Latino Politics in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in the Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience”

 

Victor M. Rodriguez, Ph.D.

Department of Chicano and Latino Studies

 California State University, Long Beach

Understanding the racialization of Latinos in the United States is a necessary task to clarify the dynamics and role of race and racism in this country. The study of Latinos serves as a good illustration of the Asocial constructedness@ of race in the United States.  However, although there is a significant literature that has focused on specific aspects of this process, very little comparative work is available on the similarities and differences between the racialization process of the various ALatino@ groups.   We can have a better grasp of the process of racialization if we understand the particularities and similarities of racialization within various ethnic components of the Latino community. This collection of essays by  the author begins to analyze the racialization experience of the two "resident minorities" in the United States. Other Latinos walk through the path they walked before in politics and society. 

 
                                                                                                                     Publisher: Kendall-Hunt

http://www.kendallhunt.com/

 
                                                                                                        Published: June 2005
                                                                                                         ISBN# is 0-7575-1917-2


The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights and Bigotry gave this book an honorable mention in their 2005 outstanding book awards.  

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Latino Politics
 

Raul Fernandez*

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The work begins by addressing, in the first chapter, one of the least studied aspects of the experience of Latin American migrants to the United States. That is to say, the ways in which their cultural and national differences are erased upon settling in this country, and their subsequent pigeonholing into pre-established, uniquely American, racial categories. Víctor Rodríguez shows us the similarities and the differences between Chicanos and Boricuas in the paths they took into the racialized American space

… This book is about understanding oppression, but it is also, and for the most part, about resistance and victory. I think that's why I enjoyed reading it as I think you will too.

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* School of Social Science, UC Irvine. His most recent books are Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination . Washington,D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2002 and co-author with Gilbert G. Gonzalez, A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations and Migration. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Juan Mestas*

What makes Latino Politics… so accessible to the uninitiated reader, without dishonoring its scholarly rigor, is, first of all, the clarity and precision of the language.  It is evident that the writer is interested in conversing with the reader, not just in manifesting his erudition. Other factors that contribute to the book’s accessibility are the multi-layered structure of the text (abstract, exposition, end notes), which allows the reader to choose his/her level of immersion, and the rational fervor with which the author approaches his subject.  Dr. Rodriguez is objective but not dispassionate.  As a good scholar, he seeks the truth; as a caring Latino, he knows that the truth matters beyond itself.
*Former Chancellor, University of Michigan, Flint