Mixed-race, Afro-Latina/x, and Black and Latina/o/x cultural producers in legacy media, digital media, or social media communicate, critique, and sometimes reinforce intersectional hierarchies of power. By analyzing the 2015 Instagram #Blaxican (Black/Mexican) tag against the 2015 emergence of racialized rhetoric and nationalist political discourse, I explore the tension between digital community-building (disruptive visibility) and the demonization of Black and Latina/o/x communities (dehumanization) in public discourse. #Blaxican and other digital communities present moments of everyday resistance in the context of nationalist public discourses. In studying the visual and textual discourses of #Blaxican posters, I analyze the potential for the formation of emerging Ethnoracial identities that disrupt established Ethnoracial categories and the now-dominant nationalist discourses which are shaping political communication and influencing public policy with potentially dangerous cognitive effects.
Isabel Molina-Guzman is a professor of Communication and Latina/Latino Studies and an affiliate of the Institute of Communication Research. This case study is part of her in-progress book manuscript Black/Latinidad: Slashing Black and Latina/x Identity in Media and Popular Communication.
See Isabel's biography here: https://lls.illinois.edu/directory/profile/imolina