The Study of Racialism

[This thread was split off from Mexican-Boricua family changed schools forever in this forum. -- FWS]



I've shown previously in my debates with Powell how this was not always so.

Salsassin again:




Jaime is lying again. I provided all my sources before, as Frank acknowledged. Any reasonable person would accept them. Jaime refuses to accept them because he has made vicious racial attacks on me and Susanne Heine since the first days of this forum. Take that into consideration when judging whatever he says.

Texas Mexicans and the Politics of Whiteness
Ariela J. Gross
http://onedroprule.org/viewtopic.php?t= ... nsus+white

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.

This is a well-documented historical fact. Read for yourself. Don't depend on Jaime's lies.

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.

Her false claims have been addressed before.
http://onedroprule.org/viewtopic.php?p=18919#18919
http://onedroprule.org/viewtopic.php?p=18648#18648

Folks, read the articles I posted and tell me if Jaime isn't a liar.

You guys are arguing past each other as usual. A.D. is saying that the census bureau switched to considering them White (after a political campaign to accomplish just that). She is correct. Jaime is saying that, despite that, some did not consider themselves White. He is also correct. Give it a rest or I wll close the thread.

Anyone interested in the politics of "racial" categorization of Mexican-Americans should read items 11, 12, and 13 of A.D.'s bibliography of Whiteness studies. Those are the appropriate sources. In addition to those three, I also like George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University, 1993) and Charles H. Montgomery, The Spanish Redemption: Heritage, Power, and Loss on New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande (Berkeley: University of California, 2002) because they show the dramatic difference between an impoverished urban counter-culture and an upper-crust politically dominant landowning group, both of which consider themselves Mexican-Americans.

No, I stated and proved the historical fact that the Census Bueau classified all Mexican Americans as "white." Jaime denied this fact. He DID NOT say, "Yes, the Census Bureau classified Mexican Americans as "white," but many of them did not consider themselves "white." I KNOW that is true, but that is NOT what Jaime said. He simply claimed that my statement about Mexican Americans and legal whiteness was totally untrue. That was deliberate on his part and part of his campaign of harassment.

Valid point. Defacto segregation and lack of self determination as White by the lower classes of Mexicans vs middle upper classes with more European admixture, make a dejure Whiteness in courts which seldom applied to the reality of daily life for poor Mexicans moot.

Neither of these statements are of how the census Bureau classified Latinos, nor even if Upper and Middle class Mostly Eurodescent Mexicsan Americans lobbied to be classified as White.
Both these posts indicate that Indigenous Mexican American auto classified themselves as white and sought to get themselves classified as White.

Furthermore, Phil adressed this claim as well:


Frank and I further discussed how ethnic identification in Mexican American populations varied by region.

Straw man. 1930 was before the census was ordered to change them to White. Indeed, their being classified as shown in the example is precisely what drove the successful campaign to get them changed. Please consider this a warning. (2.3)

.
Please provide examples showing such designations for Mexican Americans after the Bureau changed and before it all became self-defined in 1960. You have 24 hours. (3.2)

Salsassin:


Apples and oranges. Officially, there are almost no "indigenous" Mexican Americans if "indigenous" means American Indian. Legally, Mexican Americans are not Indians if the "indigenous" ancestry comes from south-of-the-border.

It is a historical fact that the League of United Latin American Citizens and other organizations claiming to represent Mexican Americans lobbied to get all Mexican-Americans classified as white. They were even "white" in the state of Texas, where de facto discrimination against them was widespread. The Mexican government lobbied to have Mexicans recognized as "white" in the U.S. I doubt that they took an opinion survey of the poorest, darkest, Mexican-Americans before doing this, but that it totally irrelevant.

Negative. As I am just quoting Phil all I can say is that Phil stands corrected then. Still does not address the fact that plenty of indigenous Mexicans do not consider themselves White, have never sought to be classified as White, nor have they been treated as White, no matter what the census says. And that was claimed. And a 24 hour notice was given quite a few months ago to provide evidence for those statements and they were never provided.

Doesn't mean they are seen or auto identify as White. And at least in Nevada they are majority indigenous, as well as the most resnt surge of immigration from places like Guerrero.


No, it is not totally irrelevant because what lobbies seek and what happens in the streets don't always match. Furthermore it was you who claimed that Mexican Americans with little or no European ancestry claimed and lobbied to be classified as white. That was your claim, not mine. And that is a claim you have yet to provide evidence for.

A.D. made it clear that she agrees with that. What she is saying is that the Census Bureau was ordered to change and they did. Do you still challenge that? If not, then we are done. If so, the clock is ticking.


She has provided a great deal of evidence. The three books in her bibliography, that I recommended, tell the story. I guess the clock is still ticking.

That is a lie. Mexican-American organizations lobbied to have all Mexican-Americans classified as white regardless of ancestry or phenotype. This meant that even the darkest, 100% Indio Mexican was legally "white" on official documents in the United States. Whether they agreed with this is besides the point. They certainly never mounted any protest against being officially classified "white" that I have found.

Strawman Frank. No clock is ticking for me as I only stated Phil addressed her claim. The rest is a quote. Last I recall, you responded to Phil and you didn't give him any ultimatum. Furthermore, I have yet to see AD retract the statements that I just quoted of hers. Show me where she has retracted those statements and then we are done. if not all she is doing is denying she did those statements in the first place.



No she has not. Time to follow your own rules Frank please provide evidence that any of the three books in her bibliography deal with Mexican Americans of little or no European ancestry lobbying to be classified as White.

Prove that my statement was a lie. Furthermore, prove that Mexican American organizations were somehow popularly elected to represent Indigenous Mexicans and their desires for auto identification. Just because Jesse Jackson and the NAACP are very succesful in lobbying for Black Americans, doesn't mean they speak for all of them or that it is an indication that most agree with them. The fact of the matter is that most poor uneducated Mexican Americans have been largely unconfrontational. I doubt they would have cared either way how a census classified them. If they really even understood what a census was. It doesn't mean they identified as White, a claim you made.

no...only those that were not "definately of indian or other non-white race", were recorded as white. The enumerator instructions clearly state this in 1940, and 1950.

Neither of those was the point. The point was that the Census Bureau was ordered to reclassify Mexican-Americans as white, and complied, as a result of a lobbying campaign on behalf of Mexican-Americans. To suggest that the campaign was not supported by all Mexican-Americans is puerile and an example of the "true scotsman" fallacy.

Sorry, Jaime. I have read the history of this event and there is no doubt at all that it happened. Whether every, or even most, working-class Mexican-Americans even knew about it much less supported it is irrelevant. (I happen to think that the record shows that they did know about it and that the vast majority supported it enthusiastically, but this is beside the point.) If you still claim that the Census Bureau was not ordered to reclassify Mexican-Americans as white, or that it did not comply as a result of a lobbying campaign on behalf of Mexican-Americans, then the clock is still ticking on your substantiating this claim. And your use of the "true scotsman" fallacy does not do you credit.

Irrelevant. Mexican American organizations like LULAC claimed to represent the ethnic group as a whole, regardless of ancestry or phenotype.



It is obvious that Jaime is beyond reason on this issue.



The statement about Mexican American organizations being "popularly elected" is ridiculous. Again, the personal opinions that dark or uneducated Mexicans had about being legally "white" are not relevant. The federal census classified them as "white" as did state governments such as Texas. Anyone who denies this is divorced from reality. All Jaime has done is create strawman statements I never made and demand that I "prove" them. He doesn't want to address the books and articles I've referenced.