Why is that now in the US anybody of Latin American descent is considered to be a minority(Even if they are fully white such as Marco Rubio or actress Joanna Garcia)?Why aren’t they just looked at another white ethnic like people of Italians,Greeks,Portuguese or French ancestry are?In the not so distant past anybody from Latin America who was not black or fully Amerindian was considered to be a white ethnic(Like people of aforementioned ancestries)are.Why not anymore?
Because it’s easier to think about things if we put them in categories rather than a continuum? Of course not all Latin or Hispanic people aren’t the same. Many Argentinians and Uruguayans are of fully Italian or Spanish or other European descent. And even then, many people consider someone from Barcelona to be Latin. The classification often has no genetic/race basis, but is based on linguistic similarities (then some put in Portuguese/Brazilian…)
I think he means hispanic as defined in the U.S. Hispanic isn’t composed of any particular racial, ethnic, or religious group and yet it is still considered to be a minority group. Charlie Sheen’s original last name is Estevez because he has ancestry from Spain so he is considered just white and not hispanic. If his family had stopped over in Mexico for a generation or two, he could consider himself to be hispanic and a minority member in some contexts. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for many specific circumstances.
I assume the original designation is due to the significant mixing of the peasant class of Mexicans (and central America, and to some extent some of South America) between Spanish settlers and local Indians. In some places, like Brazil, there is also some african slave heritage n the mix.
However, in fine white fashion, the label has been applied to anyone who has some connection, Spanish, Cuban, Argentinian, whatever - even if they have more racially in commmon with caucasians than with mestizo or aboriginal heritage.
OTOH, you don’t need to be non-white to be discriminated against. Bigotry seems to be remarkably equal-opportunity; jut ask the Italians, the Irish, the Slavics…
Let me clarify my question,I am not asking you to define the terms hispanic/latino.What I’m asking why is it that in the past anybody from L.A or of L.A ancestry who was not black or fully Amerindian was considered to be just another white(Like somebody of French,Greek or German extraction)but now all people of Latin American descent are considered to be minorities and nonwhite even if they are fully white such as in the case of Cristina Saralegui or Ted Cruz as seen below
“Minority” is a word that is used in US English for something that has little to do with numeric proportions anymore. It really means “person many would categorize (even if, as especially is the case ith “Hispanic/Latino”, the category itself is a hodgepodge, genetically and otherwise) as belonging to a group of residents who, for various historic reasons, have not, as a group, been able to enjoy fully the opportunities (educational, economic, professional, etc.) which are afforded the “core group” of US residents.”
The definition of “core group” has, as you mentioned, expanded somewhat over the decades from its WASP base, to include Northern European Catholics, been-here-for-several-generations Mediterranean Europeans, and Jews.
There is a group of people of Hispanic descent who, if I understand correctly, generally prefer to NOT think of themselves as a “minority”, to better distingish themselves from the more recently arrived, lower-socioeconomic-class Hispanic immigrants: the families living along the Rio Grande in New Mexico (around Santa Fe and Albuquerque) whose Spanish anscestors were there well before the gringos showed up.
I just mention this as an interesting friction point which highlights some of the ambiguities, contradictions, and unwarranted assumptions you allude to in your question.
I live in a California town that’s about a third Hispanic and by that I mean people who immigrated from Mexico (some several generations ago). Most of them look and likely are a lot more Mexican Indian than Spanish. These are the people who fill most of the lower-rung jobs around here, but they are also represented in the middle class.
When a Catholic family from Spain moved here for a year – the husband was a professor and had some temporary position at the university – they first went to one of our Spanish language Masses but immediately switched to an English language Mass, because they had nothing in common with the ‘Hispanic’ population except the language. They did not look, act, dress, or think like them, and I think felt rather aggrieved that we (anglos) would think to put them in the same category.
Considered by whom? He certainly fits the definitions of hispanic used by the US government, which definition includes all people of Spanish culture or origin. (cite: White House Office of Management and Budget; other government agencies have similar or identical wording)
I would venture to say “considered by those who don’t realize his real last name is Estévez”. Which just goes to show how arbitrary the whole thing is, and how dependent on the mindset (at that moment) of the observer rather than any inherent facts about the observed.
(This particular case is especially borderline, since the Sheen Brothers have only one Spanish grandparent, I believe.)
I remember the Italian teacher at my high school many years ago, apparently told off another teacher for equating her, a northern Italian, with the low-life from southern Italy that were the more common immigrants to Toronto (and also, apparently, a lot of Sicilians etc. migrated to northern Italy looking for jobs and got equal treatment there.) We also had a (northern) Italian in our class who was blonde - quite common up there, apparently.
I’m going to have to go with the obvious and say that, in the US, people of Latin American descent are considered minorities because they actually are a minority. There are parts of the US where they are in the majority, but people of Hispanic/Latino descent make up only about 15% of the total US population.
I don’t believe it was the case in the past that, in the US, a Latin American was considered just as “white” as a German. Maybe as white as a Greek, but I don’t think Greeks (or other Mediterraneans) used to be considered “really” white.
As far as the US Census is concerned, “Hispanic or Latino” is an ethnicity and not a race. For official purposes a person can be both white and Hispanic/Latino, or Hispanic/Latino and any other race. I have no doubt that there are plenty of individuals who don’t consider Latinos to be white, no matter what they look like, but I expect that more people in the US today believe “looks white = white” than did in the past.
I think a way to rephrase this question is to ask why some groups (i.e. Irish or Italians) have undergone a transformation from “stigmatized minority” to “part of the white majority,” while other groups, such as Mexicans, have not.
Italian-Americans, like Mexican-Americans, are predominantly Catholic, darker of hair, eye, and skin than the typical WASP (but with plenty of exceptions in both cases), and were regarded with suspicion by the white majority during the initial waves of immigration. Italians, however, were able to transform their image within a generation or two (though the “Sopranos” stereotypes are still around). (I keep editing this sentence: sorry -->) Mexicans’ image hasn’t changed as much, I don’t think.
I suspect the answer is because Italians and Irish stopped coming in such large numbers, but the proximity of Mexico means that even if Mexicans aren’t migrating en masse, they might at any time. So it’s convenient to keep them labelled as ethnically “other”, even if we have to contort our definitions of race and ethnicity to keep them in that “not us” category.
Mexicans have existed continuously in the Southwest long before 1848, and the U.S. conquest and exploitation of Mexico.
Is it possible that immigration takes on a different meaning in this case, when it was originally the Mexicans who were over run by Anglos?
Fully one half of the land mass of the republic of Mexico was expropriated by the U.S. after the Mexican war, and the treaty de Guadalupe Hidalgo was broken in articles, which further dispossessed the Mexican people who ended up on the U.S. side of the border.
Could it be that Mexicans do not seem to be mainstreaming into the white American majority
as quickly as other groups, because there may be some residual bitterness about territorial conquest and defeat by Anglos?
I really don’t think so. For one thing, I think your premise about mainstreaming is false—Mexicans do assimilate* over the generations, in the sense that US-born Mexicans and their children and grandchildren etc. are fluent in mainstream US language and culture, just like the Italians and Irish etc. For another, most people outside of the Southwest (and many people in it) are unaware of the history you mention. For a third, the majority of Latinos in the US are 20th and 21st century immigrants; the fact that many US Latinos have been in what is now the US for centuries doesn’t necessarily mean much to them.
*I hope it’s obvious, but “assimilate” doesn’t mean “merge”—I’m well aware that some people keep their original language and culture alive for multiple generations. The point is that Mexicans are no different than other groups except in size and proximity to the nation of origin.