Speaker: Manuel Vargas, Professor of Philosophy, University of California San Diego

A variety of philosophers and social theorists have thought that Latinxs don’t fit the usual identity categories in the United States. The category doesn’t seem like a racial category because its members can be members of any racial group. It also doesn’t seem especially promising as an ethnic category because it is unclear that there is sufficient cultural overlap among its members to constitute an ethnic group. In this talk Dr. Vargas will discuss various other proposals — ethnorace, historical families, affordances, and so on, which all seem to face their own problems. He’ll also explore the familiar challenges to the Latinxs category and the limits and significance of such categories.