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Mexican Americans are citizens of the United States of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans account for 9% of the country's population. About 26.8 million Americans have listed their ancestry as Mexican as of 2006. {Link without Title} Mexican Americans trace their ancestry to Mexico and Mesoamerica , a country located in North America; the Southwest United States ; bounded on the north by the United States; and many different European countries, especially Spain . Most Mexican American settlement concentrations are found in metropolitan and rural areas across the United States, with the highest concentrations in the Southwest , and the Midwest . Los Angeles , Albuquerque , Chicago , San Diego , Houston , Santa Ana and San Antonio are particular areas for large Mexican American communities. Other cities in the Upper Midwest with thriving Mexican American communities are , Louisiana and North Carolina . Growing populations (mostly consists of recently arrived immigrants from Mexico) are also present in other parts of the rural Southeastern United States , in states such as Georgia , Oklahoma , Tennessee , Alabama and Arkansas . A growing population is also present in urban areas such as Washington, D.C. , New York City , Miami and Philadelphia . HISTORY OF MEXICAN AMERICANS See Also: History of Mexican-Americans Mexican American history is wide-ranging, spanning more than four hundred years and varying from region to region within the United States. In settlers who arrived in the Southwest during Spanish and Mexican colonial times. Approximately ten percent of the current Mexican American population can trace their lineage back to these early colonial settlers. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761587500_1/Mexican_Americans.html As early as 1813 the Tejanos who colonized and the Santa Anna regime. {Link without Title} Author John P. Schmal wrote of the effect Texas independence had on the Tejano community: "A native of San Antonio, Juan Seguín is probably the most famous Tejano to be involved in the War of Texas Independence. His story is complex because he joined the Anglo rebels and helped defeat the Mexican forces of Santa Anna. But later on, as Mayor of San Antonio, he and other Tejanos felt the hostile encroachments of the growing Anglo power against them. After receiving a series of death threats, Seguín relocated his family in Mexico, where he was coerced into military service and fought against the US in 1846-1848 Mexican War. Californios were Spanish speaking residents of modern day California who were either of Mexican or Spanish descent or Anglos and Native Americans who became integrated into the society before the California Gold Rush . Relations between Californios and Anglo settlers were relatively good until military officer John C. Fremont arrived in California with a force of 60 men on an exploratory expedition in 1846 . Fremont made an agreement with Comandante Castro that he would only stay in the San Joaquin Valley for the winter, then move north to Oregon . However, Fremont remained in the Santa Clara Valley then headed towards Monterey . When Castro demanded that Fremont leave California, Fremont rode to Gavilan Peak , raised a US flag and vowed to fight to the last man to defend it. After three days of tension, Fremont retreated to Oregon without a shot being fired. With relations between Californios and Anglos quickly souring, Fremont rode back into California and encouraged a group of American settlers to seize a group of Castro's soldiers and their horses. Another group, seized the Presidio Of Sonoma and captured Mariano Vallejo. William B. Ide was chosen Commander and Chief and on July 5th, he proclaimed the creation of the Bear Flag Republic . On July 9th, US forces reached Sonoma and lowered the Bear Flag Republic's flag then replaced it with a US flag. Californios organized an army to defend themselves from invading American forces after the Mexican army retreated from California. The Californios defeated an American force in Los Angeles on September 30 , 1846 , but were defeated after the Americans reinforced their forces in Southern California. The arrival of tens of thousands of people during the California Gold Rush meant the end of the Californio's ranching lifestyle. Many Anglo 49ers turned to farming and moved, often illegally, onto the land granted to Californios by the old Mexican government.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/peopleevents/p_coronel.html The United States first came into conflict with Mexico in the 1830s, as the westward spread of Anglo settlements and of slavery brought significant numbers of new settlers into the region known as Tejas, then part of Mexico. The Mexican-American War , followed by the Treaty Of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, extended U.S. control over a wide range of territory once held by Mexico, including the present day states of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California. Although the treaty promised that the landowners in this newly acquired territory would enjoy full enjoyment and protection of their property as if they were citizens of the United States, many former citizens of Mexico lost their land in lawsuits before state and federal courts or as a result of legislation passed after the treaty. Even those statutes intended to protect the owners of property at the time of the extension of the United States' borders, such as the 1851 California Land Act, had the effect of dispossessing Californio owners ruined by the cost of maintaining litigation over land titles for years. While Mexican Americans were once concentrated in the States that formerly belonged to Mexico — principally, California , Arizona , New Mexico , Colorado and Texas — they began creating communities in San Diego , Los Angeles , San Francisco , Denver , Dallas , Houston and Chicago and other steel producing regions when they obtained employment there during World War I . More recently, Mexican immigrants have increasingly become a large part of the workforce in industries such as meat packing throughout the Midwest , in agriculture in the southeastern United States, and in the construction, landscaping, restaurant, hotel and other service industries throughout the country. Mexican American identity has also changed markedly throughout these years. Over the past hundred years Mexican Americans have campaigned for voting rights, stood against educational and employment discrimination and stood for economic and social advancement. At the same time many Mexican Americans have struggled with defining and maintaining their community's identity. In the 1960s and 1970s, some Latino and Hispanic student groups flirted with Nationalism and differences over the proper name for members of the community — Chicano/Chicana , Latino/Latina , Mexican Americans, or Hispanics became tied up with deeper disagreements over whether to integrate into or remain separate from Anglo society, as well as divisions between those Mexican Americans whose families had lived in the United States for two or more generations and more recent immigrants. RACIAL AND ETHNIC CLASSIFICATION OF MEXICAN AMERICANS Although the majority of Mexican Americans are Mestizos , there are also those of full-blooded White Hispanic ancestry and those of full-blooded Amerindian ancestry. There are also significant, yet often overlooked, numbers of Mexican Americans of Mulatto , Zambo , or full-blooded African ancestry. Mexican Americans form the largest White Hispanic group in the United States, with around half of all persons of Mexican or Mexican American origin in the U.S. checking ''white'' to register their race (in addition to stating their Mexican national origin). http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/cenbr01-1.pdf Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2000 Before the United States' borders expanded westward, New World regions dominated by the Spanish Empire in the 16th century held to a complex Caste system that classified persons by their fractional racial makeup and geographic origin.23 ''See Casta .'' As the United States' border expanded, the Census Bureau changed the traditional racial classification methods for Mexican Americans under United States jurisdiction. The Bureau's classification system has evolved significantly from its inception:
Politics and debate of racial classification Throughout U.S. History , Mexican Americans have been socially classified as "White" and "non-white" by United States people. Census criteria and legal constructions generally classify them as white. In times when Mexicans were uniformly allotted white status, they were permitted to intermarry with what today are termed "non-Hispanic whites" (unlike blacks and Asians), however, registrars often informally denied marriage licenses to Mexicans who they believed looked too dark to marry an Anglo.http://books.google.com/books?id=EypC4KRNR9oC&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=anti+miscegenation+mexican&source=web&ots=WSGVELWSM0&sig=JrAVv7bWJotQboswzLKUAgWp-JA#PPP1,M1 Mexican Americans could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas , especially San Antonio . They ran the state politics and constituted most of the elite of New Mexico since colonial times. However, property requirements and English literacy requirements were imposed in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas in order to prevent Mexican Americans from voting. Some eligible voters were intimidated with the threat of violence if they attempted to exercise their right to vote.http://www.iwantmyvote.com/recount/history/ They were also allowed to serve in all-white units during founded the American GI Forum to address the concerns of Mexican American veterans who were being discriminated against. All Mexicans were legally considered "white" because of early treaty obligations to Spaniards and Mexicans for citizenship status at a time when white-ness was considered a prerequisite for U.S. citizenship. Although Mexican Americans were legally classified as White, many organizations, businesses, and homeowners associations had official policies to exclude Mexican Americans. In many areas across the Southwest, Mexican Americans lived in separate residential areas, due to laws and real estate company policies. This group of laws and policies, known as Redlining , lasted until the 1950s, and fall under the concept of official segregation.http://www.understandingrace.org/history/society/post_war_economic_boom.htmlhttp://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=173707 In many other instances, it was more of a general social understanding among Anglos that Mexicans should be excluded. For instance, signs with the phrase "No Dogs or Mexicans" were posted in small businesses and public pools throughout the Southwest well into the 60's.http://www.neta.com/~1stbooks/press3b.htm Today, Mexican Americans are divided. Many Mexican Americans consider themselves "Non-White", and many Mexican Americans consider themselves White, as 48% of all Mexican Americans checked the box for White in the U.S. Census, which lists criteria and legal constructions and the self-identification of many Mexican Americans as white. See Also: White Hispanic#Representation and debate See Also: White American See Also: Race (United States Census) ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ISSUES Illegal immigration issues Illegal Mexican immigrants have long met a significant portion of the demand for cheap labor in the United States. Fear of Deportation keeps 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. Many employers, however, have developed a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude, indicating a greater comfort with or casual approach toward hiring illegal Mexican nationals. In May 2006, millions of illegal immigrants, Mexicans and other nationalities, walked out of their jobs across the country in Protest to proposed changes in immigration laws (also in hopes for amnesty to become naturalized citizens like similar the Immigration Reform And Control Act Of 1986 , which granted citizenship to Mexican nationals living and working illegally in the US). See Also: 2006 United States immigration reform protests In the United States, in states where Mexican Americans make up a large percentage of the population, such as populations, many types of blue-collar workers are often assumed to be Mexican American or Mexican immigrants (even though far from all actually are. -source U.S. census, American community survey.) because of their frequent 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 American Hispanic laborers who have been displaced because of both cheap Mexican labor and ethnic profiling, and African American workers claimed the Mexican laborers are advancing further than native-born blacks, this caused some racial tensions between black and Mexicans in the Southwest US. It has been recently noted that many Mexican immigrants are climbing the socioeconomic ladder, but this was also the case in the past by many previous Mexican immigrants who came (legally or not) and worked hard towards their way up the ladder for the " American Dream ". DISCRIMINATION, RACISM AND STEREOTYPES Throughout U.S. history, Mexican Americans have and continue to endure various types of and Latinos in general are often discriminated against because of appearance, cultural customs and use of the Spanish Language . Many ethnic stereotypes have long circulated in Media and Popular Culture . http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p111385_index.html Mexican Americans have also found themselves targeted by Hate Group s, such as the Ku Klux Klan . It is estimated that at least 597 Mexicans and Mexican Americans were lynched between 1848 and 1928 in the Southwest. Mexican Americans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic is second only to that of the African American community during that period, which suffered an average of 37.1 per 100,000 of population. Between 1848 to 1879, Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population.http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-111897839.html The Mexican American community has also been the subject of widespread immigration raids, both during the Great Depression , during which federal authorities deported more than 500,000 individuals (approximately 60 percent of which were actually United States citizens), and in the post-war McCarthy Era , in which the Justice Department launched Operation Wetback .http://campusapps.fullerton.edu/news/2005/valenciana.htmlhttp://www.counselingkevin.com/the_economy/index.html In the 1940s, imagery in newspapers and crime novels portrayed Mexican American Zoot Suit ers as disloyal foreigners or murderers attacking White-Anglo police officers and servicemen. Anti-Mexican American and African American race riots in Los Angeles during the 1940s are known as the Zoot Suit Riots . Mexican American school children were subject to racial segregation in the public school system. They were forced to attend "Mexican schools" in California. In 1947, the Mendez V. Westminster ruling declared that segrating children of "Mexican and Latin descent" in Orange County and the state of California was unconstitutional. This ruling helped lay the foundation for the landmark Brown V Board Of Education case which ended racial segregation in the public school system.http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=432 In modern times, organizations such as (a neo nazi organization) in which she encouraged violence against "illegals" and Spanish speaking individuals.http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=54 See Also: Racial segregation See Also: Lynching See Also: Illegal immigration to the United States See Also: Racism Xenophobia SOCIAL STATUS AND ASSIMILATION Barrow (2005) finds increases in average personal and household incomes for Mexican Americans in the 21st century. U.S. born Mexican Americans earn more and are represented more in the middle- and upper-class segments more than recently arriving Mexican immigrants. It should be noted, however, that Mexican Americans are not well represented in the professions. Most of the immigrants from Mexico come from the lower classes with lineage of family employed in lower skilled jobs. Thus, the kind of Mexican that arrives in the United States doesn't have a history of being involved in professions. Recently, some professionists from Mexico have been migrating, but to make the transition from one country to another it involves a lot of re-training and re-adjusting to conform to US standards--i.e. professional licencing is required. Huntington (2005) argues that the sheer number, concentration, linguistic homogeneity, and other characteristic of Hispanic immigrants will erode the dominance of English as a nationally unifying language, weaken the country's dominant cultural values, and promote ethnic allegiances over a primary identification as an American. Testing these hypotheses with data from the U.S. Census and national and Los Angeles opinion surveys, Citrin et al. (2007) show that Hispanics acquire English and lose Spanish rapidly beginning with the second generation, and appear to be no more or less religious or committed to the work ethic than native-born non-Mexican American whites. Moreover, a clear majority of Hispanics reject a purely ethnic identification and patriotism grows from one generation to the next. South et al. (2005) examine Hispanic spatial assimilation and inter-neighborhood geographic mobility. Their longitudinal analysis of seven hundred Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigrants followed from 1990 to 1995 finds broad support for hypotheses derived from the classical account of minority assimilation. High income, English-language use, and embeddedness in Anglo social contexts increased Latino immigrants' geographic mobility into Anglo neighborhoods. US citizenship and years spent in the United States were positively associated with geographic mobility into more Anglo neighborhoods, and coethnic contact was inversely associated with this form of mobility, but these associations operated largely through other predictors. Prior experiences of ethnic discrimination increased and residence in public housing decreased the likelihood that Latino immigrants would move from their original neighborhoods, while residing in metropolitan areas with large Latino populations led to geographic moves into "less Anglo" census tracts. South, Scott J.; Crowder, Kyle; and Chavez, Erick. "Geographic Mobility and Spatial Assimilation among U.S. Latino Immigrants." ''International Migration Review'' 2005 39(3): 577-607. Issn: 0197-9183 However, Mexican and Hispanic communities are said to be more solid or separated than ever by an increase of "enclavism" in the late 20th century, a new form of self-segregation of minority groups, esp. in urban centers and older suburbs at the same time. It's been said Anglo and Mexican American communities throughout history of the Southwest states were like "separate worlds" as the U.S. and Mexico are separate countries, especially before the 1960s since residential segregation and discrimination became illegal. See Also: List of Mexican American communities See Also: Hispanic and Latino politics in the United States REFERENCES
FURTHER READING 8 William A. Nericcio (2007). "Tex(t)-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the 'Mexican' in America"; utpress book ; book galleryblog John R. Chavez (1984). "The Lost Land: A Chicano Image of the American Southwest", New Mexico University Publications. NOTES SEE ALSO
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