Throughout history, Latinos have struggled to determine where they fit in relation to the black and white binary. I think the Slate article, in bringing in immigration history, points to the ways that Mexicans as an ethnic group were socially constructed in the United States as "not white", and how some Mexicans did in fact fight to make a claim to whiteness. Because there have been several waves of Mexican/Central American migration, however, Mexican and/or Latino identity is impossible to fixate. Unlike other groups (e.g. Irish) that did not experience recurring waves of migration, ethnic Mexicans and Central Americans' racial status in the United States becomes unassimilable. There is an ongoing stratification of Latinidad, and racial hierarchy within Latino identity that makes it difficult to treat the group as a whole. In the future, then, it's possible that Latino, or even Mexican as an ethnic identity will no longer be a monolith. Is it possible that the future might hold a legal/formal hierarchy of Latinidad that distinguishes between Latinos whose families have been in the U.S. for generations and those who just arrived recently?

This page comments on:

Comment on this page