ABSTRACT
Blacks and Latina/os have a long history of fighting for inclusion in the United States. Yet many times, their perceived citizenship status places them against each other. I develop a framework to show how media and political leaders use anti-immigrant rhetoric. This language places Blacks and Latina/os in opposition. Three concepts ground my citizenship framework: racial naturalization, racial alienization, and racial certification. I provide four examples of how these concepts have implications for Black and Latino relations. This framework, which I also label as a white power project, is an essential intervention as it can highlight the ways (1) Perceived citizenship status positions Blacks and Latinos relative to each other, and (2) media and political personalities strategically feature Black citizenship to advance their anti-immigrant narratives. Ultimately, my study shows that political statements divide communities of colour and uphold White supremacy.
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Acknowledgements
I want to thank Cathy Cohen, Michael Dawson, John Brehm, and Ricardo Ramirez for their support during the initial phase of this project. I would also like to thank Ainsley Lesure, Marcelle Medford, Alfredo Gonzalez, Sophia Jordan Wallace, Andrew Dilts, Niambi Carter, Lisa Garcia-Bedolla and the Berkeley Latina Collective, and Adela Licona for their conversations and suggestions to help develop the ideas in this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In this article I will use the term Latinx as the gender inclusive category. However, when the plural use of the term is required I will use the term Latina/os.
6 This perception of course can quickly be dismantled when there is a looming threat to white supremacy, as was the case with the Presidency of Barack Obama. In this case, many U.S. voters were quick to distinguish between “Americannes” and “Blackness” as two distinct categories.
23 Carter (Citation2019) see also, Cas Mudde (Citation2018) defines nativism as “a xenophobic form of nationalism that sees both nonnative persons and their alleged ideas as a threat to the nation-state’s culture, security, and economic well-being”. p. 89.
26 Conflicted nativism is a response to white racism that is not directed towards immigrants themselves.
27 I refer to this process as “symbolic power” because any actions that Blacks take on the immigration debate do not alter the existing racial structure of White dominance, much less translate into substantive change for their own life chances.
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