Mexican Americans: Difference between revisions

| religions = '''Majority'''<br>[[Catholic Church in the United States|Catholicism]]<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/08/on-religion-mexicans-are-more-catholic-and-often-more-traditional-than-mexican-americans/|title=On religion, Mexicans are more Catholic and often more traditional than Mexican Americans|first=Juan Carlos|last=Donoso}}</ref><br>'''Minority'''<br> [[Protestantism]], [[Evangelical Christianity]], [[Jehovah's Witnesses]], [[Irreligion]]<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/04/13/among-u-s-latinos-catholicism-continues-to-decline-but-is-still-the-largest-faith/#:~:text=As%20of%202022%2C%2043%25%20of,down%20from%2067%25%20in%202010 | title=Among U.S. Latinos, Catholicism Continues to Decline but is Still the Largest Faith | date=13 April 2023 }}

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| image = File:Americans with Mexican Ancestry by state.svg

| image_caption = Percent of population of Mexican descent in 2010<ref name="Multicultural America">{{cite book |doi=10.4135/9781452276274.n570 |chapter=Mexican Americans |title=Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia |year=2013 |last1=García |first1=Justin |isbn=9781452216836 |s2cid=153137775 }}</ref>

| chapter = 3 Prerequisite cases| page = 61}}</ref><ref name="Haney-Lopez1">{{cite book| author = Haney-Lopez, Ian F.| title = White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race| publisher = New York University| year = 1996| chapter = Appendix "A"}}</ref>

 

 

Although Mexican Americans were legally classified as "white" in terms of official federal policy, socially they were seen as "too Indian" to be treated as such.<ref name=ManifestDestinies>{{cite book|author=Gomez, Laura E.|title=Manifest Destinies|publisher=NYU Press|date=Feb 6, 2018}}</ref> Many organizations, businesses, and homeowners associations and local legal systems had official policies in the early 20th century to exclude Mexican Americans in a racially discriminatory way.<ref name="autogenerated2"/> Throughout the Southwest, discrimination in wages was institutionalized in "White wages" versus lower "Mexican wages" for the same job classifications.<ref name="autogenerated2"/> For Mexican Americans, opportunities for employment were largely limited to guest worker programs.<ref name="autogenerated2">{{cite web |url=http://www.understandingrace.org/history/society/post_war_economic_boom.html |title=RACE – History – Post-War Economic Boom and Racial Discrimination |publisher=Understandingrace.org |date=1956-12-21 |access-date=2014-01-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130818185124/http://www.understandingrace.org/history/society/post_war_economic_boom.html |archive-date=2013-08-18 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

 

The ''bracero'' program, begun in 1942 during World War II, when many United States men were drafted for war, allowed Mexicans temporary entry into the United States as migrant workers at farms throughout California and the Southwest. This program continued until 1964.<ref name="autogenerated1"/><ref name="autogenerated11">{{Cite web|url=http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=173707|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929122851/http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=173707|url-status=dead|title=JS Online: Filmmaker explores practice of redlining in documentary|archivedate=29 September 2007}}</ref><ref name="Pulido 53">{{cite book|last=Pulido|first=Laura|title=Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles|page=53|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-24520-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CzarnBhJiZUC&pg=PA53 |year=2006}}</ref>

 

While both Mexican American and African American minorities were subject to segregation and racial discrimination, they were treated differently. Segregation is the physical separation of peoples on the basis of ethnicity and social custom historically applied to separate African Americans and Mexican Americans from Whites in Texas. Racial attitudes that supported segregation of African Americans probably arrived in Texas during the 1820s in company with the "peculiar institution," slavery. Anglo-Americans began extending segregation to Mexican Americans after the Texas Revolution as a social custom. Tejanos formed a suspect class during and after the revolution, and that fact led to a general aversion of them. After the Civil War, segregation developed as a method of group control. For both minority groups, segregation existed in schools, churches, residential districts, and most public places such as restaurants, theaters, and barber shops. By the latter years of the nineteenth century, institutionalized segregation flourished legally in places with a visible Black population and was extended informally to Tejanos. Most Texas towns and cities had a "Negro quarter" and a "Mexican quarter."