Mexican American Whiteness

In this article Mexicans: Pioneers of a Different Type Gonzalez gives us an outlook different from what we generally read when taught about American History. His effort is to explain how each of the different Latino groups came. What was happening in their home towns that caused them to leave. If people want to accept it, eventually they will have to. That this country is bound to go through an enormous Latino population explosion. Gonzalez writes “Mexican Americans meanwhile, face a frustrating identity problem like that of Puerto Ricans” (pg97). Being a Mexican American myself I could agree that it is at times frustrating identifying. We are either too American to be Mexican. Or too Mexican, to be American. In 1749 because of what was called the promise

Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. By David G Gutiérrez. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

No one is you and that is your power. In the novel, Mexican Whiteboy by Matt De La Peña, the main character, Danny, fails to realize this fact. He alway feels the need to change who he is. He wants to feel welcomed by his father’s Mexican family during the summer when he moves to San Diego County. However, he finds this complicating to do since he is Half-Mexican and Half-White. In this novel, we view a variety of ways Danny struggles with his identity and one way he comes to terms with his struggles.

This scenario would appear to be working out smashingly for both sides from 1824 to 1831. However, the snowball’s origin that would lead to the decline of Mexican-American relations can be traced back to this point surrounding this time period. In 1830, the Mexican government passed a series of laws to halt American

Race and ethnicity is another important aspect in the nationalism of a nation. In the United States, racial differences are usually based on one’s skin color and physical characteristics as well as one’s origin, and they do not change due to varying classes or cultures (Marger 212). Before the twenty first century, the racial minority were highly discriminated, both socially and economically. But currently, there exist several races in America like the Asians, African Americans, Native Americans and the European Americans. On the other hand, Hispanics are racially assorted and are therefore an ethnic group rather than a race (Marger 133). Language is argued as the sole binder of the Hispanics other than skin color or other physical characteristics. They are in fact of mixed racial ancestry (Arreola 19).

Even by the 1930s, this was particularly among young people who, “born and educated in the United States, demanded to be included in the city’s future … ” (Sanchez 226). At a crucial meeting of Mexican-Americans in 1927, facing an Anglo led municipal incorporation move that would have raised taxes and driven them out, many Mexican-American leaders opposed applying for U.S. citizenship. Even though it would have given them more of a target, specifically, the right to vote on a subsequent ballot measure. The affront to Mexico and their heritage was, for them, a crime that outweighed the benefits (Sanchez 4).

In Norma Cantu’s Canicula: Snapshots of a girlhood el la Frontera, she addresses the topic of identity which is examined through the photographs of her past. In her story, it’s about how she grew up between two different countries of the U.S and Mexico. The narrator is searching for who she is within the two countries, which makes it hard for her to find herself as one culture can criticize the other. In one of the stories, “Mexican Citizen” the narrator is now faced to identify her identity as she now gets her U.S immigration papers. In these papers we see that the color of her skin listed is “Blanco”, on the other hand, her Mexico documents state that she’s “Moreno”. This shows two different identities that based just on her color of her skin. The narrator is able to cross the border occasionally without her parents that she then realizes the conflict of between the two cultures when she decides to live with Mamagrande in Monterrey. She interacts with her cousins, but they don’t seem to get along with her very well since she doesn’t know their way of things “I sing to them silly nursery rhymes and tell them these are great songs: Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, Little Miss Muffet, Old McDonald. They listen fascinated, awed, but then they laugh when I don’t know their games” (Cantu 23). We see that even though she can speak Spanish, the narrator still has trouble living in Mexico and she then faces problems trying to find her identity when she experiences the conflicts

The formation of segregated barrios and the development of a wealth of community-provided services showed that Mexican-Americans were not content to be marginalized by the United States. Instead, they were embracing an empowering new sense of self-determination and referring to themselves as “Mexicanos or as members of a larger, pan-Hispanic community of La Raza.” At this time La Raza referenced individuals of the Mexican “race”, whether they were in Mexico or in the United States, and was particularly important in the United States, where race was more important than citizenship. In the late 19th and early 20th century United States, race was determined by purity of blood, and there were only two races—white and black. White meant the individual had “pure blood” (European blood); black meant that the individual’s blood included indigenous or African influences. Being white meant being able to exercise one’s constitutional rights and being treated as a normal member of society’s dominant group. Being black meant that, regardless of whether he or she was a citizen, the individual would face discrimination similar to that which I described earlier. When the Spanish conquerors mixed with the people of Latin America, forming the mestizo, or mixed race, population that now composes most of the region, they removed themselves from a “white” classification in the United States. Thus, by engaging with the concept of La Raza, which connotes a mestizo race and population, Mexican-Americans rejected the binary nature of race in the United States and embraced what made them different—their indigenous-mixed blood and the cultural heritage that accompanied it. While the abuse directed towards Mexican-Americans may have

Haney Lopez describes the racialization of Mexicans in terms of ancestry and skin color. Although granted de facto White racial status with the United States conquest of much of Mexico in 1848 and having sometimes been deemed as White by the courts and censuses, Mexican Americans were rarely treated as White (5). Historically and legally, Mexicans have been treated as second-class citizens. Mexicans suffered the degradation accorded members of an inferior race, treatment nearly equivalent to the coinciding conquest of blacks and Native Americans (64). In 1857, for instance, Anglo mobs lynched eleven Mexicans in Los Angeles (67). The demographic and geographic custom of segregation in Los Angeles contributed to the growing cultural isolation and socioeconomic vulnerability of the Mexican community.

Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, is an analysis of the Anglo-Mexican

Louise Pubols, Fathers of the Pueblo: Patriarchy and Power in Mexican California, 1800-1880, article concentrated on the de la Guerra family from Santa Barbara, California. Pubols expresses to her audience that she wants to depict Mexicans from California Mexico in a different style from the usual. Pubols starts off by giving the reader a simple description of the way the California Mexican is usually presented. Typically, Californian Mexicans have little to no agency; they lose all their land and belongings and are lost to history. Pubols uses the de la Guerra family to show that California Mexicans not only had agency but also played a large part in society. Pubols second argument was that patriarchal language was being used to describe the de la Guerra’s family governance within their community.

Becoming Mexican: Mexican American and Whiteness In “Becoming Mexican: Mexican American and Whiteness,” author Neil Foley brings to light historical evidence of Mexican-Americans who attempted to assimilate into the white culture on “the backs of blacks.” The article started off by giving us the history of when the U.S. Bureau of the Census created two new ethnic categories of whites: “Hispanic” and “non-Hispanic.” According to the author the Hispanic category was more of “an ethnic rather than racial label, that comprised of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Panamanians, and other ethnic groups of Latin American descent.” By creating separate ethnic categories Hispanics would no longer be racialized as non-Whites, but were instead able to identify and acknowledge their ethnic heritage without surrendering their “whiteness.”

This animosity towards Mexican Americans contradicted the shared belief that the west was not only an escape to freedom but also a utopia where immigrants could turn a new page and paint a future for themselves. I argue that segregation in the 19th and 20th centuries was not only centralized in the South but also in the West as seen by the Mendez v Westminster case of 1946 and, consequently, that this incorrect notion of segregation being dominant only in the south led to the pivotal Brown v Board of Education case overshadowing the historical significance of Mendez v Westminster.

U.S. in 1922 is the court case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant, was rejected from getting citizenship due to not being racially categorized as Caucasian. Ozawa argued that he and his family were fully assimilated into American culture and his skin was very light to the point that he looked Caucasian (Lee, 124). However, the court ruled that skin color wasn’t the main factor in whether a person could become a citizen; being of Caucasian descent was the most important criterion (Lee, 124). A year later, Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian immigrant, was prevented from naturalizing because although he was racially categorized as Caucasian, the “common man[‘s] view Indians [as] not white” (Lee, 124). The U.S. Supreme Court in both cases manipulated the rules to prevent people of Asian descent form naturalizing, which showed that “race as a category can be manipulated to include or exclude certain groups” (Sasaki, 3/15/16). The U.S. perceived foreign people as being threats to society and therefore, didn’t feel safe to have them become citizens and receive

As stated in the film The House We Live In: Race—The Power of an Illusion “Whiteness was key to citizenship.”, in the United States. Being white was subjectively understood, it did not necessarily indicate your ancestry. The Court would make decisions about who was considered white or black under the law. Congress had passed an act in 1790 declaring that only "free white" immigrants could become naturalized citizens. Naturalization was extended to “persons of African descent” after the Civil War. Even still white citizens were the only ones who had the right to vote and participate in government duties as well as having access to better jobs. You could only gain the full benefits of being an American citizen if you were white. As stated by Giddens, Duneier, Appelbaum and Carr (2015), “In modern societies, most people living within the borders of the political system are citizens having common rights and duties and knowing themselves to be members of a national community.” (p.396). The definition of citizenship changed over time because at first in order to be a naturalized citizen in the United States you had to be characterized as white or black. But with so many immigrants coming into the country of all different races, being defined as either white or black presented as a problem. In 1857 (Dred Scott) African Americans were not considered citizens and were not granted citizenship