Books
Latino Professionals in America: Testimonios of Policies, Perseverance, and Success.
New York: Routledge Publication, 2019.
Maria Chavéz
In Latino Professionals in America, Maria Chávez combines rich qualitative interviews, auto-ethnographic accounts, and policy analysis to explore the converging oppressions that make it difficult for Latinos to become professionals and to envision themselves as successful in those professions. Recounting her own story, Chávez interviews 31 Latino professionals from across the nation in a variety of occupations and careers, contextualizing their experiences amid family struggles and ongoing racism in the United States. She addresses gender inequality within the Latino community, arguing that by defending, rationalizing, or ignoring patriarchy within the Latino community perpetuates systems of oppression—especially for women; gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals; and others at the intersections. The experiences of these Latino professionals and the author’s analysis provide a blueprint for what works—one, both pragmatic and hopeful, that uses real lives to illustrate how a combination of public policies, people, and perseverance increases the presence of America’s fastest-growing demographic group in the professional class.
American Political Science Association’s Latino Caucus Best Book Award
Maria Chávez has given us a remarkable and compelling book that deftly entwines social science with courageous acts of personal storytelling. Manifesting a profoundly civic spirit and a keen sense for the resiliency in the midst of struggle modeled by the Latina/o pioneers, warriors, and leaders who populate the volume, Chávez shows us, in the memorable words of one participant, “where the power resides” to fight racism’s historical legacies and emboldened current tenor, alike. In abundant measure, this exploration of Latino professionals’ experiences-in-context illuminates the equity-enhancing policies, altered gender frameworks, and counterracialization strategies needed to wage and win that fight.
Dr. Chávez writes a rich and deeply personal account of the nuances, idiosyncrasies and challenges Latinos encounter while making their way to professional careers, and the race-, class-, and gender-specific obstacles that meet them once attaining coveted professional positions. Her book demonstrates that a combination of targeted equity-enhancing public policies and mentors is what makes all the difference in whether one can receive an education and become an active, productive, and contributing member of society. Accessible, informative and insightful—it is a must-read for all community members, professionals, students, faculty, and anyone interested in promoting equity, inclusion and social justice in the world.
Our ability to understand the successful pathways to social and professional mobility is crucial if we are to fulfill the great potential of our community. Maria Chávez’ fascinating book is an important presentation of the, often painful, narratives of success within our community that is often shrouded in myth.
Latino Peoples in the New America: Racialization and Resistance.
New York: Routledge Publication, 2019.
Edited by José A. Cobas, Joe Feagin, Daniel Delgado, and Maria Chavéz
“Latinos” are the largest group among Americans of color. At 59 million, they constitute nearly a fifth of the US population. Their number has alarmed many in government, other mainstream institutions, and the nativist right who fear the white-majority US they have known is disappearing. During the 2016 US election and after, Donald Trump has played on these fears, embracing xenophobic messages vilifying many Latin American immigrants as rapists, drug smugglers, or “gang bangers.” Many share such nativist desires to build enhanced border walls and create immigration restrictions to keep Latinos of various backgrounds out. Many whites’ racist framing has also cast native-born Latinos, their language, and culture in an unfavorable light.
Trump and his followers’ attacks provide a peek at the complex phenomenon of the racialization of US Latinos. This volume explores an array of racialization’s manifestations, including white mob violence, profiling by law enforcement, political disenfranchisement, whitewashed reinterpretations of Latino history and culture, and depictions of “good Latinos” as racially subservient. But subservience has never marked the Latino community, and this book includes pointed discussions of Latino resistance to racism. Additionally, the book’s scope goes beyond the United States, revealing how Latinos are racialized in yet other societies.
Latino Peoples in the New America is a “must-read” contribution for many fields concerned with understanding past and present American racialization of Latinos through conquest, exploitation, and repression. Central to the analyses of several of the chapters is the White Racial Frame that relegates Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Tejanos, Dominicans, and others of Latin American descent to the lower sectors of society. As the volume illustrates, Latino struggles for inclusion, equality, and survival continue against social actions that subordinate Latino populations, especially state policies that create insecurity and fear among many Latino immigrant families, and hurl millions of Latinos out of the country.
Latino Peoples in the New America is a timely, incisive, and illuminating collection of essays from multiple disciplinary perspectives, focusing on various time periods and geographic locations. This edited volume dwells upon the persistent disadvantages affecting Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and other people of Latin American origin in the United States, due to racial profiling, violence, stereotyping, discrimination, labor exploitation, and political disenfranchisement. The book’s contributors, who include well-known authors as well as younger scholars, extensively document ways in which the dominant ideology of white supremacy continues to subordinate Latinos and other racialized minorities in the United States.
The tens of millions of “Latinos” in the US today form at once a new and an old population, made up of diverse newcomers and old timers with deeper roots in this soil than any other except for the indigenous peoples of the continent. This valuable and timely volume looks to their past, present, and future, with penetrating and multi-faceted essays that hone in on their history of racialization, as well as on their persistent resilience and resistance at a time of newly unleashed and untrammelled bigotry.
This edited volume captures a broad swath of experiences Hispanics and selected national-origin groups in the United States face as racialized peoples. Rich in empirical evidence and interpretative accounts from highly-regarded scholars, Latino Peoples in the New America provides unique substantive contributions to the body of work on race and ethnicity in the United States. Wide ranging in its scope of analysis, alternatively historical and contemporary, this book will provide readers with unequivocal accounts pertinent for the day and age we live in. It could not be more timely. Carlos Vargas-Ramos, Hunter College
Living the Dream. New Immigration Policies and the Lives of Undocumented Latino Youth.
Paradigm Publishers, 2014.
Maria Chavéz, Jessica Lavariega Monforti and Melissa R. Michelson.
In 2012, President Obama deferred the deportation of qualified undocumented youth with his policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals forever changing the lives of the approximately five million DREAMers currently in the United States. Formerly illegal, a generation of Latino youth have begun to build new lives based on their newfound legitimacy. In this book, the first to examine the lives of DREAMers in the wake of Obama’s deferred action policy, the authors relay the real-life stories of more than 100 DREAMers from four states. They assess the life circumstances in which undocumented Latino youth find themselves, the racializing effects generated by current immigration public discourse, and the permanent impact of this policy environment on DREAMers in America.
Everyday Injustice. Latino Professionals and Racism.
New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011.
Maria Chavéz
As members of the fastest-growing demographic group in America, Latinos are increasingly represented in the professional class, but they continue to face significant racism. Everyday Injustice introduces readers to the challenges facing Latino professionals today. Examining the experiences of many of the most privileged members of the largest racial and ethnic community in the United States, Maria ChOvez provides important insights into the challenges facing racialized groups, particularly Latinos, in the United States. Her study looks at Latino lawyers in depth, weaving powerful personal stories and interview excerpts with a broader analysis of survey research and focus groups. The book examines racial framing in America, the role of language and culture among Latino professionals, the role of Latinos in the workplace, their level of civic participation, and the important role that education plays in improving their experiences. One chapter discusses the unique challenges that Latinas face in the workplace as both women and people of color. The findings outlined in Everyday Injustice suggest that despite considerable success in overcoming educational, economic, and class barriers, Latino professionals still experience marginalization. A powerful illustration of racism and inequality in America.
American Political Science Association’s Latino Caucus Best Book Award
Everyday Injustice is the first comprehensive study of the experiences of Latino lawyers with racism and discrimination. Even though they have prevailed through the education process to become lawyers, Latino attorneys are often stereotyped as perpetual ‘foreigners’ to the United States, even though their families may have been in the country for generations. Citizens or not, Latino lawyers face their own struggles to become full members of the legal profession rather than marginalized outsiders. As Maria Chávez demonstrates, the discrimination is just as much a fact of life for Latino lawyers as it is for low-and medium-skilled workers. Moreover, Latina lawyers, as both racial minorities and women, face gender as well as racial stereotypes that contribute to their marginalization in the legal profession. After reading Everyday Injustice and ‘[h]aving listened to the stories from the diverse group of Latino lawyers in this study,’ one must conclude that the racial hostility and discrimination that they regularly suffer means that ‘despite our progress with race relations, we [as a nation] still have a long way to go.’
Chávez uses a combination of quantitative surveys and a significant number of in-depth interviews to shed light on the experiences of Latina/o lawyers in Washington State. Chávez paints a detailed and moving picture of how gender, race, and class intersect in her respondents’ lives, and how experiences of marginalization continue to be relevant to them across a number of parameters, despite their professional and socioeconomic success.
Many Americans, particularly immigrants, consider becoming a doctor or a lawyer the epitome of success, proof that this truly is the land of opportunity. Yet, as Chávez forcefully demonstrates, insidious racism, marginalization and even open hostility towards Latino attorneys are deep-seated and enduring within the legal profession. For Latinas, these ‘micro-aggressions’ as one respondent terms them, are even more pervasive. Maria Chávez explodes many myths in this groundbreaking book. Her outing of the barriers to success and acceptance by Latino lawyers puts the lie to the idea that America is a color-blind society, and underscores the need to take more active measures to ensure a true end to the current white racial frame under which all people of color continue to be oppressed.
This book helps us fully understand how race, culture, and class can continue to marginalize Latina/o professionals today. Chávez masterfully details the complexities and subtleties of how this marginalization persists in the contemporary legal profession. This book is highly critical of U.S. Society. More importantly, it is a call for the nation to live up to the high ideals of equal opportunity, full inclusion, and the building of a national community of common destiny and linked fate.