Race, Rights, and Identity: Mills, Curry, and Latino Culture

Introduction: Liberal Rights and the Limits of Formal Justice

This paper carefully parses the multiple critiques of race, rights, and systemic violence put forward by Charles Mills and Tommy Curry. The core argument that emerges revolves around how liberal conceptions of rights and justice ignore or otherwise fail to capture the lived experiences of racialized subjects — particularly non-white individuals — by remaining at the level of formal, legal abstractions. Mills, in his critique of liberal notions of freedom, equality, and formal (or "de jure") rights and justice, argues that these frameworks frequently fail to account for the deeply entrenched cultural and somatic dimensions of race and racism, which are essential to understanding the challenges of achieving genuine universal humanism.

One of the harsh realities of the human condition is that everyone views the world through a unique, individual lens inescapably shaped by the prevailing zeitgeist — a zeitgeist invariably influenced by the racial ideologies that manifest in societal norms and values. Although establishing a universal humanism represents a laudable and enlightened goal, the process itself is hampered by the disparities in worldviews between mainstream society and its marginalized populations.

Given the significant disproportionate percentages of whites versus non-whites in recent American history, it is little wonder that the prevailing zeitgeist has also largely failed to account for non-white experiences and values. While this situation is changing as the demographic makeup of the nation continues to shift, racist ideologies die hard — if at all — and it is reasonable to suggest that the transition from de jure to de facto civil rights will require far more than cosmetic reform, but rather fundamental changes to American institutions and to the manner in which these issues are discussed in public forums.

Mills on White Supremacy and the Cultural and Somatic Dimensions of Racism

Mills maintains that any legitimate analysis of liberal rights must also take into account the cultural and somatic aspects of racism. Developing an informed understanding of racism and its adverse effects requires both an examination of institutionalized racism and a consideration of the empirical observations and lived experiences of non-white people in a traditionally white-dominated society. In this context, Mills advises that "White supremacy is the term that has traditionally been used to denote the domination of whites over non-whites" (369).

By including the somatic aspects of racism, Mills also makes the point that oppression in any race-dominated society extends far beyond disenfranchisement from formal rights — it includes the deleterious effects that lived racism has on minorities. These negative effects may not be readily discernible, Mills contends, but they are nevertheless powerful forces that have shaped American society in the past and are likely to continue doing so unless and until a genuine universal humanism is achieved.

Curry's Critique of Progressive Categories and Systemic Violence

Curry extends this critique of liberal rights and justice in his pursuit of a universal humanism. By focusing on sexual violence against Black men and boys — both in the present context of police and civil violence and historically during slavery — Curry suggests that the very categories meant to protect marginalized people can simultaneously expose them to harm by failing to recognize the specificity of their lived experiences in a white supremacist society. This seemingly counterintuitive outcome can be attributed to the numerous ways that modern narratives about historic and ongoing violence against Black people are structured by progressive frameworks that, while advocating for rights and values, may obscure, overlook, or — worse — reinforce political and social vulnerabilities.

Certainly, these are complex issues that require more than a casual analysis. Both Mills and Curry make the point that previous efforts have fallen short of what is truly needed to effect meaningful change in American society. The categories embraced by liberal "intellectuals," as distinct from more radical critics, may advocate for rights while concealing the specific mechanisms through which bodies in marginalized populations remain vulnerable.

Latino Identity and Cultural Imperialism in Tobar's Research

Hector Tobar presents the results of a truly ambitious study of Latino identity in the United States in his article "Home Country: What Does it Mean to be Latino?" The author, a Guatemalan-American writer, traveled through Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and New York in his investigation, encountering diverse Latino communities and perspectives. One of the main themes to emerge from Tobar's research was just how different the people termed "Latino" are, even within their own communities. As Tobar points out, in New York's Spanish Harlem, for example, "El Barrio is home now to a Latin American community composed of people with roots in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, and many other countries; for some, Latino best captures this ever-increasing diversity."

Tobar adds that the term "Hispanic" is frequently heard just as often in many parts of the country as "Latino," suggesting that the terminology is less important than the profound diversity these communities encompass. Many individuals, he notes, prefer more specific cultural labels — such as Mexican, Cuban, or Puerto Rican — over the broader term "Latino." Notwithstanding these differences, Tobar ultimately argues that what unites Latino people is their shared experience of displacement, resilience, and resistance to cultural erasure.

Tobar also makes the point that Latino identity is not a monolithic, static concept, but rather a dynamic process of ongoing negotiation constantly shaped by external pressures and internal resistances. Throughout his journey, Tobar discovered that, like "white" or "black," the term "Latino" subsumes people of all backgrounds with vastly different political views and experiences. As he emphasizes: "We are brown, black, white, indigenous, European, and African; some of us speak Spanish and some of us don't. But all of us have roots in the upheavals set in motion by American imperialism."

From Tobar's perspective, "cultural imperialism" manifests through systemic mechanisms such as linguistic suppression, educational policies that marginalize Spanish and Latino cultural narratives, and economic structures that limit social mobility. Tobar further argues that dominant cultural representations frequently reduce Latino experiences to stereotypical narratives that not only are counterproductive but conceal the realities that permeate American society for these marginalized populations. In other words, these social forces work to construct a prescribed identity that serves the interests of the dominant Anglo-American cultural framework while simultaneously attempting to render Latino populations manageable within existing power structures.