This article examines the experiences of Latinos in Northwest Arkansas as they partake in community life within the Jones Center as a public setting traditionally dominated by legal and cultural practices intended to maintain white outlooks. We develop a conceptual model of race and space to theoretically frame how the implementation of an entrance fee system in this community setting shapes public space access into a restrictive racialized place. Drawing on ethnography and visual data gathered between fall 2014 and spring 2015, we found that the administration of the Jones Center made no effort to foster a more inclusive environment, creating a social atmosphere wherein participants construct the place as a whitespace. Whereas some challenged the exclusionary dimensions of symbolic white markers through spatial practices of resistance, others remained in what we call racialized subspaces. We argue that this form of restricting access aims to systematically, yet subtly preclude access to specific areas of the setting—i.e., swimming pool and ice rink. Nevertheless, participants in this study also demonstrate how community resiliency enables them to use “non‐restricted” areas within the whitespace as mechanisms to disrupt the meaning of white markers symbolically embedded in areas where access cannot be negotiated by local Latinos.

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This article examines the narrative and visual construct of the lowrider vehicle as part of the barrio aesthetic. The central argument is that the display of lowrider art can be better understood as an artistic community mechanism of resistance used to contest cultural exclusion from white art spaces. The principles of Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory provide exceptional insights into the analyses of aesthetic lowrider displays from the margins. We use this approach to theoretically frame lowriders’ artistic representations as a Chicana/o identity effort to build contemporary cultural spaces for themselves. This study employs a qualitative triangulation method that includes participant observations, photo documentation, and six semi-structured interviews. Between December 2006 and September 2007, data were collected from the cities of Lansing and South Haven as well as from two lowrider car shows in the state of Michigan. This study found that lowrider art works as a source of stability and structure for Chicana/o young adults who live on the margins of society. For young adults isolated from mainstream cultural spaces by the essentialist interpretations of art, the lowrider aesthetic represents an identity–resiliency component introduced through family and friends—consciously or unconsciously—to resist cultural oppression.

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