The difference that ‘one drop’ makes: Mexican and African Americans, mixedness and racial categorisation in the early twentieth century

Abstract

Using archival materials, I will examine how the mixed ancestry of African and Mexican Americans was treated, both in law and discourse, in distinctly contrasting ways in the early twentieth century. I will argue that black and Mexican subjects were positioned in qualitatively different ways in relation to whiteness. Furthermore, the singular treatment of 'black blood' as a social toxin, a construction emerging within the specific circumstances of American slavery, also informed the subjective positioning of Mexicans, as well as shaping some Mexican Americans' responses to racism.

From Multiracial to Monoracial: The Formation of Mexican American Identities in the U.S. Southwest

“…Indeed, northern New Mexico contained perhaps the largest concentration of individuals who were the most successful in arguing they were of Spanish rather than Mexican, that is, multiracial, origins (Gratton and Merchant 2016). Nevertheless, European American opinions and attitudes throughout the region and in the national imaginary constructed Mexican Americans as Other and nonWhite (Aragon 2014;Fox and Guglielmo 2012). Mexican American identity in the Southwest, like Whiteness itself, was refracted through class, nationality, language, and culture (Barrera 1979;Jewell 2015).…”