CSREA’s New Book Talks highlight new and notable works studying race, ethnicity, and indigeneity. They facilitate thought-provoking and critical engagement with emerging scholarship.
Figures of the Future: Latino Civil Rights and the Politics of Demographic Change
Michael Rodriguez-Muñiz
Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
For years, newspaper headlines, partisan speeches, academic research, and even comedy routines have communicated that the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation—one that will purportedly change the “face” of the country in a matter of decades. But the so-called browning of America, sociologist Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz contends, has less to do with the complexion of growing populations than with past and present struggles shaping how demographic trends are popularly imagined and experienced.
About the Author
Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz was born and raised on Chicago’s northwest side. Prior to graduate school, he led and participated in several Puerto Rican-focused grassroots and activist projects in the Humboldt Park/West Town area.
He has published on censuses, poverty knowledge, Latino identity formation, and the relationship between critical sociologies of race and science and technology studies. He is currently engaged in a collaborative interview-based project on race and political trust. His next book project will explore the history and afterlives of political repression against Chicago’s anti-colonial Puerto Rican movements. This project involves efforts to create a community-based archive.