Abstract
Many immigrant groups have racially distanced themselves from Blacks due to anti-Black prejudice and stigma. Racial distancing can be transmitted to children through regulating intimate contact with Blacks. Few studies have examined how Latino young adults receive racialized messages from their immigrant parents about dating Blacks. In-depth interviews reveal that Latino young adults encounter messages regarding mixed race children, perceived cultural differences and the US racial hierarchy. This regulatory process is gendered with Latinas experiencing more explicit sanctioning than Latino men. This study illuminates how Latino parents create racialized and gendered boundaries between their children and Blacks.
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Notes
Mexico's national discourse is based on a mestizo identity and many Mexican immigrants in the United States claim a mestizo background (Massey and Denton, 1992). However, indigenous and/or African ancestry is also present among Mexicans as well as other Latino nationals (Duany, 1998; England, 1999; Fox and Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Lewis, 2006). Although Latinos of African descent tend to be from Caribbean nations such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico (Duany, 1998), there are also Mexicans and Central Americans of African descent, who have mostly migrated to East Coast cities (England, 1999; Lewis, 2006). In Los Angeles, Afro-Mexicans and Afro-Central Americans are fewer in number compared with those of mestizo ancestry; none were participants in this study.
This study was approved by IRB and informed consent was obtained for each respondent.
California Community College is a pseudonym.
The 1.5 generation refers to individuals who migrated to the United States as children at a young age.
The second generation refers to individuals who were born in the United States to immigrant parents.
All of the interviews were conducted in English and digitally recorded. After transcribing each interview, I conducted a preliminary coding of the transcripts, generating themes that came from the data. Then, I broke down each theme into several sub-themes, to capture the subtleties and nuances in students’ experiences. I then sorted the transcripts by race and gender, and analyzed the commonalities and differences in themes and sub-themes, by the different race and gender groups.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Vilma Ortiz who lent her time, energy and expertise to several drafts of this article. Anthony Ocampo and Sylvia Zamora provided invaluable feedback as well. I would also like to thank Suzanne Oboler for her support throughout this process and to the anonymous reviewers of this article, for their helpful and insightful comments.
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Morales, E. Parental messages concerning Latino/Black interracial dating: An exploratory study among Latina/o young adults. Lat Stud 10, 314–333 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2012.24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2012.24