Racial Identity and Racial Treatment of Mexican Americans

Abstract

How racial barriers play in the experiences of Mexican Americans has been hotly debated. Some consider Mexican Americans similar to European Americans of a century ago that arrived in the United States with modest backgrounds but were eventually able to participate fully in society. In contrast, others argue that Mexican Americans have been racialized throughout U.S. history and this limits their participation in society. The evidence of persistent educational disadvantages across generations and frequent reports of discrimination and stereotyping support the racialization argument. In this paper, we explore the ways in which race plays a role in the lives of Mexican Americans by examining how education, racial characteristics, social interactions, relate to racial outcomes. We use the Mexican American Study Project, a unique data set based on a 1965 survey of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio combined with surveys of the same respondents and their adult children in 2000, thereby creating a longitudinal and intergenerational data set. First, we found that darker Mexican Americans, therefore appearing more stereotypically Mexican, report more experiences of discrimination. Second, darker men report much more discrimination than lighter men and than women overall. Third, more educated Mexican Americans experience more stereotyping and discrimination than their less-educated counterparts, which is partly due to their greater contact with Whites. Lastly, having greater contact with Whites leads to experiencing more stereotyping and discrimination. Our results are indicative of the ways in which Mexican Americans are racialized in the United States.

Racial Identity and Its Impact on Job Applicants

“…Feagin and Sikes (1994) had similar findings for African Americans who were educated as increased education led to more exposure to fewer minorities and increased experiences of prejudice. Ortiz and Telles's (2012) work highlights that racial identity may impact Latina applicants once they interview or have the job, but the current study shows that expressions of racial identity in a cover letter or resume material may prove to limit access and perhaps their starting salary. Understanding how appraisals are affected by applicant racial identity is interesting, but delving into how this may affect applicants in a more tangible way is critical as well.…”

“…This study revealed that strongly identified Latina applicants had the lowest job-related attribution scores. Ortiz and Telles (2012) found that strongly identified, highly educated Mexican employees experienced more racial backlash and mistreatment than weakly identified Mexicans. Ortiz and Telles (2012) used phenotype expressions of racial identity (skin color -darker skin is more highly identified) in their study.…”

“…Ortiz and Telles (2012) found that strongly identified, highly educated Mexican employees experienced more racial backlash and mistreatment than weakly identified Mexicans. Ortiz and Telles (2012) used phenotype expressions of racial identity (skin color -darker skin is more highly identified) in their study. Feagin and Sikes (1994) had similar findings for African Americans who were educated as increased education led to more exposure to fewer minorities and increased experiences of prejudice.…”

Latinos Need to Stay in Their Place: Differential Segregation in a Multi-Ethnic Suburb

“…Scholars like Yancey argue that since a portion of Latinos identify as white on surveys and in the United States census, the defining color line is Black/non-Black [43]. Yet there is a significant amount of literature demonstrating that Latinos continue to be racialized [44][45][46][47]. Moreover, scholars such as Lee and Fiske have found that Asians are considered competent while Latinos are not [48].…”

Ageism and Stigma

“…This is consistent with findings made by GrayLittle and Hafdahl (2000), who found that African Americans, as compared with Whites, have a higher incidence of psychological problems. Researchers (Mui & Shibusawa, 2008;Ortiz & Telles, 2012) find that, similar to African Americans, Mexican Americans and Asian Americans experience psychological problems that are often linked to their encounters with discrimination by the White majority.…”