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In southern MN we knew no Black people in the Fifties and Sixties. They just weren't there. Young people I talk to have a difficult time believing this. And Black people had no history of slavery in the State. The first Black child in MN was the son of a trapper trader and his indigenous wife.
Until the Sixties we had very little race consciousness at all and I think that was a good thing. Other than the basics of history by the time I met the first POC in college I had very little preconceived notions of Black people and was able to learn from direct experience.
But we were acquainted with the Tex-Mex farm laborers who arrived every spring to help in the fields and the corn packing factory. Many were housed in apartments above buildings downtown and the rest had accommodations on the farms they had returned to for years.
It was observable that there was an "otherness." They stayed in their groups and we in ours but I wouldn't attribute that so much to what is called racism today and more to their nomadic nature and obvious poverty.
We kids looked forward to the last few weeks of school when their children would join us and had a lot of questions for them. It was our first interactive experience with another culture for most of us.
They were soft-spoken, polite and clean and had a values system surprisingly similar to that of our community. So while our parents didn't encourage any romantic relationships (we had them or thought we did) there was no open antipathy towards them. They were a needed and necessary part of the community.
But Catholic! LOL It wasn't race as much as religion where the line was drawn in our little Lutheran town. And of course economic factors played a part as well.
That's my impression from my youth. And I think it may be pretty accurate as so many of those same families kept coming back over the years that their grand-children and great-grandchildren are now well-established members of communities all over south central MN. They seem to do well adjusting to American culture.
I've always thought the most egregious factor in race relations was never skin tone but rather behavioral and the more shared values, the easier it is to blend.
I did see a MN license plate a couple of years ago that read Aztlan, though, and thought Hey, wait a minute.
The question then comes into play were those of known say Italian background treated as "white" when among "WASP" without any colored folks to focus prejudice on?
I would think so, since the Irish and the Germans and Catholics each spent time in the penalty box of prejudice.
In southern MN we knew no Black people in the Fifties and Sixties. They just weren't there. Young people I talk to have a difficult time believing this. And Black people had no history of slavery in the State. The first Black child in MN was the son of a trapper trader and his indigenous wife.
Until the Sixties we had very little race consciousness at all and I think that was a good thing. Other than the basics of history by the time I met the first POC in college I had very little preconceived notions of Black people and was able to learn from direct experience.
But we were acquainted with the Tex-Mex farm laborers who arrived every spring to help in the fields and the corn packing factory. Many were housed in apartments above buildings downtown and the rest had accommodations on the farms they had returned to for years.
It was observable that there was an "otherness." They stayed in their groups and we in ours but I wouldn't attribute that so much to what is called racism today and more to their nomadic nature and obvious poverty.
We kids looked forward to the last few weeks of school when their children would join us and had a lot of questions for them. It was our first interactive experience with another culture for most of us.
They were soft-spoken, polite and clean and had a values system surprisingly similar to that of our community. So while our parents didn't encourage any romantic relationships (we had them or thought we did) there was no open antipathy towards them. They were a needed and necessary part of the community.
But Catholic! LOL It wasn't race as much as religion where the line was drawn in our little Lutheran town. And of course economic factors played a part as well.
That's my impression from my youth. And I think it may be pretty accurate as so many of those same families kept coming back over the years that their grand-children and great-grandchildren are now well-established members of communities all over south central MN. They seem to do well adjusting to American culture.
I've always thought the most egregious factor in race relations was never skin tone but rather behavioral and the more shared values, the easier it is to blend.
I did see a MN license plate a couple of years ago that read Aztlan, though, and thought Hey, wait a minute.
Oh yes Minnesota! In my genealogy searches I found lots of family members living in Minnesota. And yes, they would go up there as migrant workers and looks like they loved it and stayed. It does look nice -
They probably didn't blend in back in the 60s and 70s but now it seems they have passed that barrier I guess you can call it and have blended racial families.
Oh yes Minnesota! In my genealogy searches I found lots of family members living in Minnesota. And yes, they would go up there as migrant workers and looks like they loved it and stayed. It does look nice -
They probably didn't blend in back in the 60s and 70s but now it seems they have passed that barrier I guess you can call it and have blended racial families.
I never realized how wide that barrier was as a kid. Their traditional diet would have been very limited in a town full of Norwegians. There was no Catholic church. And clothing and household supplies must have been an exorbitant price for them. None of their music on the radio. It must have been a real sacrifice on the part of the parents and lonesome for them.
It took them generations of hard work and deprivation but they kept at it. They wanted education for their children. Seeing qualities like that in a culture makes acceptance easier. That's progress and took cooperation.
Now many are well established middle-class citizens here. Of course being middle-class isn't the bed of roses it used to be. I think some of them who stayed in Mexico and work in the tourist industry may be better off the way things are going. Heck of a deal.
As I recall, Hispanic American were segregated by color, same as anyone else. At LSU in the 50s here were hundreds of students from Mexico, Cuba, and other Latin countries, but all judged to be "white" if of sufficienly light complexion. In other words, "looked like they were from Spain". .
^^^^Exactly! I was going to write something similar but you beat me to it.
It was all about skin color.
For years, my parents avoided going south of the Mason-Dixon Line. As kids, we thought it was due to my parents being against segregation (which was true). However, over time we realized there was more to it than that. My Hispanic father was dark-skinned enough to have been affected by the "whites only" signage.
I once had a co-worker whose mother was full blooded Cherokee and her father was white, Growing up in TX, she told me that when she and her siblings were with their mother, they couldn't go anywhere that said "whites only". However, if they were with their father, they weren't restricted from going anywhere.
When my father's brother, who was living in the deep south at the time, met a blonde-haired blue-eyed woman and they decided to get married. When they went to get a marriage license, the clerk took one look at my uncle and let them know that due to miscegenation laws in that state, they would have to go to another state to get married. In the end, that's what they did.
So, yes, this wasn't about ethnicity but instead it was all about skin color.
Mexican-Americans faced a variety of discrimination and racism. They were called f'n wetbacks, even if their families had been here for generations, and they found it hard to get well paying jobs. My wife's family has origins in Mexico, but have been in Texas for 5 or generations, depending on which branch of the family tree you look at. My wife's aunt changed her name from Raquel to Rachel, so she wouldn't be considered Mexican - she's very light skinned and has light eyes.
After I married my wife, I was sort of shocked to learn about racism in the Mexican-American culture. Her Dad's family considered themselves Spanish, not Mexican, and looked down on my mother in law because she was "too Mexican". They also didn't think too highly of Blacks. My father in law used the n word until the day he died, and I never heard him refer to Blacks as Blacks.
Per the bolded --- Many are surprised to discover that there is racism in the Hispanic ranks. When I was a teen, my family lived in PR for a while. As kids, it surprised us to see interracial marriages among PRs and that no one so much as batted an eye over that. On the Mainland, we lived in a very racist town where majority of the residents would not accept interracial marriages.
In fact, if a dark skinned person married a lighter skinned person, they were considered to have married up. Never mind that the darker skinned person was better educated and wealthier. That attitude in PR was quite common.
However, subtle racism did exist in PR. All one had to do was look at the wealthiest people and those who held elected office. They all were fair-skinned people. Others referred to them as "blanquitos". Being the lightest skinned member of my family, more than once when I was out with my Dad, people would come up to him to tell them that they liked my coloring. Then, they would ask if my mother was a PR. My Dad would thank them for the compliment, then tell them that my mother wasn't a PR.
Some counties in New Mexico had segregated schools after the 1920s and some did not. There was a state law passed that authorized segregated schools. Mostly the counties near Texas did. Of course, what few blacks there were would go to the nonwhite schools. I have heard stories that different kids in the same Hispanic family might go to different schools depending on skin lightness. That seems very weird and peculiarly arbitrary even in a peculiar practice. Remember, there were Indian schools where Indian kids were sent to live away from their families. There were only 360,000 people in NM in 1920 and NM only became a state in 1912. Hispanos and Hispanics from Mexico were probably in the majority of the state population at that time (now 48%).
^^^^Exactly! I was going to write something similar but you beat me to it.
It was all about skin color.
No. Dark-skinned Mexicans were considered white for all purposes of Jim Crow segregation. If you watched the first hand accounts, they were obviously "brown" Mexicans and were honest that they could use white public accommodations.
Quote:
For years, my parents avoided going south of the Mason-Dixon Line. As kids, we thought it was due to my parents being against segregation (which was true). However, over time we realized there was more to it than that. My Hispanic father was dark-skinned enough to have been affected by the "whites only" signage.
Doubtful. Puerto Ricans were overwhelmingly considered white and only affected by segregation if they were very obviously of African descent - think Roberto Clemente. Otherwise they were "Spanish" and that was white.
Was your father every considered black? No? Then he was not a minority.
I grew up in Alabama during that time. Graduated from high school in '63.
There were only 2 races in Alabama during that time. You were Black or White. My Chinese sister was white. The Cubans, Mexicans, and other Hispanics at Auburn University were white; Black people were not admitted.
Our movie theater was not segregated. Black people were simply not admitted.
All African Americans had to go around the side of the building, up outdoor stairs and sit in the balcony. White children, the boys would throw popcorn boxes up in the air and get it on the people in the balcony and if they complained, they were kicked out without a ticket refund.
I do not remember any issue with Mexican, or Latino people.
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