Abstract
What’s your street race? If you were walking down the street what race do you think strangers would automatically assume you are based on what you look like? What is the universe of data and conceptual gaps that complicate or prevent rigorous data collection and analysis for advancing racial justice? Using Latinx communities in the U.S. as an example, we argue that scholars, researchers, practitioners and communities across traditional academic, sectoral and disciplinary boundaries can advance liberation by engaging the ontologies, epistemologies and conceptual guideposts of critical race theory and intersectionality in knowledge production for equity-use. This means not flattening the difference between race (master social status and relational positionality in a racially stratified society based on the social meanings ascribed to a conglomeration of one’s physical characteristics, including skin color, facial features and hair texture) and origin (ethnicity, cultural background, nationality or ancestry). We discuss the urgency of revising the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards, as well as the Census and other administrative data to include separate questions on self-identified race (mark all that apply) and street race (mark only one). We imagine street race as a rigorous “gold standard” for identifying and rectifying racialized structural inequities.
Highlights
We acknowledge that the concept of measuring how others see your race is not new; we argue that the street race question format (López 2014; López et al 2017; López 2018)
We argue that critical race theory and intersectionality as lenses are urgently needed for tracking and eliminating racial discrimination
Just because one is racialized as street race and identifies as white, doesn’t mean that one is ethically and politically committed to white supremacy: “And there have always been praiseworthy whites-anticolonialists, abolitionists, opponents of imperialism, civil rights activists, resisters of apartheid-who have recognized the existence of the immorality of Whiteness as a political system, challenged its legitimacy, and insofar as possible, refused the Contract (Inasmuch as mere skin color will automatically continue to privilege them, this identification with the oppressed can usually only be partial).” (Mills 1997, p. 107)
Summary
“Demographic and statistical research tend to confound race with ethnicity, recent theoretical understandings of the racialization of identity tend to distinguish race and ethnicity when physical characteristics, especially skin color are a principal factor in identity formation”. (Zuberi 2001, p. xxi). An unsolicited email (2018) to the first author shows how reflecting on one’s street race has the potential to plant the seeds for critical reflexivity, practicing solidarity and advancing liberation for those who are subjected to contemporary and historic injustices based on their racial status:. This woman could have left the room, avoided any discussions about race and racism; she could have engaged in denying that race and racism has any visual, or ocular dimeniton or replying that even if race do have a corporeal dimension, it should not matter and that we should just be “colorblind,”or talk about “culture” or ethnicity Instead, she acknowledged the value of interrogating her own ontologies or theories of reality about race and ethnicity and she sought to learn more about the scholarship and research on this topic. This could be a first step towards practicing solidarity and advancing human rights
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