Page 170 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 161

The cultural politics of difference

politics will be self-defeating insofar as ‘white’ continues to stand
for citizenship, ‘black’ or ‘brown’ (and ‘yellow’) for minority
‘subservient’ status (West, 1999, p. 501). Moreover, such race talk
might well perpetuate racist discourse within Latino commun-
ities themselves. Following Hall, Darder and Torres opt for a
‘critical notion of ethnicity’, able to ‘position’ already ‘racialized
populations’ in relation to their ‘particular histories’ (Darder &
Torres, 1998, p. 10).
This history has been one of ‘conquest and colonization,...
proletarianization and disempowerment’ (p. 17). The resulting
struggles, over bilingualism in education, assimilation, urban
space, media representation, welfare and the status of illegal
aliens, provided much of the raw material for Latino studies. The
initial impetus towards an independent Latino politics came from
the Californian and Texan farm strikes of the mid-1960s, which
triggered a more general mobilisation of Mexican Americans
and the beginnings of a distinctly nationalist vision. Mexican-
American activists appropriated the pejorative terms, Chicano
and Chicana, transforming them into a sign of positive political
identity. The movement evolved into a full-blown cultural nation-
alism, complete with artistic and theatrical works exalting peasant
and indigenous cultural values, an assertion of racial pride (¡Viva
la raza!) and a resuscitated mythology of Aztlán, the legendary
home of the Aztecs. As with most other cultural nationalisms, it
largely ignored class, gender and sexual differences within the
Mexican-American community. Hence the backlash from Chicana
feminists who, in the early 1980s, had begun to challenge the
machismo of Chicano nationalism.
The rather different situation of Puerto Ricans has been per-
ceptively analysed by Juan Flores in his From Bomba to Hip-Hop.
He argued that the question of cultural identity is crucial for
diasporic nations, especially so for Puerto Ricans, given that half
the population of the island now lives in the United States. The
continuous migration flows have kept alive cultural memory and
a sense of national belonging, but have also created tensions
between the islanders and the diaspora, as well as conflicts of
loyalty that are played out within the class and racial hierarchies
of the dominant society. Combining sociological insight with

161