Interrogating the constitutive silences of whiteness: racial categorizations and spatial racialization in Argentina

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the role of silence in Argentine ‘racial grammar.’ Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on youth migration in Buenos Aires, as well as a case study analysis of a state-sponsored anti-racism campaign, it analyzes how silences and silencing mechanisms serve to (re)produce the naturalization of whiteness in Argentina despite recent challenges. Specifically, it analyzes (1) the ways in which racial categories have been essentialized and erased historically, (2) the changing slippery and spatialized forms of racialization that emerge in the present, and (3) the silencing mechanisms that, although localized and nuanced, can continue to powerfully mitigate potential challenges to white supremacy. In exploring the role of silences on processes of racialization and anti-racist efforts, this article calls for further comparative research onanti-racism in the region, echoing past work that has challenged the narrative of Argentine ‘racial exceptionalism’ in Latin American race and ethnic studies.