Race Literacy.
I think too often people believe either that racism polarizes us as a society or that it is the concept of race alone that separates us. A few days ago on a topic with a local Communications professor I was asked, “Isn’t it kind of strange that the term LatinX has been widely adopted in American language but not in Latin-American countries even though when we use the term we are talking about predominantly Spanish speakers?”
To my understanding it makes sense that the term is widely used here even if not in Latin America and there are few reasons for this. One, Spanish like many languages, historically adheres to male and female pronouns thus creating a language gap between gender-neutral terms and historical languages that are designed around gender conjugates. Second, the term LatinX can be traced back to the word Xicano or Chicano. , a term used to empower people with Mexican origin in the United States and also to accentuate the ancestral connection of the letter X to the Indigenous Nahuatl language. So when we dissect the term itself we can understand why it is so heavily used in the U.S., considering that we are talking about Americans with ancestral backgrounds and not solely people who live in Latin American countries. Also, we need to consider that language is evolutionary. Too often people become fearful of new age linguistics because it’s new and unheard of. Terms and phrases that in the older generation's prime were not yet taught. Google Trends shows that the term LatinX was first and widely seen online in 2004. Conversely, it has been claimed that the term "started in online chat rooms and listservs in the 1990s" and that its arrival in academic literature first appeared in the "Fall 2004 volume of the journal Feministas Unidas". As students and linguists develop ideas and put terms to the faces of those ideas we are thrown into a continuous cycle of having to relearn and revamp language.
The follow up response I received was that this professor believed that in ten years or so this kind of terminology would cease to exist because people would realize that by introducing new racial words and descriptors to the vocabulary we would eventually ostracize our communities to the point of having to completely break the significance on race and ethnic origin.
Over the course of the week a few acquaintances and friends around me have been combatting their grasp on the differences between race, ethnicity, and nationality. One friend argues that they are not white because they are Jewish. To which I replied that you can be ethnically Jewish (or anything else) and still be racially white. Over the last decade the word Caucasian has become wildly popular in describing white people even though the ethnic term is literally derived from the Caucasus mountains, a region spanning between Asia and Europe, populated primarily by Asian people. When we misuse ethnic labels we contribute to the erasure of these communities and perpetuate the cycle of mis-education. I think for a lot of people we have been putting the breakdowns of race and ethnicity into subcategories that we forget to reach when we are too accustomed to putting all of it under one umbrella or too fixated on the divisions of what is respectably true and what is not. It causes a misguidance in education and in people who want to learn but who do not have access to the right resources. Essentially, it creates a racial illiteracy.
As I described in my essay, Reverse Racism, Critical Race Theory, and Richard Henry Pratt, standard dictionary definitions reduce the term racism to racial prejudice against any group of people and it reduces the actual term race to the physical differences that groups and cultures consider socially significant. These definitions fail to give enough context to the breakdown of identity and community and when we are unable to fully understand and decipher racial terminology we can become frustrated in each other's discourse when having these conversations. Some people will use mainstream dictionary definitions to argue things like reverse racism or to argue that there is no power threat when racism and race applies to all ethnic groups of the world. Social scientists will confirm that Critical Race Theory assesses racism to be a weapon of a social hierarchy that through imperialism and colonialism white people created and are therefore unable to experience systemic racism. Yes, white people will endure struggle and societial fractions such as classism or misogyny, but systemic racism will not be one of them. Yes, people of color can also perpetuate racism against others and within their own communities, but this does not apply to the one racial group that designed the social hierarchy in which racial prejudices thrive. Our drive to navigate the socially conscious world without grappling with every perspective creates a racial illiteracy as we develop strong opinions that are not entirely informed.
It is not anyone's fault if they struggle with navigating racial terminology or conceptual power structures, however it does hinder our ability to talk about race in meaningful and informative ways.
For my friends, here are a few definitions to get you started. Keep in mind, language is evolutionary and we have much to learn and to uncover.
Race: considered to be a biological classification and sometimes be determined by physical features.
Ethnicity: Considered to be a cultural identity referring to factors such as nationality, religion, language and traditional customs.
Chicanx: Chicanx is a gender neutral term derived from Chicano or Xicano. It is a chosen identity re-branded by descendents from Mexico who live in the United States. The term became popular in the 1960’s during the Chicano Movement in which urban youth and farm workers began demanding reforms in labor and education.
Latinx: A gender neutral term used to define descendents from Latin American countries.
Transborder: Transborder is the extensive relationship between two or more borderlines, typically used by people who have relations in multiple countries.
Borderlands: Originally coined by Gloria Anzaldúato to create a new way of discussing Latin American history and identity where the traditional perspective of the border is broken down and rebranded. It refers to the idea that borderlands exist wherever people of different ethnic backgrounds come together. It is a hybrid identity.
Thank you for reading!