At our November 2024 Editorial and Advisory Board meeting, we decided to create this collective/roundtable essay made up of each of our individual analyses and reflections post-election. Drawing on our research and teaching expertise, these contributions address impacts on Ethnic and Gender Studies and on our communities, and how Latinx Studies research can help us all navigate this moment. We also consider how we push back on policies that harm us, how we keep opening spaces to create policies that support us, our work and our communities, and how we support students.
David J. Vazquez, Associate Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies, American University, Washington, DC
As we emerge from what is the most painful and humiliating election loss of my lifetime and the horrific actions of the early administration in its first month, we must reflect on what a second Trump presidency means for our lives and our fields. The journey we are on is not the one I hoped for my students, Latinx communities across this nation, my family, or myself. We are already seeing McCarthyite attacks on intersectional and interdisciplinary programs like Latinx Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies. Yet even with the pain and bitterness I have felt since November, I am buoyed by the optimism and clear-eyed determination of our students. Already, soon after the election, on my campus and across my home state of Maryland, a coalition of Latinx students affiliated with the Latinos en Acción network, the Sunrise Movement, and LULAC, started planning and executing their activism. Sunrise engineered a national student strike on November 8 and mobilized to protect undocumented people throughout the mid-Atlantic region. Students, trade unions, and activist groups dedicated to social justice have become energized by the numerous attacks on vulnerable populations and the outrageous and illegal power grabs on the part of the new administration. To give just one example, hundreds of protestors organized by trade union activists gathered at the Treasury Department on February 5 to protest the illegal access Elon Musk and his operatives gained to sensitive Treasury databases. Actions like these give me hope. They matter. What the right wants is for those of us who believe in justice, truth, and facts to fall into despair and to be cowed. But what we must do instead is marshall our love, our anger, and our power into a broad-based social movement that addresses the fundamental inequalities in our world, particularly around income, housing, health care, immigration, and climate justice. In reflecting on the impacts of this election defeat, I am inspired by forebears like Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Octavia Butler, Dolores Huerta, and other queer of color and feminist thinkers who demanded change based on decolonial love and a dogged commitment to solidarity and struggle. I see this type of commitment emerging in these early days among my students, my colleagues, my family, and my friends. While I cannot predict the future, I know–in fact, I feel it in my bones–that we as scholars of the intersectional study of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class have the opportunity to redefine what a coalition dedicated to social change can accomplish. The lessons of groups like the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, the Combahee River Collective, the Warren County Concerned Citizens, and others have taught us that we can prevail–and I believe we will!
Lee Bebout, Professor of English and affiliate faculty with the School of Transborder Studies and Program in American Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
“The Time is Always Now”
My family moved to Arizona a year after the anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx bills, SB1070 and HB2281, were passed. Latinx studies friends asked if we were sure we wanted to live in a place so hostile. My students in Texas warned me “Those people are crazy in Arizona”—I could only smile. Members of the search committee that recruited me joked that Arizona’s was a “dry hate.” I drew on these memories in 2016 when Donald Trump was first elected, and I draw on them again today.
For many, this is a time of uncertainty and fear. Will the second Trump administration institute mass deportations as happened in the 1930s and 1950s? We are seeing the early stages being set. Will new leadership at the Department of Justice roll back consent decrees and police reform efforts? Yes. Will the culture wars enter a new stage wherein a neo-McCarthyism runs amok and academic freedom is no more? New policies in the federal government and bills being introduced at the state level certainly indicate this is on the horizon. And the list of catastrophic uncertainties goes on.
Fourteen years ago, when those anti-immigrant, anti-Latinx bills passed, surely many Latinx Arizonans and those committed to social justice faced similar fears. However, when my family arrived we found a vibrant and resilient Latinx activist community, one that built strategic alliances. Latinxs and their allies protested in the streets and filed lawsuits to disrupt the implementation of these draconian measures. Latinxs wrote plays and poetry affirming and giving testimony to the community resistance in the face of struggle. Latinxs and their allies formed community organizations that continue on fourteen years later, pushing for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice.
As Latinx studies scholars, we must take the long view in the face of uncertainty and adversity. The time is always now to build strong ties to local communities, to develop skills and experiences within our students so that they may continue the work in the years to come.
Audrey Lucero, Professor of Language & Literacy Education, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
While we certainly have reason to be concerned – and even fearful – of what is transpiring and may still await us in higher education during this second Trump presidency, I also want us to recognize the deep well of expertise and energy that we have to draw on in the challenging years ahead. I live and work in a predominantly white state, yet in 2020 I was privileged to become the first director of the new Latinx Studies program at the University of Oregon. In a twist of fate, our program launch celebration was on January 7, 2021. Maybe, like me, you remember how you felt on that day. I was angry. So angry. The mob who stormed the capital that day believed that both the history of this country and its future belonged to them and them alone. I contend today, as I did then, that this is a failure of education. We have allowed generations of American schoolchildren to believe that our country has been shaped by the actions of white men and that the rest of us have not contributed anything. Fortunately, programs like Latinx Studies – which follow in the hallowed traditions of ethnic studies more broadly – are becoming more widespread at both the college and K-12 levels. No matter what kinds of obstacles the president and his administration try to put in our place, we must continue to advocate for sure programs and stand as allies with our K-12 teaching colleagues who are in the trenches everyday. And so I return to the idea of expertise and energy. In the past 5 years, I have had the opportunity to work with more than 125 K-12 educators from around the state of Oregon – some of whom teach in rural and deeply red communities – who are committed to teaching the truth and to supporting students who have been historically marginalized. I have helped these teachers build community with one another around social justice education and I feel optimistic that we will continue that work no matter who is in the White House.
Theresa Delgadillo, Professor of English and Chican@ and Latin@ Studies at UW-Madison
In our program we have resolved to collaborate with students, peers, and community organizations to host events that can provide expertise and information to the many students and community members who have questions, concerns, and anxieties about pressing policy changes. We heard concerns from a number of students in the fall about the impact of proposed policy changes on their communities, including proposed policies of mass deportation and detention, changes in reproductive rights, and increasing attacks on non-binary gender and sexual identities. This is a moment in which I want to remember that organized advocates and social movements can and will influence policy debates and implementation as well as legislation. This is a time for us to share our expertise in the critical examination of immigration and deportation, racialized citizenship, the expansion of private prisons and incarceration, limitations to Latina and Latino participation in the labor force, the effects of climate change on marginalized communities, reproductive justice for Latinx populations, Latinx trans and queer lives and experiences, and the relations between Latinx and other marginalized groups. Latinx studies scholars have important work to continue doing and we might want to be doing more of this in collaboration with each other, to strengthen our national networks. Continuing our research and teaching and taking this into our communities and in conversation with others is vitally important. This, our ongoing work, can contribute to improving the lives of our and all communities and in affirming our commitment to continuing and deepening this work we are also making a commitment to respond to our student’s concerns by taking this expertise beyond the classroom and campus.
Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, Professor of Ethnic Studies, Washington State University Vancouver
What Came Our Way
There is no elegant way to describe what came our way. There is no verbal cushioning, no grammatical bumper or physical forcefield to absorb the hit of that which many think started last month (or back in November), but if we study history, we can comprehend that it started a long time ago. All we can do in response to what came our way is be prepared (mentally, physically, spiritually even) and make sure we understand (for ourselves and others) why “all this” (e.g., the hatred, the mean-spiritedness, the ignorance, the refusal to learn and understand, the worshiping of bankrupt morality and misinformation, etc.) is here. We must also continue to document everything. Everything. Beginning with why the United States of America is the kind of country that it is today, a quarter into the 21st Century, and why some of its people are who they are. And above all, we must resist. Resist in every way possible and from all angles. Resist by insisting that the past is important. Resist by declaring all books necessary. Resist by pronouncing science an important path. Resist by believing that justice and fairness are worth fighting for. Resist because time and history are on our side. And, yes, there are sides.
There is no doubt that what came our way is terrifying, but we cannot be terrified, not in a paralyzing way. Scared, yes, we are only human. But even if our voices and bodies tremble, we must resist, so when people look back generations down the road, they can say, see, even then, when it all came to them, people resisted. Even then, people knew what was right.
Louis Mendoza, Professor of Latinx Literary and Cultural Studies, Arizona State University
I cannot help but echo many of the sentiments expressed by my ASU colleague, Lee Bebout as he reflects on what it means and has meant to be in Arizona. My family and I moved here in 2014, in the aftermath of the passing of Senate Bill 1070 (the notorious show me your papers law which was the feather in the cap to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror in Arizona) and House Bill 2281, the ban against ethnic studies that was triggered by the success of Tucson Unified School District highly successful Mexican American studies curriculum. Both of these legislative acts targeted the Latinx community and were cause for alarm. Both challenges were met with fierce resistance and were ultimately defeated. It’s important to note that while academics played a role in the resistance to these acts of hate and vilification, it is the larger community and our allies across lines of difference who made a difference. It would be insane and foolish not to worry about the coming storm of hatred and attacks against the Latinx community. But we would be even more foolish to cower in fear and be paralyzed. Our willingness to take risks must increase. Our tolerance for racial profiling and targeted attacks must diminish as it is only through a fierce solidarity that is proactive, vigilant, and coordinated that we can overcome the looming threat. Victory is never permanent, but the values, the vision, and the passion needed to persevere have always been integral to our survival and well-being as Latinx.
Delia Fernández-Jones, Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University
The overwhelming ramifications of this past election and early days of the administration have the power to isolate and separate us as we process what has been coming our way. With every passing headline, cabinet decision, or potential policy change, I try to remember two consejos: 1) “we take care of us, always.” My former undergraduate student and now doctoral student, Sariah Metcalfe, told me this in a conversation preceding the election regarding how we would move forward post election, whatever the result would be. I repeated this mantra in the days following the election and still do whenever I need to. I draw on this to remind me, as a historian and scholar of Latinx Studies, that oppressed communities have always turned inward and provided for one another no matter the horrors of the state action. While there are technologies of oppression, our communities are well versed in technologies of survival that we can and will draw on now. 2) I turn to Black and Latina feminist theorists who have long taught us that white supremacy and patriarchy are not only antithetical to our survival but a direct threat. In a period of rising individualism, I draw on a collectivism that is rooted in radical solidarity. I read and reread this passage from M. Jacqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing on becoming women of color: “We would need to unlearn an impulse that allows mythologies about each other to replace knowing about one another. We would need to cultivate a way of knowing in which we direct our social, cultural, psychic, and spiritually marked attention on each other. We cannot afford to cease yearning for each others’ company.” In the days, months, and years that follow, let us commit to truly knowing one another and being in solidarity with those who face direct harm.
Isabel Espinal, Librarian, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Four areas of my work were challenged not only by this recent presidential election and the winner of that election, but by a slew of right wing politicians, organizations and individuals for the past ten years or so: Latinx Studies and identity – DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) – critical race theory – libraries. I’ve heard that this election was a referendum against the word and the very idea of Latinx. And here I am, a proud Co-Editor of the publication Latinx Talk. I have read the news about a study that suggested that this term drew people away from the Democratic and to the Republican Party. But I am still proud of us here for using the term. This is not a moment for us to back away from this word or on the other hand to cut people off who don’t like the term. This is a moment for us to engage with our communities. For me, this means making myself ready to answer questions such as: Why Latinx? Why was I so happy to see this term being used in the last 10 years? I can be ready to say how refreshing the term Latinx was after a lifetime of looking at my native language, Spanish, and always feeling disrespected when the masculine version of words was the preferred, the one taken to be default. I was always uncomfortable with the word Latino to describe us as a people when I as an individual was Latina, not Latino. And then there are those people who identify with the culture but do not identify or do not want to pin themselves down as either Latina or Latino. Thus the x in Latinx instead of the o in Latino is very inclusive in so many ways. After hearing Latinx, I immediately started using it. I am always ready to explain why. And I am not alone. As for diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory, these are not terms in and of themselves that spoke to me, but the practices and truths these terms point to have been core to a lot of my work. In this I am also not alone. There are many of us now, and through the history of this country, who have worked hard to fight exclusions, bigotry, unfairness, racism, sexism. Throughout my life, I’ve heard many different words and terms to refer to the work of combating these exclusions and of making our country, our workplaces , our communities more inclusive, more equitable, more fair. DEI is just the most recent term. But during Trump’s first term, I started seeing political attacks on DEI and on critical race theory. I remember the challenge to critical race theory specifically came as I was finishing up a chapter I had been invited to write for the book Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory. I’ve been a librarian since 1991 and it’s only recently that I have felt that my profession was such a target. Prior to the recent onslaught of attacks on libraries and librarians by such groups as Moms for Liberty, the threat to my profession was a quieter one. We have felt the loss of support and funding coming from the misguided idea that libraries were becoming obsolete due to technology. There was an idea that books and libraries as places would lose their appeal or usefulness. But in recent years librarians have been targeted for the content of the materials. This is a moment when we librarians are standing up for the freedom to read and the ability to have diverse books, media and other sources available to our communities. The work of librarians in Reforma: The National Association to Promote Library Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking is more important than ever. Reforma’s recent Call to Action for Democracy and Human Rights for All bolstered my spirit and gives me strength.
It’s strange and unsettling that all this important work is under attack; that the work I am most proud of is under attack. I am consoled in the knowledge that I am not alone. Even in writing this, I do not write alone, but within this strong community of Latinx Talk Editorial and Advisory Board members, of hundreds of contributors and our thousands of readers. There is power in that. Let’s keep using it.