Abstract: Mass migration from Latin America and Asia is dramatically changing the racial landscape of our nation. In California, Latinos and Asians already collectively constitute the majority in large metropolitan areas, a demographic shift that is reshaping the way children of immigrants are racially incorporated into American society. To date, race scholars treat Latinos and Asians as two distinct panethnic categories. In this presentation, I examine how Filipino Americans, the largest Asian group in the state, disrupt this conventional divide and negotiate their racial identity within an emerging Latino-Asian racial spectrum. Drawing on interviews and survey data of Filipino Americans in Southern California, I demonstrate how multiethnic contexts interact with historical factors to influence Filipino racial formation. I argue that the cultural residuals of Spanish and U.S. colonialism affect how Filipinos racially position themselves vis-à-vis Latinos and Asians, the two fastest growing panethnic groups in the country. These findings have implications for better understanding how the racialization process is evolving as the United States moves beyond a black-white racial paradigm.
