Figures of the Future

Latino Civil Rights and the Politics of Demographic Change

Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780691205908
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Hispanic American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

An in-depth look at how U.S. Latino advocacy groups are using ethnoracial demographic projections to bring about political change in the present For years, newspaper headlines, partisan speeches, academic research, and even comedy routines have communicated that the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation—one that will purportedly change the "face" of the country in a matter of decades. But the so-called browning of America, sociologist Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz contends, has less to do with the complexion of growing populations than with past and present struggles shaping how demographic trends are popularly imagined and experienced. Offering an original and timely window into these struggles, Figures of the Future explores the population politics of national Latino civil rights groups.Based on eight years of ethnographic and qualitative research, spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations, this book investigates how several of the most prominent of these organizations—including UnidosUS (formerly NCLR), the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Voto Latino—have mobilized demographic data about the Latino population in dogged pursuit of political recognition and influence. In census promotions, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and policy advocacy, this knowledge has been infused with meaning, variously serving as future-oriented sources of inspiration, emblems for identification, and weapons for contestation. At the same time, Rodríguez-Muñiz considers why these political actors have struggled to translate this demographic growth into tangible political gain and how concerns about white backlash have affected how they forecast demographic futures. Figures of the Future looks closely at the politics surrounding ethnoracial demographic changes and their rising influence in U.S. public debate and discourse.

NOTES

Introduction

1. 1. I employ the notion of ethnoracial throughout. While “race” and “ethnicity” are often treated as obviously and ontologically distinct, they are historically and conceptually entangled. Indeed, “racial” taxonomies were colonially fashioned through not only through bodily markers but also putative ethnic criteria, such as language and custom. See Barnor Hesse, “Racialized Modernity.” For formulations and applications of the notion, see David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture; Linda Alcoff-Martin, Visible Identities; and Nilda Flores-González, Citizens but Not Americans.
2. 2. Aquatic or hydraulic metaphors have long colored how ethnoracial demographic trends are imagined. These metaphors, have naturalized racialized conceptions of certain populations as threatening and dangerous. Here, I use such metaphors to describe population discourse, not populations themselves. See Eileen Díaz McConnell, “Numbers, Narratives, and Nation”; Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising; Roger Daniels, “Two Cheers for Immigration,” 7.
3. 3. Jonathan Vespa, David M. Armstrong, and Lauren Medina, Demographic Turning Points for the United States, 6.
4. 4. Sabrina Tavernise, “Why the Announcement of a Looming White Minority Makes Demographers Nervous.”
5. 5. It is analytically possible to distinguish those entities that deliberately seek to influence public demographic imaginaries to achieve particular political ends from those that influence without an explicit strategic motivation. Whether this distinction holds in practice or what entities can be placed on either side is an empirical—and not always straightforward—question.
6. 6. See Leo R. Chavez, Covering Immigration; Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising; Díaz McConnell, “Numbers, Narratives, and Nation.”
7. 7. Josh Sanburn, “U.S. Steps Closer to a Future Where Minorities Are the Majoritity”; Sabrina Tavernise, “Fewer Births than Deaths among Whites in Majority of U.S. States”; Rafael Bernal, “Hispanic Population Reaches New High of Nearly 60 Million.”
8. 8. For example, in 2017, the New York Times data blog Upshot featured a “census time machine” in the form of a choropleth map that showed “which counties today resemble what America will look like in decades ahead, and which ones most resemble the nation’s ethnic composition as it once was.” Niraj Chokshi and Quoctrung Bui, “A Census Time Machine.” TIME magazine’s Time Lab featured a similar story but with an interactive map to illustrate whether a given state was demographically in the “past or future.” Unlike the New York Times, which claimed Las Vegas, it claimed that current Texas demographics were most indicative of the future. TIME, “Find Out If Your State Is America’s Past or Future.”
9. 9. Sociologists of the media understand “newsworthiness” as constructed rather than inherent to events and issues. Among others, see David L. Altheide, Creating Fear.
10. 10. Philip Bump, “Rep. Steve King Warns That ‘Our Civilization’ Can’t Be Restored with ‘Somebody Else’s Babies.’ ” King’s tweet, in support of a far-right candidate for prime minister of the Netherlands, is one of many anti-immigrant and racist remarks he has made. To the joy of many civil rights advocates, King failed to win the primary for his 2020 reelection bid.
11. 11. Pierre Bourdieu, On the State, 3.
12. 12. The attitude of demographic naturalism is closely enveloped in attitudes of statistical realism. See Alain Desrosières, “How Real Are Statistics?”
13. 13. Bruce Curtis, The Politics of Population, 24. See also Bruce Curtis, “The Politics of Demography.”
14. 14. Curtis, The Politics of Population, 28. Moreover, the academic field of demography has always been concerned with policy and politics. Dennis Hodgson, “Demography as Social Science and Policy Science.”
15. 15. William Alonso and Paul Starr, eds., The Politics of Numbers, 3.
16. 16. Ann Morning, The Nature of Race, 10.
17. 17. Morning has found that the social constructionism has been far less influential than typically assumed. The rise of genomic conceptions of race over the past two decades has raised concerns about the future of racial essentialism.
18. 18. Étienne Balibar, “Is There a Neo-Racism?”
19. 19. Susanne Schultz, “Demographic Futurity,” 648.
20. 20. Barnor Hesse, “Counter-Racial Reformation Theory,” viii.
21. 21. Barnor Hesse, “Racialized Modernity.”
22. 22. Patrick Wolfe, Traces of History, 18. See also Dorothy Roberts, The Fatal Invention.
23. 23. David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture, 149.
24. 24. Alaka M. Basu, “Demography for the Public.” On “garbled demography,” see Michael S. Teitelbaum, “The Media Marketplace for Garbled Demography.”
25. 25. As anthropologist and demographer Philip Kreager has written about the production of population statistics, “We should not underestimate the feat of imagination this entailed: firs...