Immigration, Race, and Women
Immigration, Race, and Women
THE GENDERED PRIVILEGES AND IMAGES OF LATINA WOMEN
THE EXPERIENCE OF DAUGHTERS OF LATIN AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS
THE ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL LIVES OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN
Latin American women who migrate to the United States come with a set of social beliefs and practices with regard to race relations and racism that selectively shape their lives in the new land. Racial ideologies and practices in each Latin American country have been shaped by distinctive colonization histories and regional socioeconomics, politics, and cultures. A woman from Santiago de Cuba, for example, experiences these dynamics in a very different way than a woman from Santiago de Chile, or from Santiago, Nuevo León, in Mexico. But beyond these local and unique differences, the Spanish invasion and colonization, as well as its historical sequel, unite all the people of Latin America through a common denominator that has shaped their lives for centuries: white supremacy.
In any Latin American country, being blanca, or a white-skinned woman, has been socially established as superior to other standard racial identities that shape women’s lives. In Mexico and other countries, these identities may include, but are not limited to: (1) negra, or “black,” (2) indígena, or the derogatory expression “india,” (3)morena, or “dark skinned,” and (4)mulata, whose linguistic origin comes from mula, or “mule,” and which indicates a racial mixture of raza negra with white. As a consequence of el mestizaje—a term of Spanish origin that identifies racial and cultural mixture following the Spanish colonization of the Americas—multiple skin tones, facial features, body shapes and sizes, hair textures, and eye shapes and color have selectively emerged along with their corresponding identity categories. Beyond these endless phenotype possibilities, the closer the combined effect gets to the superior European standard, the more privilege a woman is granted in a given society. Likewise, the more distant from the “ideal” a woman is, the greater the social disadvantage and inequality she will experience.
In the United States, Latin American immigrant women unpack their racialized baggage within a mainstream society that celebrates women with white skin, blond hair, tall and slender bodies, and blue eyes. As women from different Latin American cultures and societies coincide with people from different ethnic cultures and backgrounds living in the United States, the endless racial and cultural interactions that emerge follow distinct social avenues in a number of ways.
RACISM IN THE NEW LAND
Migration to and settlement in the United States does not automatically guarantee gender equality to Latin American women. Ironically, women who use migration as a coping mechanism to escape the violence they experienced in their countries of origin (e.g., domestic and sexual violence) may painfully encounter the very same form of inequality they were trying to escape. Some women encounter sexual violence as they partake in the dangerous journey to the United States. These women are raped in transit, while crossing the border, or after settlement in the new society.
After establishing a permanent life on the margins of society, racism becomes part of a large structure of inequality and everyday life for immigrants, uncovering new forms of danger. Racism is part of the new socioeconomic and sociopolitical scenarios that make immigrant women’s routine at work a treacherous puzzle, and sexual violence may become part of their survival journeys. Women who were raped before migrating and who live and work on the margins of society in the United States become vulnerable to sexual violence and rape on their way to sweatshops and other deplorable spaces where they face exploitative and miserable labor conditions. A lack of transportation, linguistic limitations, a dangerous inner-city life, and uncertain citizenship status, among other factors, can exacerbate women’s vulnerability.
More and more Latina women have been facing these challenges in the United States. Since the early 1980s, the numbers of Latina migrants coming from Mexico and Central America and settling in permanently in the United States has increased, and as Enrico Marcelli and Wayne Cornelius point out, by the early 1990s Mexican migrant women outnumbered Mexican migrant men. Groundbreaking research done by Pierrette HondagneuSotelo in 1994 found that the migration and settlement of women in the United States can redefine gender relations in a way that may alter power dynamics in their households. These women actively nurture kinship networks and well-established migrant communities (further mediating the migration of women); they attain relatively stable paid employment; and they utilize various forms of financial assistance. Marcelli and Cornelius note that settlement patterns of women seem to be more permanent than that of men, who seem to move back and forth more frequently. Further, motherhood and the education of children raised in the United States may mediate this process.
THE GENDERED PRIVILEGES AND IMAGES OF LATINA WOMEN
In both Latin America and the United States, social images of women are racialized. For more than 500 years, racist beliefs, practices, and experiences of womanhood have made white and fair-skinned women the idealized expression of femininity vis-à-vis indigenous women, negras, mulatas, and mestizas. Before and after migrating, racist images of women have been internalized and reproduced by Latina women. For instance, it is common for people in Mexican and Mexican immigrant communities to celebrate the lighter skin or other attributes of relatives or people close to them, thereby implying some kind of racial superiority. For example, a mother may use the expression “my daughter is blanca, blanca, blanca,” or “my daughter has ojos azules, azules, azules” sharing her joy and pride with others as she describes the white skin or the blue eyes of a child born with these characteristics.
Racial privilege is reproduced within everyday life interactions and shaped by larger social and cultural contexts in Mexican and other Latino immigrant communities. Popular culture reinforces white supremacy, which is further emphasized when immigrant women are exposed to major Spanish-speaking television networks such as Telemundo and Univisión. Both of these broadcasting companies reproduce the same Western ideals of beauty in their racist, sexist, classist, and homo-phobic soap operas, or telenovelas.In telenovelas and other TV shows and movies, white skin goes hand and hand with socioeconomic class. The concept of “una buena familia” (literally, “a good family” ) represents the heterosexual nuclear family with an intact moral reputation from the middle, upper-middle, or elite socioeconomic strata. Las buenas familias in Mexico are usually light-skinned families, never poor or working-class families, and many of the Latino families portrayed in these TV shows follow the same pattern.
In Mexican society and other Latin American countries, a dark-skinned woman is very frequently the inspiration of love and passion in the lyrics of romantic songs, but rarely do such songs express these feelings for a white woman. In other popular culture expressions, race relations take different dimensions. The quintessential “sexy” Latina image—characterized by brown skin, exotic features, and a well-shaped (and at times voluptuous) body—may create both cultural pride and discomfort in women. This iconic archetype has produced racist stereotypes for the benefit of Hollywood filmmakers and U.S. and Latin American producers of images for mass consumption, leading to women’s endless efforts to achieve unattainable standards of beauty. Even though a Latina immigrant may feel validated for her dark skin color, she now has to work on her body so she will look like actresses such as Salma Hayek and Jennifer López, or the statuesque models that are sexually harassed by Don Francisco in his popular Sábado Gigante, a Saturday evening television variety show that Univisión has aired for at least twenty years.
THE EXPERIENCE OF DAUGHTERS OF LATIN AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS
Becoming a woman in the United States—ser mujer—is not only about gender but also about culture, race, ethnicity, and class. Second-generation Latinas come of age being exposed to racialized stereotypical images of Latinas. In addition, they are also exposed to their immigrant mothers’ expectations rooted in their Latin American countries of origin. These experiences are shaped by the women’s cultural roots, their immigration experiences, and the ways young women are raised in the United States, particularly in relation to gender, sexuality, and romantic relationships. Some immigrant mothers may not want their daughters to experience premarital sex, but others are not concerned about their daughters’ virginity, given the different values in the United States regarding the virginal status of a woman. In the end, immigrant mothers do their best to protect their daughters from the gender inequalities they experienced before and after migrating.
THE ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL LIVES OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN
Racially, “dating up” and “marrying up” are acceptable in these immigrant communities, but “dating down” and “marrying down” are frequently objected to. While being exposed to the racist ideologies they learned before migrating, immigrant women who date outside their group are subjected to their families’ and friends’ racial surveillance of their romantic choices. A frequent racist pattern views dating African-American men negatively and light-skinned Latino men or white men positively. This preference is related, in part, to the structure of opportunity: Dark-skinned individuals have historically encountered discrimination in education and employment vis-à-vis whites.
Accordingly, going back home with the “wrong” or the “right” man is either punished or celebrated. The act of visiting relatives back home in Latin America may reproduce both racially discriminatory and white supremacist practices, for these relatives may react to a woman’s choice in a partner in racially stigmatizing ways. Ultimately, coming to the United States may help a heterosexual woman to “marry up” racially, providing an avenue for social mobility that many Latin Americans celebrate as a way to “improve one’s race,” as witnessed in the expression “para mejorar la raza.” Finally, but not less importantly, in homophobic and sexist Latin American societies, same sex romantic relationships are always questioned regardless of racial differences. However, racism may exacerbate the above dynamics for immigrant women involved in interracial lesbian relationships. Similar patterns may interact with other factors including her family and friends’ feelings of acceptance or discomfort toward same sex relationships.
Given the above complexities that reproduce racist dynamics, is racial-ethnic community integration and development possible for all Latin American immigrant women living in the United States? Entrepreneurs and politicians have worked hard to satisfy their own agendas through the construction of a pan-Latino or “Hispanic” identity that embraces all Latin American immigrants. Many women may not escape, however, from the forces that divided them before migrating from Latin America. Even though social networking and a sense of solidarity among Latina immigrants have been identified in migration research with Mexican women (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; González-López 2005), racism, classism, and homophobia, among other factors, selectively survive the migration test. And while a common language and similar colonization histories unite these women, intragroup diversity divides them based on socioeconomic class and occupation, racial background, modes of migration and incorporation, country of origin, sexual orientation, education, marital status, and political agendas and concerns in their countries of origin. The frequently romanticized concept of a “Latino culture” is therefore a theoretical fiction that has little to do with the social realities of Latina immigrant women and their families. The wider concept of “Latino cultures” is more appropriate, for it recognizes diversity in both Latin American societies and U.S. Latino communities.
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Gloria González-López