Mexican Americans

Mexican American

César E. Chávez Notable Mexican Americans: César E. Chávez, Selena Quintanilla Pérez, Romualdo Pacheco, Ellen Ochoa, Richard E. Cavazos and Eva Longoria. See also: List of notable Mexican Americans
Total population
26,781,547 9% of the U.S. population
Regions with significant populations
California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Southwest and Midwest See also: List of Mexican American communities
Languages
American Spanish, Spanish, American English, Indigenous Languages
Religion
Roman Catholic, Protestantism, Aztec, Maya, Nonreligious

Template:TotallydisputedMexican Americans are citizens of the United States of Mexican descent. Mexican Americans account for 64% of the U.S. Hispanic and Latino population and are the largest ethnic group in the United States. About 26.8 million Americans have listed their ancestry as Mexican as of 2006.

Mexican Americans trace their ancestry to the Southwest United States; Mexico and Mesoamerica, a country located in North America, bounded on the north by the United States; and many different European countries, especially Spain, a country located in Southern Europe.

Mexican American settlement concentrations are found in metropolitan and rural areas across the United States, with the highest concentrations in the Southwest, and the Midwest. Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Houston, and San Antonio are particular areas for large Mexican American communities. Other cities in the Upper Midwest with thriving Mexican American communities are Detroit, Kansas City, Missouri, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. There are also isolated concentrations of Mexican Americans in mostly rural areas in Florida and North Carolina. Growing populations are also present in other parts of the rural Southeastern United States, in states such as Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. A growing population is also present in urban areas such as Washington, DC, New York City, Miami and Philadelphia.

History of Mexican Americans

Main article: History of Mexican-Americans

Mexican-American history is wide-ranging, spanning more than four hundred years and varying from region to region within the United States. While Mexican-Americans were once concentrated in the states that formerly belonged to Mexico — principally, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Texas — they began creating communities in San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago and other steel producing regions when they obtained employment there during World War I. More recently, Mexican immigrants have increasingly become a large part of the workforce in industries such as meat packing throughout the Midwest, in agriculture in the southeastern United States, and in the construction, landscaping, restaurant, hotel and other service industries throughout the country.

Mexican-American identity has also changed markedly throughout these years. Over the past hundred years Mexican-Americans have campaigned for voting rights, stood against educational and employment discrimination and stood for economic and social advancement. At the same time many Mexican-Americans have struggled with defining and maintaining their community's identity. In the 1960s and 1970s, some Latino and Hispanic student groups flirted with nationalism and differences over the proper name for members of the community — Chicano/Chicana, Latino/Latina, Mexican-Americans, Hispanics or simply La Raza became tied up with deeper disagreements over whether to integrate into or remain separate from Anglo society, as well as divisions between those Mexican-Americans whose families had lived in the United States for two or more generations and more recent immigrants.

Racial and ethnic classification of Mexican Americans

Before the United States' borders expanded westward, New World regions dominated by the Spanish Empire in the 16th century held to a complex caste system that classified persons by their fractional racial makeup and geographic origin. See Casta.

As the United States' border expanded, the Census Bureau changed the traditional racial classification methods for Mexican Americans under United States jurisdiction. The Bureau's classification system has evolved significantly from its inception:

• From 1790 to 1850, there was no distinct racial classification of Mexican Americans in the U.S. census. The only racial categories recognized by the Census Bureau were White and Black. The Census Bureau estimates that during this period the number of persons that could not be categorized as white or black did not exceed 0.25% of the total population based on 1860 census data.

• From 1850 through 1920 the Census Bureau expanded its racial categories to include at different times Mulattos, American Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Hindu, and Korean, but continued to classify Mexicans and Mexican Americans as White.

• The 1930 U.S. census form asked for "color or race." The 1930 census calculators received these instructions: “write ‘W’ for White; ’Mex’ for Mexican.”

• In the 1940 census, Mexican Americans were re-classified as White. Instructions for enumerators were "Mexicans - Report 'White' (W) for Mexicans unless they are definitely of indigenous or other nonwhite race." During the same census, however, the bureau began to track the White population of Spanish mother tongue. This practice continued through the 1960 census. The 1960 census also used the title "Spanish- surnamed American" in their reporting data of Mexican Americans but included Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans under the same category.

• In 1970, Mexican Americans classified themselves as White. Hispanic individuals who classified themselves racially as Other were re-classified as White by the bureau. During this census, the bureau attempted to identify all Hispanics by use of the following criteria in sampled sets:

• Spanish speakers and persons belonging to a household where the head of household was a Spanish speaker
• Persons with Spanish heritage by birth location or surname
• Persons who self-identified Spanish origin or descent

• From 1980 on, the Census Bureau has collected data on Hispanic origin on a 100-percent basis. The bureau has noted an increasing number of respondents who mark themselves as Hispanic origin but not of the White race. This is perhaps due to the increase of non-white Latino immigrants into the country.

Politics and debate of racial classification

Throughout U.S. history, many Mexican Americans have been socially classified as "non-white" by United States people, despite Census criteria and legal constructions classifying them as white.

However, in times when Mexicans were uniformly allotted white status, they were permitted to intermarry with what today are termed "non-Hispanic whites" (unlike blacks and Asians). They were allowed to acquire U.S. citizenship upon arrival; served in all-white units during the World War II; could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas, especially San Antonio; ran the state politics and constituted most of the elite of New Mexico since colonial times; and went to integrated schools in Central Texas and Los Angeles. Additionally, Asians were barred from marrying Mexican Americans because of their legal white status.

All Mexicans were legally considered "white" because of early treaty obligations to Spaniards and Mexicans for citizenship status at a time when white-ness was considered a prerequisite for U.S. citizenship.

Today, many Mexican Americans consider themselves and are socially classified as "non-white" by the United States population, despite Census criteria and legal constructions classifying them as white. Many within and outside the Mexican American community contest and dispute the U.S. Census classification of Hispanics and Latinos in the population as "White" Americans.

See also: White Hispanic § Representation and debate

See also: White American

See also: Race (United States Census)

Economic and social issues

File:Cesar-chavez-USPS.jpg

César E. Chávez-founder of the United Farm Workers, a labor union of migrant farm laborers, and civil rights activist in the 1960s and 1970's called for organization of employees' rights groups and expanded political representation of Mexican Americans.

Undocumented Immigration Issues

Undocumented Mexican immigrants have usually met demands for cheap and unwanted labor in the United States. Fear of deportation keeps many illegal immigrant workers from taking advantage of social welfare programs as well as interaction with public authorities and makes them highly vulnerable to exploitation by employers. Many employers, however, have developed a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude, indicating a greater comfort with or casual approach toward hiring illegal Mexican nationals. In May 2006, millions of illegal immigrants, Mexicans and other nationalities, walked out of their jobs across the country in protest to proposed changes in immigration laws (also in hopes for amnesty to become naturalized citizens like similar acts in 1986, which granted citizenship to Mexican nationals living and working illegally in the US).

See also: 2006 United States immigration reform protests

In the United States, where Mexican Americans make up a significant percentage of the population, such as California and Texas, illegal immigrants and Mexican Americans almost exclusively occupy blue-collar occupations: they are restaurant workers, janitors, truck drivers, gardeners, construction laborers, material moving workers, or perform other types of manual labor. In many of these places with large Latino populations, blue-collar workers are often considered Mexican Americans because of their dominance in those occupations. Occasionally, tensions have risen between Mexican immigrants and other ethnic groups because of increasing concerns over the availability of working-class jobs to non-Hispanic ethnic groups. However, tensions have also risen among American Hispanic laborers who have been displaced because of both cheap Mexican labor and ethnic profiling, and African-American workers claimed the Mexican laborers are advancing further than native-born blacks, this caused some racial tensions between black and Mexicans in the Southwest US. It was recently noticed that the Mexican immigrants are climbing the socioeconomic ladder, but this was the case in the past by previous Mexican immigrants who came (legally or not) and worked hard their way in the ladder for the "American dream".

Discrimination, Racism and Stereotypes

Throughout U.S. history, Mexican Americans have and continue to endure various types of discrimination and negative stereotypes among the American population. Hispanics and Latinos in general are often discriminated against because of appearance, cultural customs and use of the Spanish language. Many ethnic stereotypes have long circulated in media and popular culture.

Mexican Americans have also found themselves targeted by hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. In the 1940s, viciously racist imagery in newspapers and crime novels portrayed Mexican American Zoot suiters as disloyal foreigners or murderers attacking White-Anglo police officers and servicemen. Anti-Mexican American, Filipino American and African American race riots in Los Angeles during the 1940s are known as the Zoot Suit Riots.

In modern times, organizations such as neo-nazis, white supremacist groups, American nationalist and nativist groups have all been known and continue to intimidate, harass and advocate the use violence towards Mexican-Americans and other ethnic Latinos, Hispanics and non-anglo in the population while seeking to apprehend immigrants that have crossed into the United States illegally.

Social status and assimilation

Barrow (2005) finds increases in average personal and household incomes for Mexican Americans in the 21st century. U.S. born Mexican Americans earn more and are represented more in the middle- and upper-class segments more than recently arriving Mexican immigrants. It should be noted, however, that Mexican Americans are not well represented in the professions. Most of the immigrants from Mexico come from the lower classes with lineage of family employed in lower skilled jobs. Thus, the kind of Mexican that arrives in the United States doesn't have a history of being involved in professions. Recently, some professionists from Mexico have been migrating, but to make the transition from one country to another it involves a lot of re-training and re-adjusting to conform to US standards--i.e. professional licencing is required.

Huntington (2005) argues that the sheer number, concentration, linguistic homogeneity, and other characteristic of Hispanic immigrants will erode the dominance of English as a nationally unifying language, weaken the country's dominant cultural values, and promote ethnic allegiances over a primary identification as an American. Testing these hypotheses with data from the U.S. Census and national and Los Angeles opinion surveys, Citrin et al. (2007) show that Hispanics acquire English and lose Spanish rapidly beginning with the second generation, and appear to be no more or less religious or committed to the work ethic than native-born non-Mexican American whites. Moreover, a clear majority of Hispanics reject a purely ethnic identification and patriotism grows from one generation to the next.

South et al (2005) examines Hispanic spatial assimilation and inter-neighborhood geographic mobility. Their longitudinal analysis of seven hundred Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigrants followed from 1990 to 1995 finds broad support for hypotheses derived from the classical account of minority assimilation. High income, English-language use, and embeddedness in Anglo social contexts increased Latino immigrants' geographic mobility into Anglo neighborhoods. US citizenship and years spent in the United States were positively associated with geographic mobility into more Anglo neighborhoods, and coethnic contact was inversely associated with this form of mobility, but these associations operated largely through other predictors. Prior experiences of ethnic discrimination increased and residence in public housing decreased the likelihood that Latino immigrants would move from their origin neighborhoods, while residing in metropolitan areas with large Latino populations led to geographic moves into "less Anglo" census tracts.

See also List of Mexican American communities

References

• Barrow, Lisa and Rouse, Cecilia Elena. "Do Returns to Schooling Differ by Race and Ethnicity?" American Economic Review 2005 95(2): 83-87. Issn: 0002-8282 Fulltext: in Ingenta and Ebsco
• Jack Citrin, Amy Lerman, Michael Murakami and Kathryn Pearson, "Testing Huntington: Is Hispanic Immigration a Threat to American Identity?" Perspectives on Politics, Volume 5, Issue 01, February 2007, pp 31-48
• De La Garza, Rodolfo O., Martha Menchaca, Louis DeSipio. Barrio Ballots: Latino Politics in the 1990 Elections (1994)
• De la Garza, Rodolfo O. Awash in the Mainstream: Latino Politics in the 1996 Elections (1999) * De la Garza, Rodolfo O., and Louis Desipio. Ethnic Ironies: Latino Politics in the 1992 Elections (1996)
• De la Garza, Rodolfo O. Et al. Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics (1992)
• Arnoldo De León, Mexican Americans in Texas: A Brief History, 2nd ed. (1999)
• Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, David R. Maciel, editors, The Contested Homeland: A Chicano History of New Mexico 2000, ISBN 0-8263-2199-
• Nancie L. González; The Spanish-Americans of New Mexico: A Heritage of Pride (1969)
• Hero, Rodney E. Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-Tiered Pluralism. (1992)
• Garcia, F. Chris. Latinos and the Political System. (1988)
• Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity (2005)
• Kenski, Kate and Tisinger, Russell. "Hispanic Voters in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential General Elections." Presidential Studies Quarterly 2006 36(2): 189-202. Issn: 0360-4918 Fulltext: in Swetswise and Ingenta
• David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (1987)
• Pachon, Harry and Louis Desipio. New Americans by Choice: Political Perspectives of Latino Immigrants. (1994)
• Rosales, Francisco A., Chicano!: The history of the Mexican American civil rights movement. (1997). ISBN 1-55885-201-8
• Smith, Robert Courtney. Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants (2005), links with old village, based on interviews
• South, Scott J.; Crowder, Kyle; and Chavez, Erick. "Geographic Mobility and Spatial Assimilation among U.S. Latino Immigrants." International Migration Review 2005 39(3): 577-607. Issn: 0197-9183
• Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. And Mariela M. Páez. Latinos: Remaking America. (2002)
• Villarreal, Roberto E., and Norma G. Hernandez. Latinos and Political Coalitions: Political Empowerment for the 1990s (1991)

Further reading

Martha Menchaca (2002). Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans. University of Texas Press. pp. 19–21. ISBN 0292752547.

William A. Nericcio (2007). "Tex(t)-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the 'Mexican' in America"; utpress book; book galleryblog

See also

• List of Mexican Americans
• History of Mexican-Americans
• Mexico
• United States
• List of Mexican American communities
• Hispanic
• White Hispanic
• Latino
• White Latin American
• Chicano
• Brown people
• La Raza
• Casta
• Chicano Movement (Aztlán)
• MEChA
• Pocho
• Ethnic group