Anti-Mexican sentiment

Part of a series of articles on Discrimination General forms Racism · Sexism · Ageism Religious intolerance · Xenophobia Specific forms Social Ableism · Adultism · Biphobia · Classism Elitism · Ephebiphobia · Gerontophobia Heightism · Heterosexism · Homophobia Lesbophobia · Lookism · Misandry Misogyny · Pediaphobia · Sizeism Transphobia Against cultures American · Arab · Armenian Australian · Canadian · Catalan Chinese · English · European · French German · Igbo · Indian · Iranian · Irish Italian · Japanese · Jewish · Malay Mexican · Pakistani · Polish Portuguese · Quebec · Roma Romanian · Russian · Scottish Serbian · Turkish Against beliefs Atheism · Bahá'í · Catholicism Christianity · Hinduism · Judaism Mormonism · Islam · Neopaganism Protestantism New religious movements Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime Genocide (examples) · Ethnocide Ethnic cleansing · Pogrom · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Blood libel · Black Legend · Paternalism Police brutality Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Hate groups · Kahanism Ku Klux Klan · Nativism Neo-Nazism · American Nazi Party South African National Party Supremacism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights Women's / Universal suffrage LGBT rights · Feminism Masculism · Men's / Fathers' rights Children's rights · Youth rights Disability rights (Inclusion) Autistic rights · Equalism Policies Discriminatory Race / Religion / Sex segregation Apartheid · Redlining · Internment Anti-discriminatory Emancipation · Civil rights Desegregation · Integration Equal opportunity Counter-discriminatory Affirmative action · Racial quota Reservation (India) · Reparation Forced busing Employment equity (Canada) Law Discriminatory Anti-miscegenation · Anti-immigration Alien and Sedition Acts · Jim Crow laws Black codes · Apartheid laws Ketuanan Melayu · Nuremberg Laws Anti-discriminatory Anti-discrimination acts Anti-discrimination law 14th Amendment · Crime of apartheid Other forms Nepotism · Cronyism · Colorism Linguicism · Ethnocentrism · Triumphalism Adultcentrism · Gynocentrism Androcentrism · Economic Related topics Bigotry · Prejudice · Supremacism Intolerance · Tolerance · Diversity Multiculturalism · Oppression Political correctness Reverse discrimination · Eugenics Racialism · Speciesism WikiProject Discrimination Discrimination Portal

Anti-Mexican sentiment refers to hostility or fear against Mexico, people of Mexican citizenship or descent, or Mexican culture.

Hostility against Mexican-Americans

Throughout U.S. history, Mexican Americans have endured negative stereotypes among the American people.^[1] Such stereotypes have long circulated in the media.^[2]

Racial stereotypes have amounted to discrimination against Mexican Americans through much of the 20th century.

1840's to 1920's

After the United State's victory over Mexico in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty required Mexico to cede over half its land to the United States in exchange for $15 million. The Treaty of Gualdalupe Hidalgo also guaranteed that Mexican citizens living in ceded lands would retain property rights and would be given United States citenzship if they remained in ceded lands for at least one year. However, the property rights of Mexicans were ignored by the United States government and local officials. Mexicans were systematically forced from lands which their families had held for generations in many cases.^[3]

The lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest has long been overlooked in American history. This may be due to the fact that most historical records categorized Mexican, Chinese, and Native American lynching victims as white.^[4] It is estimated that at least 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928 (this is a conservative estimate due to lack of records in many reported lynchings).^[5] Mexicans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic is second only to that of the African American community during that period, which suffered an average of 37.1 per 100,000 population.^[6] Between 1848 to 1879, Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population. These lynchings cannot be excused as merely "frontier justice"--of the 597 total victims, only 64 were lynched in areas which lacked a formal judicial system.^[7] The majority of lynching victims were denied access to a trial while others were convicted unjustly.

During the California Gold Rush, as many as 25,000 Mexicans arrived in California. Many of these Mexicans were experienced miners and had great success mining gold in California. Some Anglos perceived their success as a threat and intimidated Mexican miners with violence. Between 1848 and 1860, at least 163 Mexicans were lynched in California alone.^[8]One particularly infamous lynching occurred on July 5, 1851 when a Mexican woman named Josefa Segovia was lynched by a mob in Downieville, California. She was accused of killing a white man who had attempted to assault her after breaking into her home.^[9]

The Texas Rangers were also known to brutally repress the Mexican-American population in Texas. Historians estimate that hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were killed by the Texas Rangers.^[10]

Anti-Mexican mob violence and intimidation resulted in Mexicans being displaced from their lands, denied access to natural resources, and becoming politically disenfranchised.

1930's

The Mexican American community has also been the subject of widespread immigration raids, both during the Great Depression, during which federal authorities deported more than 500,000 individuals (approximately 60 percent of which were actually United States citizens), and in the post-war McCarthy era, in which the Justice Department launched Operation Wetback.^[11][12][13]

1940's

According to the National World War II Museum, between 250,000 and 500,000 Hispanic Americans served in the Armed Forces during WWII. Thus, Hispanic Americans comprised 2.3% to 4.7% of the Army. The exact number, however is unknown as at the time Hispanics were classified as whites. Generally Mexican American World War II servicemen were integrated into regular military units. However, many Mexican American war veterans were discriminated against and even denied medical services by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs when they arrived home.^[14] In 1948, war veteran Dr Hector P. Garcia founded the American GI Forum to address the concerns of Mexican American veterans who were being discriminated against. The AGIF's first campaign was on the behalf of Felix Longoria, a Mexican American private who was killed in the Philippines in the line of duty. Upon the return of his body to his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, he was denied funeral services because he was Mexican American.

In the 1940s, viciously racist imagery in newspapers and crime novels portrayed Mexican zoot suiters as disloyal "foreigners" or murderers attacking White-Anglo police officers. Uniformed sailors and zoot suiters clashed on the streets of Los Angeles, the tension culminated in 1943 when a mob of 500 sailors and civilians entered East Los Angeles and attacked young Mexican-Americans (zoot suiters and non zoot suiters alike) in an incident known as the Zoot Suit Riots.^[15]

Mexican American school children were subject to racial segregation in the public school system. They were forced to attend "Mexican schools" in California. In 1947, the Mendez v. Westminster ruling declared that segrating children of "Mexican and Latin descent" in Orange County and the state of California was unconstitutional. This ruling helped lay the foundation for the landmark Brown v Board of Education case which ended racial segregation in the public school system.^[16]

1950's-1960's

Many organizations, businesses, and homeowners associations had official policies to exclude Mexican Americans. In many areas across the Southwest, Mexican Americans lived in separate residential areas, due to laws and real estate company policies. This group of laws and policies, known as redlining, lasted until the 1950s, and fall under the concept of official segregation.^[17][18] In many other instances, it was more of a general social understanding among Anglos that Mexicans should be excluded. For instance, signs with the phrase "No Dogs or Mexicans" were posted in small businesses and public pools throughout the Southwest well into the 60's.^[19]

Present

In modern times, organizations such as neo-nazis, white supremacist groups, American nationalist and nativist groups have all been known and continue to intimidate, harass and advocate the use of violence towards Mexican Americans and other ethnic Latinos in the population.^[20] Racial slurs such as wetback are used to refer to illegal immigrants. Pejorative terms such as anchor baby are frequently used by the conservative media to refer to US born Mexican American children whose parents entered the United States illegally.^[21]

Other organizations seeking to apprehend immigrants that have crossed into the United States illegally have also been accused of discrimination. It has recently been reported that members of Neo-Nazi organizations have participated in demonstrations by the Minuteman Project and other anti-immigration organizations.^[22][23][24]In 2006, it was revealed that Laine Lawless, former Minuteman Project member and founder of Border Guardians (an an anti-Illigal immigration organization), sent emails to leaders of the National Socialist Movement (a neo nazi organization) in which she encouraged violence against "illegals" and Spanish speaking individuals.^[25]

References

Topics on racism
History of racism	Apartheid • The Holocaust • Racism in the United States • Anti-racism • Civil rights movement
Racist ideologies	White supremacy • Black supremacy • Social Darwinism • Nazism • Aryanism
Acts of racism	Institutional racism • State racism • Racial profiling • Racism by country • Hate speech • Racial segregation • Stereotype • Scientific racism • Slavery • Crime of apartheid
Racial violence	Ethnic cleansing • Hate crime • Race war • Genocide • Lynching
Racism against groups	American Indians • Arabs • Armenians • Blacks • Chinese • Iranians • Irish • Italians • Japanese • Jews • Mexicans • Poles • Roma people • South Asians • Whites
Racist groups	Ku Klux Klan • Neo-Nazis • Grey Wolves • South African National Party • Nation of Islam
Anti-racist groups and movements	NAACP • Anti-Defamation League • Anti-Fascist Action • Civil Rights Movement • Southern Poverty Law Center

Donate to Wikimedia