People experience life in the nuance—a person is many things. I am from a small, rural town in Southern Colorado and have been lucky enough to have lived in five states. Each place I have lived has reinforced my belief that as educators and researchers a commitment to elevating diversity is one of the most important commitments we make. Further, as a Chicana American woman from the Southwest, I understand that fostering inclusion and acceptance in academic settings is of critical importance. My experiences have shown me that there are many reasons that diversity is an elusive goal in academia—I think one of the barriers to this goal is the way in which our political and academic discourses focus on limited understandings of often diverse groups.
My own nuanced background shapes my approach to the principals of diversity, equity, and inclusion— toward fostering an accepting environment whether it be in research, teaching, or service. As stated, I identify as Chicana or Hispanic, not necessarily as Latine. My ethnicity is not dissimilar to what many Colorado or New Mexico families share. I am a 13th generation Nuevo Mexicana and 3rd generation Chicana—a mixed-race product of the two colonizations of the New Mexico territory. When I left the Southwest for graduate school I quickly learned that very few in the Pacific Northwest understood my background or why I would use the terms Chicana or Hispanic—“wasn’t that a label the census created?” I was labeled a Latina or told I was Latinx and even once assigned to teach a Spanish Language class when I was in Oregon despite the fact that I am not fluent myself. Like many Chicanos and Hispanics from the Southwest, my grandparents were forced to shift to anglicized names and faced severe corporal punishment if they spoke Spanish in school—thus by the time I was born, my parents only spoke English. So, while I learned what Latine meant, I share this because I know what it is like to traverse the academy and to be thrown into new boxes of identity as well intentioned people try to sort me into categories they are familiar with. As researchers, however, we know that people are complex and that identity is multifaceted. It is due to these experiences that I find value in letting people tell me about themselves and the most important faucets of their identities. I have found this approach to not only lead to a better understanding for myself of the nuance around me, but to generate better results with students from diverse backgrounds, establish trust during service work, and overall makes me a better researcher.
In the classroom, I continuously experience the impact that my presence as a minority has on students. In teaching undergraduate courses, I work hard to emphasize the unique histories of various racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, something that I have found to be an empowering activity for many students who are unaware of the long and often difficult history of people like— or different from— them have in the United States. In addition, I work hard to make room for all voices and to foster a space inclusive to many ways of knowing. This means incorporating opportunities for students to explore what they know about topics and to think critically about what from their past influences their opinions. While this builds cultural relativity and strengthens their ability to use the sociological imagination through awareness, it also makes space for students of any background to be reflexive and engaged in the learning process.
Working with students is one of the most important ways we can support diversity, equity, and inclusion for future generations. A good advisor can make a world of difference to a student’s success as a first generation, transfer, or minority student. My unique experiences as all three position me to provide important insights to students of similar back grounds. In addition, I know what it is to have to work while attending school. Like many college students, I was a Starbucks barista and later supervisor during my undergraduate degree—a role I returned to during breaks between graduate programs or unfunded summers. I understand the financial struggle that school can be for students at all stages of their academic journey. These experiences have already made me a stronger mentor to students.
Another important area of my DEI work is my research, which has always been heavily focused on elevating underrepresented communities, particularly those that are rural or minority-majority. The forces keeping rural, minority-majority communities poor are not well understood. While my masters research explored food-insecurity and moral capital in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, my dissertation work focused on the place my family is from, the Southwest. My dissertation research largely focuses on rural minority poverty and its intersections with environment and health. I explore how structural inequalities impact rural, Hispanic and Latine communities in their ability to access aid programs and healthcare. I focus on multigenerational Hispanic/Latine populations because as a someone of this identity from Colorado, I think it is vital to understand the barriers to opportunity for people in rural communities like the one my family is from. I strive to better unravel the elements—structural, cultural, social, and political— that have prevented equal opportunity for families like my own so that more recent Latine immigrants and their children might face fewer barriers to their American dream.
Specifically, I use structural barriers such as isolation, transportation, built infrastructure, and those created by deficits in social and moral capital, to show the impact of structural racism on multigenerational Hispanic and Latine communities. In my work thus far I reach two central conclusions: The first is that the conceptualization of barriers for Latine populations are often framed as issues of assimilation, however my work shows that racialization and structural racism prevent fully assimilated members of this ethnic group from equity in New Mexico; The second is that symbolic capital is insufficient in its ability to bridge infrastructural or institutional deficits in rural communities during a period of strain and that relying on it to do so in disaster preparation is dangerous. Better understanding the impact of structural racism on established Hispanic and Latine communities and the limits to social capital as a tool for resilience when a community is under times of strain — such as a pandemic, economic upheaval like gentrification, or during an environmental disaster — have become important focal points of my research.
I am working to make sure that this research contributes to the Sociological literature. In a recent publication in Rural Sociology, I illustrate how Hispanic/Latine New Mexicans navigate housing insecurity differently than their White neighbors due to unique cultural and racial barriers. In another forthcoming paper, I outline the ways in which social capital failed to bridge gaps during the pandemic due to lack of infrastructure and the isolated nature of many New Mexico communities because of structural racism. In yet another forthcoming paper I explore how racialization of Hispanic and Latine people in Taos leads to moral capital deficits in the eyes of their White peers. Additionally, I am working on a book manuscript from my dissertation, which outlines the impact of structural racism on modern Hispanic and Latine communities in New Mexico in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic with a specific focus on the impact of access to healthcare. The work I did for my dissertation is just the first step in a career focused on better understanding the impact of chronic marginalization and disinvestment in minority communities.
In the future, I plan to continue doing work that illustrates the way that American cultural treatment of Hispanic and Latine people as a racial group impacts modern populations. I know that this work is important and that capturing the nuanced experiences of Hispanic and Latine people beyond first or second-generation communities is vital for researchers if we are going to move past trying to explain why assimilation models stall out for members of this vast ethnic identity. In addition, in my work with the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center and with IREACH, I have done research working directly with Native American communities—both in person with reservation populations and with secondary data. Although I have been focused on Hispanic and Latine populations in my own research, I also believe that these are voices and stories that should be elevated in research and that I have previously worked to elevate. As I look toward future research, I know that both these communities will continue to struggle with issues related to a changing climate, access to healthcare, and access to aid programs in many areas of the United States.
In sum, my commitment to diversity is influenced both by my background and who I have become as a member of the academic community. Not only will I strive to elevate diverse voices in the classes I teach, but I will continue to mentor students and seek service opportunities. Further, I am committed to continuing research around structural racism and its impact on established Hispanic/Latine communities as this work will lead to the creation of better pathways to equity for this growing racial/ethnic group.