CONCEPTS & OTHER CONSTRUCTS

The Heterogeneous Composition of U.S. Latina/os

      In a social world intertwined with enshrined systems of race-based social classification and differentiation, U.S. Latina/os are a contrived conundrum. That is to say, the entrenched U.S. system of racial classification, which permeates all fields in general and the academic and media fields in particular, has had to constantly adapt to the disruptions caused by the growing presence of this peculiar quasi-, mono- and polyracial social collective and its interactions with a structure that derives it strength from monoracially defined social identities. Overall, this burgeoning population is a polychromatic, polyracial, polyethnic, polycultural, and polylingual collective entity of any citizenship status that ultimately requires an interdisciplinary and hybrid theoretical approach to accurately and authentically discern its ongoing dialectical influence upon the macrocosmic system of power and racial logics that it encounters and upholds. That is to say, the exploration of U.S. Latina/o’s multidimensional complexities and entropic capacities requires multifaceted analyses of the patterns of consciousness, which are both contradictory and critical, that members of this dynamic population maintain concerning the forms (i.e., capitals) and systems (i.e., fields) of power that enforce their comprehension of their racialized social identity (i.e., habitus or their propensity to operate as racialized agents) as conjointly monoracial American and hybrid Latina/o agents. Moreover, subjectivists investigations of the microcosmic (i.e., in immediate proximity) and macrocosmic (i.e., in ubiquitous proximity) elements of a specific social world, in this case the American populace categorized by current configurations of racial methods of social stratification that are enforced and regulated by the state as well as by dominant media systems, that are being incessantly influenced by the individuals that occupy various sectors of these interconnected fields are benefited by assessing the contradictory and critical consciousness that are employed by social agents that operate in relation to a social order that emphasizes the differentiation of particular elements of identity (e.g., racial positioning, national origin, cultural heritage, generational citizenship, etc.) in agreement with longstanding social hierarchies based on chroma, ancestry, class, gender, sexuality, religious affiliation, or body type. Therefore, to understand the paradoxical racialization of U.S. Latina/os, race as a stratagem for federally regulated social stratification must be clarified.

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION