1B. We Count: Identity, the Census and Visibility
9:30am-11:00am
The process of self-identification and increased recognition is of central importance to the Afro-Latin@ struggle for rights and equality. The census is one area of active involvement, as campaigns throughout the Americas have challenged the reigning categories and encouraged Afro-Latin@s to go on record as Black. Key questions: what can we do to step up struggles for Black Latino self-affirmation and overcoming racial denial? How can we continue and expand the efforts being taken to address the pitfalls of misleading census and other official categorizations? What educational steps can we take to counteract the still prevalent influence of ideologies of mestizaje and the more recent “mixed-race” identity? How can we relate specifically anti-Black racism to other forms of racial and cultural discrimination?
The process of self-identification and increased recognition is of central importance to the Afro-Latin@ struggle for rights and equality. The census is one area of active involvement, as campaigns throughout the Americas have challenged the reigning categories and encouraged Afro-Latin@s to go on record as Black. Key questions: what can we do to step up struggles for Black Latino self-affirmation and overcoming racial denial? How can we continue and expand the efforts being taken to address the pitfalls of misleading census and other official categorizations? What educational steps can we take to counteract the still prevalent influence of ideologies of mestizaje and the more recent “mixed-race” identity? How can we relate specifically anti-Black racism to other forms of racial and cultural discrimination?
Presenters
Angelo Falcón is President of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP) and editor of its NiLP Network on Latino Issues. He is the Chair of the Census Advisory Committee on the Hispanic Population and serves on the Steering Committee of the Census Information Centers (CIC) Program of the Census Bureau. He is co-editor of Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics and Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City, and author of The Atlas of Stateside Puerto Ricans. He is a resident of “Los Sures” in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York.
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Jocelyn A. Géliga Vargas has a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez where she also teaches in the Film Studies and Comparative Literature programs. Her publications focus on racial, ethnic and gender identities and their representations; oral history; film studies; and ethnographic, participatory and collaborative methodologies and draws from research conducted in the United States, Argentina and Puerto Rico. She is the founder and director of “Afro-Puerto Rican Testimonies: An Oral History Project in Western Puerto Rico,” a collective of academics and community leaders.
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Claudia Mosquera Rosero is aassociate professor in the Department of Social Work at the National University of Colombia in Bogota, lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Paris III and a doctoral candidate at the University of Laval in Canada. She is the director of Research on Racial Equality, Cultural Difference, Environmental Conflicts and Racisms in the Black Americas (IDCARAN) Her co-edited publications include: Debates sobre ciudadanía y políticas raciales (2010); Acciones afirmativas y ciudadanía diferenciada étnico-racial negra, afrocolombiana, raizal y palenquera (2009); Escenarios post- Durban para pueblos, y personas negras, afrocolombianas, raizales y palenqueras (2009); Afro-reparaciones: Memorias de la esclavitud y justicia reparativa para negros, afrocolombianos y raizales (2007); and Afrodescendientes en las Américas: trayectorias sociales e identitarias (2002).
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Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas is a professor of Spanish at North Carolina Central University. He holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Italian Studies from the University of British Columbia and is the author of: African Mexicans and The Discourse on Modern Nation; Africa en el carnaval mexicano (2005); Africa en Mexico: una herencia repudiada (2007); The Africanization of Mexico From the Sixteenth Century Onward: A Review of the Evidence (2010); and Eternidad (2010), a collection of his own poetry. He founded and directs the Instituto Mexicano de la Africanía Americana (Mexican Institute of Africana Studies) IMAA; and the Africana Studies Journal. He has lectured in the Americas, Europe and Africa. He is an African-Mexican native of Mexico City's inner ghettos and considers Chilango, an Afro-Spanish urban vernacular, his first language.
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Moderator
Guesnerth Josúe Perea is a board member of the afrolatin@ forum and co-founder of AfroColombia NY, a non-profit organization that highlights the cultural contributions of AfroColombians to the Colombian national identity. He is a frequent speaker on Afro-Latino issues and has presented at public events sponsored by the Inter-American Foundation, the National Urban League, and NAACP, and at various educational institutions. Josúe holds degrees in theology and Latin American history.
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