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How do we differentiate or categorize according to race in the United States? Is brown automatically Latino, black automatically African, yellow automatically Asian? Or does color tell us little to none about the nature of racialization? In this paper I want to talk about the race and ethnicity of Latino immigrants, and challenges they face when declaring their ethnic identity in the U.S.

The largest sub-group of Latinos in the U.S. is Mexicans. They are 60% of the Latino-American group, largely in part because Mexico shares a border with the U.S. (easy travel). The racial conceptualized in the U.S. is very black and white. You are either black or white, and the law of hypodescent meant that if you even had “one drop” of Black blood, you were Black. The concern of the U.S. was “avoid contamination” so they had anti-miscegenation laws for a very long time. There was such a time where race determined privilege or lack there of, and whether you received citizenship or not (1709-1954).

The second largest sub-group of Latinos into America is Puerto Ricans. They have been citizens of the U.S. since 1898, making their history very unique. The Puerto Rican migration experience produced a very dynamic population. With a mainland and island combination, where many Puerto Ricans flew back and forth to and from (transnational), they were able to reciprocate their culture. Place of origin didn’t mean place of birth, and there is strong Puerto Rican pride. On the U.S. race structure, Puerto Rican do don’t adapt racially. They feel strong nationalism that they are Puerto Ricans, or connected to their specific Province, but that is not on the census status.

New Mexican identity is also confusing. They have been citizens since 1848, since U.S. came to New Mexico (previously Mexico). Linguistically, they are mixed and relate more to Spanish. Their history is to want nothing to do with the negative connotations of being a Mexican-American, so they are sometimes labeled as “Spanish American” –a very forced and confused identity.

‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ are umbrella terms for Mexicans, Central Americans, South Americans, Caribbean’s and the Spanish. In 1977, the Statistics Directive #15 coins the different terms for categorizing ethnicities and along with that come up with ‘Hispanic.’ In order to apply civil rights laws, the government needed to be able to identify people. So where Hispanic is a more government generated term, Latino is more of a larger picture because it points to Latin America. Also, many individuals use the term Latino because it is actually a bottom-up or grassroots term.

Latin America had a very different race conceptualization than the U.S. There were many castes along the color lines and all were linked to class and money. There was greater attention to variety and diversity of possible mixtures. The goal of many countries was to absorb or weaken the “weaker” race (seen as people of color) so they could “better the race.” The goal of everyone was becoming more White. Class trumped race in status, so that the elite class could be considered White even if colored, as long as they where high on the social ladder (many times meaning being very wealthy).

Latinos are very confused by census. There is a consciousness of skin color and social hierarchy based on color, since there is such a strong desire to be White. Primary ID is country or origin/nationality, and secondary ID may reflect on culture.