Reconstructing Racial Identity

Abstract

When people move across state borders, they enter not only a different labor market and political structure but also a new system of social stratification by class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Migrants bring their own cultural conceptions of their identity, which often do not coincide with the ideological constructions of the receiving societies. As a mulatto Dominican colleague told me recently, she discovered that she was black only when she first came to the United States; until then she had thought of herself as an india clara (literally, a light Indian) in a country whose aboriginal population was practically exterminated in the 16th century. For most Caribbean immigrants in the United States, race and color have played a crucial role in the formation of their cultural identities. Two different models of racial hegemony are juxtaposed in the process of moving from the Caribbean to the United States. On one hand, Caribbean migrantsespecially those coming from the Spanish-speaking countries of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico-tend to use three main racial categories-black, white, and mixed-based primarily on skin color and other physical characteristics such as facial features and hair texture (Seda Bonilla, 1980). On the other hand, the dominant system of racial classification in the