1 AFRICAN AMERICANS AND LATINOS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: POINTS OF UNITY, POINTS OF DISCORD by Vânia Penha-Lopes, Ph.D. Bloomfield College A revised version of the paper prepared for the Points of Unity--An Afro-Latino-African American Dialogue Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, May 28-29, 2004 July 30, 2004 At the onset of the twenty-first century, Latinos became the largest minority group in the United States. Given the variety of their national origins and even the uncertainty about what to label them (i.e., “Latinos,” “Hispanics,” or, in the case of Mexicans, “Chicanos”), some (e.g., Etzioni 2002) have argued that the very group is an American invention. After all, up until 1980, the U.S. census counted the various nationalities as separate entities, and newcomers also tended to identify themselves (and many still do) with their countries of origin. The attempt to lump all peoples of Central, South American, and (some of) Caribbean descent appears to be at least in part related to the racialized structure of the United States. American society thinks of itself in “either/or” terms: one is either White or not. “White,” as the dominant group and thus the norm, demands standards of racial purity and permanence, spoken in biologically erroneous terms. In other words, one drop of non-White “blood” automatically makes a person non-White, but one drop of White “blood” cannot turn one into a White person. Put it another way, in the United States a White woman is believed to be able to give birth to a non-White baby, but a non-White woman cannot possibly give birth to a White child (cite). Sociologically speaking, categories of people who are defined in terms of national origin and language, such as Latinos, constitute ethnic groups, not races. In the United States, however,