this suggests that most members of the Hispanic minority could in fact be members of the white majority.

The reason no racial distinctions within the Hispanic population are made when data about them are presented may be that Hispanics, despite racial differences, are assumed to share a culture or that to make those distinctions would reveal the source of the racial discrimination and economic exploitation to which this population has been historically subject: the fact that Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans (as well as many Latin Americans) are of mixed ancestry that may include African, Native American, or Asian. As one critic of the Hispanic label forcefully states,

The terms currently in vogue - "Hispanic" and "Spanish origin" - are both misleading, stereotypical, and racist.... No Spaniard has ever suffered undue discrimination, either in Latin America or in the United States. Raza, be they Chicanos, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, etc., have not been denied access to social benefits because they might have had a distant Spanish ancestor; discrimination has been suffered because raza are of Indian descent.... Continued use of the term "Hispanic" or "Spanish origin" denies the very basis upon which discrimination has been based, and confuses the basis for civil rights and affirmative action efforts (Hayes-Bautista, 1980: 335).

These comments highlight another important shortcoming of the label: stressing the Hispanicity of this population gives it a European veneer that hides the Native American ancestry of many of its members (see Forbes, this issue [1992]).

The existence of racial divisions within this population may partly explain why many refuse to accept it. Both in the 1980 and the 1990 census, many respondents refused to go along and wrote their nationality in the space reserved for "Other" race. Some demographers have dismissed them as "inconsistent respondents" who felt embarrassed about their presumed ethnic identity:

these individuals were likely to be Hispanics with ambivalent ethnic identities who misreported their origin ... because they objected to the lack of response choices on the full enumeration item (e.g., no Venezuelan, Argentine, etc., choices) or who deliberately denied their "Hispanic" origins.... [the status




inconsistency perspective] suggests that Hispanics with ambivalent social identities will be of higher socioeconomic status.... Presumably the ambigu- ity in their social identity derives from their desire to be recognized by the majority group (non-Hispanics) based on their socioeconomic credentials (Tienda and Ortiz, 1986: 11, 15).

This remarkably candid statement clearly expresses the intent of the label - the identification of a minority group, that is, a group viewed as racially, culturally, and socially inferior.

There may be many reasons for people's rejecting the label (see, e.g., Oboler, this issue [1992]). Rather than implying ignorance or psychological trauma due to "status inconsistency," rejection may indicate that for many Latin Americans the division between whites and nonwhites is insufficient to capture the racial gradations to which they are accustomed to in their countries of origin. Rodriguez (1991) suggests that "racial identity is ulti- mately a sense of what one is culturally, not what one looks like to oth- ers.... Individuals and groups can be, and often are, of two or more 'races.' " Many who chose Other also wrote their nationality, thus indicating that their self-identification was not racial but political. Those who consider it natural for Latin Americans and people of Latin American descent to accept a Spanish/Hispanic origin overlook the fact that for a substantial proportion of these populations this origin makes no sense either in terms of their actual ancestry (which may be Native American, Northern, Eastern, or Southern European, African, or Asian) or in terms of their historical understanding of who they are as citizens of a given country or as descendants of Latin American immigrants.

These reasons are not, however, the only ones. Racial ethnic labels are used in the United States as code words for behavioral patterns associated with poverty, destitution, and deviant/criminal behavior. The "hidden injuries of class" can only be acknowledged, in legitimate political discourse, as the "social problems" and taxpayers' burdens to be expected from racial/ethnic minorities. Because those labels are indiscriminately used to characterize everyone judged to be a member of a racial/ethnic minority group, it is not surprising that many law-abiding people, regardless of social class, may consider that they do not apply to them because of the social stigma attached to them.

Thus racial/ethnic labels have a double connotation. On the one hand, they are presented by minority leaders and educators as the symbols of cultures and identities of which people should be proud. On the other hand, in the context of social science research and mass media discussion of social problems or of census information they identify populations that are dis-



Gim6nez / U.S. ETHNIC POLITICS 13

proportionately poor and plagued by all sorts of social problems and deviant/ criminal behavior. In the case of Hispanic, the label "upgrades" Chicano, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and, broadly speaking, Latin American cultures by making them clones of the culture of Spain; it gives them a European veneer that denies both their Native American dimensions and their originality. At the same time, because it is used to identify a stigmatized population, it "downgrades" all these groups, stigmatizing their cultures as the source of the problems faced by a significant proportion of their members while denying the economic and political causes of those problems.

It is possible, in light of the above, to identify some of the positive and negative implications of the label for Latin Americans and their descendants. On the positive side, Latin Americans as a whole benefit if they choose to play the minority role. While civil rights legislation and affirmative action are indifferent to class, protecting everyone from illiterate peasants to scientists, professionals, and the wealthy from discrimination in economic, political and social activities, it is the upper strata that are likely to benefit the most. Working-class Central and South Americans are likely to be overrepresented in low-paid, undesirable employment; affirmative action is not relevant to their chances of finding jobs. The situation is radically different in the upper strata, where affirmative action can be considered a blessing for the thousands of professionals continuously overproduced by Latin Ameri- can universities. While some funding agencies may specify that Hispanic applies only to Puerto Ricans or persons self-identified as Chicanos or Mexican-Americans, the term makes no distinctions with regards to national origin, leaving the door open for universities and other employers of scientists and professionals to count Latin Americans as minorities. This gives middle- and upper-middle-class Latin Americans an edge in the market at the expense of people who have been historically subject to oppression and whose fate is likely to remain relatively unchanged while institutions cele- brate their success in "minority recruitment."

On the negative side, because the label refers to a stigmatized population that is disproportionately poor and has a high proportion of female-headed households and a high incidence of AIDS, drug abuse, and deviant/criminal behavior, the prejudices and racist stereotypes associated with it are automatically transferred to Latin Americans regardless of social class and country of origin. Latin Americans, however, are racially heterogeneous, and a large proportion are of European descent. It is possible to hypothesize, conse- quently, that while all Latin American immigrants are potentially subject to stereotyping and racial discrimination, racism is likely to be most strongly felt among those who are working-class, poor, and/or of mixed non-European



14 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECrIVES

ancestry. Those with high socioeconomic status and high levels of education are better equipped to make the system work for them and to protect their children from the racism of teachers and peers.

The label deprives all Latin Americans of their national identities, which, though they have been used to develop racist stereotypes, are less likely to create the presumption of racial distinction. In my view, the fact that the heterogeneity of the Hispanic population is generally not taken into account contributes to its assuming a racelike character in social scientific and everyday discourse that strengthens the development of racist stereotypes. The fact that social class differences are ignored when information about Hispanics is presented in the mass media reinforces the assumption that it is Hispanic culture that keeps so many below or close to the poverty level and produces high rates of deviant/criminal behavior. In this context, successful Latin Americans seem exceptions to the rule, having succeeded not because of their class-based resources but because they have presumably overcome the limits of their "Hispanicness," becoming "assimilated" to the majority culture.

CONCLUSION

Latin Americans coming to the United States face important and unex- pected political and social obstacles associated with the Hispanic label and its intended and unintended effects. Latin American immigration and the other immigration flows from Asia and Africa are changing the racial and ethnic composition of social classes, expanding both the lower and the upper strata of U.S. racial/ethnic minorities. The minoritization of all non-European immigrants places Latin American immigrants (especially those of European descent and/or middle- and upper-class origins) in an unfamiliar and complex political context. Those who are dark-skinned, poor, and lower-class will be stereotyped as being poor because of their Hispanic culture/race; those who, because of their economic and/or human capital, succeed in business or the professions are likely to be taken as examples of "minority success" and to be counted as minorities for the purpose of affirmative action accounting. Given that racial/ethnic classifications seem to be here to stay, at least for the near future, what are their political options?

In view of the racial and class heterogeneity of Latin Americans, further complicated by differences in national origin, it is difficult to imagine what political issues could generate unity on an "ethnic" or "panethnic" (see Calderon, this issue [1992]) rather than a class basis. It is also difficult to




identify grounds for political solidarity between Latin American immigrants and U.S. Spanish-speaking historical minorities. Immigration from Mexico and Puerto Rico is constantly changing the composition and size of these minorities, and the vulnerability of their members to racism varies with social class and racial ancestry. Their ability to benefit from affirmative action varies directly with social class and gives well-educated and middle/upper- middle-class Latin Americans, particularly those of European ancestry, a distinct advantage over local minorities and working-class Latin Americans, especially those of mixed but non-European ancestry. Racial divisions and racism within Latin American populations are yet another source of social cleavages and political conflict.

While it would seem that class and race create hopeless divisions and make solidarity among Latin American immigrants and between Latin Americans and U.S. minorities difficult, it is possible to envision temporary alliances built around issues of bilingual education, educational concerns, housing, and employment that might bring together people with similar problems and needs. The common experience of racism and discrimination among less privileged Latin Americans and members of U.S. minorities might become a strong basis for political alliances. Less privileged Latin American immigrants of non-European ancestry (e.g., displaced Central American peasants) and. those who may be better off but come with no English-language skills tend to gravitate toward ethnic enclaves in which, classified as generic Hispanics by the authorities, the mass media, and the society in general, they confront problems and develop needs similar to those experienced by U.S. historically exploited minorities of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. In fact, poor working-class Central and South American immigrants, legal and illegal, increase the ranks of the Hispanic poor, thus strengthening "majority" stereotypes about their permanent economic inferiority and cultural backwardness. It is among the ranks of the poor and the lower strata of the working classes that rejection of the Hispanic label might become more pronounced and coalitions under the Latino label or a combi- nation of Latino and national-origin identities might be formed. It is in the politically conservative upper strata of professional and technical workers and petty-bourgeois entrepreneurs that uncritical and opportunistic acceptance of the Hispanic label and concomitant minority status might become more prevalent, for it is here that the effects of affirmative action can provide the most economic benefits for employment, promotion, or provision of economic support by the state or private lending institutions.

In light of this situation, Latin Americans who immigrate to the United States should be prepared to assume a new, stigmatized identity coexisting




with economic opportunities for those willing to pay the price. Some Latin Americans, however, because of political solidarity with the civil rights struggles of local U.S. minorities, may reject the label and work with local minorities to organize collective actions built on the preservation of historical identities and the recognition of common economic and political interests. This process of building solidarity between Latin American immigrants and U.S. local minorities of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent can find solid ground only to the extent that potential conflicts of interests, class divisions, and differences in historical identity are brought into the open so that common class interests can be identified as a basis for stable and effective political mobilization. While ethnic- or panethnic-based collective action may be effective in the short run, it cannot be the basis for attaining goals that satisfy the interests of all the classes that racial labels conceal. This essay is a modest effort to highlight the theoretical and political shortcomings of one such label frorfi the standpoint of a Latin American who, having chosen not to "pass" as a member of a minority so that U.S. minorities would have a fair chance, believes that the basis for political solidarity and effective political struggles is to be found in the recognition rather than the obliteration of differences.

NOTES

1. Black, a person having origins in any of the African racial groups not of Hispanic origin; Hispanic, a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race; Asian and Pacific Islander, a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, or the Pacific islands;AmericanIndian orAlaskanNative, a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition; White, a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East (Lowry, 1982: 51).

2. For an in-depth discussion of these issues, see Gimenez (1988; 1989a; 1989b).

REFERENCES

Barringer, Felicity 1991 "Census shows profound change in racial makeup of the nation." New York Times, March 11: A1-A12.

Choldin, H. M. 1986 "Statistics and politics: The 'Hispanic' issue in the 1980 Census." Demography 23: 403-418.




Gimenez, Martha E. 1988 "Minorities and the world-system: theoretical and political implications of the inter- nationalization of minorities," pp.39-56 in Joan Smith et al. (eds.), Racism, Sexism, and the World-System. Westport: Greenwood Press. 1989a "Latino/'Hispanic'-who needs a name? The case against a standardized terminology." International Journal of Health Services 19: 557-571. 1989b "The political construction of the Hispanic," pp. 66-85 in Mary Romero and Cordelia Candelaria (eds.), Estudios Chicanos and the Politics of Community. Selected Proceedings, National Association of Chicano Studies.

Hayes-Bautista, David E. 1980 "Identifying 'Hispanic' populations: the influence of research methodology on public policy." American Journal of Public Health 70: 353-356.

Hayes-Bautista, David E. and J. Chapa 1987 "Latino terminology: conceptual bases for standardized terminology." American Journal of Public Health 77 (January): 61-68.

Lowry, Ira S. 1982 "The science and politics of ethnic enumeration," pp. 42-61 in Winston A. Van Home (ed.), Ethnicity and Public Policy. Madison: University of Wisconsin System.

Petersen, William 1985 "Who's what: 1790-1980." The Wilson Quarterly 9: 110.

Rodriguez, Clara 1991 "Why 'Other' is our second fastest growing racial category." The New York Times, March 17, p. A10.

Tienda, Marta and V. Ortiz 1986 " 'Hispanicity' and the 1980 census." Social Science Quarterly 67: 3-20.



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The Politics of Ethnic Construction: Hispanic, Chicano, Latino...? || U.S. Ethnic Politics: Implications for Latin Americans