Efrén O. Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226799766
- eISBN:
- 9780226799933
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226799933.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
For decades now, pundits and political scientists have been pointing to a major demographic change that’s underway in the United States. Demographers project that whites will become a minority of the ...
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For decades now, pundits and political scientists have been pointing to a major demographic change that’s underway in the United States. Demographers project that whites will become a minority of the US population and that minority groups will jointly comprise a majority before 2050. Diversity’s Child appraises the political ramifications of this change. Efrén O. Pérez deftly argues that America’s changing demographics are forging a new identity for many people of color—that unifies the political outlook of assorted minority groups. Drawing on opinion surveys of multiple minority groups, social science experiments with minority adults, content analyses of newspapers and congressional archives, and in-depth interviews with minority individuals, Pérez makes two key points. First, a person of color’s identity does exist, and we can reliably measure it, as well as distinguish it from other identities that minorities hold. Second, across a wide swath of circumstances, identifying as a person of color profoundly shapes how minorities view themselves and their political system. Diversity’s Child is a vital and engaging look at America’s identity politics as well as at how people of color think about racial disparities and how politics can best solve them.Less
For decades now, pundits and political scientists have been pointing to a major demographic change that’s underway in the United States. Demographers project that whites will become a minority of the US population and that minority groups will jointly comprise a majority before 2050. Diversity’s Child appraises the political ramifications of this change. Efrén O. Pérez deftly argues that America’s changing demographics are forging a new identity for many people of color—that unifies the political outlook of assorted minority groups. Drawing on opinion surveys of multiple minority groups, social science experiments with minority adults, content analyses of newspapers and congressional archives, and in-depth interviews with minority individuals, Pérez makes two key points. First, a person of color’s identity does exist, and we can reliably measure it, as well as distinguish it from other identities that minorities hold. Second, across a wide swath of circumstances, identifying as a person of color profoundly shapes how minorities view themselves and their political system. Diversity’s Child is a vital and engaging look at America’s identity politics as well as at how people of color think about racial disparities and how politics can best solve them.
Hilde Roos
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520299887
- eISBN:
- 9780520971516
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520299887.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
The introduction opens with the watershed moment in Eoan’s history, when Verdi’s La Traviata is performed for the first time by an all-colored cast, in 1956. Despite being described as “an ...
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The introduction opens with the watershed moment in Eoan’s history, when Verdi’s La Traviata is performed for the first time by an all-colored cast, in 1956. Despite being described as “an unqualified artistic success,” this event laid bare the controversy that surrounded their engagement with Western art music and one that led to the demise of their opera productions twenty years later. The event presents the full spectrum of perspectives on Eoan, which included the many conflicted meanings that opera held for participants and audiences. The notion of “colored identity” as a uniquely South African experience that is different from how American readers understand the concept is discussed.Less
The introduction opens with the watershed moment in Eoan’s history, when Verdi’s La Traviata is performed for the first time by an all-colored cast, in 1956. Despite being described as “an unqualified artistic success,” this event laid bare the controversy that surrounded their engagement with Western art music and one that led to the demise of their opera productions twenty years later. The event presents the full spectrum of perspectives on Eoan, which included the many conflicted meanings that opera held for participants and audiences. The notion of “colored identity” as a uniquely South African experience that is different from how American readers understand the concept is discussed.
Efrén O. Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226799766
- eISBN:
- 9780226799933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226799933.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
In 1993, Manning Marable predicted that "in the year 2000, fully one-third of America’s total population will consist of people of color—Latinos, Asian-Americans, Pacific-Americans, American Indians ...
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In 1993, Manning Marable predicted that "in the year 2000, fully one-third of America’s total population will consist of people of color—Latinos, Asian-Americans, Pacific-Americans, American Indians and African Americans." Marable also envisioned that demographic growth would be followed by greater solidarity among diverse minority communities. The latest estimates from the Census Bureau (2018) reveal that the first half of his vision has been fulfilled. Yet whether various minority groups can sometimes share a common identity and sense of solidarity as people of color is a lingering question that has largely escaped researchers’ attention. This is a mistake, I think, and one I hope to rectify in the subsequent chapters of this book. Accordingly, I aim to convince you that despite their unique identities as Black, Asian American, Latino, and so on, members of these distinct minority groups often share an identity as people of color, or what I call PoC ID. My plan for the book involves the wholesale development of a new concept; its appraisal through novel instrumentation; the assessment of its political effects; the isolation of conditions when it matters most; and, just as importantly, the pinpointing of circumstances when it matters less or hardly at all.Less
In 1993, Manning Marable predicted that "in the year 2000, fully one-third of America’s total population will consist of people of color—Latinos, Asian-Americans, Pacific-Americans, American Indians and African Americans." Marable also envisioned that demographic growth would be followed by greater solidarity among diverse minority communities. The latest estimates from the Census Bureau (2018) reveal that the first half of his vision has been fulfilled. Yet whether various minority groups can sometimes share a common identity and sense of solidarity as people of color is a lingering question that has largely escaped researchers’ attention. This is a mistake, I think, and one I hope to rectify in the subsequent chapters of this book. Accordingly, I aim to convince you that despite their unique identities as Black, Asian American, Latino, and so on, members of these distinct minority groups often share an identity as people of color, or what I call PoC ID. My plan for the book involves the wholesale development of a new concept; its appraisal through novel instrumentation; the assessment of its political effects; the isolation of conditions when it matters most; and, just as importantly, the pinpointing of circumstances when it matters less or hardly at all.
Hilde Roos
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520299887
- eISBN:
- 9780520971516
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520299887.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
Opera, race, and politics during apartheid South Africa form the foundation of this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a so-called colored cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. ...
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Opera, race, and politics during apartheid South Africa form the foundation of this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a so-called colored cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Time of Apartheid charts Eoan’s opera activities from its inception in 1933 until the cessation of its work by 1980. By accepting funding from the apartheid government and adhering to apartheid conditions, the group, in time, became politically compromised, resulting in the rejection of the group by their own community and the cessation of opera production. However, their unquestioned acceptance of and commitment to the art of opera lead to the most extraordinary of performance trajectories. During apartheid, the Eoan Group provided a space for colored people to perform Western classical art forms in an environment that potentially transgressed racial boundaries and challenged perceptions of racial exclusivity in the genre of opera. This highly significant endeavor and the way it was thwarted at the hands of the apartheid regime is the story that unfolds in this book.Less
Opera, race, and politics during apartheid South Africa form the foundation of this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a so-called colored cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Time of Apartheid charts Eoan’s opera activities from its inception in 1933 until the cessation of its work by 1980. By accepting funding from the apartheid government and adhering to apartheid conditions, the group, in time, became politically compromised, resulting in the rejection of the group by their own community and the cessation of opera production. However, their unquestioned acceptance of and commitment to the art of opera lead to the most extraordinary of performance trajectories. During apartheid, the Eoan Group provided a space for colored people to perform Western classical art forms in an environment that potentially transgressed racial boundaries and challenged perceptions of racial exclusivity in the genre of opera. This highly significant endeavor and the way it was thwarted at the hands of the apartheid regime is the story that unfolds in this book.
Micere Keels
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501746888
- eISBN:
- 9781501746895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501746888.003.0003
- Subject:
- Education, Higher and Further Education
This chapter lays out the argument for shifting social identities from the margin to the center of how universities engage with students from historically marginalized groups. It does this by showing ...
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This chapter lays out the argument for shifting social identities from the margin to the center of how universities engage with students from historically marginalized groups. It does this by showing that even when minority students intentionally attempt to “move beyond” their social identities and embody a humanist identity, they are regularly tripped up by how they are identified by others, and by the psychic energy they must expend to deny, to themselves, their experiences of prejudice. To some extent, simple demographics predestine particular American racial-ethnic groups to be minorities on college campuses, but the marginalization that Black and Latinx students experience is an institutionally constructed phenomenon. To be minoritized is to be a member of a group that is both less in number and has less power and more stigma than other groups. And it is the combination of being both in the demographic minority and negatively stereotyped—having to interact with peers and professors who hold racialized stereotypes about academic potential—that leads Black and Latinx students in historically White colleges and universities to experience marginalization in ways that implicate both their racial-ethnic and academic identities.Less
This chapter lays out the argument for shifting social identities from the margin to the center of how universities engage with students from historically marginalized groups. It does this by showing that even when minority students intentionally attempt to “move beyond” their social identities and embody a humanist identity, they are regularly tripped up by how they are identified by others, and by the psychic energy they must expend to deny, to themselves, their experiences of prejudice. To some extent, simple demographics predestine particular American racial-ethnic groups to be minorities on college campuses, but the marginalization that Black and Latinx students experience is an institutionally constructed phenomenon. To be minoritized is to be a member of a group that is both less in number and has less power and more stigma than other groups. And it is the combination of being both in the demographic minority and negatively stereotyped—having to interact with peers and professors who hold racialized stereotypes about academic potential—that leads Black and Latinx students in historically White colleges and universities to experience marginalization in ways that implicate both their racial-ethnic and academic identities.
Efrén O. Pérez and Efrén O. Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226799766
- eISBN:
- 9780226799933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226799933.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Chapter 5 uses a series of studies called the “I Feel Your Pain” experiments to provide initial evidence about the steadfast influence of PoC ID among distinct racial and ethnic minority groups. The ...
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Chapter 5 uses a series of studies called the “I Feel Your Pain” experiments to provide initial evidence about the steadfast influence of PoC ID among distinct racial and ethnic minority groups. The aim of these studies is disarmingly simple: to demonstrate that minorities’ reactions to racial affronts are just as strong and swift when their own racial in-group is involved as when other minority out-groups are entangled, which would provide a sincere testament to their sense of being people of color (cf. Mackie, Smith, and Ray 2008). The pattern emerging from these studies is consistent and robust: Minorities’ support for people of color depends very little on who the aggrieved minority is. Blacks, Asians, and Latinos all come to the support of people of color in equal measure when their own in-group is involved as when other minorities are embroiled. The evidence presented in this chapter firmly establishes a simple point: PoC ID is, in fact, a broadly inclusive, pan-racial category, in line with my theoretical reasoning and in-depth interviews.Less
Chapter 5 uses a series of studies called the “I Feel Your Pain” experiments to provide initial evidence about the steadfast influence of PoC ID among distinct racial and ethnic minority groups. The aim of these studies is disarmingly simple: to demonstrate that minorities’ reactions to racial affronts are just as strong and swift when their own racial in-group is involved as when other minority out-groups are entangled, which would provide a sincere testament to their sense of being people of color (cf. Mackie, Smith, and Ray 2008). The pattern emerging from these studies is consistent and robust: Minorities’ support for people of color depends very little on who the aggrieved minority is. Blacks, Asians, and Latinos all come to the support of people of color in equal measure when their own in-group is involved as when other minorities are embroiled. The evidence presented in this chapter firmly establishes a simple point: PoC ID is, in fact, a broadly inclusive, pan-racial category, in line with my theoretical reasoning and in-depth interviews.
Efrén O. Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226799766
- eISBN:
- 9780226799933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226799933.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
In the conclusion, I turn to reviewing and integrating the major empirical findings of my book. Specifically, I discuss their implications for political decision making among racial and ethnic ...
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In the conclusion, I turn to reviewing and integrating the major empirical findings of my book. Specifically, I discuss their implications for political decision making among racial and ethnic minorities, paying special attention to how the presence and influence of PoC ID complicates and deepens our understanding of politics in a racially diversifying nation. Throughout my discussion, I wrestle with the normative implications raised by the presence of a pan-racial identity that can be bolstered or minimized simply on the basis of perceived commonality or difference.Less
In the conclusion, I turn to reviewing and integrating the major empirical findings of my book. Specifically, I discuss their implications for political decision making among racial and ethnic minorities, paying special attention to how the presence and influence of PoC ID complicates and deepens our understanding of politics in a racially diversifying nation. Throughout my discussion, I wrestle with the normative implications raised by the presence of a pan-racial identity that can be bolstered or minimized simply on the basis of perceived commonality or difference.