1. Color Blind Discourses in Paid Domestic Work: Foreignness and the Delineation of Alternative Racial Markers.
- Author
-
Moras, Amanda
- Subjects
EMPLOYMENT discrimination ,RACE discrimination ,RACISM ,WOMEN immigrants ,AFRICAN Americans - Abstract
This paper explores how current shifts in racial discourse and demographics are reflected within the negotiation of paid domestic work. Various scholars have pointed out that racism in the United States has become increasingly covert and institutionalized, void of racial terminology and invisible to most whites. This shift has been institutionalized in the negotiation of paid reproductive labor, as alternative racial markers such as language and citizenship replace explicit racial terminology. Over the past thirty years immigrant women of Color have increasingly replaced native born women of Color in domestic work. Through an analysis of thirty interviews with white women who employ domestic workers this research examines how this shift has transformed the negotiation of racial privilege and subordination in domestic work. Overall, white employers insisted that race did not matter when making hiring decisions, however other cultural markers such as language mattered greatly, at times even resulting in firing. In addition, complex and contradictory narratives about immigration were used to both simultaneously vilify immigrant workers and romanticize their work experiences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2007