Racial Identity and Racial Treatment of Mexican Americans

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 supports 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.