Moving beyond the binary?: How anti-Black racial talk appears in critical discourses on race

Abstract

For more than two decades, Latina/o critical theory (LatCrit) scholars have called for moving beyond the Black/White binary in conversations on race. By emphasizing Black people, proponents have argued, we ignore Latinx and other racialized minorities who are neither Black nor White and who often live in transnational contexts with transnational identities. This article engages with those scholars who call for moving beyond the Black/White binary by asking how their arguments stimulate anti-Black discourse. Ultimately, LatCrit writers fail to engage with Black Latinx critical race theorists in both the United States and Latin America and, as a result, reproduce anti-Blackness. The call to move beyond a Black/White binary is really a call to make Latinx Blackness invisible. As such, it is not a step toward racial justice but another articulation of anti-Blackness presented as progressive racial thinking. Here I engage with Black Latinx and Black Latin American critical race scholars who challenge US LatCrit scholars to think about how anti-Blackness is part of Latinidad.