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Of course whiteness in the US has more to do with social class. Why do you think Italians, Irish and Jews were not considered white when most of them were poor and/or of working class, but once those communities started to prosper, suddenly they are white.
I think the same thing will happen with many Latinos in the US that today are not considered white. Eventually they will be "whitened," if anything, the process is already starting.
Also, race in the US does have a caste-like hierarchy. For example, traditionally blacks have been the least desirable and anyone that is labeled as black is, somehow, seen as less. Not all the time, but there is this 'they are not as good as us' mentality that still lingers. In some ways, a poor and uneducated white person would be seen in better light than a well educated and wealthy black.
Even the blacks subscribe to this type of thinking, although I think they do it without noticing. Whenever a black person progresses, supposedly there is always some other black person who will say "but he/she is still black," as to say he is not an equal to the whites and never will be, regardless of what he does. Almost as if it was a caste.
The average Mexican mestizo is 58 % European, this percentage changes depending which part of the country you come from. Sonora is the whitest state in mexico based by percantage. The bajio and northern region also has white majority heritage. so can the average Mexican be considered white? Well, half white.
Many of the mexicans who you encounter in the states are of obviously a predominant indigenous background. That is often a result of certain regions of mexico having more emigrants than others.
"Whites" were "Wasp" not long ago. The US census divised the "Anglo" category in which most people were not considered white 50 or 60 years ago. It seems that ethnic classifications in that country are more political than ethnographic, so Mexicans will be white in the near future if they are not white now.
That implies that The United States committed "mass genocide" against the Indians which it obviously didn't, just visit Wisconsin.
um, hello? The Native population now is only 1% of the total US population. There were wars against the Native populations that lasted into the early 20th Century. In my home state of CA, attempts were made to exterminate many of the tribes. For those who remained, boarding schools that forbid the use of Native languages and Native customs were a forced regime. This, too, is considered a form of genocide in international law. Smallpox achieved some of the population reduction, making war unnecessary in some areas.
The Spanish did commit mass genocide in the Caribbean.
I actually heard that 50% of the Mexican gene pool is actually of European origin, and only 35% is First Nations.
I think I've run into some sources that place it higher. It does vary from region to region tho. However, that's not the narrative the average mexican buys into tho. They've managed to romantisize the "we're a native people who've been raped by the evil white" man blah blah blah stuff.
Every girl in Mexico I talked to who didn't look distinctly indigente asked me the question "Do I look white to you?" It's definitely a thread down there. I don't think it's an issue, just a curiosity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sanfel
Which just goes to show that the term "white" has more to do with social class than actual race or color.
And I'm surprised that nobody brought up the question: What exactly is "white"?
I tend to think that the definition of a "white person" is one of the most variable definitions. It changes from country to country, from group to group, and even from individual to individual. Sure, it revolves 'more or less' around the concept of color or race, but much less than you imagine.
Is Gloria Estefan white? Is Antonio Banderas white?
Not that I'm very worried about that (in fact, I don't consider the "whiteness" of a person too relevant), but if we're discussing this, I think we should first set a definition of white. Just saying, anyway.
With black ancestry, they're mulattos. The point was that the statistics the OP gave leave out a huge swath of the population. Mestizos are way more than just 15% of the population. There's got to be more thorough census info on the internet somewhere. But even that wouldn't be reliable, as some of the Native people might not identify as such.
The Mexican government conducted genetic research in 2010 and they found ethnically mixed constituted 70% of the population; those of European descent were 18%, indigenous were 10% and 2% was other. I forgot to save the article which was in Spanish, but I'll see it I can find it again (though wikipedia must have read the same article as they also mention 18% for Mexico on their white Latin american page).
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