Authors:

Valentina Parra

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About Paper:

Racialization, the process through which one is marked and treated as a certain race, can be complex and contradictory. My project uses a contemporary case study of satirical political discourse on social media during the 2024 Mexican presidential elections to document the ways in which racialization is operationalized without the explicit naming of race. The ideology of mestizaje, which touts the development of an exceptional "raceless" race through centuries of racial mixture in Latin America, is a core component of the Mexican identity. However, racism remains a central facet of Mexico's landscape, perpetuating the erasure and subjugation of the Black, Indigenous, and Asian presence and experiences in the country's national identity. Despite claiming unity, mestizaje sustains the race-blind conditions needed to ignore, deny, and disavow racism in Mexico. The public nature of social media can provide important insights into the process of racialization by providing an accessible view of popular reactions to racism. Digital satirical environments are rife with racist language, made permissible under the guise of dark humor. The novelty of digital social network research, coupled with the recency of the 2024 presidential elections, signal an opportunity to address understudied phenomena. | focus on a racist political post by popular Mexican meme account @EsDeMamador on X (previously Twitter) on the day of the election. | utilize an intersectional framework to analyze an array of 56 pre-selected (sub)replies to the original post. Drawing from literature on ethics in the digital humanities, Critical and Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis, post-colonialism, and Critical Race Theory, | illuminate how non-racial categories (i.e., class, political party, religion) are weaponized as instruments of racialization. These reflect, refract, and advance exclusionary national imaginaries. My findings accentuate how white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and anti-Indigeneity continue to permeate daily interactions in Mexico today, despite the country's alignment with race-blind ideologies.

Source:

Northwestern University

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Co-authors:

Valentina Parra