Five stories to read about voting rights

When something is cruelly racist, the average American wants to pin it on the prejudiced feelings of individual actors. Here, a few “bad apples” are responsible for the gut-wrenching fate of Kevin González – an American teen who recently died from cancer after briefly reuniting with his deported parents in México. But the real force behind this cruelty against Mr. González and other Latinos is driven by something more sinister and less recognizable than a bad batch of fruit. The literal violence raining down on Latinos is being caused by an unstable racial hierarchy – a long-standing system rooted in using Black people as a yardstick for how Americans judge the worth of other people of color, including Latinos.

This hierarchy has no feelings. It simply follows an internal logic aimed at preserving White Americans’ political clout, economic power, and distinctiveness from people of color. This system considers Whites the most superior and American group, reflected in their collective advantages in politics and society (figure 1). Moreover, although this system casts Asian people as foreigners, it also treats them as superior to Latinos and Blacks, justified by stereotyping all Asians as well-to-do and less impertinent than other racial “minorities.” And Latinos? Well, they are not confused for being White, but many of them are deemed too much like Black people –which matters for how the hierarchy handles Latinos like Kevin González. The average Latino in the U.S. is Mexican, native-born with immigrant parents, bilingual, votes Democratic, and wants economic mobility without forfeiting their culture. This combo of cultural difference and left-of-center politics is what the racial order finds most threatening now.