FADE TO BLACK.

Increasingly, African Americans find themselves living side-by-side with immigrant newcomers from Latin America, the largest source of today's immigrant population. Research on "Black/Brown" relations tends to a priori define groupness in ethnoracial terms and gloss over potential nuance in inter-group relations. Taking an inductive approach to understanding how African Americans interpret the boundaries that result from immigrationdriven change, this paper draws on fieldwork among African Americans in East Palo Alto, California, a Black-majority-turned-Latino-majority city, to examine how African Americans construct multiple symbolic boundaries in the context of a Latino-immigrant settlement. Blacks' rendering of these boundaries at the communal level invokes ethnoracial boundaries as a source of significant division. They see Latinos as having overwhelmed Black material and symbolic prowess. However, accounts of inter-personal interactions evince symbolic boundaries defined by language and neighborhood tenure that render ethnoracial boundaries porous. Respondents note intra-group differences among Latinos, pointing out how the ability to speak English and long-time residence in the neighborhood are important factors facilitating ties and cooperation across ethnoracial boundaries. The findings point to the importance of intra -ethnoracial-group differences for inter -ethnoracial-group attitudes and relations. Adopting ethnographic and survey research practices that treat boundaries as multiplex will better capture how growing intra -ethnoracial-group diversity shapes interethnoracial- group relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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