Discrimination Against and Among Mexican Americans in the United States

More than a decade ago, Gutiérrez (1995) commented on what was then, already, an unprecedented growth in the United States ethnic Mexican minority group, a population phenomenon that is attributed mainly to immigration. In recent years, as the United States Administration continues to consider potential approaches to immigration reform, much of note on this subject appears in regular news broadcasts. These days, Mexican Americans comprise approximately two thirds of the total Hispanic population in the United States (Schaefer, 2006). Even as Latino immersion into United States society becomes denser and more diverse, Mexican immigrants do not necessarily find themselves any more welcome in American society today than they did at any point prior to the new millennium.

At one time, Mexican Americans played a prominent role in United States affirmative action policies, but the beginning of the end started with a 1996 Supreme Court decision that found such policies to be unconstitutional (Schaefer, 2006). According to Schaefer, this decision began a domino effect that has since impacted many schools and companies and will likely impact more in the future. Thus, Mexican Americans have already lost a part of what little advantage they held in gaining education and employment opportunities. According to 2002 data, about 22 percent of Latinos survive in poverty conditions, with a never-narrowing income gap between them and their White counterparts (Schaefer, 2006).

Mexican Americans and other minority groups have, increasingly, been subject to the burgeoning English-only movement in the United States, a largely anti-immigrant sentiment that seeks to unify the nation through a single, official language (Mora, 2006). As Schaefer (2006) stated, "The myth of Anglo superiority has rested in part on language differences" (17). Instead of unifying peoples of different languages, as is supposedly the goal, such policies often only serve to further alienate and segregate Mexican Americans and other minority groups from the dominant American culture (Mora, 2006). While many Mexican Americans cling to their native language as a barrier against infringing American culture, in turn, many Americans tend to look down at a lack of English proficiency as a symptom of ignorance or laziness, exacerbating misconceived stereotypes and worsening race relations.

Racism is not always relegated to the dominant group. At the time of his writings, Gutiérrez (1995) was one of few researchers who took an interest in how Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants viewed one another in terms of social and cultural differences, or what he referred to as "love/hate relationships" (4) between the factions. Gutiérrez observed symptoms of a sub-level of prejudice within a population composed of the same ethnicity but separated by different views of and claims on the land called America. In essence, there are those Mexican Americans who successfully assimilate into American culture and look down on their newly immigrated counterparts who do not as easily enter the fold. On the flip side, there are those Mexican immigrants who fear and distrust what appears, to many, to be an attempt to forget and forego their language, culture, and heritage.

The undertones of racial clashes do not occur only between White people and their minority groups of choice. Those undertones also ring loud and clear within many minority groups, at least for those who choose to listen. For many Mexican Americans living in the United States today, these challenges are ongoing and perpetuated from within as well as without.

References

Gutiérrez, D. G. (1995). Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Mora, J. K. Debunking English-only Ideology: Bilingual Educators are Not the Enemy. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/Prop227/EngOnly.htm

Schaefer, R. T. (2006). Racial and Ethnic Groups (10th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall