Racial Formation and Chicana/o Identity: Lessons from the Rasquache

Abstract

This chapter reveals the significance of identity to larger Chicana/o experience and to efforts at empowerment by focusing exclusively on identity formation process. The evolution of Chicana/o racial-political identities in late twentieth century shows the racial formation process at work in vivid detail. Chicana/o students in Los Angeles grow up being defined not as an ethnic group, not in terms of their cultural capital or with respect to their socioeconomic status, but as a racialized group. However, reality of the Chicana/o experience reveals that the lives of the individuals, from a very early age, are defined and categorized for them as a function of the color of their skin. The experiences of these students and their impact on students’ identity formations are a powerful illustration of Omi and Winant’s racial formation model. In many ways, Ernesto has turned traditional constructions on their end and helped us understand the ways in which identity can be reconstituted to move Chicanas/os toward empowerment.