“Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias in the Law”: Princeton Progressive Law Society Holds Inaugural Event

On the evening of February 3, around three dozen students gathered to hear Fordham Law Professor Tanya Hernández at the Princeton Progressive Law Society’s first event. Hernández is a Fulbright Scholar and author of Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality, and her remarks were titled, “Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias in the Law.” 

Luke Carroll ’26, the Progressive Law Society’s founder, began the event by briefly defining “progressive” as “in the interest of ordinary people and constructive political change” and then introduced Hernández. She focused on employment and housing discrimination court cases as indicative of a larger, under-discussed trend of Latino (or, in her words, “Latinx”) anti-Black racism.

Central to Hernández’s talk were a few anti-discrimination court cases between Black petitioners and Latino respondents. In these cases, judges mistakenly employed the race of the respondents as a defense against allegations of racism. While an employer’s or landlord’s background should be “immaterial” to a court decision, judges allegedly often dismiss claims of racial discrimination when both parties, or at least the respondent, are Latino, regardless of their respective races or skin tones.

Hernández said that current civil rights law is “imperfect” and that she would support the explicit recognition of discrimination based on hairstyle as unlawful. Nevertheless, she contended that existing laws could address the problem of Latino anti-Black discrimination, “but they have to be applied.” In order to address this type of racism and limit its effects in law, she argued that it is important to raise awareness, a goal she believed is being threatened by politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

In Hernández’s view, broad public attention was first drawn to Latino anti-Black racism by last year’s widely-reported racist conversation between several Latino Los Angeles politicians. In October, a recording of a meeting between Nury Martinez, then-Los Angeles City Council President, and three other important officials was leaked to the press. During the conversation, three of the speakers made racist remarks denigrating several different minority groups, including African Americans. The recording went viral and was condemned by President Biden.

Hernández predicted that the population of non-Hispanic whites will decline and, as a result, believes Latino anti-Black racism is important to discuss so that anti-Black racism is not ignored. Others, including Latinos, can “sustain and be complicit in anti-Blackness,” too. Racism can be “embedded” in Latino culture and is not necessarily learned in the United States. Even inside families, according to the memoirs she consulted for her book, those with darker skin are subjects of discrimination.

After the lecture, free copies of Hernández’s book were distributed. The event was co-sponsored by Students for Prison Education, Abolition, and Reform and the Department of African American Studies. According to Carroll, the Progressive Law Society’s founder, the Society plans to host numerous other events this semester.

(photo courtesy of Flickr/Brian Turner)

Benjamin Woodard

Comments

comments