Three important notes about this file

Latino/a Identity Impact

Attempting to fit Latinos/as into the black-white binary relegates them to the powerless other- erases identity that can’t be categorized by paradigms

AT Education Disparity on the FW debate- Latinos/as can’t receive as much from the school system because of the way they’re classified in the white/black system

Bowman 1- prof of law @MSU, JD from Duke

(Kristi, Duke Law Journal “The New Face of School Desegregation,” http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?50+Duke+L.+J.+1751//MGD)

Scholars refer to Latinos as both a racial and an ethnic group,52 but trying to classify Latinos in only one category (race or ethnicity) illustrates the problematic nature of the categories themselves. If Latinos are viewed as a separate race in order to be “on par” with African Americans, then their ethnic identity will have been collapsed into their racial identity. Given the history of slavery and the continued “demarcation line of skin color” that have created the Black– White racial binary,53 there is little room within the racial framework for a distinct Latino racial category. Alternatively, if Latinos are viewed only as an ethnic group, then to fit within the larger Black– White binary they must also be assigned to one of the two racial groups. As will be discussed later, the Census Bureau has taken this approach, classifying Latinos as racially White in every decennial census except the 1930 Census.54 The only way for Latinos to receive the full benefits of school desegregation is for the discourse to shift away from the restrictive Black–White55 and race-ethnicity binaries. As Professor Jerome Culp suggests, the most important category of social construction may not be the demarcation of race, ethnicity, or nationality, but that of “other.”56 The role of “other” connotes powerlessness, and it is not necessary to distinguish among race, ethnicity, and nationality if one is in a marginalized group. The classification of Non-White embodies otherness.

Black white binaries marginalize other forms of discrimination and excuse other forms of racial violence

Delgado 2k- prof @ Seattle Law, Pulitzer Prize nominee

(Richard, May, “Derrick Bell’s Toolkit- Fit to Dismantle That Famous House?” New York University Law Review, lexis, d.a. 7-13//MGD)

Binary thinking can also impair moral insight and reasoning for whites. Justice John Harlan, author of the famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, n87 wrote a shockingly disparaging opinion on the Chinese [*297] just a few years earlier in the Chinese Exclusion case, Chae Chan Ping. n88 Recently, Asian American scholars have pointed out how the great Justice turns out to have suffered a blind spot that besmirches his reputation. n89 Similarly, others have pointed out how Earl Warren, who enjoys towering fame as a liberal justice who supported civil rights for blacks and, as governor of California, put an end to school segregation for Asian and Mexican American schoolchildren, was a prime mover in the effort to remove Japanese Americans to concentration camps in the beginning months of World War II. n90 Until recently, most historians and biographers embraced the official version in which Warren played at most a minor role. n91 It seems quite likely that binary, monocular thinking made possible the selective empathy that enabled these two famous figures to misstep as they did. n92 Binary thinking can easily allow one to believe that America made only one historical mistake - for example, slavery. n93 If so, the prime order of business is to redress that mistake by making its victims whole; the concerns of other groups would come into play only insofar as they resemble, in kind and seriousness, that one great mistake. But simplifications of that form are always debatable, never necessary, and rarely wise. As a leading Native American scholar put it: "To the Indian people it has seemed quite unfair that churches and government agencies concentrated their efforts primarily on the blacks. By defining the problem as one of race and making race refer solely to black, Indians were systematically excluded from consideration." n94 The truth is that all the groups are exceptional; each has been racialized in different ways; none is the paradigm or template for the others. n95 [*298] Blacks were enslaved. n96 Indians were massacred and then removed to the West. n97 Japanese Americans were relocated in the other direction. n98 African Americans are stereotyped as bestial or happy-go-lucky, depending on society's shifting needs; n99 Asians, as crafty, derivative copycats or soulless drones; n100 Mexicans as hot-tempered, romantic, or close to the earth. n101 Blacks are racialized by reason of their color; Latinos, Indians, and Asians on that basis but also by reason of their accent, national origin, and, sometimes, religion as well. All these groups were sought as sources of labor; Indians and Mexicans, as sources of land. n102 Puerto Ricans, Indians, and Mexicans are racialized by reason of conquest. n103 Latinos, Indians, and Asians are pressured to assimilate; blacks to do the opposite. n104 The matrix of race and racialization thus is constantly shifting, sometimes overlapping, for the four main groups. n105 [*299] This differential racialization renders binary thinking deeply problematic. Consider the recent trial of Ronald Ebens for the murder of Vincent Chin, whom he beat to death for being a "Jap" supposedly responsible for the loss of jobs in the automobile industry. n106 After Ebens's first trial in Detroit, which resulted in a twenty-five year jail sentence, was overturned for technical reasons, his attorney moved for a change of venue on the ground that Ebens could not be tried fairly in that city. n107 The motion was successful, and the second trial was held in Cincinnati, where Ebens was acquitted. n108 A United States Commission on Civil Rights report speculated that the acquittal resulted from the limitations of the black/white paradigm of race, which may have misled the Cincinnati jury, sitting in a city where Asian Americans are few, into disbelieving that racism against Asians played a part in the crime: The ultimate failure of the American justice system to convict Ebens of civil rights charges, perhaps partly because of the Cincinnati jury's difficulty in believing in the existence of anti-Asian hatred, also implies that many Americans view racial hatred purely as a black-white problem and are unaware that Asian Americans are also frequently targets of hate crimes.

Invisibility of other races in relation to blacks and whites entrenches marginalization

Luna 3- JD U of Cali-Berkeley

(Eduardo, “How the Black/White Paradigm Renders Mexicans/Mexican Americans and Discrimination Against Them Invisible,” La Raza Law Journal//MGD)

The omission of Mexican/Mexican American experiences extends far beyond legal academia. Indeed, Mexican/Mexican Americans are poorly represented in popular media such as the news, and the film, television, and music industries. The invisibility of Mexicans/Mexican Americans is partly attributable to the Black/White paradigm. Scholars and popular media alike almost exclusively utilize the Black/White paradigm to conceptualize race/ethnicity. The paradigm promulgates Black experiences but fails to represent Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and other non-Black minority groups adequately. The coverage of the Los Angeles riots by news media supports such an assertion. The Los Angeles riots took place in late April and early May of 1992. The catalyst for the social unrest is largely attributed to the acquittal of the four white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King. The resulting riot claimed 55 lives and injured more than 2,300 persons. More than one thousand buildings were damaged or destroyed and the resulting property damage was estimated in the billions of dollars. Amont the images in the news media presented were police officers beating Rodney King, Black rioters beating the White motorist Reginald Denny, confrontations between Korean storeowners and rioters and finally, rioters looting. The news media paid considerable attention to the role racial/ethnic discrimination played in precipitating the riots. However, the journalistic and scholarly works focused on the dynamics between Whites, Blacks and Koreans. Mexicans/Mexican Americans were all but excluded from the discussion. Professor Perea notes that, “only on published article focuses exclusively on describing and explaining the role of Latinos during the Los Angeles riots.” The anthology contains works by Black, Asian, and White scholars. Their articles detail the perspectives of their respective communities concerning the riots. The anthology’s analysis is inexcusably incomplete, especially when considering the role Mexicans/Mexican Americans played in the riots. The majority of the victims of early riot violence were Latinos. A full third of the dead victims of the riots were Latinos. Between twenty and forty percent of the businesses damaged were Latino owned, and Latinos comprised one half of all the arrested. These statistics are far from surprising because Latinos, primarily Mexicans/Mexican Americans, comprise over half of South Central Los Angeles’ population. Considering these statistics, what should be surprising is the lack of attention visual and print media gave to Mexicans’/Mexican Americans perspectives concerning the riots. Media coverage and scholarly analyses of the Los Angeles riots provide a poignant example of how the Black/White paradigm distorts the lens through which we view racial/ethnic group dynamics in the United States. Under the Black/White paradigm, Mexicans/Mexican Americans are omitted from racial/ethnic analyses, their harms and grievances are under-reported and their marginalization is exacerbated.