This week we would like to highlight the work of Dr. Claudia García-Louis, who is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Texas San Antonio.
This Project MALES Research Brief focuses on highlighting the lived experiences of six self-identified undergraduate AfroLatino males attending a small, urban, commuter campus in the northeastern United States. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with the participants (Patton, 2002). The guiding research questions for the study were: (1) How do AfroLatino males view their themselves in relation to Latina/os and African-Americans on campus? (2) How do AfroLatino males mold their racial, ethnic, and cultural identity?
Findings from this study show that AfroLatino males are forced to traverse socially constructed categories, that in effect, thrust them into (in)visibility through the social investment of African American and Latinx nomenclature. Based on the findings, AfroLatino males feel overlooked on campus. Despite campus being located in a very diverse city and neighborhood, not one participant could identify a single program, service, club, activity, or class that was dedicated to AfroLatinxs. Moreover, in addition to navigating campus culture and academics, they were also forced to make daily decisions about whether to disclose their ethnic, cultural, and/or racial identity.
For Dr. García-Louis’s full research brief click here
For the rest of our brief series click here
