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1. ESSAY: White Latinos, 6 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 1

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 ESSAY: White Latinos
Spring, 2003

Reporter
6 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 1 *

Length: 3055 words

Author: Ian Haney Lopez *

* Professor, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. This Essay is based on remarks given at
the Alianza Conference held on April 6, 2002, at Harvard Law School, and draws on some of the ideas developed in
IAN HANEY LOPEZ, RACISM ON TRIAL: THE CHICANO FIGHT FOR JUSTICE (2003). The copyright for this
Essay is held by the author. Permission to reproduce this Essay for classroom purposes is hereby granted.

Text

[*1] Who are the leaders in Latino communities? This question does not admit simple answers, for who counts as
a leader and what Latino identity entails are both contentious issues. Having said that, I contend that often Latino
leaders are white. I employ this hyperbole to emphasize my point that most of those who see themselves as leaders
of Latino communities accept or assert whiteness as a key component of their identity. This assertion of whiteness,
I argue here, facilitates the mistreatment of Latinos and buttresses social inequality. In this Essay I use the
experience of Mexican Americans and the Chicano movement to illustrate this dynamic, and also comment on the
aspiration to be white in the context of contemporary racial politics.

I. WHITE LATINO LEADERS

The majority of those who consider themselves leaders in Latino communities are white. I do not contend by this
that race is fixed or easily ascertained. 1 Nor do I mean that the Latino community is led by Anglos--that is, by
persons from the group historically understood as white in this country. Rather, Latino leaders are often white in
terms of how they see themselves and how they are regarded by others within and outside of their community.
Race's socially constructed nature ensures that racial identity is formed on multiple, sometimes contradictory levels.
Self-identification, group perception, and external classification all constitute axes of racial construction. In turn,
these axes encompass myriad criteria for determining racial identity. In this context, many Latino leaders believe
they are--and are understood to be--white by virtue of class privilege, education, physical features, accent,
acculturation, self-conception, and social consensus. True, these Latinos are rarely white in the sense that they are

1 See generally Ian Haney Lopez, The Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion, Fabrication, and Choice, 29
HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 1 (1994). For a discussion of Latino identity in racial versus ethnic terms, see Ian Haney Lopez, Race,
Ethnicity, Erasure: The Salience of Race to LatCrit Theory, 85 CAL. L. REV. 1143 (1997). See also MARTHA MENCHACA,
RECOVERING HISTORY, CONSTRUCTING RACE: THE INDIAN, BLACK, AND WHITE ROOTS OF MEXICAN AMERICANS
(2002).
 Page 2 of 5
6 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 1, *1

accorded the full range of racial privileges and presumptions [*2] Anglos reserve for themselves. But then, as with
all racial categories, there are various shades of white, and many Latino leaders are arrayed along this continuum.

II. MEXICAN AMERICANS

The claim by Latinos to be white is not a new one, as the history of Mexican American identity attests. Prior to the
Great Depression, the Mexican community in the United States was composed primarily of immigrants whose
political and social imagination was attuned to Mexico and eventual return. 2 During the economic catastrophe of
the Depression, however, Anglos scapegoated Mexicans and clamored for their expulsion. National, state, and local
governments responded with deportation campaigns that expelled over half a million persons, including many U.S.
citizens, amid tremendous hardship. 3 The result was not the eradication of the Mexican community, but rather the
solidification of a Mexican American identity. Those most likely to remain in the United States through the
calamitous 1930s included persons with the most developed employment, property, family, social, and cultural ties
to the United States. The Mexican community that remained developed a new identity as "Mexican Americans,"
asserting through that label a political and social philosophy centered on the claim to be quintessential members of
the U.S. polity.

Mexican American leaders demanded equality for their community and launched political and legal campaigns to
secure better treatment at the same time that they attempted to foster pride in their distinct origins. They also
asserted that Mexicans were racially white. 4 For instance, the most prominent Mexican American civil rights
organizations, including the League of United Latin American Citizens and the GI Forum, attacked segregation not
on the ground that this racial practice was morally wrong, but because Mexicans were ostensibly white. Employing
what they termed the "other white" strategy, these groups insisted that Mexican Americans were members of the
white race and that, consequently, no basis existed for subjecting Mexicans to racial segregation of the sort
imposed on blacks. 5

The Mexican assertion of a white identity reflected the cultural premium American society placed on being white. In
this context, Mexican [*3] claims of whiteness were more prevalent in those places where racial hierarchy was
most deeply entrenched--Texas, for instance, more than California, and rural towns more than cities. In addition, the
ideology of white identity better suited the middle class--teachers, business owners, and skilled craftspeople. In
both Mexico and the United States, fair features enabled upward mobility. As a result, middle-class Mexicans in the
United States were not only more acculturated, educated, and wealthy than other community members, but also
more likely to bear European features. In contrast, laborers and more recent immigrants from Mexico were often
darker and in other ways more distant from white ideals (for instance, by virtue of menial occupation, limited English
ability, or poor education), and thus less able and less likely to avail themselves of a white identity. Having said that,
it remains the case that Mexican Americans throughout the Southwest, in particular those who fashioned
themselves as community leaders, typically claimed for themselves a white identity.

Why does it matter that Mexican American leaders insisted that they were white? After all, they took pride in their
origins, were politically active, and sought to improve their communities' social, economic, and political standing.
We should acknowledge the politically progressive efforts of many Mexican Americans and eschew judgments that
do not take into account changed historical circumstances. Nevertheless, we must also be clear that those who

2 This discussion draws on MARIO T. GARCIA, MEXICAN AMERICANS: LEADERSHIP, IDEOLOGY, AND IDENTITY, 1930-
1960 (1989) and GEORGE J. SANCHEZ, BECOMING MEXICAN AMERICAN: ETHNICITY, CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN
CHICANO LOS ANGELES, 1900-1945 (1993).

3 See RICARDO ROMO, EAST LOS ANGELES: HISTORY OF A BARRIO 162 (1983).

4 See generally Neil Foley, Becoming Hispanic: Mexican Americans and the Faustian Pact with Whiteness, in REFLEXIONES
1997: NEW DIRECTIONS IN MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES 53 (Neil Foley ed., 1997).

5Strikingly, this was the argument advanced by LULAC in Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954), the first case to extend
Equal Protection doctrine to a Latino group. See Haney Lopez, Race, Ethnicity, Erasure, supra note 1, at 1164-66.
 Page 3 of 5
6 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 1, *3

claimed a white identity also held a corollary belief that certain categories of persons lived beyond the realm of
social concern or responsibility. Those beyond care included non-citizens and non-whites, in particular blacks, but
also many Mexicans.

The assertion of a white identity is at root an attempt to locate oneself at or near the top of the racial hierarchy that
forms an intrinsic part of U.S. society. To this extent, claiming a white identity does not disrupt but rather further
entrenches racial hierarchy. It adds legitimacy to the perception that whites fundamentally differ from non-whites,
that whites are superior and deserve the best, that non-whites remain inferior and deserve less, and that these
divisions reflect nature and not social norms. These concomitants of whiteness skewed Mexican American politics.

The Mexican American generation saw citizenship as a key attribute of whiteness and belonging, and feared that
the continued influx of Mexican immigrants--whom they perceived as poor, uneducated, and dark--undercut the
ability of Mexican Americans to assimilate as white persons. As a result, Mexican American civil rights
organizations insisted on citizenship as a prerequisite to membership and actively campaigned against "wetbacks."
The emphasis on white identity also manifested as racial antipathy toward blacks, ranging from a widespread
unwillingness to find common cause with African Americans to the expression of white supremacist ideas regarding
black inferiority. Finally, the celebration of whiteness caused many Mexican American leaders to accept the Horatio
Alger ideology that pictured social and economic progress as a function [*4] of individual effort. This led them to
condemn those members of the Mexican community who were forced by racism and structural injustice to the
margins of U.S. society. Whiteness was a Faustian bargain.

III. THE BROWN RACE

The Chicano movement challenged the notion of a white Mexican identity. Exasperated by a community politics that
stressed assimilation on the basis of white identity and yet failed to produce meaningful equality with Anglos, and
inspired by the racial pride of the Black Power movement, many Mexicans came to embrace a politics of cultural
distinctiveness and to view themselves as members of a brown race. 6 To be sure, the leaders of the Chicano
movement did not initially emerge from the same community segments that most forcefully asserted a white
identity. Instead, members of the working class predominated among Chicano activists, who also included vatos
locos and pintos--persons formed, respectively, by their participation in street culture or by their status as former
prisoners. Nevertheless, during the Chicano movement, broad sectors of the Mexican community came to accept
and assert the idea that they were proud members of a brown race. In the intervening years, this legacy waned, so
that today members of the Mexican community in the United States are evenly split, with roughly half claiming they
are white, and the other half insisting otherwise. 7 Still, the move to an explicitly brown racial identity among
Mexicans has had important political ramifications.

The Chicano movement had many failings, including the tendency to define brown identity in terms of nineteenth-
century ideas that tied race to ancestry, culture, and group destiny, as well as to patriarchal gender roles. Chicano
militants tended to believe that race was fixed by blood, and in turn that race--that is, nature--determined aspects of
culture, group history, and gender relations. Nevertheless, in adopting a non-white identity, the Chicano movement
worked against some of the more pernicious aspects of Mexican American racial politics. The movement saw the
community as united by oppression and so rejected the notion that citizenship formed a pertinent divide. The
rejection of citizenship as a dividing line continues, as few Latino leaders today support a politics of hostility toward
recent immigrants. With slightly less enduring success, the Chicano movement supplanted the aspirations of the
middle-class with the concerns [*5] of the poor in the center of Latino political consciousness. Today's leaders are
more likely than their Mexican American antecedents to believe that structural inequalities distort the life chances of

6Some argue that this shift from a white to a non-white identity should be traced to the pachuco culture that emerged among
Mexican Americans during the 1940s. To be sure, the hip, alienated style of the pachucos rejected assimilation as well as
whiteness. Nevertheless, pachuquismo never included the positive articulation of a non-white or brown racial identity. This task
was left to the Chicano movement.
7 RODOLFO F. ACUNA, ANYTHING BUT MEXICAN: CHICANOS IN CONTEMPORARY LOS ANGELES 9 (1996) (stating that
in 1992 46.9% of foreign-born and 55.4% of U.S.-born persons of Mexican descent classified themselves as white).
 Page 4 of 5
6 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 1, *5

their constituents and to work to undo such embedded disadvantages. With regard to the anti-black stance of the
previous generation, Chicano militants initially marched shoulder-to-shoulder with African Americans, though this
solidarity has long since evaporated. Now division and suspicion often characterize Latino and black relations.
Despite its varying successes, the Chicano movement provides important lessons, for once again the lure of a white
identity calls out to many Latinos, including community leaders.

IV. THE NEW WHITES

Racial dynamics continue to change. Historically, Anglo society constructed Mexicans and other Latino groups as
non-white. But now various Latino and Asian communities, for instance the Cubans and the Japanese, increasingly
hold nearly white status. Growing numbers of minority individuals--those with fair skin, wealth, political connections,
or high athletic, artistic, or professional accomplishments--can virtually achieve a white identity. This is not to say
that these groups and individuals are fully white, for that racial designation, like all others, operates on a sliding
scale. Nevertheless, the boundaries of whiteness are expanding to incorporate communities and individuals who
would have been construed as non-white just a few decades ago. In turn, this expansion fuels the growing sense
among many, particularly among those who regard themselves as white, that not only racism but race are now
artifacts of the past. The fair treatment and high status accorded some minorities ostensibly proves that our society
has transcended race and racism.

But race and racism continue to distort almost every social encounter and warp almost every facet of our social
structure. While whites have preserved their superior status, in part by extending privileges to some, many in our
society remain victimized by the brutal politics of race. Our society still constructs whole populations as non-white.
Large numbers of us remain beyond the care of the rest, impoverished and incarcerated, disdained and despised,
feared and forsaken. Our prison populations testify to the persistently destructive power of race. The statistics,
although familiar, remain chilling. In 1972, at the end of the Chicano movement, 200,000 persons were incarcerated
in state and federal prisons. In 1997, that number stood at 1.2 million, with another 500,000 persons in local jails
awaiting trial or serving short sentences and a further 100,000 juveniles locked up in youth detention facilities
across the country. 8 The United States now incarcerates people--mainly minorities--at six to ten [*6] times the
rate of other industrialized nations. 9 Half of all inmates are black and probably one-quarter are Latino. 10

However harrowing these numbers, the effort to criminalize and incarcerate minorities is only a small part of a larger
process of deindustrialization and wealth transfer to the rich that has defined the decades since the civil rights era.
This deepening immiseration relies on racial politics. Race explains why we see criminal justice responses to crises
in public health, education, and job creation as well as sustained attacks by legislators on a broad array of social
services and government wealth redistribution efforts. Race--now couched in the language of criminals, or of
immigrants, or of terrorists--is the scare tactic that unifies a "white" majority behind a cohort of political leaders who
primarily serve an emerging plutocracy. Crack addicts, welfare queens, gang bangers, illegal aliens, enemy
combatants, and terrorists are the racial images thrown down repeatedly to justify a politics of inequality that
continually favors middle-and upper-class whites.

In this context, individuals and communities continue to reap a premium by being white. The closer one comes to
being white, the less susceptible one is to the gross mistreatment and disregard accorded minorities, and the more
access one has to the material rewards and positive presumptions reserved for our nation's racial elite. One would
be crazy to want to be anything other than white. As a result, two-thirds of all recent immigrants--the vast majority of
them from Asia and Latin America--identify themselves as white. 11 So does half of the Latino population. 12

8 MARC MAUER, RACE TO INCARCERATE 9, 19 (1999).

9 Id. at 9.

10 Id. at 119.

11 Solomon Moore & Robin Fields, The Great "White" Influx, L.A. TIMES, July 31, 2002, at A1.
 Page 5 of 5
6 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 1, *6

Claiming to be white achieves measurable advantages for some individuals and communities, but these
advantages come at a steep price for others. The Latino community, to remain a community, must reject the lure of
white identity and instead adopt a solidarity based on being nonwhite. I do not mean a solidarity rooted in claims of
a putative biological connection, for this was the chief mistake of the Chicano movement. Rather, I mean cohesion
founded on the basis of a political identity. Nonwhites in the United States suffer a subordinate status. Asserting a
white identity may provide one way to escape that inferior position, yet this solution solidifies the root structures of
racial hierarchy and ensures the continued subordination of others. In contrast, claiming a non-white identity
commits one to the political goal of ending racial oppression for all. We should assert a non-white identity as a
means of fostering political opposition to racial status inequality. 13 Latinos and their leaders should not [*7] pine
for the privileges of whiteness, but should embrace a political commitment to end racial hierarchy.

Harvard Latino Law Review

Copyright (c) 2003 Harvard Latino Law Review

End of Document

12 Id.

13 Cf. LANI GUINIER & GERALD TORRES, THE MINER'S CANARY: ENLISTING RACE, RESISTING POWER,
TRANSFORMING DEMOCRACY 15 (2002) ("The political race project is an effort to change the framework of the conversation
about race by naming relationships to power within the context of our racial and political history. This approach reveals race as a
political, not just a social, construction.").