The politics of Black and Brown solidarities: race, space, and hip-hop cultural production in Los Angeles

Conceptualizations of Latinidad range from those emphasizing ethnicity and whiteness to those questioning the category's utility for capturing the diversity of diasporas from dozens of countries. This article approaches Latinidad from relational formations of race framework, revealing the importance of the sociohistorical context in which Latinxs are racialized in relation to one another and other racialized groups. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with artists and activists in Los Angeles and analysis of hip-hop cultural productions, this research finds that Latinxs raised in “minority-majority” neighbourhoods have developed understandings of race and political solidarities that highlight brownness, which is often articulated as part of a “Black and Brown multiracial formation”. Such understandings of race and racialization challenge the dominant black/white racial binary, whitewashed notions of Latinidad, and ethnonationalisms. The counterscripts articulated through cultural production and activist narratives provide grassroots theorizations on race, belonging, and citizenship and shed light on multilevel processes of racialization.