In This Episode
As the author of Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American, Dr. G. Cristina Mora is familiar with the nuance of Latinidad. In fact, she insists on it. She’s also aware that our Latino community—a structure undergirding the nation, as she perfectly puts it—needs to work together towards a project of justice. That project is one where we aren’t made to feel gaslighted by the mainstream media, where we’re seen as revitalizers of cities and growers of economies. Where we’re not invisible. For Dr. Mora, that’s the greatest challenge faced by Latinos today—being seen as American. Our collective consciousness may have developed as a result of never being accepted, but every new generation brings with it an added layer of dynamism and a welcome discourse about the identity of America.
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About Our Guest
G. Cristina Mora is an associate professor of sociology and Chicano/Latino studies (by courtesy) and the codirector of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses mainly on questions of census racial classification, Latino immigration, and racial politics in the United States. Her first book, Making Hispanics, was published by the University of Chicago Press and provides the first historical account of the rise of the “Hispanic/Latino” panethnic category in the United States. Mora has received numerous academic awards for her scholarship, and her pioneering research on Latina/o/x identity has been the subject of various national media segments in venues like the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and NPR.
In April 2020, she helped oversee the largest survey on COVID-19 and racial disparities in California, and published some of the first research reports on the pandemic’s impact on Latino families.
She is currently working on her next book, California Color Lines, which examines contemporary racial attitudes and politics in an increasingly diverse California.
Follow G. Cristina Mora
Website: https://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/g-cristina-mora
Book: Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American
LinkedIn: G. Cristina Mora
Twitter: G. Cristina Mora
