‘And You Need Me to Be the Token Mexican?’: Examining Racial Hierarchies and the Complexities of Racial Identities for Middle Class Mexican Americans

This article examines the racial identities of middle class Mexican Americans, and provides a focus on how racial oppression plays a significant role in the formation, negotiation, and organization of these identities. This article sheds light on how Mexican Americans continue to experience racism d...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Critical sociology Vol. 42; no. 4-5; pp. 679 - 698
Main Author: Delgado, Daniel J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.07.2016
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects:
Business hours
Ethnic identity
Hierarchies
Hispanic Americans
Identity
Mexican Americans
Middle class
Negotiation
Oppression
Race
Race relations
Racial identity
Racism
Social classes
White people
Mexico
racial hierarchy
middle class
Hispanic
Latino
racial identity
sociology
ISSN:0896-9205, 1569-1632
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article examines the racial identities of middle class Mexican Americans, and provides a focus on how racial oppression plays a significant role in the formation, negotiation, and organization of these identities. This article sheds light on how Mexican Americans continue to experience racism despite being middle class and achieving socioeconomic parity with many middle class whites. Drawing on 67 semi-structured open-ended interviews (one to three hours each) in Phoenix and San Antonio this article shows how middle class Latinos/as negotiate racialized identities and racial oppression. This research concludes that these middle class Mexican Americans utilize different identity practices to navigate racism and racial hierarchies. These practices are attempts to access white coded middle class resources and to maintain and/or shift their positions in the race and class hierarchies of the USA.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0896-9205
1569-1632
DOI:10.1177/0896920514543153