Rarely does a day a go by without Americans learning about Attorney General [tag]Alberto Gonzales[/tag] and the political strife over the firings of US Attorneys. Now the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general is being pressured to resign by columnists, pundits and everybody you can think of. That is to be expected by Latinos, African Americans and any other minority groups, here in the US, who finds themselves in these “Faustian bargain” situations. Part of me considers this as another lynch mob against the Brown. I may not like the guy, but I will not take away his dues as being a son of a poor immigrant who beat the odds to become a successful and respected lawyer. His personal history of struggle and opportunity is embodiment of the American Dream in the land of Horatio Alger. The question I have been pondering about this growing issue is to what extent, can we – as a community of color – really celebrate the accomplishments of an individual from our community if their success is undeniably tied to powerful and corrupt people who are currently in power whose policies and measures have helped destroy this nation as a whole. Policies where his advice and his counsel lay the foundation for torture; the suspension of habeas corpus; the use of illegal rendition; the use of illegal wiretaps to spy on American citizens; the expansion of power in the Executive Branch; and other countless government scandals and lies.

That is where the other part of me is saying “told ya so” to organizations like the Nation Council of La Raza who were aggressively pushing for his nomination as attorney general down everybody’s throat just because he was Brown. Some [tag]Mexican Americans[/tag] may admire and hail Gonzales as an evidence of how far we have come, how we finally have a place at the table. Some even touted him as the proverbial American “bootstrap” success story – the second of eight children, whose parents were children of Mexican immigrants, Gonzales was the only one in his family to complete college and rising to a prominent position in government. However, we cannot simply turn a blind eye and overlook the glaring injustices in Gonzales’ track record. There is little to admire in a peón who blindly follows his patrón just to do his bidding.

Don’t be deceived into believing I would not be making this an issue if he happened to be a Democrat, I employ this hyperbole because Gonzales is a prime example of a growing trend among people of color, especially among Latinos, that feel they need to “act White” in order to leave repression and poverty behind. A process in which the Unapologetic Mexican puts it in his latest White Lens (IV) post

… consideration is not complete until you cease any scary activity or identification with the Brown™ part of your lineage. If you can shed the accent, learn the Queen’s English as preferred, skip the ponchos and “vatos” and menudo, think of Mexican immigrants as Illegal Alienz, consider Racism in the past, or best yet—crusade against your own type of people—you are well on your way.

Gonzales’ experience as a Mexican American is very illustrative of America’s grasp of how class and ethnicity function together – a view that has formed divisions between those who attempt to overcome the overwhelming obstacles that traditionally limit socioeconomic success and those who continue to face racial oppression, but rather seek other paths to self-sufficiency and security.

This situation raises an essential question, one that does not have a simple answer. Who are our leaders within the Latino community? While it is hard to distinguish who counts for as a leader, this question should consider the importance of defining the Latino identity. In addressing this question, it is important to consider the role “white identity” plays into defining the Latino identity, a topic that is often ignored and/or neglected. According to David Roediger¹, “white identity has its roots both in domination and in a desire to avoid confronting one’s own miseries.”

Having said that, this is why most of those who see themselves as leaders of Latino communities accept or assert “whiteness” as a key component to their identity. Self-identification, group perception, and external classification all represent axes of racial construction. In turn, these axes encompass myriad criteria for determining racial identity. In this framework, many Latino leaders believe they are – and are understood to be – white by virtue of [tag]class privilege[/tag], education, physical features, accent, acculturation, self-conception, and social consensus. This strategy was created by the neo-conservatives in order to create a cultural war that emphasize cultural issues over the economic. The notion that American society

is not really about money or birth or even occupation. It is primarily a matter of authenticity, that most valuable cultural commodity. Class is about what one drives and where one shops and how one prays, and only secondarily about the work one does or the income one makes.

The assertion of trying to claim whiteness leads down slippery path that only facilitates the mistreatment of Latinos and buttresses social inequality. In today’s society, there is a strong aspiration to be white in the context of racial politics. The longstanding discourse is based on invidious comparisons between Latinos and old European immigrants. The comparison provokes the popular idiom that takes form of the question, “We made it, why haven’t they” The danger in this line of thinking is that it dismisses “racism” as a factor and purposely creates a wedge within the different communities of color.

The claim by Latinos to be “white” is not a new one, the history of Mexican American identity attests to the recent divide regarding to undocumented immigrants among the Latino community. Ironically, today’s social pariahs – Latinos, Asians, African Americans and the indigenous – are the same people 19th and early 20th century European immigrants were force to disassociate themselves with along with their plight to “become American.”

Whatever incidental insights into our history regarding our current race problem is inherently flawed by the failure to consider in the context of the historically omnipresent factor of white supremacism in US history. America’s doctrine of American Exceptionalism has historically frustrated the search for an explanation for the degree of class consciousness with which European-American workers have perceived, and still do perceive, whiteness equals “social mobility.”

In The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, Neil Foley reveals the inadequacy of the black/white model for understanding the southwestern United States. According to Foley Anglo American racial ideologies that defined the defined Mexicans as lazy, unambitious, shiftless, and inferior began in the in the nineteenth century. At the founding of the Republic of Texas, Mexicans were classed with Indians and African Americans as “nonwhite” people who were unworthy of full citizenship. After the United States annexed [tag]Texas[/tag] and gained more territory in 1848 through its war with Mexico, many white Americans were already expressing the same racial ideologies.

During the economic catastrophe of the Depression, Anglos scapegoated Mexicans and bellowed for their expulsion. National, state, and local governments responded with deportation campaigns that expelled over half a million person, comprising many US citizens, amid tremendous hardship. The result was not the eradication of the Mexican community, but rather the solicitation of a Mexican American identity. Those most likely to remain in the US through the devastating 1930s were individuals who had stable employment, property, family, social, and liberal ties to the US. The Mexican community that remained developed a new identity as “Mexican Americans,” asserting a political and social philosophy centered on the claim to be the model citizen.

Mexican American leaders demanded justice for their community and launched political and legal campaigns to secure better treatment at the same time that they sought to foster pride in their distinct origins. They also asserted that Mexicans were racially white. For instance, the most prominent Mexican American civil rights organizations – the League of United Latin American Citizens and the GI Forum, aimed to integrate Mexican-descended persons into the US mainstream, that is, to “Americanize” the community because Mexicans were ostensibly white. LULAC’s constitution called for members to be loyal citizens and also stressed the importance of learning English in order to show the Anglos, they were just like them.

…the founders of LULAC, in order to avoid suspicions of un-American activities and a safe haven for its members, forewent many of their convictions. Many of the official rites which LULAC adopted had never be adopted by any other Mexican American organization. Adopted was the American Flag as the official flag, America the Beautiful as the official song, and The George Washington Prayer as the official prayer. Also, adopted were Robert Rules of Order as the governing rules during meetings and conventions.

Like African Americans, Mexican Americans also faced discrimination in a Jim Crow society. Race-based discrimination had existed in customary and eventually in legal form in most realms of American political, social, and economic life, but it was given the protection of the US Constitution when the Supreme Court approved statute-mandated segregation, provided that the separate elements of the system were formally equal, in the 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson².

The Texas legislature also established the legal framework for Jim Crow prior to Plessy, and Texas law had conformed to the “separate but equal” principle even before the Court’s decision. The Mexican Americans’ white status found early judicial support in the case that marks the beginning of the Mexican American civil rights canon, In re Rodriguez – the legal precedent for granting citizenship to those of Mexican descent in Texas before statehood. By employing what was termed the “other white” strategy, Mexican Americans argued that they should not be subjected to the same apartheid that was imposed on blacks.

The Mexican assertion of a white identity rejected the cultural premium American society placed on being white. In this context, Mexican claims of whiteness were more widespread in areas where racial hierarchy was most deeply entrenched – TX. As a result, those who were considered middle-class were not only more acculturated, educated, and wealthier than their counter-part, but also were more likely to have European features. In contrast, laborers and more recent immigrants from Mexico were often darker and tend to look more indigenous; thus less able and less likely to avail themselves of a white identity.

Why does it matter that Mexican American leaders insisted that they were white? After all, they took pride in their origins, were politically active, and sought to improve their communities’ social, economic, and political standing. Although, we should acknowledge the politically progressive efforts of many Mexican Americans; we must, however, also acknowledge that those who firmly asserted, a white identity also held the opinion that certain segments of society lived beyond the realm of social concern. Those who did not deserve protection included non-citizens and non-whites, in particular African Americans, but also many Mexicans. This led them to condemn those members of the Mexican community who were forced by racism and structural injustice.

The assertion of a white identity is at root of an effort to place one-self at or near the top of the racial hierarchy, which happens to major role in US society. To this extent, asserting a white identity furthermore entrenches a racial hierarchy by adding legitimacy to the belief that white people are fundamentally different from non-whites and that whites are superior, therefore, deserve the best, while non-whites are inferior and deserve less.

It was the Mexican American generation who saw citizenship as a key attribute to whiteness and belonging. As a consequence, they were the ones who perceived Mexican immigrants as poor, uneducated, dark and as a peril to Mexican Americans to assimilate into “whiteness.” The result of their action, Mexican American [tag]civil rights[/tag] organizations insisted on citizenship as a condition to membership and actively campaigned against “wetbacks.” Their value on white identity showed in an unwillingness to find common cause with African Americans to the expressing white supremacist opinions regarding black inferiority.

It was not until the Chicano movement that challenged the idea of a white Mexican identity. Exasperated by a community politics that failed to produce meaningful equality with Anglos, and inspired by the racial pride of the Black Power movement, many Mexicans came to embrace a politics of cultural distinctiveness and began to view themselves as members of a brown race. Even though broad sectors of the Mexican community came to accept and assert the idea that they were proud members of a brown race, this legacy waned. Currently, Latinos in the US are evenly split, with roughly half claiming they are white, and the other half insisting otherwise. However, the Chicano movement did provide aspirations of the middle-class with the concerns of the poor in the center of Latino political consciousness. Today’s leaders are more likely than their Mexican American counter-parts to believe that structural inequalities distort the life chances of their constituents and to work to undo such embedded disadvantages.

Western American history is not that simple as some like it to be, it is more complex filled with consequences of failure and unforeseen outcomes. We as a society must not overlook it. Yet, like the mythical siren, the lure of a white identity calling out to many Latinos again. Historically, Anglo society constructed Mexicans and other Latino groups as non-white, but now various Latino and Asian communities increasingly hold nearly white status – for instance the Cubans and the Japanese – and those with fair skin, wealth, political connections, or high athletic, artistic, or professional accomplishments can virtually achieve a white identity.

The effort to criminalize and incarcerate minorities is only a small part of a larger process of wealth transfer to the rich that has defined the decades since the civil rights era. Claiming to be white achieves measurable advantages for some individuals, such as Alberto Gonzales, but these advantages come at a steep price for others. As a Latino, I was very concerned that NCLR played the race card. I’m committed and supportive of my Latino community, and communities of color in general, but I’m not a sell out like our AG, and one thing is for sure I will never support any Juan-come-lately just so I can say we got one into the White House.

There is also a need to take off our political blinders and to confront it head on. There is nothing progressive about comprising society leaders who refuses to confront the neoliberal underpinnings of laissez-faire policies that relegates millions of immigrants to the vagaries of the “free market.” This type of thinking did nothing more but throw low-wage workers in pitiless competition with each other, while closing off avenues of mobility into more desirable job sectors.

It is not enough to reject the “natural racism” idea; it must be confronted. Asserting a white identity may provide one way to escape that inferior position, yet this solution solidifies the root structures of a racial hierarchy that ensures a continuation of subordination of others.

1. Roediger, D. (1991). The Wages of Whiteness. New York: Verso Press.[back]
2. 163 U.S. 537 (1896).[back]

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