summer vacations 2014 in sindh

- good morning, everyone. welcome to the invited session, american racializationsbeyond black and white, strange racial subjects in the u.s. i'm martin manalansan from the university of illinois, urbana-champaign. i'm very proud and excitedto hear the papers today, as i know you are, but to start, for some reason,

the program committee saw it fit to have the discussants comein first, which is very odd. and so, in an act of defiance, and i know some of you might not like it, but that's the way it's gonna be, we're going to have thetwo discussants last. so, the first speaker,i'm gonna introduce them, and they will, i'll introduce everyone,and then they will,

they will present in the order that, not in the order that's in the schedule. stan thangaraj will speak first. so, let me introduce stan thangaraj, he his an assistantprofessor of anthropology at the city college of new york. his work looks at theintersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and citizenship, and is the winner of the 2015american studies association

comparative ethnic studies prize. he is the author of desi hoop dreams, by the way, there are books,are right in front of them, feel free to look at them later. desi hoop dreams: pickup basketball and the making of asian american masculinity, and one of the co-editorsof the forthcoming book asian american sporting cultures, both books from nyu press.

stan takes his inspirationfrom women of color, feminist theory, andqueer of color critique. the second speaker is sujey vega, who's an assistant professor ofwomen and gender studies at arizona state university. using ethnography, oralhistory, and archival analysis, dr. vega's work explores the lived impact of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric. her book, latino heartland,

of borders and belonging in the midwest, weaves latino and non-latinovoices from central indiana to understand notions of belonging during a heightened momentin immigration politics. her current project locates another previously under-recognized experience, that of latinos and latinasin the mormon church, and the role the lds church plays in the lives of current latino mormons.

the third speaker is samuel k. byrd, and samuel is an anthropologistwhose ph.d. is from the city university ofnew york graduate center, an adjunct assistantprofessor at hunter college. his research interestsinclude music, urban life, immigration, and the u.s. south. he lives in manhattan with his wife and two daughters. the next speaker is ahmed afzal.

oh, here it is. ahmed afzal received his bachelor's degree in third world studies from vassar, master of science withdistinction in cultural geography from lsc, and a doctorate of philosophy in cultural anthropologyfrom yale in 2005. he has taught at colgateuniversity, purchase college, and currently, californiastate university at stanislaus. dr. afzal's research interestsinclude globalization,

transnationalism and the nation-state, and particularly, south asianimmigrants in north america, urban anthropology, southasian media industries in the west, indian cinema, bollywood, and gender and sexuality cross-culturally. his paper he's presentingtoday is excerpted from a chapter from hisrecently published monograph, "lone star state muslims:transnational lives, "american dreams, and southasian muslims in texas"

and from university press, 2014. our two discussants who will present, the first of the discussants is gina perez, who's a professor in comparative americanstudies program at oberlin. she is the author of the new book, citizen, student, soldier:latina and latino youth, jrotc, and the american dream, which has been published with nyu press.

it's like an nyu press extravaganza. (laughter) she is also the author ofthe near northwest side: migration, displacementand puerto rican families, university of californiapress, which was awarded the delmos jones and jagnasharff memorial prize for the critical studyof north america by the society for the anthropologyof north america. she's co-editor with frankguridy and adrian burgos

of the 2011 anthology, beyond el barrio: everyday life in latina latino america, also from nyu press. the last of the, and final presenter, and the second discussantis john l. jackson junior, who is dean of the school ofsocial policy and practice, and the richard perry university professor at the university of pennsylvania. his latest book is impolite conversations:

on race, politics, sex, money, wait, on race, politics, sex,money, and religion, co-authored with award winningjournalist cora daniels. his most recent film, co-directedwith deborah a. thomas, is bad friday: rastafariafter coral gardens. - thank you very very much. but, before i start mypaper, just to acknowledge some folks, and to begin withsomething we cannot forget, that black lives matter,and with ongoing violence

across our universities and campuses, it is important to stress this. i want to thank sue ulhey for organizing this amazing panel, and allthe labor she put into it, and to john and gina forjust giving us such the honor of being the discussants on our panel. and, i'm grateful to my mentors, martin, janae, dave and nancy,who have shaped my work. and for alejandro lugo, who is here,

who has been a life line, and finally, i wanna thank my colleagues at ccny, professor loti silber, arthurspears, and asha samad-matias. so, as the u.s. stateand xenophobic sentiments continue to organize and conflate arabs, muslims, southasians, middle easterners as terrorists, theeveryday lived experiences and folk knowledge ofrace varies tremendously. this paper attempts toget at the messiness

of racial formations by lookingat south asian americans and kurdish americans, two very strange racial figures in the familiarblack white racial logic. although both groups appearin institutional records in various ways, and in thecensus form as caucasian, they have endured variousracial formations, which further demonstrate the instability and multiplicity of race and whiteness. race within south asianamerican communities

has never been constant or consistent. early in u.s. history, theracial formation of hindu essentialized early punjabimuslim and sikh farmers as hindus, outside thebinary racial logic, unfit for citizen ship, and apart from the racial heteronormativestandards of family. the case of bhagat singhthind in 1920 to 23 highlights how theunfamiliar racial figure of the south asian makesstrange and inconsistent

the normative racial logic. thind called forcitizenship on the grounds of south asians being classified by racial science as caucasian. the court rejected the claim,and denied him citizenship, by saying that although racialscience upheld his status, the common white man wouldnot recognize him as white. thus, he as culturallyoutside the racial logic that also utilized biologicalconceptions of race,

which was determined bywhite male homosociality. whiteness was somethingoutside of his grasp, and he could not make claims to blackness, and he did not choose to make claims to blackness his citizenship. in this paper, the varyingfigures of the south asian and kurdish american demonstrate the shifting and exclusionary politics of whiteness, blackness, and otherness

that play out in theu.s. south in familiar, strange, and contradictory ways. in my book, which isfeatured on the table, with the familiar rigidblack white racial logic of the u.s. south, south asian americans' racial ambiguity in atlantaallowed them to move through various spaces, unliketheir black counterparts. this racial ambiguity waspart of the racial strangeness that was distinct fromthe toughness and threat

of black masculinity in sporting cultures. thus, when two of my maininformants, mustafa and ali, when their family livedin lagrange, georgia, these men could play at either the white or black segregated gym in 1990. the young south asian american would also play in ethnic asianamerican and latino leagues without roadblocks,while african americans and black athletes were highly policed.

with the rise of latinosin the u.s. south, they are now at times raced and classified under the newly familiar racial category of quote-unquote mexican. yet, the familiar racial categories of black and white were used often. black and white were used aspart of the racial grammar that set the standardsfor racial interpretation and interaction based on class.

white and black extended beyond african and white, africanamerican and white bodies. there are historicalmetaphors to talk about class difference and thepolitics of respectability within south asian america. here is that one, here is one example where the common racial lexicon is used to dissect and understand difference within south asian america.

so, i was playing and watchingseveral of these teams, and ali was playing in amulti-racial, city-wide league where the participants were mostly white and upper-class players. he played on a team that was comprised mostly of south asian americans, and their opponents were a white team. after the game, withthis team barely winning by a few points, ali and i carried on

our conversation in the parking lot. sweating through on ahot summer atlanta day, all of a sudden, we heard aloud screeching of car tires. we both turned around quickly to see a light gray new bmw rushthrough the parking lot. it was maliq, one of the children of the 1975 professional immigrant waves. we both looked at each other,we shook our head in disbelief and belief and theshenannighans involving maliq.

ali, at this moment, told me, (spits) "maliq, he is so white. "but you know my brothers,mustafa and kumir, they're black, they had it tough." when i prodded deeper about what exactly what these terms mean and meant, i noticed how a lot ofplayers would self-reference as quote-unquote white. players did not self-reference as black,

but rather, referenced other south asians as black, regardlessof the black stylistics or urban aesthetics that they sported. players used white fordiasporic normativity, which further ingrainedthe racial formation of model minority as the familiar template of south asian identity. black stood for the failed male subjects it often referenced youngmen who came through

the family preferenceacts and did not have the resources like professional status, college education, andstrong social networks. when the term blackwas used, it referenced traits of aggressiveness, toughness, frequent bouts of fighting, donning on too much of the black aesthetic, where the line betweenstyle and body was blurred, failing or falling outside the markers

of middle-class respectability, and taking part in theunderground economy. thus, in relation to mustafa and kumir, who did not attend good schools, did not have vast social networks, and were employed inprecarious situations and jobs, ali considered maliq and himself as white. but, when it came to the matter of the familiar waysin which we understand

race, and this particularbiological history, there were very different terms for racial and races' communicative competence. instead of using englishlanguage and vernacular to mark certain racialized masculinitiesas mad or out of place, most of the desi basketball players used south asian idioms to create their acceptable u.s. racial arrangements. although there is a word, gora,

in indo-european languagesfor white people, that term rarely ever surfacedon the basketball court. on the other hand, the term culoo, for black and african americans, was prevalent on and off the court. although this term originated to mark difference as dirt between light skinned and dark skinned south asians, it has become commonwithin south asian america

to mark black bodies in general, and lower class blackpersons in particular as non-normative figuresin south asian america, and in u.s. society. it originated in north indian languages, but has become commonplacein south asian america, regardless of one's ancestral language. it is a way of navigatingrace and racial deference. daniel, a malayali american, and sanjib,

a punjabi sikh american, informed me that their white friends, if theyknew one south asian term, it was the term culoo. whiteness and white bodies thus moved in and out of south asianamerican sporting cultures and spaces without the sametype of policing as blacks. sanjit, at six two and over 230 pounds, said with frustrationabout his life playing recreational basketball, quote,

"the culoos made it impossible to play a-league intramuralsat college," end quote. the black men and their blackness had biological and cultural valences, both seen, as my gay informant, muslim shariq told me, as less than ideal. on the physical level, sanjit and other south asian american players racialized african american men as culoo,

which over-determinedtheir athletic aptitude, foreground the thuggish mentality, while making themselves therespectable sporting figure. at a asian american tournament,mohammed and mustafa were watching a south asianteam, atlanta franchise, play, and mohammed shook hishead with discontent, and told mustafa, "man, theyplay culoo style of ball." now with the very categoryof culoo was transported from bodies to culturalpractices that invoked blackness.

in this respect, the blackworking class aesthetics associated with playground, organic and loosely policed basketball was distasteful for mohammed to watch. it was an act of policing. for these athletes thatgrew up on the playground, playing in organic versions of basketball, their basketball skill set,understanding of the space, and moving on the court were dictated

through spontaneousrecreational basketball, but not valued across all sporting spaces. and now, when we move fromthis south asian americas to newest project onkurdish american refugees in the u.s. south, withthe focus on nashville, unlike the south asianamerican men who are immigrants, kurdish americans in nashville came through refugee waves in the late 1970's, 80's and 90's.

whereas south asian americans used black and white bodies andthe terms black and white as the racial compass to adudicate racial belonging and cultural citizenship, kurds have multiple andcomplicated relationships to race, that is further confounded by various imperialisms that invoke whiteness and arabness. with a history of settler, sorry,

with a history of settler colonialism by arabs, turks and persians, kurds are racialized in everyday discourse and in institutionalrecords in the middle east. for example, in turkey,the kurds were referred to as quote-unquote mountain turks, and as a way of identifying difference from the turkish national subject. in their own exertions of agency,

kurds relied on racial language to further underscore difference from arabs and arab americans as a way to challenge the legitimacyof arab imperialisms. when i met d.r. for aninterview and dinner, he showed me a comprehensive encyclopedia, and stated something thatother kurds had mentioned, a commonality betweensouth asians and kurds, and long histories ofcommunication and intimacy.

and i was quite surprised. i am much darker skinned than he was, but he said that wewere both indo-european. he then pointed to theencyclopedic section on language families, he mentioned that we are both indo-european. i shook my head and isaid, "no, i'm dravidian." this did not suffice, and he said, "do you have people in yourcountry with blue eyes?"

"yeah," he then pointedto difference from arabs, who he said were semitic,and not indo-european. here, we see how the language of race, coded in the category of indo-european, allows for claims towhiteness, while concurrently pushing arabs out of that category. this use of indo-european isa key marker for difference from the census forms that categorize both kurds and arabs as white.

furthermore, the post-9/11 hysteria and the global war onterror conflates various ethnic, religious, and nationalgroups in the middle east into the racial formationof muslim-looking. despite how mainstream classifications try to make sense of thisstrange racial figure of the muslim or the middle easterner, some kurds made sure that thelogic that we were used to was not adjucated in aproblematic, conflating manner.

for example, when the censusagency started to consider a category of middle easternerswith the grouping of arabs, the kurdish americansorganized to oppose this. here we see how kurdsdisrupt the uniformity of whiteness that constituted persons of middle eastern heritage in the u.s., and bifurcated to meanindo-european and semitic. yet, the whiteness and the wages that come with it were exclusive.

phenotype, religiousadornment, name, accent, and bodily comportmentlimited social mobility for several of the kurdishamericans in nashville whose parents were farmers, and had little social capital in the u.s. dalal, one of the activistsi met, said, quote, "we changed our names, so we used to have "a very arabic name, ourlast name was mohammed. "before, i remember, i was at mtsu,

"and it was my first semester there "when the twin towers went down. "at 11 o'clock, we got a phone call from "one of the newspapersin town, and they said, "your name was mohammed before. "you're a muslim family, they're saying "this attack was done by muslims. "what do you have to say for yourself? "that's the thing that happened,

"and we immediately realized that things "weren't going to go very well, so, "when we became citizens, we all "changed our last name to darci, "and nobody can figure outwhat it is", end quote. for d.r.'s daughters and others, they make this moment to stress that whiteness does not give them the same privileges and wages thatother whites receive.

but yet, at the same time,the muslim kurdish american activists i met who choose the headscarf, they actually chose, insteadof distancing from arabs and claiming tenuous ground as whites, these young women chose the headscarf, and engaged with the racialformation of muslim-looking, and took what janade rana identifies as the expansive reach to create coalitions with other middle eastern communities

and communities of color. instead of embracingwhiteness, there is potential, as the kurdish americanactivists have shown, to dismantle the racial system through collaborationand community building. (applause) - so, thank you, thank you all for coming to this wonderful panel. stan's already done a wonderful job

of thanking folks thathave influence to us. stan and i went to graduate school, so, because stan did that thing,i want to thank the panel, actually, for pushingthe anthropology holdings to the point that we'retalking about these race issues and race politics in many critical ways that may not have beentalked about in the past. so, i want to thank the panel as well, for their wonderful work, as you see here.

it was not by accidentthat we're all nyu authors. stan and i coordinated this because we're so proud of what wehave to offer this year. it's frozen, so while he'sdoing that, i'll start. as i was writing this paper,i thought of, perhaps, a more appropriate subtitle for today. the title of the current paper is, he's gonna set up, en mi casa: latino latter day saints

and the making of complexmormon identities. but i thought, maybe, en mi casa, on the ooh's, ah's, and oh'sof making the strange familiar in the anthropology of racepolitics was more appropriate. here, the title of enmi casa, or in my house, holds meaning for both the participants in my current researchproject, and for me, a latina anthropologistdoing research at home, or within the united statesamongst latino populations.

the new subtitle, however, derives from varied responses i've gotten, from varied responsesi've gotten over the years as an anthropologist doingwork at home, responses like, can you click it for me, thank you, "can you ever truly learn the languages of the community you study," spoken by doubtingsociologists who can't imagine i could research my ownlinguistic community.

then there was the encounterwith me and a colleague. me, "hey rudy, welcome back to the states, "how was new zealand?" him: "it was great, hey, how was, "where did you do research again?" me: "utah." him: "ohhh." me: "it's okay, i get this all the time." and lastly, the comment i get often

from white male colleagues who have a skewed sense of anthropologists. they, them, "oh, you're an anthropologist. "you're all so much fun, youreally know how to party. "i met up with thisarchaeologist at a bar once. "hey, what, what, well,what do you study?" me: "the u.s., the impactof anti-immigration "rhetoric, and white privilege." them: "oh, huh."

i begin with these statements because i'm, as i'm sure my fellowcolleagues on this panel can attest to, we came upin the field of anthropology where studies of, andwithin, the united states, racial politics was growing,but work in the u.s. was still seen as someone'ssecondary project, what one did after real field work abroad, or if one was stuckwithout external funding. in addition, dealing withracism in the u.s. context

was still placed withinblack white binaries, such that some of myfavorite triple a memories involved events or talkssponsored by the aba. importantly for me, alawas also a welcoming space where latino ethnographywas finally discussed. still, even within thesecircles, latino ethnography remained a conversation of urban centers or traditional settlinglocations, like the southwest. so, when i chose to unpackthe latino experience

in central indiana, i wasgreeted then, as i am now, with quixotic expressions of "huh," or "wow," or worse, "why?" for me, making the strange familiar means pushing beyond theblack and white binary, toward embracingopportunities for coalition and comparative analysis that deepens our understanding of racepolitics as it impinges on multiple communities in a myriad of ways.

but, it also means moving beyond traditional recognized sites of analysis. that means, looking at latinos in supposed new settling destinations,even if they are not so much new as they were neverseen previously recognized. it also means lookingat communities of color within spaces once consideredhomogeneously white. this could be in the suburbs, the exurbs, in politics, or as in my case,in religious institutions,

entrenched in white anody theology. for roughly three years,i collected narratives of both white and latino residentsin indiana on immigration, and the lived impact ofthe political rhetoric. listening to racial slurs, or about dehumanizing encounters during the 2006 immigration debate,was difficult, but necessary. equally necessary for me was locating the spaces of survival,or the everyday tactics

of contesting otherwiseoppressive environments. as a lapsed catholicand a cynical academic, i did not set out to explorereligion as a site of inquiry. the ethnography gods,however, had other plans. indeed, it was beingintroduced to latino mormons in indiana that inspiredthe work i'm doing now. currently, i find myselfliving in arizona, a state whose immigration politics need no further introduction.

and like indiana, i'mhungry to learn about the ways that let latinoresidents survive, combat, or undermine the systemsof power that target them. the focus in the u.s.southwest, i posit that the strangeness or peculiar difference of being latino and mormon, as well as the multi-sided appropriationof latinos in utah, expands our knowledge offamiliar yet strange encounters with u.s. processes of racialization.

moreover, exploring the leadership roles, and yes, feminism, oflatina women in mormonism might also read strange to some. placed in a particularborder zone of belonging, this project focuses on mesa, arizona, a city honored with the label of the most conservative city in the country, with the heavily right andwhite leaning electorate. yet a drive through mesa also reveals

signage in spanish,(says word in spanish), and cars thumping to spanish music. similarly, one can equally find drivers listening to conservative talk radio with don't tread on mestickers on their vehicles. these worlds collided and ruptured in 2010 when russell pearce introduced s.b. 1070. russel pearce made anational name for himself with 1070, and living within his district

meant daily encounters between supporters and protesters of the bill. when i arrived in 2011,the tension intensified during the successful recall of pearce, that pit mormons against mormons. for instance, one localresident recalled an encounter outside the public library, where an older retired manliterally pushed a woman who dared voice disagreement with pearce.

police were called, andthe library had to maintain a security presence for weeks to follow. a mormon himself, pearcerepeated church dictates about following the law in his rhetoric. meanwhile, more moderatelatino and white lds members, and lds is short for latter day saints, were openly organizing to oust him. they wrote and demandedcompassionate leadership on immigration from salt lake city.

a latina in mesa would not wait for mormon headquarters to respond. in her 60's at thetime, bathi gruen sensed that the stories from otherlatino hermanos and hermanas, sisters and brothers, whose ward met at the same space as that of pearce. so, within the lds kind of practice, you have wards, which arebasically congregations, and sometimes they meet in the same

physical spaces, or meeting houses. the latino members felt inundated with subtle and overt messages that they were not welcome there. bathi brought this up to white elders, and here elders doesn't mean that they're actually older than her. she critiqued the presenceof political flyers within the walls of their meeting house.

she demanded that thepro-pearce flyers be taken down. as she remembered duringher interview, quote, "i mean, que seso, they shouldn't have "had them up in the first place." indeed, bathi and so many others did not appreciate theuncomfortable, and i might add, illegal blending of churchand state on the issue. i started doing interviewswith latino mormons in arizona precisely becausei wanted to understand

faith based responses topoliticians like russell pearce. faced with the politics of belonging within the walls of their church, as well as within theborders of their state, how were latino mormons coping with their marginal status within the national and religious imaginary? did faith soothe oraggravate the precarity of spanish speaking members?

these questions, unfortunately, expect mormons to air their dirty laundry, something that a select fewhave been willing to do. for now, i focus on ethnicbelonging in the church. how do latino mormons make home in the faith of whiteand delightsome people? what purpose does thisfaith serve in their lives? in particular, i'minterested in getting at the latina female experience as it relates

to traditional curturaland religious gender roles. bathi, for instance, maynot be a priest holder in her church, but her active voice was strong enough to question white elders and demand that they dosomething about the flyers. like in latino heartland, i also explore the history of spanishspeaking mormons in the state, where their past and theircurrent contributions are all but eradicated.

i find archives, historicaltext, and oral histories critical for understanding the palimpsest of racial layerings and space. it should be noted that mormons have, as part of their doctrine, a proclivity toward documenting their past. history and knowing where one comes from is built in the church'sgenealogy efforts. so, it comes to nosurprise, when one member,

eva, met with me at the, gave me a historical chronology of the spanish speaking chapel in mesa. with a notebook full ofinformation and personal images that showcase 1940's era carsparked in front of the chapel, and a latina mormons in bouffant hairdos, eva's enthusiasm was obviousas she sent me on a mission. i only got as far back as the 1930's. you have to go back and do thework of finding our history.

with that request in mind,i took a research trip to salt lake city lastdecember, where i spent 9 am to 5 pm in the ldschurch history library, and in the evening,immediately after archiving, i attended rehearsals andinterviewed participants of the church christmaslatino celebration. the interviews with ldslatinos in salt lake city helps situate how they appreciate these public demonstrationsof pan-latinidad,

and as one responded, (speaks spanish) "it made me feel at home." here, in these latino ethnic celebrations, mormons made the strange familiar by re-drafting their religionwithin latin american rituals. foods, spanish christmascarols, and notions of familia extended across geographical borders from utah to mexico andother parts of latin america. presently, i'm collectingthe oral histories

of latino mormons to see how their ethnic religiosity holds meaning in mesa. these mormons lovinglyrelate worshiping together in spanish for decadesbefore they were disbanded by higher white lds leadership. women, in particular, recalledwith tears in their eyes their memories of community and importance of familia and the church. women in the lds churchcertainly encounter limitations,

and fall into traditionalgender roles at home. still, as latino mennonite historian felipe hinojosa remarks,there is a feminism within their faith, andthat we have to account for. that's where i go forth now. ethnographically speaking,the kind of questions i want to ask about thepolitics of immigration within the church, and about the racialized genderedpositions all take time.

in indiana, it took time before people would openly discussperceptions of immigration. i want to trouble the white supremacy underlying the visionof the light-skinned god in mormon doctrine, speaking to and saving indigenous communities of the americas. i want to address how thechurch can be welcoming to some, while extremely inhospitable to queer and gender non-conforming members.

i want to point to those justaposition between celebrated white motherhood, and the ways latinafertility gets politicized. i want to, and i will,but i also have to be true to latinas who are tremendouslystrengthened by their faith, who remake an otherwise predominantly anglo church in their own image. what i can do now is recognizehow, in their own ways, latinos challenge who isimagined as a familiar face

of the church of jesuschrist of latter day saints. thank you. - morning, i'd like to second the thanks for panelists, and then allthe discussants for today. my name is sam byrd,the title of my paper is the strangeness of southern latinidad: race, ethnicity and politicsin the latino u.s. south. in this paper, i offerseveral critical interventions about race, based on theexperience of latinos

living in the nuevo south,the globally connected, increasingly diverse, yetstill racially stratified southeastern united states. in these new immigrant destinations, and i am aware of sujey'scritique of the word new, i think it's veryinteresting and important, we can discuss later, maybe, latinos are strange racial subjects, not fitting easily into established

black white dichotomies, yet marked as racially others through aregime of immigration policing, occupational stratification,and social marginalization. latinos in the south also engage with notions of regional identity, negotiating what it meansto be southern and latino. drawing on my recent book,the sounds of latinidad, and ongoing research incharlotte, north carolina, i consider the strangeness and familiarity

of the southern latinoexperience, through, i have three questions herethat i'm trying to answer. one, what are the experience of latinos in a medium sized southern city, and what can it teach us aboutracial politics in the u.s., particularly about theway the racialization of latino immigrants makes them into both familiar and strange subjects? so the themes of familiar and strange

remind me of leon russell's song, "strangers in a strange land," a striking example of what we might call blue-eyed gospel soul, and also the title of an influentialscience fiction novel, that's another topic, another day. a white rock and rollmusician channeling blackness is about as familiarand strange as one gets, commonplace in the popularmusic of the 1960's and 70's.

leon russell's song leads me to ask whether latino immigrantsto the u.s. south are strangers in a strange land. yes and no, according to my research among charlotte's latino musicians. many of the musicians i spoke with were familiar withpopular american culture and southern music, particularly the blues and other africanamerican folk traditions.

in their creative processand musical taste, they familiarize themselveswith southern music, and experiment with ways to incorporate american pop songs and cultural references into their performances. i argue that these musicians are part of a larger cultural movement, creating a southern version of latinidad that is looser than other conceptions,

and situated in conversation with the unique environment of the u.s. south. however, residential andsocial segregation mean that latino musicians operatein a separate social world from both whites and blacks in charlotte, and even other latino immigrant groups in a different socio-economicclass or legal status. when i told whiteacquaintances in charlotte that i was studying latino musicians,

i got strange looks, as if iwas from some alien planet. first, they were incredulousthat latino musicians existed in charlotte, andthat i would be studying them. latino musicians often perform in well known clubs and music venues that whites attended,just on different nights. the exception to the socialsegregation happens at latino cultural festivals,where mixed audiences enjoy latino bands, food, art, and dance.

by presenting a particularvision of latino culture that appeals to a broad audience, festivals have a somewhat unifying effect, but they also gloss over class, racial and national differences. the festivals are alsobeholden to corporate sponsors, and must be interpretedwith a critical eye that understands the versionof latinidad presented is leaning toward white, or whiter,

middle class, familyfriendly, apolitical and traditional types of performances. yet, the space of thefestival is a contested one, and fans, musicians, andeven concert organizers sometimes try to push the boundaries of what the festival can mean by including songs and performances that challenge these types of assumptions. since latino activism,musicians often see themselves

as southern, it is importantto pause for a moment and problematize whatbeing southern means. there are the traditional whitenotions of being southern, typified in phrases like"southern by the grace of god," and "the south shall rise again," and steeped in the continuous sense of white victimhood andpersecution at the hands of yankees and the federal government. there are the notions of thesouthern business elites,

starting with henry grady and typified by former bank of america ceo hugh mccoll, the new south, who want asouthern version of capitalism free from regulations and unions, but also unfettered by thedark history of the region. there are the notions of theafrican american generation of the 1950's and 60's, who fought for racial equality and justice, and forced all americans toconfront their racial demons.

but there is also southern culture, which in its richness, hasbeen celebrated and maligned in many a media portrayal. there are the notions ofthe generation of whites who grew up in thedesegregating 60's and 70's that felt the development of southern rock was an avenue toward self-awareness and of their own racial privelige, an expression of common cultural thread

between black and white southerners. there's country music, which has connected themes of white southern identity to national tropes that have, sort of, filtered into mainstream popular culture. american, and i should add,white american popular culture. there's also southernblacks, who in the 1990's developed new notions of being southern through the creation ofsouthern rap and r and b,

that celebrated theflourishing youth culture in cities like atlanta, miami and houston, while also critiquing racist policing and drug enforcement policies, the corrupted mainstreampolitical process, and cultural chauvinism towards the south. thus, there are multipleways of being southern, some of which latino immigrantscan align themselves with and identify with, andothers that they can't.

when i speak with latinopolitical activists, they are most concerned about how immigration policingand government policies demonize immigrants, andlimit their opportunities to engage as full members of society. what is it that leads to this revengeism? and by revengeism, i mean, i refer to the punitive and exclusionarypractices and attitudes that are prevalent in the u.s. south today

towards the presence of immigrants. in part, i think it isa late imperial mindset, where the u.s.'s ineffectiveand contradictory foreign policy, alongwith economic uneasiness, leads to a crisis in national,read, white identity. immigrants both familiar with through everyday visibility as laborers, and strange because ofperceived cultural difference, become an obsession forwhites feeling unmoored.

thus emerge new processesof racial formation, such as the racialization ofnew immigrants and latinos. i define quote mexican as a racial term, because in anti-immigrant rhetoric, and indeed in currentpopular linguistic usage, it is deployed in ways that supercede a mere reference to nationality. instead, mexican has becomea marker for brownness, illegal immigration status,indigenous facial features,

working class culture, perceived orality, foreignness, and accented english. latino immigrants, in particularundocumented individuals but, by association, other latinos, are cast as criminal, andsubject to increasing policing and exclusion from basic rights. paired with an expandingimmigrant policing regime, this discourse makes upwhat gilberto rosas calls the borderland condition, that inscribes

exceptionality on immigrant bodies through everyday violenceand surveillance. in the south, the riseof immigration policing at the state levelparallels the conservative slash neoliberal turn in state politics, where slowly, republicansreplace the last generation of white democraticgovernors and state leaders in 1990's and early 2000's. i don't have time to gothrough every southern state's

portfolio of these immigration laws, but i do wanna point to therecent north carolina bill, s.b. 318, which prohibits the use of the matricula consular asi.d, and outlaws municipalities from acting as quote sanctuary cities. instead, to paraphrasea charlotte-mecklenburg police officer in arecent community meeting, "with latinos about theissue, immigrants should now "always carry theirpassports, and be prepared

"to present proof oftheir physical address "through a copy of abill or tax statement." another latino officer warned that not all cpmd officers (speaks spanish), there's a few racists among them. so, latino communitymembers should be wary of situations of possible abuse, and should be ready torespond without hesitating with their name, address,and date of birth.

brings me to my second question, "how do latinos consentto common sense notions "of racial hierarchy throughtheir cultural production, "or challenge them through developing "critical perspectives ontheir role in society?" so, organizing around immigration reform in the latino, the latin music scene provide an interestingfields through which we can analyze how latinos consent to

common sense notions ofracial and class hierarchy through their cultural production, or challenge them through developing critical perspectives ontheir role in society. many of the musical performances i witness reinforce common sense notionsof cultural difference. what i call genrechauvinism, where the genres, terms of national identity, tradition, festival goers atfestivals who wear flags,

and other national markerslike soccer jerseys, or traditional dress or hats. and as a whole, the latinpopular music industry constructs musical tastesthat favors whiteness, middle class behavior and striving, and heteronormativity inmusic themes and performance. most of charlotte's bands follow in this vein, with some exceptions. in politics, the immigrationreform marches that i went to,

a type of patrioticcommon sense is followed, where participants erasemexican and other latin american national identity, andstress the american qualities of latino immigrants, as students, hard workers, and small business owners. but other examples thati point out in my book highlight a more critical view of latinos' role in u.s. society. bands such as heavymetal group dorian gris,

their performance practiceswhat one journalist dubbed "the collective circle" as a way to debate intellectual questionsand create rituals that momentarily overturn the dominantdiscourse about mexicans. other musicians pointout the commonalities between afro-caribbeanmerengue, or bachata, and banda music from tierra caliente, a region of mexico with manypeople of african descent. oh, okay.

a local acoustic regional mexicano band, los tarascos de michoacan, has engaged in cross-cultural exchange withwhite bluegrass musicians, performing live on a localenglish radio station. five, okay. a visual artist, rosalia torres-weiner, paints works that presentthe plight of immigrants facing family separationand police surveillance, and paints murals onwalls around charlotte.

in terms of political organizing, new circumstances have ledto a grassroots activism that is both critical ofstate and federal policies, while also wary and weary of traditional marches and rallies. for example, the failureto pass the dream act led many young undocumented students to try different approachesto advocate for reforms, such as sit-ins, confrontationswith politicians,

and reaching out to theirparents' generation. a group of families facing separation from their loved ones becauseof deportation proceedings started familias unidas, which provides emotional and logistical support to help families fight deportations. finally, the 2015 latin americanfestival, local newspaper que pasa mi gente, great name for a paper, created a large poster withdonald trump's face on it,

and the caption "tell donaldtrump what you think of him." festival goers wrotetheir thoughts and insults across the poster and on his image, and i can't repeat what they wrote, 'cause it's, anyway. this brings me to the third question, "what lessons can the experience "of southern latinos teach us about "conducting a critical anthropology

"of the seemingly never-ending episodes "of racial oppressionand revengous policing "of communities of colorin the united states?" i'm reminded of another strange reference, billie holiday's "strange fruit." i believe that theseemingly everyday incidents of killing and violenceagainst blacks by police are modern day lynchings, the continuation of state sanctionedviolence against blacks

and other socially marginalizedgroups in this country. what can the experienceof southern latinos add to our understanding of this moment, and how anthropologists can study racial oppression and violence? first, i think looking at people's everyday lives is central. when we do this, it becomes clear that latinos and blacksexperience oppression

on a daily basis, not just through high profile incidents that make the news. the oppression stems froma crisis of whiteness, a paranoia and fear that drives campaigns against illegal immigration, and against police assassinations. i put those highly in quotes. revengism in charlotte and other places is based on its own logic, that follows

from a neoliberal cryfor a right to the city, including a right to befree from illegality, being inconvenienced by the homeless, day laborers, or the poor in general, free from high taxes,and leads to restrictions on lifestyle crime suchas public drunkenness, loud music, drug use and drug dealing, violating housing codes,and informal street vending, read, food trucks.

in general, this is part of a process of reclaiming whitepublic space for whites, and claiming new spaces as whites encroach on neighborhoods through gentrification, without necessarily being overtly racist in the sense of encodingrace based discrimination. and so latinos get insertedinto this argument, even without really wanting to be, about race and belonging,where they are seen

as the problem, vilifiedand stereotyped as mexican. i argue that they turninward to fellow latinos to try to form a sense of community. some become politically active, while others try to avoid politics as a way to try to live a normal life. the political claims thatlatinos make, however, are already precluded and limited

by this neoliberal frameworkof a right to the city, where there's very littlespace for their claims to try to go to college, or to try to have the right to belong, or to have an i.d. sothat's an important point. second, i think, isimportant that we look at the intellectual debateswithin the latino community. the bands and musiciansand the political activists i studied engage in veryintense debates daily

about these sorts of questions about race, about ethnicity, aboutwhat it meant to be latino. and so, they try to create asense of southern latinidad that exists in concert with an awareness of race and racism in both latinamerica and the u.s. south. they also define themselvesin terms of the term mexican, whether or not theyagree with and identify in solidarity with mexicans, or not. third, i think it's vital that we connect

the struggles of blacks andlatinos in the u.s. south, while also noting how limited interracial collaboration has been so far. organizations like thelatin american coalition have partnered with black churches to host immigration reform rallies, but a broader coalition appears stunted. many immigration activists look to the civil rights movement for inspiration,

but they draw lessons alsofrom other social movements, such as queer struggles orindigenous people's movements. yet, the message of solidarityfor immigration reform seems unconvincing to manyafrican americans in charlotte. afro-latinos feel littlesolidarity with black residents, instead focusing theircommunity making efforts in collaboration with fellow latinos, particularly mexicans, because of their common diminished socialstatus in the city.

however, solidarity doesappear to be growing between latino activists and vietnamese and laotian immigrants. members of the asian immigrant community recently founded thesoutheast asian coalition to help advocate forindividuals facing deportation. in conclusion, have we movedbeyond black and white? the experience of latino immigrants in the u.s. southsuggests both yes and no.

latino immigrationsparks an intense debate about citizenship, regionaland national identity, and belonging, with much ofthe anti-immigrant language couched in coded racial terms, such illegal and mexican, that signal a new racialization ofimmigrants of color. as many scholars have pointed out, latino has always been a nebulous term, that touches on ethnic,racial, linguistic,

and national identities, andhas meant different things to people at differenttimes and different places. but one effect of theanti-immigrant climate in charlotte has been togalvanize most latinos into a clear political position,where they feel empathy for the plight of undocumented immigrants, and disgust at the vitriol and hatred spewed in their direction. thus latino, quote unquote,has gained a clearer meaning,

even if lighter skinnedlatinos still benefit from being able to associate themselves, if they choose, with whiteness. but the targeting of immigrants, policies and laws parallels a much longer and ongoing regime ofoppression that targets blacks. while there's a significant and thriving african american middle classin places like charlotte, the last few years have shown that

police violence against black bodies creates boundaries of class, urban subur, sorry, crosses boundaries of class, urban surburban, genderand education level. there also persists a large community of poor, socially marginalizedblacks in charlotte that often get overlooked in the hype about it being a booming city. perhaps instead of movingbeyond black and white,

the presence of latinos in the u.s. south complicates things, makingthe strange familiar and the familiar strange, thank you. - do you mind if i usethis for one second? so, first, thanks to stanley and sujey for organizing the panel, i'm very thrilled to be included, and appreciate the opportunity to share my ongoing researchon south asian radio.

it's a final chapter of myrecently published book, but i'm also hoping to expand it, making it more comparative,so i'm looking at south asian ethnic radio production in major cities like new york city in addition to houston, also looking at san francisco and losangeles as potential sites for thinking about south asianmedia cultures comparatively. this paper, though, focuses on

pakistani radio programming in houston. i contextualize it as a practice of diasporic community formation among pakistanis in houston. at first, the prominence of radio as a medium for constructing community among new immigrantcommunities in the u.s. might appear unexpected, or, to invoke the theme of the conference, strange,

given the rise of new media technologies such as the internet, andeven satellite television. the use of urdu instead ofenglish as the preferred language of communication on most of the pakistani radio programs in houston might also appear toperpetuate the foreignness, or strangeness of mediated practices among new immigrant communities. yet, as i try to show in this paper,

radio can also be approached through the lens of the familiar, and illuminate diasporic registers such as the uses of radioin practices of nation and community building in the homeland that make radio familiar to my pakistani interlocutors in houston. and at local and national levels as well, the strangeness ofnon-english language radio

is belied by similar uses of radio as a practice of cultural production during the course of the 20th century. so, i begin with my own introduction to pakistani radio inhouston to demonstrate my surprise at the importance of radio within the local south asiancommunities in houston. i had not planned to study radio, and it was certainly not on my radar

as the viable field sitefor ethnographic research. none of the published research on south asian communities in the u.s. that i'd consulted priorto commencing field work had critically analyzednon-english language ethnic radio among newimmigrant communities. yet, as gleaned from the vignette below, radio appeared to play a central role in negotiations oftrans-national belonging

and community among thelocal pakistani population. so, the vignette. i'd been in houston for less than a week when i realized thedifficulty in figuring out where cultural life tookplace for my interlocutors, pakistani americans andpakistani immigrants. like many new immigrantcommunities in houston, pakistanis also reside throughoutthe greater houston area. even in sections of southwest houston,

where pakistani businessesand residential enclaves predominate, pakistanis are part of an ethnically and raciallydiverse landscape. during this initial period of research, i could not discern a recognizable south asian ethnic centerthat would not only anchor my research, butalso provide me with a sense of ethnic rootedness and belonging in an as yet unfamiliar city.

on one of my first exploratory visits, wondering how in a city asvast and populous as houston, i would ever find pakistani interlocutors. i got into a cab toexplore hillcroft avenue, and hillcroft is one ofthe arteries that has a lot of indian, pakistanibusinesses and residences, and also community and civicorganizations based there. so, i got into the cab toexplore hillcroft avenue. the cab driver was vassim,a middle aged pakistani man.

as i learned during theride, vassim had relocated with his family from new york city to houston a few years earlier. "i wanted to be closer to my brother, "who lives here," he told me. "besides, it's tough toraise a family in new york. "life is so fast there,houston is better that way." as we continued our conversation, vassim headed south on hillcroft avenue.

i looked out the windowand saw storefronts advertising middle easternbusinesses in english and arabic. passing harbin drive,arab language storefronts are replaced by south asianand latino businesses, storefronts in urdu, hindi, and spanish. the blazing late summer sunand the oppressive humidity gave sidewalks and stripmalls a deserted look. large, nondescript parking lotsoccupied by car dealerships, commercial high rises, and roadways

leading into gated communities gave way to open fields and prairie land. i was taking in the sightswhen vassim asked me, "so, what brings you to houston?" "my research is onpakistanis here, you know, "their cultural life," i began to explain. "you must listen to theradio then," he said, as he turned up thevolume of the car radio. a pakistani folk song permeated the cab.

a male radio programmer speaking in urdu introduced the next song. vassim continued, quote, "there's so many pakistani radio programs "on 1150 am, it is basicallya pakistani radio station. "i always listen to itwhenever i am driving. "the programs are on all the time. "you learn much about pakistanisfrom listening to radio." end quote.

so, wandering around in ataxicab looking for interlocutors for my research, i wasthus first introduced to pakistani radio in houston. importantly, vassim had not taken me to the more familiar spaceof an ethnic enclave, or pointed me to the similarly familiar institutional space of a mosque or a pakistani community based organization. instead, vassim haddirected me to look for

the pakistani communitythrough its participation in the airwaves of commercial radio. the preference for radio as amedium for mass communication amongst south asians in houston invokes the historicalsignificance of radio as a tool for nation andcommunity building in pakistan. as one of my interlocutors, apakistani radio program host said to me, quote, "webring our habits from home, "and we always have been radio people,

"newspaper people, that is where "we get our information from." radio also represents the medium to which my interlocutors have turned since the early decades ofpakistani immigration to texas. pakistanis are relatively new entrants to the ethnic landscape in houston, arriving in large numbersonly in the 1970's. during the 1970's, middleclass professionals,

most of whom wereemployed in the hospitals, aerospace industry, andin the oil exploration and construction sectors,along with students at local universities,constituted the majority of the pakistani population. it was in 1978 that thefirst pakistani radio program began broadcast in houston. the program was called, andthe translation in english is "a galaxy of stars," andwas produced and hosted

by a pakistani husband and wife team who had been producing radio programs for the state sponsoredradio pakistan in pakistan. they utilized theirknowledge of radio production and programming to startthe program in houston. after an extremely popular 12 year run, the program went off the air when saleem, the husband, passed away. a dramatically revamped programbegan broadcasting in 1990.

when saleem's friend,also a regular volunteer with the program, convincedsaleem's wife to restart it, "galaxy of star" attempted to represent a culturally conceived diasporiccommunity, inclusive of all south asian nationalitygroups residing locally. in a 1983 interviewpublished in the oldest south asian newspaper in houston, mr. saleem emphasized that the audience for his program included both pakistanis

as well as the local indian communities. the newspaper quotes mr. saleem as saying that the programs were, quote, "for people "who want to remembertheir culture and language. "there's not muchdifference in the pakistani "and the indian culture,people on both sides "listen to the same music and songs. "it is for people who want tokeep in touch with their roots "and understand theirorigin better," end quote.

by the early 2000's,the program had become part of a widely diversifiedpakistani media landscape that included over 15 regularlyscheduled radio programs, several pakistaninewspapers in the english and the urdu language,asian india radio programs, multiplex cinemas that show indian films, bollywood films, several times daily. these radio programs are broadcast throughout greater houston onthree different am stations.

but the year 2001 pakistaniradio programs reflected also the internal diversitywithin the local population, and represented a widerange of professional class and ethno-linguistic backgrounds such as punjabis, sindhi, pathan, balochi. moreover, these hosts included recently arrived working class pakistanis as well as second and third generation pakistani american professionals.

radio had come to symbolize a public space and venue that brought together the varied waves of pakistanimigrations to the u.s., and transcended differences of class, age, generation, geography, and gender. it is not these trans-national intersections with radio, though, in the homelandthat make it familiar. i think radio also representsestablished patterns

of cultural production among new immigrant communities in the u.s. during the course of my research, i spent time with the administrative staff at the studios from wherethese programs are broadcast. on one occasion, i was sittingwith the station manager, elizabeth malindez, a second generation mexican american woman in her 40's. as we sat in her officechatting over coffee,

our conversation was often interrupted by program host who stopped by. suhel, a second generationpakistani american who co-hosted an urdu language program, had brought two of his childrenwith him to the studios. as suhel spoke withelizabeth, his children kept running around making noise. suhel, embarrassed,apologized for his children. as suhel left, elizabethsmiled with understanding,

turned to me and said, "you know, "this reminds me of me wheni was a child in the 1970's. "my father was a mexican immigrant, "and he started his radio programin this studio as a hobby. "as a way for him to feelconnected to his culture. "he would bring us to the studios, "and we would always be running around, "just like suhel's children,when i see these kids, "it reminds me of how my father

"got involved with spanish language radio. "that is how i became interested in radio. "this is how we got started. "and now, spanish languageradio is everywhere." i recalled this conversation as one of the light bulb moments in my research that enabled me to imagine the possibility of pakistani radio asa site of convergence between new immigrants and earlier waves

of immigrant communities intexas and elsewhere in the u.s. histories of non-englishlanguage radio in the u.s. show how immigrantcommunities have utilized it as a vehicle for negotiatingexperiences of marginality and racism in mainstreamamerican media industries. specifically, spanishlanguage radio in texas during the 20th century,and pakistani radio today reflects similargenealogies and progressions from community basednon-profit initiatives

to marketing tools for business, and as spaces for commercethat reach audiences locally, regionally, and nationally. this growth in spanish language radio has required alliance building, and ongoing accommodations of difference among varied south asian and central american nationality communities. the convergences between pakistani

and spanish language radio suggests not only models of growth forsouth asian radio in houston, but also potentialitiesfor greater solidarities, across, between southasian radio programmers, across religion and nationsof ancestral affiliation. alas, my discussion about this issue with several differentpakistani radio hosts was met with pointed reservation. when i mentioned my conversation

with elizabeth to shazad,a radio program host, a pakistani radio program host, and asked if he anticipatedsomething similar happening, he said, quote, "maybeit will down the road." i think a lot of it has todo with advertising money. it is scarce, we indianand pakistani radio hosts are all fighting for that dollar, so sometimes, that bringsin a bit of bitterness. i hope that we willget over it and realize

that if we can coexist, wewill all do a little better. and my interlocutors'misgivings were based on the recurrence of tensions between south asian radio program hosts, as well as between pakistani and indians on issues of sponsorship. indeed, this constructionof difference and antagonism has undermined theability of pakistani radio to collaborate and build alliances with

other south asian nationality programs. in conclusion, analytical consideration of pakistani programs in houston shows the tremendous endurance and relevance of radio, atechnology over a century old in the life of new immigrantcommunities in the u.s. pakistani programs provide animportant ethnographic site to denaturalize thetaken for granted frames, and expand the horizons andvaries uses and meanings

of radio among new immigrant communities. as a practice of diasporiccommunity building, pakistani radio demonstratesthe ability to mediate differences between southasian nationality groups, as well as accentuate them. you know, i'm thinkingthat may be the end, so i'm just gonna end here. - good morning everyone,it's truly an honor to be here, to be invited as a discussant

for this executive session that features papers that represent newresearch in a critical americanist anthropology, andamerican studies more broadly, and i want to thank you for an opportunity to be a part of this session. in ahmed's paper, thathe just finished reading, about urdu language radio in houston, he uses the journey in coversation with a pakistani cab driver as a reminder

of one of the most valuablegifts in anthropology, and that is the value that we place on mundane, quotidianencounters in our lives, to provide a profoundand meaningful insight into our complex cultural,political, and social lives. in his paper, ahmed captures how the routine question a cab driveroften asks his traveller, "what brings you to houston?", how a simple question like that can

radically transform ourmethodological approach to trying to understand wherecultural life takes place, and i just thought that was really beautifully captured in his paper. if you're interested in cultural life in, if you're interested in the cultural life of pakistanis in houston,the cabbie notes, quote, "you must listen to radio." and the beauty of this man's remarks

is not only the direct simplicity, and then the fact thathe turns on the radio, or turns up the volume, and youcan hear a pakistani folk song, but it's also the reminder of how the familiar and ubiquitousfeatures that structure so much of our lives, like radiostations, musicians, sports like basketball, and churches are simultaneously sitesof unexpected and important affinities, community building,

boundary construction,and identity formation. and that's preciselywhat these four papers do so well for us this morning. they invite us to think critically, they invite us to critically examine these familiar spaces andlocations in american daily life, and to see the strange andsurprising and precious insights they can generate indeepening our understanding of american racialization projects

that we all know are farmore complicated and nuanced than the broader publicand academic discourse often suggest. this attention to themundane spaces and places for understanding americanracialization projects is more urgent than ever. in a historical moment,in which our lives are increasingly defined by raceand class based polarization, violence at the hands of deeplymilitarized police forces,

and in a moment of virulentanti-immigrant sentiment and hostility, as wellas class-based exclusions that have a profound impact on national discourses of belonging, critical americanist anthropology, and these particularprojects, have a lot to offer. this kind of work builds on alot of what we already know, what is familiar about immigration, practices of transnationalcommunity building,

the role of powerfulinstitutions like churches and facilitating feelings of belonging, and the importance ofcultural production and sports as vehicles for inclusion. but these papers also offerimportant new insights that demand exploration, andto some of those insights, i now turn to the papers, and they're not in the order they were presented. but, i'm gonna cover all four of them.

sujey's paper provides amuch needed exploration of the experiences of latinas and latinos in the church of latter-day saints. in what has become a familiarstatistic, that latinos, that we're the largest,youngest and fastest growing demographic in the united states today, we can see a similar trend in lds, with the church of latter-daysaints, that latinos are the fastest growinggroup in the mormon church.

and as sujey insightfullydemonstrates in her paper, they are playing acritical role in, quote, "ethnically asserting theirown vision and practices "of culture and faith, within an otherwise "purposefully homogenous institution "like the lds church," unquote. and her larger goal of theproject is to explore, quote, "how white lds members respond to this growing population in theirmeeting houses," unquote.

well, vega provides a nuanced analysis of the way latinas, in particular, develop valuable women centered networks of support within lds, and this is something that she explored in her paper more than in the presentation today, thati really appreciated. while these women developthese women centered networks within lds, that do notdisrupt the marginal status

of women and childrenwithin the mormon church, she identifies incredible moments of quiet and direct resistanceto the racialization and stigmatization oflatinos and immigrants when the one 67 year old woman challenges her whitebretheren to take, to quote, "take down political flyerssupporting russell pearce," who is the architect of s.b.1070, at the meeting house, saying to sujey, "i mean, que seso?

"they shouldn't have putthis up in the first place," suggesting that while latina lds members recognize and work throughpatriarchal constraints, the racialization projects undergirding anti-immigrant legislation have no place within their church. these insights lead me toask the following questions to sujey, and others whoare thinking specifically about the intersections of race,gender and latina autonomy,

how do we understand the ways in which latinas successfully operate within some of the mosthierarchical, patriarchal, and hypermasculine spaces like lds, the catholic church,and in my own research, the u.s. military and military programs, to create spaces for autonomyand leadership development, and the exercise of their own agency, and how might these spaces allow for

the support and developmentof critical identity formation that can challenge exclusions based on gender, race and class? this is something i found veryinteresting in your paper, and would love to seemore fully developed. these strange and surprising spaces for the development of latina agency extend beyond churches to include the familiar locations of music

and musical cultural production that sam byrd explores in his paper. as part of a new research exploring the presence and impact of latino communities in the nuevo south, byrdinvites us to think about the familiar experience in the development of pan-ethnic identity, or latinidad. but to focus on thedistinctive and strangeness of a southern latinidad, byfocusing on the experiences

of musicians, deejays, andpolitical activists in charlotte, sam locates how latino musicians navigate what he refers to as, quote,"the never-ending episodes "of communities of color inthe united states," unquote, and their particulariteration in the u.s. south. in his work, he demonstratesnot only the ways that latino musicians, quote, "consent to "common sense notions of racial hierarchy "through their cultural production,"

but he also highlights theways that these same musicians challenge these constructionsthrough their construction of a southern latinidadthat he describes as looser than other conceptions, and that reflects boththeir social isolation, away from whites and blacks in charlotte, as well as the surprisingaffinities and connections with the heterogeneous latino and carribbean population in the city.

so while fear and thebalkanization of latino media and the presence ofparticular gatekeepers, like deejays and club owners, for example, are key in hardening the lines between latinos and the broader society, the musical and culturalpractices of musicians creates a space forchallenging what he calls "racial common sense notionsof cultural difference," unquote, that is oftenreproduced through music

by developing new cultural practices that challenge the dominantand stigmatizing discourses around mexicans, for example, or that seek solidarity across genres, for example, across merengue and banda. what i would have likedto have read more about is, and, if we, further conversation, is how these culturalpractices might be spaces for political activism,and i think he starts

to allude to this at the end of his paper. but i would like to seehow this might change in light of the events of this summer, of incredible racialized violence against black communities and black churches, and specifically in the south, and to know whether thetensions and isolation between latino and africanamerican communities might be transformed, inlight of recent events,

and how cultural practices might reflect these new moments ofsolidarity and racialization. i'm also interested in understanding how the notion of southernlatinidad that you allude to, and i think couldcontribute significantly to conversations in latino studiesand in latino ethnography, kind of to flesh that out,about what is specific about southern latinidad, and kind of contributing to our notionof latinidades more broadly.

while sam's work on music provides a familiar way ofthinking through latinidad and racialization projects, stan's paper, focusing on the role of sport,and specifically basketball, provides a refreshingand new line of inquiry for thinking about racialization projects, and builds on the importantwork of historians such as adrian burgos' scholarship on race, latinos, and baseball.

by turning to basketball, and south asian participation in it in atlanta,sam is able to capture, quote, "the fluidity andexclusionary politics "of whiteness, blackness and otherness "that play out in multiple andcontradictory ways," unquote. in atlanta, stan beautifully demonstrates sports culture is animportant site to explore the use of raciallanguage, and how they're reproduced and challengedby young south asian men.

so, while the familiarity of blackness is bound up with dominantnarratives of, quote, "aggressiveness andtoughness, and frequent bouts of fighting on the court,"stan draws our attention to class, and the ways thatclass and economic mobility and aspirations and consumption intersect with these narratives as well. these experiences of southasian youth in atlanta are in sharp contrast to those of

kurdish young men in nashville, whose racialization, inquote, "everyday discourses in institutional records," unquote, are both the site ofcontestation and reproduction of their marginalizationin a post 9/11 world. in turning his attention to the ways kurds claim status throughclaims to indo-european heritage, which i just really found fascinating, stan correctly identifies the way that

racialization projectsare always simultaneously bound up with ideas about gender and gender identity construction. at the end of his paperrefers to different veiling practices in nashville, and so what i would like to know more about is how this intersectionalapproach to thinking about gender and race play out in the context of sports in atlanta, and howare racialization projects

being transformed inrelation to ideas about girls in sports, forexample, and i would love to know more about gender veilingand racialization projects in nashville, as well. and finally, ahmed's focus on radio, which was the opening framefor my remarks this morning, provide a final new and strange focus on racialization projectsfor today's panel. as i noted before, this paper represents

new directions, focusingon media and its role in the making and unmaking of south asian diaspora in texas. one of the most interesting insights from ahmed's paper wasthe interaction he had with elizabeth melendez,a second generation mexican american woman,who is the station manager who took immense delightin the connection she made between seeing suhel's childrenplaying in the station,

just as she and her siblings had done so many years before, when her father had his own spanish language radio show. her delight is not only about this cross-cultural recognition,but for a potentiality, and for seeing the familiar in something that is new and strangein the racial landscape. quote, "this is how wegot started," unquote, she explains to ahmed.

now, spanish language is everywhere. in a similar way, thinkingof racialization projects beyond black and white has a long history, but we now find ourselvesin a political moment that requires continuedand sustained attention to these questions, andthese papers, i suggest, is how we get started, thank you. - good morning. - [voiceover] good morning.

- so, what i think i'm going to do is take a different tact fromthe one that gina took. i will tell you, i thought the papers were wonderfully evocative, i'dalmost say too much so. because i wrote so manynotes, and i got back and realized, i couldn't evenread the many notes i wrote, so i re-wrote them, andre-wrote them again. i think part of what,for me, that speaks to, is the extent to which i feellike part of what this panel

is trying to get us to think about, and i do feel likeanthropology, at this point, needs to reboot in terms of its appreciation of andunderstanding of its relationship to larger discourses aboutrace and racialization, i think we've fallen intothis trap of thinking we're kind of a one trick pony. the idea simply is wecontinue to hammer home the race is a social construction idea,

show them all the ways inwhich it isn't biological, we make the case that its value comes out of the factthat we can dislodge it from these poorquasi-biological understandings. it's almost like we think wecan put our pen and pads away, and go on about our business,as though the job is done. and, i think some of what this panel, and the papers thereof,get us to think through, are our, and all of our, now,

i'll claim my owninconsistencies, on race. all of our complicated,cathected, inconsistencies about how we think aboutthis category, this trope, this organizing principle forhow we understand the world and our various places in it, and i think the papers do, in very different ways, a wonderful job of showing us why, even this idea of gettingbeyond black and white is much more complicatedthan you think it would be.

so, i'm actually teachinga course this semester at penn on american racism,and i'm only teaching it because so many facultyand students and alumni have been complaining abouthow the class is structured. the argument, basically,is, this is a class that was concocted in the 1970's, and still reads as thoughwe're in that moment. still feels like nothing'schanged in america in the last, you know, 40 years.

and so students, in the moment now, are saying, "this doesn'tgive me the tools, "the conceptual frameworks i need "to make sense of the current moment." and i think what each one of these papers, in very different kinds ofways, is trying to get us to understand, is we haveto build a new toolkit for making sense of this stuff. and it means recognizingthat we've all been complicit

in a certain understandingof race as parochial. almost in this kind of intellectually imperialist way, right? this is almost an impositionof a certain version, in a certain moment ofan american preoccupation with a biologization of difference. and so, what i wanted todo is maybe talk about five specific themes that thepapers made me think about, that i feel like theydo a nice job of helping

to thematize for us, andhopefully, pushing us. i know they pushed me to think differently about how we write this stuff. ultimately, also how we live it, too, but i'll start with low hanging fruit, i think is how we write it. so the first thing,again, is that this binary isn't a simple one, that the categories can be fixed and fungibleat the same time.

it's a whiteness thatcan be quite expansive, can let in different folksin different points in time, also a blackness in the blackwhite iteration of things, that can do a whole buncha different work. the lines between them canbe policed differently, in different moments bydifferent constituents towards different ends. part of what becomes important,i think, to remember, is that ultimately, i thinkthe reason why race works

and why we talk so muchabout racialization, at least the reason whyi write about it so much, is because it's not somethingthat we could understand except, i would argue,insofar as we recognize that when race does, when race takes as a logic, as a reason,as an organizing principle, for how you think about the world, it constitutes in analmost existential way who and what people think they are.

so it's not just the lensthrough which you see the world, which almost sounds almosttoo simple and superficial, it's actually about howyou understand yourself. that's why deconstruction canbe such a radical project. because, we can deconstructthis category to death, and ultimately, what it endsup doing, i would argue, if it's working, is imagining, purporting, to disappear ourselves out of existence. now, that isn't to say again,that that's because race

is so ontologicallyreal, it's pre-cultured, to say that part of whatwe have to recognize is the power of culture,is that it constitutes us. so, we only interact inand through its frameworks and under its auspices. so, how do we make sense of what this binary allows us to do, and the kinds of ways in which, if we reconfigure it,if we push beyond it,

we might be able to imaginedifferent relationships between various versions of us and them. and so each paper, ina very different way, talks about how moveable this notion of this binary, black white, can be, and why it's important to think not just beyond in a waythat seems to be about transcending, and not recognizing the constitutive legacy based commitment

that the past bringsto bear on the present, but to recognize actuallyif we get the current moment and take it and get itright, and take it seriously, we actually can reinterpretsome of what we imagine to be the historical facts of the matter about how races functioned in the past. and so i think that's really important, the papers do a nice job of that. second thing, in different ways,

some more explicitly than others, thinking about therelationship between race, i'm gonna say and democracy,but i would say that, in and through the categories'mass mediation, the media, and when i'm just talkingabout south asians in houston on the radio, but recognizing that one of the projects thatbecomes very important is being able to create anarrative that can circulate about the value of theseparticular investments.

so, thinking about the ways in which, i mean so my, these areall nyu press books, so my, you know, contributionto the nyu press party, is a book coming out 2017 with carolyn rouse and marla frederick, around race, religion and mass mediation, called televised redemption,the argument simply being, that to understand, to really understand how and why race helps us think about

this transnational, sort of,you know, postmodern present, means we have to go in andthrough these mechanisms whereby we communicate itthrough electronic media, and through all kinds ofmass media to possibilities. and so thinking about how, ineach one of these instances, whether it's the specific deployment of musical forms and genres to create a new version of what it means to be in the south in the contemporary moment,

or recognizing all theways in which your project, as someone who's not supposed to be in the lds and is anyway, is about trying to control a narrative that isn't simply aninterpersonal narrative, but that's one that's playing out on social media all the time. these questions about, i am lds, and it isn't your stereotypical notion of lds,

it's all about, i think,some of those issues, and recognizing ultimately thepart of what race is about, it's about purporting toclaim that you can find bio-physical matter that'ssomehow out of place. isn't where it's supposed tobe, isn't where it belongs. race wouldn't even be important, wouldn't have the traction i think it has as a way of understanding the world if we didn't imagine it madea difference, of course,

in how people behaved,that's a presupposition. if we didn't see it inaction, i'm not sure it would have the longevity it's had. so, in different ways,each one of these papers tries to play with whatracialized communities do, what they're supposed to do,what they authentically do, how they change and reconfigurethe expectations people have about what particular kindsof peoples are expected to, i think that was somethingthat really came through

in each piece in very powerful ways. there is also, always, this, i think, interesting relationship between, and people have writtenincredibly compelling arguments about how this is played out historically, between vernacular folk deployments and understandings of race, and what we, as academicians, can bring to the table. i think of stan's piece, as he opens with

this 1923 decision, an impossible subject, does a nice job of layingout how, in this moment, we see an example of the futility, the insignificance, ultimately, at least, the partiality of a socialconstructionist argument. where we have a supremecourt justice saying, well race science, might say,south asians are caucasian. that might be what science tells us. but the common white southernerdoesn't see it that way.

that's race as social construction. let's say it doesn't matterwhat you're saying up here. what the science,ostensibly, is telling you is different from thesort of self-evidential common sensical understandingof the community, and that's what will take primacy. that's what we'll actuallyget codified into law. such a powerful moment,and it's another way in which we need to think about

our relationship to theselarger circulating discourses. i think that's also important. i think the final thing i'll say is each one of these papers,some very explicitly, just about all of them explicitly, are trying to get us to think about what these discussions about race in a post civil rightsmoment, in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic americanmoment, tells us about

the very category of citizenship. who can be a citizen, who can't. makes me think of devoncarbado's work about the difference between american identity and american citizenship. american citizenship might be an official category of belonging, might mean recognition by the state. but being american means assimilating

a certain understanding ofracial hierarchy, of privilege. it means internalizing that. he does this wonderful job,this very personal story of his own, as a blackbrit, his own introduction to american identityand the logics thereof. it's different, he wants to argue, from american citizenship,i thought that was powerful. and for him, it's also clearly always lived in and through theseconnected categories.

so it's gendered in a waythat a lot of the pieces have tried to get us to think about today. it's an understandingof identity of community that says, there's this fantasy out there, and i think it is a fantasy,it's a post racial fantasy, that if we somehow can push back against and innoculate ourselves fromracial reasoning in any way, then we could find theseuniversal subjects, these subjects that aren'ttied to particularity,

it's this habermasian model of being able to have these reasonedbrain, that can articulate their conversations inways that aren't saddled with cultural particularity, with the stuff of race, or religion. any of the things thatmake us human, arguably. and that if we can getto this rarefied state, we can, and we have, created a polity that somehow won't betrapped in all of these

atavistic and primitiveways of understanding connectivity in the community. and so, for me, what i want to end on, is the fact that in each one of these papers, they get us to think bothabout how we can imagine, not just race in the u.s.being much more complicated than some of the stereotypicalunderstandings out there and in the academy ofthe history of that story might lead us to believe.

but that, to understand race in the u.s. is to recognize that it'salways a global conversation. it's always been atrans-national conversation. not just in 2015, but in 1923, and then clearly in the 19thand 18th and 17th century. this is a, and so to think about how, and each one of thesepapers does it differently, to think about how wecan learn to recognize the limitations of the black white model

of what it means to thinkabout race in america while doing it in a waythat allows us to see how and why our commitmentis into educating ourselves, educating other folks, tounderstand, not the project to be one of trying toget beyond and transcend this simplistic notion of what it means to be a racialized subject, but i think, to recognize the reality of the fact, and roger sanjek, i think,said this very well,

that the future of usall is thinking about sameness and difference, us and them, in ways that tries toforge coalitional politics across whatever differencethey might prop up, whatever difference might be policed, and to think about howthose coalitions can work, how those differences can actually produce and createcommunity, not endanger them. it's another way i thinkeach one of these papers,

in very different ways, getsus to re-imagine our commitment to the value ofambivalence, of difference, and of a notion of raciality,that i think helps us to get beyond, not justwhat's strange about it, what's familiar, andclearly that's something we've always been thinking about, this trope of trying to make the strange familiar andthe familiar strange. but it's this way of trying,i think, to really hone in

on the extent to whichwe can get ourselves to recognize the productiveforce of the cultural. it's the productive force that usually, when we deploy it in thepopular public sphere, gets impoverished andtrivialized in these ways that become incrediblyflat footed and reified, but that anthropologists, i think, can help to make a muchmore rigorous, nuanced, and sophisticated understanding

of not culture as puppet masterand pre-determining impacts on the kinds of choices,decisions we make as agents, but a notion of culture thatsays, let's try to figure out how it can be that there'smore to say about race than that it's just a prison house, it's just a carceral state that stops us from thinking about community. because if that's thecase, i think i would argue every form of cultural identification,

every way in which we'rehuman has that potentiality. but that's not, i think,the most effective and fundamentally powerful way to add to an ongoingconversation, in a neoliberal moment, about the value of these questions for folks who wouldimagine it's even silly to talk about it at all. and so, for me, comingand going back to a campus where folks are trying to mobilize

thinking about how these questions aren't just theoretical conceptual, but impact even the hallowed halls of the ivy leagues and the academy, i want us to remember thateach one of these papers, in different ways, gives us a key into reminding us exactlywhat it is we know about race, so we know we've heard alotta this stuff before, but a key that we canturn one more rotation

to bring a slightly different perspective to some of the stuff we thinkwe've already understood, and taken for granted, aboutracious reality for us, and for the kind ofcommunities we want to build. and ultimately, i thinkthese are questions that are about social justice. it's about what kind ofsociety we want to build, what kind of possibilities wethink we want to be invested in bringing to fruition, andi think the papers show us,

both historically andin contemporary moment, the investments other people make. various kinds of communities, they're not just identifying with one localized racializedcommunity or another, which is the kind ofsegmented assimilation model of how we think about these things, but how they actually model for us a way of understandingcommitments to connection,

to community, to identity, that if we take them seriously, give us roadmaps for how we can create versions of national belonging that i think we haven't quite seen before. and, i think a lot of what's emerging here is both new and old, but the aspects of it that haven't been thematized before, i think we should hold on and make sure,

not just we translate toeveryone who should hear it, but that we figure out what lessons we can make sure we double down on, to educate people about thethings they take for granted about race, that actually usually means they're not taking raceseriously, i would argue, at all. and these four papers,definitely, short as they were, definitely did, so thanks. - thank you very much to the panel,

and we have five minutes for discussion, and i was wondering if,before we opened it up, if the panelists andpresenters had any reaction, to each others' papers,or to the discussants, before we open it up? anyone want to come? - thank you for the comments, and the ways in whichgina would connects to a much more complex model.

i think both of the discussantsand all of the papers, giving us a very differentintersectional model of not just how you study race, but also, how you practice with it. gina, your question aboutthe intersectional approach and how it plays out is also a way that i think all of our papers tend to have the politics of identity andthe politics of community is always built along this spectrum

of inclusion and exclusion, and how are we to criticallystudy those politics that of always inclusion and exclusion? that can also really play a critical role in the type of teaching wedo in this historical moment where mizzou and yale arenot the exceptional cases, but rather, they should be, they normal, and the standard by which we think about how these politics ofexclusion and inclusion

play out in how we live these racial lives within the university. - um, yes ma'am. - i think there's amicrophone there, yeah. - [voiceover] hi, good afternoon. i have a question for stanley and sam. since all black peopleare not african american, but blackness gets, allblack people get categorized under this african american label,

i was wondering if you'dlooked at relationship between african immigrants and afro-caribbeans, and also i was wonderingif you'd looked at, sam, if you'd looked atsports, if you'd looked at, like, a sport like european football, instead of basketball,which is so stereotypical african american, iwonder if you would see some differences in the gaps you've seen between southeast asians and black people.

- thank you, thank you for that question, and i think, in the paper,i intentionally used it various times, african american and black, to see the ways in which that element of difference where, with the increasing refugeemigration of somalis to atlanta, where clarkston,a suburb of atlanta, is the largest refugeespace in the u.s. right now. and so the ways in which,and ahmed afzal's work

really deals with this,how the idea of islam becomes a open category that allows a lot of african muslimsto come into that space. so when there were three onthree basketball tournaments sponsored by the local mosque, you see so many more african athletes there, but recent immigrants and refugees. so, the ways in which you seecertain types of alliances

and friendships formthrough the realm of islam, but that don't form when you leave that religious base intoother sporting spaces. where, all of a sudden, the heterogeneity within blackness is just dismissed for the ways in which the corporal black body is just seen as so innately athletic and aggressive, and as the very threat to amerit based space of sport,

that sport should always be about merit. so that blackness actually serves to justify the merit and thehard work of south asians. so, in that moment, that blackness, even though we know it is heterogeneous, it is collapsed and decentralized. that also happened withthe kurds in nashville, where the most important dayfor the activists was eid. so, to celebrate the end of ramadan,

you have the huge 20,000kurdish community, and the 15,000 somali community, out in the center of nashville. and, you have all thesekinds of incredible coalitional and immigrantrights activists there, but those spaces become public political space becomes a space where you can create a coalition, but once you leave that space,

we live in very differentparts of the city, and we socialize and we eat in different spaces across nashville. - yeah, it's a great question. i would add, i didn'tget to this in my paper, but in my book, and otherplaces, i talk about it. there is a lot of cross-intermingling and collaboration between the spanish speaking

caribbean immigrants to charlotte and jamaicans and other west indians. there's, for example, anartist named ross congo, who performed with bacalao stars, and they collaboratedon an album together. there's also some commonalities between jamaicans and brazilians,which i include in the catch-all term latinoin my book at least, because i think that the cultures,

there's some similarities there. and so, i agree, i think you do have to, you can't just use africanamerican as a catch-all term as well, and sometimes we're a little too easy with these termswhen we throw them out there. but, it is important to parse some of the differences and similaritiesand transnationalism that goes on in these communities. - and also, the ways in whichreligion and race intersect,

generally create exceptions, right? the building of the mosque in atlanta, and the putting up thebasketball court, they said, "well, we already have muslimrole models in the nba." hakeem elijawon, shareef abdur-rahim, so, there are thesespaces that can be opened. - don't really have time, but, as an expression ofrenegadeness, if you will, does anyone want to have any

last minute quick questionfor the rest of the panel? - i guess one last minutecomment i'd like to make is just, i'm thankful for the continuedconversations we're having in anthropology, as wasstated in the last comment, that we're having toreimagine anthropology and race politics, andi'm thankful for the fact that those conversations are happening, albeit in limited ways. i know that when i wascoming into anthropology,

these conversations wereunheard of in the triple a's, with the exception ofmaybe one or two panels. and so i'm hopeful that we willrevamp or reboot the field. - i'm okay. - can i just make a final comment? to thank, and it's so critical in our work to cite, and to bring into our scholarship the work done by communitiesand scholars of color. and the fact that in this space we have

gina perez, and john jackson,whose work has influenced all of our works, i mean, i got into thinking about basketball because of birthdays and basketball, right, that chapter. so, i'm very very gratefulfor the scholars of color who have done that incredible work, and we have two other herewith alejandro lugo and martin. so, thank you.

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