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Latino Studies 101: Latinos in the U.S. A Seminar on Race, Power, and Resistance Ester Trujillo, PhD .
Course Description: This class explores the social, racial, legal, and discursive construction of immigrants from Latin America to the U.S. and their progeny. Latinas/os in the U.S. are discursively constructed as threats to the “American” way of life because they do not present the typical markers of immigrant assimilation; markers such as upward economic mobility, the adoption of English as a primary or sole language, and intermarriage with white Americans. The Latino Threat Narrative has long shaped the characterization of Latinas/os as a monolithic group. However, Latinas/os come from many different backgrounds and represent various origin nations. In this class we will primarily examine how Latinas/os of various national origins have become the focus of the Latino Threat Narrative and how various types of violence shape their lives. Our examination of the ways immigrants and their children respond to their depiction as threats to the social order will take us through a discussion of race, class, gender, sexuality, and migration. This course also investigates ethnic and racial tensions and points of solidarity across these populations in the U.S. Together, we will delve into various debates in the field of Latino Studies: .
The Use of the Terms "Negro" and "Black" to Include Persons of Native American Ancestry in "Anglo" North America Jack D. Forbes
In 1854 the California State Supreme Court sought to bar all non Caucasians from equal citizenship and civil rights. The court stated: The word "Black" may include all Negroes, but the term "N egro" does not include all Black persons . . . . We are of the opinion that the words "White," "Negro," "Mulatto" and "Black person," whenever they occur in our constitution . . . must be taken in their generic sense . . . that the words "Black person," in the 14th section must be taken as contra distinguished from White, and necessarily includes all races other than the Caucasian. ! As convoluted as the quote may be, it tends to express a strong tendency in the history of the United States, toward creating two broad classes of people: white and non-white, citizen and non-citizen (or semi-citizen). The tendency to create a two-caste society often clashed with the reality of a territory which included many different types of people, of all colors and different degrees of intermixture of European, American, African, and Asian. Native American people, whether of unmixed ancestry or mixed with other stocks, were at times affected by the tendency to create a purely white-black social system, especially when living away from a reservation or the ancestral homeland.2 In the British slave colonies of North America along the Atlantic coast, many persons of American ancestry were at times classified as blacks, negroes, mulattoes, or people of color, and these terms were, of course, used for people of African ancestry. The manner in which Americans and part-Americans were sometimes classified as "mulat toes" and "people of color" from New England to South Carolina and in the Spanish Empire are explored elsew here. 3 The purpose here is to illustrate how the term "negro" has also been applied to people of American descent.