From our quotidian experiences as contemporary nonwhite immigrants and our gaze as sociologists, we recognize a certain ‘structuration’ of resistance, or ‘recurrent practices’ deployed at different times and in different places to challenge racist frames or systemic racism in our daily interactive spaces. We figured this to be so because we have engaged in such practices ourselves as contemporary immigrants. We wonder about the ways in which new immigrants of color perform race, and the alternate frames of reference used in race narratives. We pose several questions about these practices.

This essay represents our way of having a broad conversation about the contexts of our racial lives in the United States. As members of contemporary minority groups who have settled in this great land of immigrants, we would like this conversation to be about expressive control or a structure of resistance to racial thinking, if you will.

It is also a conversation about how we stage ourselves when it is difficult to transcend the context of race in America. Continue reading…