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The ethnonym Mexican American is an American of Mexican Descent. Mexican Americans account for 64% of the Hispanic or Latino population of the United States. [citation needed] Settlement concentration is overwhelmingly found in the Southwestern part of the United States. However, there are isolated concentrations of Mexican-Americans near the Chicago area and 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. In addition to the upper Midwest, Mexican American communities thrive in Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Missouri, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. A growing population is also present in urban areas such as New York City and Philadelphia. However, Mexican American citizens reside throughout the entire United States, and according to the U.S. census, about 26.5 million Americans listed their ancestry as "Mexican". [citation needed]

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[edit] Economic and Social issues

The economy has long needed service workers, manufacturing workers, farm laborers, and skilled artisans. Mexican workers have usually met those demands for cheap labor. However, fear of detection and deportation keep 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. Some employers, however, over the last decade, have developed a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude, indicating a greater comfort or casual approach toward hiring ethnic Mexican residents.

In the United States where Mexican Americans make up a significant percentage of the population, such as California and Texas, Mexican Americans almost exclusively occupy most blue-collar occupations, such as restaurant workers, janitors, truck drivers, gardeners, construction laborers, material moving workers, and other manual labor. In many of these places with large Latino populations, blue-collar workers are often assumed to be 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 Mexican American laborers who have been displaced as a result of both cheap Mexican labor and racial profiling.

[edit] Social mobility

The U.S. Census finds increases in average personal and household incomes for Mexican Americans, among all Latinos in the early 2000s. U.S. born Mexican Americans earn more and are represented more in the middle and upper-class segments than most recently arrived Mexican immigrants. [citation needed] It should be noted, however, that Mexican Americans are not well represented in the professions. Some have argued that this precipitates the need for affirmative action for Hispanics in general and Mexicans in particular.

[edit] Discrimination and Stereotypes

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Mexican Americans endured a high level of stereotypes, mainly negative enough to defame and insult a whole people in the media: As street criminals, poor drifters, "lazy peon" field workers, illegal "alien" immigrants or backward people). They are found on news reports, movies, television, comedy (offensive racial jokes) and music parodies. They amount to discrimination on Mexican Americans for most of the 20th century in obtaining employment, education, real estate and financial loans. However, some famous Mexican Americans like Chicano folk musician Lalo Guerrero made spoof of these stereotypes in a comical light, such as two of his songs "Yes, There are No Tortillas" and "No Chicanos on TV".

But, these assumptions came back violently and Mexican Americans paid the price in police brutality, physical harassment and run-ins with immigration officials, when in fact the suspect was actually an US citizen or here legally. Mexican Americans found themselves targeted by hate groups, from the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920's had a major influence in Texas; to the Neo-Nazis in the 1990's attacked several Hispanic individuals for looking "Mexican" or "illegal alien", but most victims are native-born citizens. The news media doesn't focus much on the impact of hate crimes against Mexican Americans, unlike the amount of attention on hate crimes on other minority groups.

[edit] Racial classification of Mexican Americans in the USA

Americans of Mexican heritage, like other minority groups, are defined differently at various times in the United States. In the 19th century, they are classified as white and allowed to naturalize, based upon an 1848 treaty. In 1930, nativists lobby to classify them separately on the census, to limit their immigration and reinforce their distinctness from whites. During World War II, as demand for Mexican labor grows, Mexicans are again classified as whites. In the 1970s, they are reclassified as "Hispanics." As census historian Hyman Alterman notes, the definition depends on political climate: "It was not an accident that in the census of 1930, persons of Mexican birth or ancestry were classified as 'nonwhite'. This was a policy decision, not a mistake. "Mexican Americans have held different forms of status at different times throughout the history of the United States, and during most times of the history of the United States, Mexicans have been considered racially non-White." Mexicans are largely considered non-white today, however according to the U.S. Census criteria and other governmental legal construction they are 'legally' white <ref> Ian F. Haney-Lopez, white by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University, 1996), Appendix "A". </ref> and in the last U.S census around half of them self-checked the box for white (in addition to stating their Hispanic national origin), though it is very possible that some who checked that box also had partial non-white ancestry. This American rule would place President Fox-Quesada whose parents are from Ireland (father) and from Spain (mother) as non-white even though the parents who were born in Europe would be white.

The 1930 U.S. census form asked for "color or race." The 1930 census enumerators were given these instructions: "write 'W' for White; 'Mex for Mexican [1], but from 1940 to the latter part of the century the instructions were: Mexicans.-Report "white" (W) for Mexicans unless they are definitely of indigenous or other nonwhite race. [2]

During the Great Depression anywhere from one to two million people were deported in a decade-long effort by the government to free up jobs for those who were considered “real Americans” and rid the county governments of “the problem.” The campaign, called the "Mexican Repatriation", was authorized by President Herbert Hoover and it targeted areas with large Hispanic populations, mostly in California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Illinois and Michigan. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended federal support when he took office, many state and local governments continued with their efforts. It left festering emotional wounds that for many have not healed. Estimates now indicate that approximately 60 percent of the people deported were children who were born in the United States and others who, while of Mexican descent, were legal citizens. Many of these people returned to the United States during the labor shortages of World War II. But racial animosity continued to a point racial violence against Mexican Americans took place, like in Los Angeles, June 1943 (see zoot suit riots).

In other U.S. regions, there was much less social stigma of intermarriage with Euro-Americans, mainly of ethnic communities who share the immigrant experience and both spouses are in the Roman Catholic church. In California, high rates of intermarriages involved Indian-American and Arab-American spouses are well documented. In California until the 1950

[edit] Mexican American neighborhoods and communities

Neighborhoods in many cities across America have developed significant and/or growing Mexican American populations. A few of these neighborhoods are:

[edit] Southern California

[edit] Elsewhere in California

[edit] Southwestern USA

[edit] Other communities with large Mexican American populations across the USA

Image:Cesar-chavez-USPS.jpg

[edit] Regions with large Mexican American populations across America

[edit] Southern California

[edit] Northern California

[edit] Southwestern US

[edit] References

  • Chavez, Linda. Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation Basic Books, (1991)
  • 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 0-8263-2199-2
  • 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)
  • 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
  • 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)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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