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chapter three The Meanings of Latino The word Latino means nothing and everything. It can be an empty category . It can also be full of meanings and contradictions. Latino is a socially constructed concept or category when referring to a group. Its existence and meanings are contingent on a particular social and historical context. In this instance, the context is the U.S. racial system. Outside the United States, Latino is almost nonexistent. If it does exist, its meanings are different and perhaps less powerful than those in the United States. To think of Latino as a social construct is not to deny the actual consequences of its use on the individuals categorized as such. One of the most significant consequences is the stigma and the discriminatory practices exercised upon those people referred to as Latinos. In the United States, we use Latino as a label to categorize people as a race, ethnic group, or minority.As Michel Foucault proposed (1976/1990), labels such as this one are created to manage populations. One of the features of power is to create and name the other (e.g., people not defined as white and thought of as different) through such labels. In doing so, it reduces human complexity to a set of characteristics or a stereotype, which then become an identity. The creation of this Latino identity, however, cannot be attributed solely to what is usually thought of as the sites of power, namely, state institutions and the mostly white male ruling group. Individuals and groups categorized as Latinos have also been active participants in the creation and maintenance of such identity (Skerry 1993). The term Latino contains some ambiguity. Both lay people and state institutions (e.g., census) frequently equate Latino with race, ethnicity, or minority status (Skerry 1993). Its use is not empty when we see the enormous variation of so-called races included in the Latino category. But, it becomes devoid of meaning when we think of race as a social construct. Race does not exist as a homogeneous group of people sharing either a particular set of genes or physiological features (Wilkinson and King 1987; Cooper and David 1986). Races, like “black” and “white,” are merely the product of social factors in the context of power relations and in a given historical period. In the United States, race has been created through state regulations such as segregated schooling and housing programs, and through daily life practices such as attitudes, harassment, and verbal abuse (Roediger 1991; Wolpe 1986; Anthias 1990). Latinos can not be thought of as an ethnic group. An ethnic group refers to a group (or groups) of people who share a culture, that is, language, religion, food, music, and a structure of relations among individuals (e.g., marriage, family). Hence, to think of Latino as an ethnicity is to echo the dominant racial discourse. As the life histories of compañeros attest, individuals referred to as Latinos come from a variety of cultural milieus: residential projects in Southern California farms; a small town in Cuba; southern Brazil; the Bronx in New York City; the Mexico–United States border; Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico; a Native American reservation in Colorado; the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago; Morelia, Michoacán; the outskirts of Mexico City; and Nicaragua. Although not comprising an ethnic group, Latinos could be thought of as a minority group. Here, I refer to minority group not in terms of numeric denotation, but in the oppressed sense of the word (Skerry 1993). That is, Latinos can be considered members of an oppressed group based on their position in power relations. The dominant discourse frequently treats them as such, as in the case of welfare programs and affirmative action policies. Those programs and policies, however, reproduce constructs of race and power relationships (e.g., between those called Latinos and whites) more than alleviate or change power differences. In the understanding of Latino as a minority group lies the potential for collective action and social change. When a group of Latinos as diverse as the group of activists represented in this book begins to see themselves as a minority, not in a racial system, but in a power structure, then, they could grow collectively into a unifying force. According to Paulo Freire (1971), when a group of individuals acquires critical consciousness of being oppressed , and when they realize that they, as a group, are treated different or unfairly, they can become part of the world and act to change...

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