Abstract
Given the current political climate in the U.S.—the civil unrest regarding the recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement, the calls to abolish prisons and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, and the workers’ rights movements—projects investigating moments of inter-ethnic solidarity and conflict remain essential. Because inter-ethnic conflict and solidarity in communities of color have become more visible as waves of migration over the past 50 years have complicated and enriched the sociocultural landscape of the U.S., I examine the ways that raciolinguistic ideologies are reflected in assertions of ethno-racial belonging for Afro-Dominicans and their descendants. Framing my analysis at the language, race, and identity interface, I ask what mechanisms are used to perform Blackness and/or anti-Blackness for Dominican(-American)s and in what ways does this behavior contribute to our understanding of Blackness in the U.S.? I undertake a critical discourse analysis on 10 YouTube videos that discuss what I call the African American/Dominican boundary of difference. The results show that the primary inter-ethnic conflict between Dominican(-Americans) and African Americans was posited through a categorization fallacy, in which the racial term “Black” was conceived as an ethnic term for use only with African Americans.
Highlights
On Tuesday 25 June 2019, Belcalis Almenzár, better known as Cardi B, took to Instagram live in order to defend her Blackness
I provide a brief description of the ways that the ideologies occurred together, showing the inter-relatedness of some of these concepts in strengthening or contesting the boundaries of difference between African Americans and Dominicans
The subject of inter-racial conflict forms the cornerstone of many race studies, but inter-ethnic conflict is far less studied in the United States
Summary
On Tuesday 25 June 2019, Belcalis Almenzár, better known as Cardi B, took to Instagram live in order to defend her Blackness Her aim was to clarify confusion about her ethno-racial identity following a wave of criticism resulting from her Black Entertainment Television (BET) Album of the Year and Best Female Hip-Hop Artist awards. People argued that she should not be eligible for the awards because she is not Black, maintaining that her use of the Spanish language and her previous claims of Latinidad precluded her from Blackness. Attributing this ignorance to a lack of proper education in the U.S school systems, Cardi B arrives at the core of the matter regarding public discussions of race in the United States: first, that as a society we have not yet agreed upon set definitions for terms of identity that are used in everyday language; and second, that part of the reason that we have not agreed is because there are societal institutions that either willfully obscure our understandings or that at the very least have done very little to historicize the rise of these notions (Nagel 1994, 2003; Telles 2014)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
