Race Migrations by Wendy Roth

Author:Wendy Roth [Roth, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780804782531
Google: i7sfNnihrdsC
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-06-13T03:22:27+00:00

6

Performing Race Strategically

RACIAL SCHEMAS OFTEN OPERATE AT A SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL. We may not even be aware of how we divide the world into racial categories and try to place everyone we see into the appropriate one. However, people also develop conscious ideas or concepts about different races—how they behave, for example—which are not the same as those racial schemas but are based upon them. When migrants move to a new society, they learn not only new cognitive schemas for dividing up and classifying the world, but also bits of cultural knowledge about how to behave around those new groups and how to perform their own race as well. They learn the styles, routines, and actions to signal who they are and, sometimes, who they want to be seen to be.1 Enacting this cultural knowledge of ways of behaving to signal membership in a particular racial group—what I call racial strategies—can be deployed purposefully, as part of a cultural tool kit. For example, Latino migrants can use these strategies, to the extent that their appearance allows, to try to shape whether they are seen as Latino or as White or Black Americans in different situations.

Chapter 5 examined how other people’s perceptions of race, especially the views of people in power, are what matter most in stratifying society. Individuals have only limited control over how they are perceived racially by others. But they can use culture and performance to try to mediate that perception. Here, I focus on “race in action”—how migrants enact race by performing it, adopting types of behavior, styles, and routines that signal who they are within a racial framework. Just as every decision about how to behave in a situation constitutes a strategy of action, these decisions can collectively constitute broader racial strategies for positioning oneself within a racial hierarchy.

The selection of American or immigrant styles of behavior can be a deliberate decision, chosen as a way of avoiding discrimination and improving one’s position within a racially stratified society. Sociologist Mary Waters found that West Indian immigrants retained their immigrant identities, and even taught their children the accents and styles that would distinguish them as West Indian, to avoid the stigma of being seen as African American.2 Similarly, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans may choose to retain or to shed the trappings of their ethnic origins by adopting the styles and behaviors of native-born Americans. But for them, which racial strategy will improve their status is influenced by their skin color. For those who are lighter and more European in appearance, choosing the cultural strategies of White Americans is likely to position them closer to Whites, and may lead others to view and treat them accordingly. For those who are darker, the cultural strategies of their Latino group signal their difference from Black Americans and tend to present them as having what they see as a higher-status position. In groups with such phenotype diversity, where a person falls on the color spectrum influences what advantages can be gained from becoming more culturally American.

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