In this Slate article, Jamelle Bouie provides an insight into the Latino answer to the question “Who is white?”. Bouie begins his analysis with the debate that resulted from racially labeling George Zimmerman, after the Trayvon Martin shooting. Zimmerman is half-Peruvian but was labeled as white-Hispanic, which conservative news outlets claim was used to maintain the issue as race-based. This incident leads into Bouie’s greater point, where he questions who gets to identify as white in today’s shifting demographics and where Latinos stand when answering that question.

Findings from the Pew Research Center show changing demographics in America, where it is projected only 47 percent of Americans will identify as white by 2050. Latinos will grow to be 28 percent of the American population and will be the driving force behind the “demographic makeover.”

The policing of racial lines has shifted since the 19th century. Bouie argues that whiteness has changed into from being Anglo-Saxon exclusive to offering an opening for minority groups. This option is opening up for the Latinos in America, but does not offer a place for all those that identify as Latino. As Bouie points out, there are many different ethnicities that fall into this group, and not all can or will be able to identify as white. As seen in past inclusion of migrant groups into whiteness, their dark-skinned counterparts are not offered the same.

Bouie’s piece conveys questions of the racialization of Latinos in America and what that means in terms of identity for future generations.

Reading Summary:

Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Migra! (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010), 125-234

There was a ton going on in this week’s reading! While Karen and I are going to focus mainly on the portion concerning Mexican Americans (their attitude toward Border Control, the immigrants, and themselves, as well as how they were treated and perceived by others), here is a brief-(ish!) rundown of some of the other main points of this second chunk of Migra!

• Border control tactics shifting from overt violence to a more passive “power to let die”(p132), through the construction of fences strategically planned to end in the roughest terrains of the border.
  
• Border Control officers beginning to view undocumented migrants working for American agribusiness-men as analogous to slaves, and typing them all as “Josés”(p138): rural, poor, unskilled, abused men. Officers saw deportation as their way of “liberating” these “Josés”. Later, as the focus of America shifted to law and order, BCOs stopped viewing Mexican migrants as Josés and instead cast them all as criminals.
  
• Operation Wetback ’54: A comprehensive and aggressive attempt to deport all undocumented Mexican workers. Supported by Mexican Americans in hopes that less illegal workers (at the mercy of their employers) would mean more opportunities for them, and rebelled against by American agribusiness-men (such as the Fletcher family (p153-55)) who resented losing cheap labor and continual property raids.
• Required Mexican Americans to submit to their own harassment, as Mexican-appearance was the main/only ground upon which citizenship was questioned. During this time as well Mexican Americans were seeking “whiteness”, and divorcing themselves from the migrants even more strongly.
• The Bracero Program (’42-64) offered selective legality to able-bodied men. The details of Bracero contracts caused a host of issues:
  
• The exclusion of women and children led to an increased flow of these undocumented parties over the border as they tried to join their husbands/fathers as well as find work for themselves. This led to gendered deportation (deporting women and children entailed more guilt and was thus carried out less aggressively, a practice of which migrants took advantage)
• Agribusiness-men north of the border used exclusively undocumented labor before Operation Wetback, but afterwards, a new method of identification and review (I-100 cards) (p188) as well as lax enforcement of program details allowed farmers to continue to mistreat and underpay their Braceros.
• Structural Changes in Border Control methods: airlifts into central Mexico, busses dropping immigrants into unfamiliar communities from whom they would be less able to get help to cross back over the border (after Operation Wetback these structural shifts remained in place, and along with the Border Control training school in El Paso, centralized the idea of “Border Control” at the US-Mexico Border)