Allies, Antagonists, or Ambivalent? Exploring Latino Attitudes about the Black Lives Matter Movement

Abstract

While many Latinos suffer the injustices of racial profiling at the hands of law enforcement and immigration officials, differences in immigration status, racial identity, contact with the Black community, and the prevalence anti-Black sentiment pose challenges for coalition building with Blacks. This study explores the factors that lead to an avenue for allyship from the Latino community to the Black community. Using attitudes about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, a series of hypotheses are tested to examine the structure of Latino-Black compared to white-Black coalitions. Two major findings emerge from the analysis; first, differences between whites and Latinos reveal that the effect of harboring anti-Black stereotypes are extraordinarily predictive of rejecting calls for racial social justice and combatting the scourge of police killings of unarmed Black men among whites but not among Latinos. Second, differences according to Latino racial identity and indicators of acculturation also impact support for the BLM movement in ways that both reaffirm but also challenge previous scholarship. These results suggest that while on the whole Latinos, and especially immigrants, are uninformed about BLM, once aware they exhibit a generally supportive stance toward the movement’s goals of criminal justice reform.

Asian Americans’ Perception of Intergroup Commonality with Blacks and Latinos: The Roles of Group Consciousness, Ethnic Identity, and Intergroup Contact

“…Beyond the simple feelings of in-group closeness, many researchers conceptualize racial identity as a multidimensional construct consisting in part of the physical, psychological, sociopolitical, and cultural elements of life for racial groups in the United States (McClain et al 2009, p. 474). In particular, major demographic changes in the United States driven by the immigration of non-White populations have led academics to measure racial identity that can grasp the racial, linguistic, and immigrant status diversity among Latinos and Asian Americans (Corral 2020).…”

“…In comparison to Latinos who identify racially as White, Latinos who ascribe to the Hispanic/Latino label are more likely to report perceived commonality with Blacks (Gomez-Aguinaga et al 2021;Wilkinson 2015). Although they are less likely to be aware of the BLM movement, Latinos who identify racially as Hispanics or Latinos are more likely to support and believe that the BLM movement can effectively meet its goals (Corral 2020). However, other scholars find that Latinos who identify more as Americans also perceive higher levels of commonality with the Black population of the United States (Gomez-Aguinaga et al 2021) and that Latinos who self-identify as Black or Latino are only slightly more likely to feel close to Blacks, as are Latinos who identify as White (Kaufmann 2003).…”

“…In addition, the social movement in the last few years against police brutality in Black communities, as exemplified by Black Lives Matter (BLM), has demonstrated the potential to advance interracial solidarity because of the movement's expanded commitment to working on social justice for all minority groups (Bonilla and Tillery 2020;Yellow Horse et al 2021;Huang 2021;Merseth 2018). Seemingly, the BLM movement has garnered support from Latinos who acknowledge systematic racism and share the goal of criminal justice reform (Corral 2020). Likewise, a few ethnographic studies have recorded a number of protests in New York and Minnesota where many Asian Americans attended in solidarity with Black Lives Matter (Liu 2018;Vang and Myers 2021).…”

“…Indeed, the growing body of literature on Latino politics has explored opportunities for coalition-building between Blacks and Latinos. As perceptions of commonality are central to the formation of multiracial political coalitions (Wallsten and Nteta 2017), scholars discover that factors such as intragroup-linked fate, pan-ethnic identity or superordinary community identity, experiences or awareness of discrimination, acculturation, and environmental contexts are important predictors for Black-Brown attitudes (Corral 2020;Gomez-Aguinaga et al 2021;Israel-Trummel and Schachter 2019;Jones-Correa et al 2016;Kaufmann 2003;Martinez-Ebers et al 2021;McClain et al 2009;Sanchez 2008;Wilkinson 2014). When it comes to Asian Americans' intergroup commonality, there is a small amount of meaningful qualitative work that examines possibilities and challenges in Asian American collaborations with other groups of color in California (Hope 2019;Johnson 2004;Kim and Lee 2001;Okamoto and Gast 2013;Ramakrishnan 2014).…”

Troubling the Essentialist Discourse of Brown in Education: The Anti-Black Sociopolitical and Sociohistorical Etymology of Latinxs as a Brown Monolith

“…More recently, political distinctions emerged in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement. The National Public Radio conducted an interview with Latinx activists asking “when should brown lives matter?” (Florido, 2016), which echoed conversations of differentiation between the attention given to U.S. state–sanctioned racial violence experienced by African Americans in comparison with that experienced by Latinxs (Corral, 2020; Santa Cruz et al, 2015). Beyond racial distancing and convergence, scholarly efforts to intellectualize conversations on demographic shifts specific to Latinx populations further suggest the racialization of Latinx persons as Brown (see: Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse by Otto Santa Ana, 2002, and Latinos in the End Zone: Conversations on the Brown Color Line in the NFL by Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González, 2014).…”