Cristina Beltrán Quotes

Rather than envisioning and enacting a better and more beautiful world, white democracy's vision is defined by scarcity. In the logic of racial replacement, nativists imagine social goods within an economy of exclusion and democratic forms of denial; there is no sharing of power; there is only one majority "taking control" from the other. (p 119)

Rather than speaking in terms of specific and distinct subgroups (Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, etc.) ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ have become the shorthand designation of choice among journalists, politicians, advertising executives, academics, and other influential elites.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, Mexican American and Puerto Rican activists put forward a politically charged critique of American politics. Bringing together a paradoxical mix of cultural nationalism, liberal reformism, radical critique, andromantic idealism, the Chicano and Puerto Rican movements created a new political vocabulary, one emphasizing resistance, recognition, cultural pride, authenticity, and fraternity (hermanidad). The movements-organizations, issues, and events left a profound legacy.

1980s feminism focused on questions of difference and making the category of women more inclusive

In challenging traditional gender relations, many Chicana activists were accused of being lesbians, 'white identified,' narcissistic, and antifamily.

It is my contention the category ‘Latino,’ like the category ‘women,’ should be reconceived as a site of permanent political contestation

The Puerto Rican movement of the 1960s and 1970s can be defined by its consistent calls for a radical transformation of U.S. society while simultaneously promoting the independence of Puerto Rico. Known as El Nuevo Despertar, this "New Awakening" of Puerto Rican radicalism was inspired and shaped by the growing militancy abroad and at home. Black Power, youth unrest (particularly against the Vietnam War), the War on Poverty, national liberation struggles in the Third World, Chicano and Native American militancy, gay and lesbian rights, and second-wave feminism are all part of the context that shaped the movement.

I think that one of the things that's interesting about the politics of multicultural conservatism, for example, is that multicultural conservatism - which is the kind of conservative politics of reaching out to other racial minorities practiced by folks like Jack Kemp or George W. Bush - was an effort to recognize the specific histories and backgrounds of particular racial populations and to say that they could be part of the GOP. And I think that one of the things that's interesting is that there's a segment of people of color who don't necessarily want to be recognized at all. They don't want to be recognized for their racial distinctiveness-that for them, the very act of sort of identifying them as Latino, as African American - that they themselves have a certain discomfort with that very logic. They want to be understood as simply Americans outside of those kinds of identity categories.

when it comes to finding joy, who you're with matters more than where you are. (Acknowledgements)

I think that one of the big political divides we face right now is people who find the very act of talking about those histories of racial exclusion as divisive because the act of talking about it and acknowledging it produces a kind of defensiveness or anger - and even discussing it, the idea that unity should be practiced from sort of not engaging with our history, not - sort of celebrating the best stuff and not really acknowledging that we have a complicated, beautiful, tragic, inspiring inheritance that we have to understand to go forward.

Unlike the civil rights struggles of African Americans or the protest politics surrounding the Vietnam War, the Chicano and Puerto Rican movements represent a decidedly underexplored aspect of 1960s New Left radicalism. Outside of the communities themselves, the names, places, and events of these two movements are virtually unknown.

Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity — a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.

whiteness is not the same thing as white people and that whiteness is actually better understood as a political project that has emerged historically, and that is dynamic and that is always changing. And so whiteness as an ideology is rooted in America's history of white supremacy-which has to do with the legacy of slavery or Indigenous dispossession or Jim Crow. And I think it's important to realize just how long in this country legal discrimination was not simply culturally acceptable but legally authorized. And so we've only been practicing a more consistent form of legal equality for a relatively short time since the 1960s. So Americans have often learned how to create their own sense of belonging through violence and through the exclusion of certain groups and populations.

Both Chicano and Puerto Rican activists continually stressed the importance of community control of local institutions, arguing that oppression and inequality would never end until Chicanos and Puerto Ricans controlled the institutions that directly affected community life.

What I actually find helpful about theorizing and talking about whiteness as understanding that the politics of whiteness is distinct from white people is I think it actually opens up and expands our political possibilities going forward because we're not actually trapped in our identities or our demographics. It means that white citizens can - and many are - rejecting the politics of whiteness and working with communities of color to forge a multiracial democracy. But we have to understand this complicated and tragic and also beautiful shared inheritance we have. If we want to build something new together, we have to understand where we've come from.