Black like This, Not like That: How Afro-Latines Navigate Black and Latine Ethnoracial Hierarchies in the U.S.

The maintenance of structures of racial domination depends on the actions of all actors in a society, from Whites, as dominant racial actors, to ethnoracial minorities, who can uphold these structures despite not being their intended beneficiaries. One way that marginalized groups maintain these systems is by internally reproducing ethnoracial hierarchies that perpetuate exclusions and marginalize certain members of their communities. In this paper, I highlight the experiences of Afro-Latines as they navigate the hierarchies that emerge within the spaces of both Blackness and Latinidad in the U.S. I draw on interviews with Black Dominicans to demonstrate the ethnoracial contestations that take place at the intersection of these identities, and the ways in which these intragroup dynamics contribute to their double marginalization and the reproduction of broader social exclusions. This work contributes to a broader conversation about the micro- and meso-level dynamics that reproduce systems of domination and the role that marginalized groups can play in perpetuating the dynamics of the broader racial hierarchy.