With the election looming, I spoke with David Rind about Harris and Trump and the Latino vote. The podcast link is live here. Check it out!
Events
Cruelty as Citizenship
Order Cruelty as Citizenship from your local indie bookshop or directly from the University of Minnesota Press!
More than a decade before the election of Donald Trump, vitriolic and dehumanizing rhetoric against migrants was already part of the national conversation. Situating the contemporary debate on immigration within America’s history of indigenous dispossession, chattel slavery, the Mexican-American War, and Jim Crow, Cristina Beltrán reveals white supremacy to be white democracy—a participatory practice of racial violence, domination, and exclusion that gave white citizens the right to both wield and exceed the law. Still, Beltrán sees cause for hope in growing movements for migrant and racial justice.
The Trouble with Unity
- Order The Trouble with Unity from your local indie bookshop or directly from Oxford University Press! Over the past dozen years, much attention has been given to examining the growing political influence of Latinos in the United States in order to define the so-called "Latino vote." The existence of a coherent, pan-ethnic Latino political agenda is, as The Trouble with Unity shows, not only highly debatable but democratically unviable. Situated at the intersection of political theory and Latino studies, the book is a nuanced critique of civic Latinidad and the Latino electoral and protest politics that work to erase diversity and debate in favor of images of commonality. Cristina Beltrán looks at key moments in U.S. Latino political history through the lens of political, feminist, and cultural thought to provide a theoretically driven account of the many ways in which Latinos lay claim to the public realm. In its innovative approach to the realities of Latino protest politics, The Trouble with Unity advances both social-movement and democratic political theory.
10/01/2024
07/04/2023
In Politico, for Independence Day
"If conservatives are uncomfortable confronting our violent and complicated past, we progressives struggle with how to celebrate this place we also love. Indeed, such political speech makes many of us skittish: How can we express civic pride in an era of right-wing backlash? How can we speak love of country when that country was built by stolen labor on stolen land?"
For the Fourth this year, I pulled together some thoughts on patriotism for an essay for Politico.
02/28/2023
In The New York Times (!), on the diverse security state
My first New York Times guest essay is headlined, "America's Increasingly Diverse Security State Is Changing Communities." The ways in which America’s prison culture and military commitments have transformed the nation's cultural and economic landscape—particularly among communities of color—is a subject I had been mulling over for a couple of months and finally put into op-ed form. Great to be able to launch it into the world in the most prestigious opinion forum there is!
11/17/2022
10/09/2022
APSA award for 'Cruelty as Citizenship'!
Was an honor to have Cruelty as Citizenship named one of two recipients of the APSA Latino Caucus's 2020 Best Book Award, alongside Holding Fast: Resilience and Civic Engagement Among Latino Immigrants by James A. McCann and Michael Jones-Correa. (Thanks to Betina Cutaia Wilkinson for tweeting this photo, with Angela X. Ocampo.)
09/19/2022
Countering political misinformation aimed at Latinos
With Spanish-language activists targeting Latino voters in particular, manipulating communities with mis- and disinformation, Providence College professor Tony Affigne and I wrote an op-ed explaining the problem and offering some ideas for addressing it. This version of our essay was published in the Sunday, July 31, Providence Journal. (Click on the op-ed to read a larger version.)