Cristina Beltrán Quotes

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.

Limited by a scarcity logic in which migrant flourishing means citizen hardship, nativists in the thrall of whiteness presume that migrant movement will invert the practices of white democracy, causing whites to "lose their country." Trapped in their own fears and fantasies of domination and racial terror, nativists can't help but conjure Latinx migrants as subjects planning to inflict a vengeful politics of invasion, replacement, and reconquista. (p 114)

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

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

Poetry such as "Puerto Rican Obituary" highlights another significant aspect of movement thought: the shift from cultural shame to ethnic pride. Unlike earlier critiques of prejudice and discrimination, movement rhetoric and writings often focused on the emotional and psychic damage of racism, exploring the need toovercome internalized shame and self-hate.

As someone who studies race and the right, I have found that Democrats and progressives, expecting demographic change and rising diversity to tilt the country leftward, have failed to take seriously how that change is not at all a given...Communities of color are simultaneously victims of, participants in and practitioners of the violence practiced within and beyond our nation’s borders...Communities of color have an intimate history with violence, from massacres of Native Americans and chattel slavery to anti-Asian violence, police killings and the deaths of migrants on the border. But communities of color are not monolithic, and their responses and relationships to that violence mirror that very diversity.

Majority-white schools, neighborhoods, and community institutions were made white through violence; racialized exclusions; and the denial of equality, opportunity, and legal protection for nonwhite populations. (p 18)

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

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.

Emphasizing standing and status rather than political participation and collective action, white citizenship continually constrains the meaning of both democracy and political freedom. (p 118)