The Study of Racialism

[This thread was split from Deliberate harrassment of members in the "Site Management" forum. -- FWS 2/1/07]

Hispanics as a group have been legally considered to be white. This racial classification was campaigned for by a group of Mexican Americans, mostly urban and middle class, who founded their own organization in 1929 called the League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC. LULAC’s main purpose was to develop and maintain a white racial identity for U.S. citizens of Latino origin, especially Mexicans. Before self-categorization, it was the practice of the census to assign anyone with a Spanish surname to the "white" category - regardless of what they looked like or called themselves.

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/21.1/forum_sheridan.html

http://www.nyupress.org/product_info.php?products_id=1145

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exfolrep.html

http://multiracial.com/site/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=417

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/6921.html

http://www.nyupress.org/product_info.php?products_id=1145

This is a well-documented historical fact.

All census records I've seen contradict this....if you take even a cursory look through some census records before 1960, they are filled with hispanics listed as mulatto, negro, "mex", colored, indian ect.....




Example: A "negro" puertorican family in 1930 census (from the bronx)



The puertoricans I find in the census, are classified as either white or black/colored/negro, and "mulatto" in some earlier census'.


Additionally, census enumerator instructions, specifically say to not classify mexicans who were "obviously of indian or other non-white race", as white.

http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/tEnumInstr.shtml

Census enumerator instructions regarding mexicans before 1960

1930-

154. Mexicans.-Practically all Mexican laborers are of a racial mixture difficult to classify, though usually well recognized in the localities where they are found. In order to obtain separate figures for this racial group, it has been decided that all person born in Mexico, or having parents born in Mexico, who are not definitely white, Negro, Indian, Chinese, or Japanese, should be returned as Mexican ("Mex").

1940-

454. Mexicans.-Mexicans are to be regarded as white unless definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race.

1950-

115. Mexicans.-Report "white" (W) for Mexicans unless they are definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race.

Both AD and Phil345 may be correct.

I believe that AD may be partly correct, with regards to Mexican-Americans, since the instructions for 1940 and 1950 say to classify them as non-White only if the individual is "definitely" of a "non-White race." Mexicans who look purely African or purely Native American are so rare that the most likely practical effect was to achieve the Mexican-American political goal of being classified as "White."

And I believe that Phil345 is partly correct regarding Puerto Ricans. I say partly because before 1960, it was up to each census enumerator to determine someone's "race" by visual inspection. Even when enumerators tried to follow the instructions in the Enumerators Manual, the instructions themselves apparently varied from state to state. In 1950, Florida and Georgia demographers were instructed to define all Puerto Ricans as Colored, no matter how pale. The Enumerators Manual said, “The term ‘white person’ shall include only persons... who have no trace of... West Indian.... ‘West Indian’ shall include anyone with a West Indies background, regardless of whether his antecedents were... Spanish or French Caucasians....” [See Clara E. Rodriguez, “Challenging Racial Hegemony: Puerto Ricans in the United States,” in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick NJ, 1994), 131-45.]

Powell makes an interesting strawman claim yet provides faulty evidence to back up her claims. Furthermore, it does not address the original post.


Evidence "racially" Native American Mexicans call themselves White.

Evidence of the White part of the claim.

Going back to her most recent claim. That LULAC somehow successfully campaigned for all Mexican Americans to classify as White (Including those of predominant Native Ancestry, I assume she is claiming)
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/21.1/forum_sheridan.html
No where does this link say that Indigenous Mexican-Americans identified themselves as White nor that they got themselves legally classified as White. What it does say is that Mexican Americans (the majority who have substantial European ancestry) were classified as White, and when negative feelings started to brood against Mexican migration, these Mexican Americans started to be perceived as the same as these new migrants. So these Mexican Americans of substantial European ancestry ushed to have their White identities protected. Plenty of Mestizo Americans have been classifying themselves as White, ala Johny Depp. This does not speak to how Indigenous Mexican-Americans saw themselves or legally classified themselves on any census.
http://www.nyupress.org/product_info.php?products_id=1145
The second is a book advertisement without any direct quotes to the claim challenged.
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exfolrep.html
The third link speaks to Middle Class Mexican Americans of substantial and in many cases pure European ancestry who embraced the Anglo culture and became White Americans, instead of Mexican Blancos. In other words they pushed away from Hispanicity and Mexicanicity, they did not push away from their racial identity which they always had.
http://multiracial.com/site/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=417
The fourth link doesn't work.
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/6921.html
Another book advertisement without any direct quote that addresses the topic at hand.

Obviously not.
And I am still waiting for this:

Evidence of this

Evidence of this.

Evidence of this

Evidence for this.

Evidence I made a claim 46% is greater than 54%

Evidence for this

Evidence for this.

Exactly. In other words if you had European ancestry and looked ambiguous enough to pass you were accepted, but if you definitely had nonEuropean (read Native OR African) then you were not seen as White.

I disagree. AD is not correct.


It says of definitely non-White race. Not purely. In other words strong ethnic features. Most Mexican Americans who had been here for many generations had substantial European admixture. Quite different from the more recent immigrants that showed much stronger ethnic features.
Moreover, the older families have tended to have joined into the Anglo-American mainstream while many of the poorer pochos/pachucos who never identified with White Americana have idealized their Native ancestry.

[Message duplicating one in the "Site Management" forum deleted. -- FWS 2/1/07]

Sorry, I cannot see the distinction between "definitely" and "purely" in this context. I suspect that Jaime's perception and mine would align with regards to who we see as "definitely" versus "purely" non-European, since we come from similar backgrounds. But neither Jaime nor I were enumerators at the time. The actual enumerators were local folks who were familiar with the political firestorm that led Congress to order the change in census instructions. In some areas, New Mexico in particular, a census enumerator would not have dared to classify an upper-crust Mexican-American as non-White.


Yes. That is an important point. We tend to mentally homogenize all Mexican-Americans. In some regions the wealthiest social, commercial, industrial, and political leaders of the community were (and are) Mexican-Americans. To this day, they see themselves as White, demand acceptance as White, and have the social-political-economic power to enforce their self-identity at every level. [See Charles H. Montgomery, The Spanish Redemption: Heritage, Power, and Loss on New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande (Berkeley: University of California, 2002).] The Chicanos of Los Angeles, on the other hand, created and prosletyze the "neo-Aztec self-identity," and most of them do not tend to be senators, wealthy industrialists, nor vast landowners. [See George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University, 1993).]

Whether the White-identified Mexican-Americans of New Mexico have more Euro admixture than the Chicanos of Los Angeles is conjectural. Jaime's suggestion seems reasonable, since the former have out-married heavily with Anglos, but I know of no data either way.

Frank, most upper crust Mexican Americans had substantial European ancestry and were hardly of "little or no European ancestry" let alone "racially Native American." But the poor migrant workers and their descendants were definitely much more obviously Mestizos and Indios and they and their descendants were classified as such, or "Mex".


I definitely agree.
I suspect that even in Chicanos European admixture is also strong for those who have been here more generations, but the identity of Mestizo, La Raza and/or NeoAztec has always been stronger. Thus the claims of a homogeneous mentality among Mexican Americans by Powell do not ring true.

Its still cannot be said that it was the policy/practice of the the census to classify all persons of hispanic origin as "white" regardless of physical appearance - which was the claim made.

From what I gather, only the sufficiently european-looking hispanics (as perceived by the enumerator) were classified as "white"....

Except for people with "any trace" of Caribbean Hispanic ancestry in Georgia and Florida, who were apparently classified as non-White no matter what they looked like. Again, we should not conflate the plight of Caribbean Hispanics in 1940-50 with that of Mexican-Americans in the same period. (Just as, as Jaime pointed out, we should not conflate well-to-do New Mexico "Spanish" with Los Angeles "Chicanos".)

Reflexiones 1997
New Directions in Mexican American Studies
Edited by Neil Foley
Read his article:
Becoming Hispanic: Mexican Americans and the Faustian Pact with Whiteness (Neil Foley)

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/21.1/forum_sheridan.html

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/21.1/comment_gross.html

http://www.oyez.org/cases/case/?case=1950-1959/1953/1953_406


Hernandez v. Texas (This was like Brown v. Board of Education for Mexican-Americans)

Pete Hernandez, an agricultural worker, was indicted for the murder of Joe Espinoza by an all-Anglo (white) grand jury in Jackson County, Texas. Claiming that Mexican-Americans were barred from the jury commission that selected juries, and from petit juries, Hernandez' attorneys tried to quash the indictment. Moreover, Hernandez tried to quash the petit jury panel called for service, because persons of Mexican descent were excluded from jury service in this case. A Mexican-American had not served on a jury in Jackson County in over 25 years and thus, Hernandez claimed that Mexican ancestry citizens were discriminated against as a special class in Jackson County. The trial court denied the motions. Hernandez was found guilty of murder and sentenced by the all-Anglo jury to life in prison. In affirming, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that "Mexicans are...members of and within the classification of the white race as distinguished from members of the Negro Race" and rejected the petitioners' argument that they were a "special class" under the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Further, the court pointed out that "so far as we are advised, no member of the Mexican nationality" challenged this classification as white or Caucasian.

http://www.law.uh.edu/hernandez50/NeilFoley.pdf

http://www.princeton.edu/aci/cases-pdf/aci2.hernandez.pdf


Salsassin:



Salsassin is [ad hominem edit out -- FWS] creating a strawman argument. The issue is the historical LEGAL whiteness of Mexican Americans. I NEVER said there was " a homogeneous mentality among Mexican Americans," since I don't believe such a thing. The issue is not what Mexicans THOUGHT of themselves or how every "white" individual or community TREATED them. The legal whiteness of Mexicans dates at least to the 1930s and involves the lobbying efforts of both LULAC and the Mexican goverrnment. This whiteness is historical fact. In Hernandez v. Texas, the defenders of de facto discrimination against Mexican-Americans argued that "whites" can't legally be accused of discriminating against other "whites" (Mexicans and Mexican-Americans).

Please! Has anyone checked the FBI crime stats http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm or seen flyers for missing and exploited children? http://www.missingkids.com/

For these dark Mexicans, on every one it says- race: White,
(Ethnicitity: Hispanic).

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ ... 3&seqNum=1
Race - White (Hispanic)

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/fugitives/vc/ ... ales_r.htm
Race - White (Hispanic)

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugiti ... orozco.htm
Race - White (Hispanic)

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/montoya.htm
Race: White (Hispanic)

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/gerena.htm
Race: White (Hispanic) of Puerto Rican descent

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ ... 4&seqNum=1
A Hondurian White (Hispanic)

Osama bin Laden http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/laden.htm
Race not listed

Now, compare these Hispanic 'Whites' to Native Americans as listed by the same groups:

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ ... Lang=en_US

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ ... 6&seqNum=2

http://wwhttp://www.missingkids.com/mis ... /laden.htm

And biracial is Asian and White: http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ ... 4&seqNum=1

The only criteria to be 'White' in America is to NOT be Black/African.

Sorry. I thought we were only talking about census classification. Court case decisions (whether federal or state), and agency regulations (whether FBI, EEOC, or INS) are something else again.

It is true that court case decisions in recent years have leaned towards considering Mexican-American and Caribbean Hispanics to be White. But, as the example above explicitly states, this may be because for the past 25 years or so courts have defined "White" as "non-Black". So the issue in court usually comes down to as "Are Mexican-Americans Black or not?"

EEOC regulations, on the other hand, explicitly define "Hispanic" as a distinct and separate "race," (neither Black nor White) with all the equal-opportunity and affirmative-action implications thereof.

The Small Business Administration classifies all Hispanics as a "minority" (they do not use the term "race"). But this agency defines "Hispanic" as someone of Latin American cultural background who lacks education beyond high school. In other words, if a Hispanic gets an associate degree, he/she no longer qualifies for SBA assistance as a "minority."

I have no idea how the FBI classifies people, but I suspect that they are no more nor less consistent than any other bureaucracy.

I am sorry to muddy the water, but I thought that we were just talking about the census.


Yes and no. Yes, in that Americans increasingly see ethnicities that were considered "races" yesterday (Hispanic, Asian) as mere flavors of Whites today. This has happened to all ethnicities (Jews, Irish, Italians). The exception, of course is African-Americans.

No, in that Melani23 phrases it imprecisely. Plenty of people have noticeable sub-Saharan phenotype but are considered White. And plenty of people born and raised in Africa are considered White. One famous case, that of Mostafa Hefny, is of a man who is both sub-Saharan in phenotype and African-born and raised, and yet has been ruled to be White by the U.S. courts, despite his insistence that he is Black. A more precise phrasing would be, "The only criteria to be White in America is to NOT be African-American."

Already addressed that strawman


A claim that is contradicted by:


Mexican-Americans are not Mexicans and campaigning for legal protection for Hispanics who were of European ancestry does not mean the Mexican indigenous peasants were classified as White.

This has less to do with a Hispanic escape clause, and more to do with the fact that ambiguous features usually use the default White. In other words , most Hispanics or others who do not specify race but aren't definitely Asian, Black or White, will be classified as White. In fact, in missing children's site only 12 children were classified as Am Ind. And Hispanics aren't given that option because they aren't "American". So they are typically classed as White Black or Biracial. The default, unless specified being "White OR Hispanic". There also were 12 "Black or Hispanic".

The only categories OFFERED by that website to report a lost child are:
All, Am. Ind. Asian, Biracial, Black, Black/Hisp, Unknown, White, White/Hisp. So for someone who is Hispanic they are forced to either choose Black or White.
It is sheer stupidity, but not one chosen by Hispanics, but by the site's parameters. In the FBI website even worse. Only 4 people reported as Native American. So unless they know the person identifies as Black or Asian or Biracial or clearly looks more Black or Asian than anything they are going to classify the person as White, Hispanic or not.

I wonder why the Hispanics have to "escape" from anything. I don't believe they do. They are proud of their past.

Omar