“You Ain’t Black, You’re Cuban!”: Mariels, Stigmatization, and the Politics of De-Racialization (1980–1989)

Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Police and Prosecutorial Drug Charging: Analyzing Organizational Overlap in Charging Patterns at Arrest, Filing, and Conviction

“…These initial disadvantages are passed along downstream, and for Black Latinx people, in particular, the most severe charges at arrest are maintained over several discretionary charging decision points, resulting in a greater likelihood of incarceration (Kutateladze et al 2014; Spohn 2008; Sutton 2013). These results are consistent with a growing literature documenting racial-ethnic disparities among Black Latinx populations across a wide range of domains, including health (Khan et al 2014), economics (Aja 2016; Logan 2009), and criminal justice (Finkeldey and Demuth 2019; Kizer 2017; Omori and Petersen 2020). Given that Latinx people are the second-largest and fastest-growing racial-ethnic group in the U.S. (Flores 2017), our findings highlight the utility of disentangling race and ethnicity to more fully understand the nature of racial-ethnic inequality throughout the criminal justice system.…”

“…Foremost, these studies examine disparities among White, Black, and Latino defendants, whereas our data capture race (Black/White) and ethnicity (Latinx/non-Latinx) information for each defendant. In doing so, we find that Black Latinx defendants are the most disadvantaged racial-ethnic group in terms of their charging trajectories, perhaps doubly disadvantaged by their dual minority status as both Latinx and Black people (Aja 2016; Logan 2009). These initial disadvantages are passed along downstream, and for Black Latinx people, in particular, the most severe charges at arrest are maintained over several discretionary charging decision points, resulting in a greater likelihood of incarceration (Kutateladze et al 2014; Spohn 2008; Sutton 2013).…”

“…While research on Latinx populations is mixed (Kutateladze, Lynn, and Liang 2012), our results highlighting the importance of considering the intersections of race and ethnicity suggest that doing so may help shed new light on Latinx disparities. Given that Latinx people represent the largest and fast-growing minority group in the U.S. (Flores 2017), and in light of research uncovering large-scale disparities among Black Latinx populations due to intersecting and cumulative disadvantages stemming from their dually marginal status (Aja 2016; Logan 2009; Monk 2014; Steffensmeier and Demuth 2001), examining racial disparities among Latinx populations is critical for understanding inequalities within the criminal justice system more broadly.…”

Time, Money, and Punishment: Institutional Racial-Ethnic Inequalities in Pretrial Detention and Case Outcomes

“…Given the racial heterogeneity of some national-origin Latinx groups in Miami, pretrial outcomes may reflect the preferential treatment of some groups over others (Chavez, 2013). Moreover, we suspect that there are intraethnic criminal justice disparities among Latinx groups based on colorism (Hunter, 2007; Monk, 2019) as prior research finds that Latinx Black individuals fare worse than Latinx White individuals along a number of dimensions, including health (Borrell & Dallo, 2008; Sheehan et al, 2015), economics (Darity, Hamilton, & Dietrich, 2002; Logan, 2009), and general well-being (Aja, 2016; Logan, 2009). Because the original data did not measure ethnicity, we used the Census Hispanic Surname List to determine Latinx ethnicity (Word, Coleman, Nunziata, & Kominski, 2008).…”

Toward a Latinx Stratification Economics

“…28 This way of thinking stands in contrast to an approach that maps a small number of characteristics into a choice-theoretic framework (exogenous preferences, common objective function and constraints) without engaging with history or dynamics through time. It is not that some groups better match the profile of theoretical economic migrants and others more closely match the theoretical profile of refugees: Cubans seeking to migrate after the Cuban Revolution were “seen” as different from working-class Mexicans crossing the US-Mexico border, different from Haitians seeking to move to the U.S., and similar perhaps to Vietnamese migrants (Aja, 2016; Grosfoguel, 2003). While LSE seeks to build accurate and liberatory knowledge, the role it plays in economics is to deconstruct, denaturalize and present alternatives for ways of thinking that justify, rationalize, or obfuscate inequality based on social group identity.…”