Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives; Identity and the Politics of (Re) Presentation in the United States by Suzanne Oboler (review)

206 Canadian Revietv of American Studies might have. Liberals often couched their arguments in republican terms. Republican public philosophy waned when a republican form of government disappeared for good, not when liberal political philosophers crowded it out. ]atnes F. Louckes III University of Toronto Suzanne Oboler. Ethnic Labels,Latino Lives;Identity and the Politics of (Re) Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Pp xvi + 226 with bibliography and index. Professor Oboler draws on her own heritage as a Peruvian American scholar of Latino/a studies and American literatures and cultures to offer a lucid and well-documented account of the historical emergence and multiple effects of the ethnic label "Hispanic,1'as mobilized bythe U.S. government in response to Latino/a claims for social justice during the civil rights movements of the 1960s. Situating her analysis in terms of the historical nationalist and civil rights movements that inform the use or disavowal of this term by the people/s to and by whom it is applied, Oboler charts the homogenic racialization produced by this constructed constituency of contemporary U.S. policies that too often tolerate discrimination in the name of pluralism. In a very even-handed treatment of the issues, Oboler makes a reserved case for the grassroots alternative "Latino/a," while illustrating the diversity of possible responses to either term through a qualitative study of twenty-one Latino/a garment-industry workers of various national origins whom she interviewed in her role as director of a college English-as-a-second-language (ESL) program in New York. Her combination of thoroughly researched social history and qualitative analysis results in an important, carefully reasoned , and timely contribution to contemporary debates on affirmative action. Working as a non-Latina Canadian professor of literature and women's studies at a richly diverse university college also located in New York City, my reading of Oboler's work reflects an interest in serving and promoting responsible participation in the social community that is reflected in this educational environment. From this perspective, I welcome such a rigorous scholarly interrogation of the practices of identity politics in the context of U.S. claims to supporting cultural diversity and autonomy. One of the many Book Reviews 207 important points this work demonstrates is that mainstream American identity has been forged, in part, though the xenophobic marginalization of the "minority" groups it homogenizes. Oboler's text begins with an account of a cross-borders journey through cultures undertaken by a group of fourteen Peruvians who left their country in the hopes of immigrating to the United States in February 1985. This opening move gives first place to the diversity of cultures and experiences that have evolved across the Americas in the past several hundred years, and throws into relief the potentially reductive effects of the term "Hispanic," as outlined by the U. S. Bureau of Census, whose definition heads up the second chapter. One of the first impressions that comes clear in this moment of contrast between narrated experiences of cultural diversity and the construction of all Latino/as as 11 instant Hispanics" (171) upon entry into the United States, is that the government definition belies a sympathy with imperialism through its valorization of Spanish colonial rule as the supposedly salient characteristic of Latino/a peoples. Increasingly used in the construction of target consumer and labour markets, the label Oboler dissects reveals its place in familiar imperialistic historical and contemporary American economic policies that have shaped Latino/a experiences in the United States and abroad. She demonstrates that the label also has immediate consequences in terms of allocation of government resources in what Oboler calls the diversely "imagined" (158) American communities that work to destabilize a tenacious belief in the U.S. "melting pot." Affirming the multiplicity of distinctions in race, class, gender, sexual preference, language, religion, culture, and national origin that meet under this ethnic label, Oboler also asserts the need for Latino/as to establish political unity in the struggle for full citizenship and social justice in the United States and beyond. Exploring the differences that have evolved in national contexts that include historical experiences of colonization and resistance ranging...