Read an excerpt from Executive Director Sheila Velez Martinez's new article published in Jotwell titled "How Latinos Came to Be, What Is at Stake, and What Is to Be Done." The article reviews Laura E. Gomez's "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (2020).
Despite our long historical presence, there is a general sociolegal invisibility of Latina/os in the United States. As with other traditionally subordinated communities within this country, the combination of longstanding occupancy and persistent marginality has fueled an increasing number of contemporary Latina/o legal scholars to engage with and try to define the contours of what it means to be Latino in the United States, as well as questions of what is our place/space now and in the future of this nation, which, as the author highlights, “thinks of itself as the conscience of the world.”