Mexican Americans have always been racialized throughout the history of the United States and that abridged their participation in social life. Frequent stories about stereotyping and discrimination and the facts about educational disadvantages across several generations prove that the racialization is a reality.
The distinct racial notion “Mexican” was formed after the conquest of Mexican inhabitants on the territory of current U.S. Southwest (Ortiz, V. and Telles, E). The long history of Mexican Americans as labor migrants make them associate with the labors at the very bottom of the economic and racial hierarchy. During the 20th century the Mexicans with low level of education immigrated to the U.S.A. in order to fill the lowest paid jobs, for instance, they used their skills in agriculture, domestic work, and construction. This immigration throughout the twentieth century means that the Mexican-origin population in the U.S.A. consists of a great number of people who were born in the States. But even the later generations continued to face economic and educational disadvantages that were mentioned in Generations of Exclusion (Ortiz, V. and Telles, E).
Having low status and viewed as alien, Mexican Americans lag economically and educationally even if their families arrived at the States several generations ago. In most cases, Mexican Americans could not have been integrated into middle-class society and could not have got highly paid jobs. Discriminatory and unfair attitude to Mexican Americans went out of the frame of the economy. Throughout history, children from Mexican families were sent to separate schools. School segregation was often challenged in the court. But courts allowed the segregation of Mexican children because of their migrant status (Ortiz, V. and Telles, E).
The Mexicans have their roots in various races. They are the mix of Indigenous, African and European ancestry. That is why they are heterogeneous in the racial characteristics and range from having dark to light skin.
When asked about their race, Mexican Americans usually provide ambiguous responses to such questions. That signifies that they are ambivalent about being not white and uncertain about their race. The data published in Generations of Exclusion in 1965 shows that most Mexican Americans refer themselves to Spanish or Latin Americans (Ortiz, V. and Telles, E). Though, after the United States’ conquest of Mexican land in 1848 and getting de facto White racial status, Mexican Americans are seldom treated as White.
Though Mexican Americans were granted U.S. citizenship and got full rights, they were still relegated to low-status positions and were treated as second-class citizens.
Works cited
Ortiz, V. and Telles, E. “Racial Identity and Racial Treatment of Mexican Americans”. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 2013. Web. Accessed 03 March 2016 at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3846170/
