Racializing American Authenticity: Mexican Americans’ Perceptions of the Foreign Other

Abstract

Anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States has long plagued the lives of people of Mexican descent. Since their incorporation, Mexican Americans have experienced processes of racialization as second-class citizens while a continuous anti-immigrant climate continues to impact them. This has influenced their use of a white racial frame resulting in their distancing of themselves from perceived foreign-ness. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with self-identified Mexican Americans along the U.S.-Mexico border, we find that divisions between the two nations have become embedded in the lived experiences of those residing in the borderland region. The themes raised by our respondents illustrate how Mexican Americans use notions of illegality, belonging to a nation, and the dangerous other to differentiate themselves from foreign-born Mexicans and the ways they address immigration. We argue that Mexican Americans living in a transnational border space navigate their everyday lives as racialized beings, resulting in their search for ways to situate themselves apart from the foreign other. We argue that the larger implications for understanding how Mexican Americans use the white racial frame is significant since their embedded ideas and beliefs are founded upon racist nativist differences that are used to create and support policies that target racialized others.

Keywords

racialization racial identity white racial frame borderlands Mexican Americans

Personal Reflexive Statements

Angela J. Silva

I believe sociology and sociologists have the potential to build radical social change. My sociological lens has been shaped by groundbreaking sociologists and legal scholars in Critical Race Theory. By understanding the absolute necessity of critical analysis, I learned quickly how I wanted to approach sociology. As a first generation Latina scholar, who was raised in the borderlands region of the United States, the significance of the popular saying “ni de aquí, ni de allá” went beyond the notion of an abstract idea and was, instead, a lived reality. The drive along US Highway-10 and the sight of Juárez, Mexico in the rearview mirror, was a constant reminder of how my identity was complicated by the stark border wall that divided the U.S. and México. The visible and arbitrary border that divides the two nations seeped deep into my own lived experience and permeates through the lives of all who occupy this space. It is in this space that my own identity of being an American of Mexican ancestry blossomed and pushed me to examine the ways white supremacy and nativism are as prevalent along the U.S.-México border as it is elsewhere. This knowledge informs this paper and the work that I do as a social agent, researcher, and teacher.

Aurelia Lorena Murga

I was issued my “U.S. Resident Alien” card when I was a little less than a year old. That card was part of my identity growing up in a small rural Southwest Texas town. In that borderland community, I was a Mexican immigrant who would eventually have to negotiate her identity as an “American.” Today, I live along the U.S.-México border where people, cultures, languages, and identities are influenced by a long geopolitical history. As a sociologist, these experiences inform my sociological imagination and the work that I do as an educator. My perspective is influenced by the work of critical race scholars who center their analysis on the permanence of racism in the United States by remaining critical of white supremacy, racism, and nativism. These experiences, those of my students, and the work of critical race scholars inform my work in this paper.

The histories of Latinas/os in the United States are varied, as a myriad of experiences have affected the lives of this diverse population. It is estimated that Latinas/os make up 17 percent of the total population of the United States making them the largest ethno-racial minority group with approximately 33.7 million of the 57 million Latinas/os in the United States being of Mexican origin (Stepler and Brown 2016). Though “Mexican” is regarded as an ethnic categorization, the classification has historically been a racial one (Gomez 2007). As such, it has been tied to social, political, and economic factors that are often used as justification for systemic oppression and discrimination (Omi and Winant 1986). Moreover, the complexities of the racialized categorization of people of Mexican descent has created an intraracial divide in the relationship between Mexican and Mexican Americans. In particular, we address how the illusion of “race,” which is rooted in white supremacy, affects the lives of people along the U.S.-Mexico border and how this, in turn, influences Mexicans Americans’ perceptions of Mexicans and their perspectives on immigration within a transnational border region.

Historically, for people of Mexican descent in the United States, the racial designation of “white” is tied to actions of colonization motivated by the ideology of manifest destiny that was used by white Protestant settlers who believed that their right to the land in the northern provinces of Mexico was God-given in order to support their settlement in the region (Sáenz and Murga 2011). These beliefs and acts led to the Mexican-American War and to the subsequent annexation of parts of Mexico by the United States through the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. This, in turn, resulted in the creation of an arbitrary boundary at the Rio Grande River that separated the two countries and their people with some 80,000–100,000 Mexicans residing in the region becoming US citizens. Though Mexican Americans had legal access to “white” status, they remained second-class citizens. For instance, as Gomez (2007:45) argues, in New Mexico, Mexican men were allowed the enfranchisement of “white” rights-holders yet were not afforded the entitlement of “…state citizenship alongside federal citizenship.” During that time, most white leaders considered Mexicans to be a “mongrelized race” with Spanish, indigenous, and African roots, who were undeserving of the rights afforded whites (Gomez 2007). Consequently, the divisions between the United States and Mexico and their peoples became embedded in the lived experiences of those residing in the region. This history is crucial to understanding how white supremacy has affected the everyday lives of people of Mexican descent along the United States–Mexico border around notions of race and citizenship. The Mexican American population of the United States has experienced processes of racialization, which refers to the extension of racial meanings to social groups, social practices, and relations that may not have been previously ascribed racial meaning (Alba, Jimenez, and Marrow 2014; Golash-Boza 2014; Omi and Winant 1986). For instance, the racialization of Latinas/os and, more specifically, Mexicans can be seen in the often-used stereotypes and images that support racist views of these groups as public charges, criminals, illegal aliens, and hyper-fertile in order to depict their perceived threat to the United States (Chavez 2008; Santa Anna 2002). Therefore, these racialized processes have led to the conflation of race, illegality, and foreignness despite the diversity in generational status, nativity, and citizenship status of the Mexican-origin population (De Genova and Ramos-Zayas 2003; Garcia 2017). For example, common ideas surrounding Mexican immigration to the United States have been characterized by images of waves, hordes, and droves of “alien invaders,” omitting the United States’ creation of the need for an expendable labor force (Gutierrez 1995; Santa Ana 1999).

These historical issues are useful in examining contemporary intraracial relations impacting people of Mexican descent. Work on intraracial relations among Latinas/os has focused on the larger sociopolitical context that explains the relations among groups that share common racial experiences and ancestry (Gutierrez 1995; Ochoa 2004:5-6; Morales, Murga, and Sanchez 2013; Alba et al. 2014; Dowling 2014). While work on intraracial relations has focused on the various aspects of nativity, class, phenotype, language, and culture shaping these relationships, less research has attended to the ways that white racism and white supremacy inevitably become embedded in the daily lives of Mexican Americans living along the US–Mexico borderlands (for notable exceptions see, Dowling 2014; Ochoa 2004; Vila 2000). Furthermore, these studies do not examine how perceptions of those seen as “other,” in this case Mexicans, are often shaped by these ideologies. Our aim is to analyze Mexican Americans’ perceptions of Mexicans and their perspectives on immigration within a transnational border region using a white racial frame perspective to address the deep-seated effects of white supremacy on people of Mexican descent. We analyze interviews with self-identified Mexican Americans along the U.S.-Mexico border, to find what divisions have become embedded between the two countries and their peoples. We include a section on racialized identities to highlight the ways that these identities inform our respondents’ own perceptions and understandings of those who are perceived as foreign and therefore different from them. In the following sections we provide brief discussions of anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as race and citizenship, in the United States to contextualize our findings.

Anti-immigrant Sentiment in the United States

Pervasive racist-nativist notions about immigrants of color, particularly Latina/o and, more specifically, Mexican immigrants, fuel anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. For instance, the notion of a Latino threat has fueled xenophobic ideas of Latinas/os as public charges responsible for damaging the American cultural fabric (Chavez 2008). Some common myths behind these ideas are that Latina/o immigrants drain public resources by taking advantage of social welfare programs as well as being characterized as hyper-fertile, criminals, and unassimilable. These ideas are not new. As Ngai (2004:67) argues, immigration policy during the 1920s “rearticulated the U.S.-Mexico border as a cultural and racial boundary, as a creator of illegal immigration.” Historically, during the Great Depression, these racist ideas led to the forcible deportation of Mexicans and US-citizen Mexicans, US-born children of migrant parents, under the guise of repatriation (DeGenova and Ramos-Zayas 2003; Sáenz and Manges Douglas 2015). Moreover, future mass arrests and deportations through Operation Wetback in 1954 “served to solidify Mexicans as alien criminals with little respect for U.S. laws” (Sáenz and Manges Douglas 2015:169).

In more contemporary times, high-profile public panics over the “browning of America” fueled restrictive immigration policies and border enforcement. Throughout the 1990s a number of US Border Patrol operations along the United States–Mexico border were framed as “prevention through deterrence” and resulted in undocumented persons migrating through remote and dangerous terrain away from urban areas, “resulting in over three hundred deaths per year” (Dunn and Palafox 2005:6). During this same decade, a “Save Our State” initiative (Proposition 187) in California led to restrictive legislation barring undocumented immigrants from receiving social services and non-emergency health care, and undocumented immigrant children and children of immigrants from receiving public education (Santa Ana 2002). More recently, Arizona’s “Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” or SB 1070, supported the rampant racial profiling of Latinas/os and others presumed to be foreign-born and spawned copycat laws in states such as, Georgia, Utah, Alabama, Indiana, and South Carolina (National Immigration Law Center 2014). The burgeoning anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States has fueled systemic actions supporting the policing and deportation of undocumented immigrants of color and the subsequent fragmentation of families across the country. Moreover, in a climate of anti-immigrant sentiment the continuing racialization of Latinas/os, and more specifically people of Mexican descent, has been shown to “mark them as undocumented” regardless of their generational or legal status (García 2017:4-5).

Research focused on the relationship between Mexican Americans and Mexicans in Texas and California have examined how native-born Latinas/os perceive Latina/o immigration. For example, Vila’s (2000) research on Mexican Americans and Mexicans in El Paso, Texas, finds that these two groups hold negative views of each other. More specifically, the author notes that while Mexican Americans utilize an “all poverty is Mexican” narrative when referring to Mexicans, Mexicans perceive Mexican Americans as lazy and welfare dependent (Vila 2000:86-101). In her research, Dowling (2014) finds that Mexican Americans in Texas declare white on the U.S. Census in an attempt to distance themselves from immigrants and other racial minorities and in order to validate themselves as true Americans. She explains that Mexican Americans’ selection of white on the Census form does not indicate an affinity toward whiteness, but instead argues the label is used as a mechanism to combat discrimination and found this happened more in border areas. Furthermore, Ochoa’s (2004) research, which centers on the intra-ethnic relations among Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in California, finds that factors such as racial/ethnic identity, contact with immigrants, positions within dominant institutions (e.g., schools), language, a history of discrimination, and negative stereotypes of Mexicans determine whether Mexican Americans are in conflict or in solidarity with Mexican immigrants.

Researchers have also highlighted the challenges of identity and interactions among people of Mexican origin by focusing on federal agents and immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Heyman (2002) finds that Mexican American border patrol agents do not identify with the Mexican immigrants they may be arresting and explains that the issue is tied to notions of power, privilege, and institutions embedded within capitalism. Likewise, Correa and Thomas (2015) note that Mexican American border patrol agents find that power, racialization, and agency affect these agents’ inability to identify with the “other.” Vega (2014:1769) identifies a rather poignant area of conflict among starkly conservative Mexican Americans in regard to immigration. She found that respondents held conservative political ideologies,felt strong national belonging to the United States, engaged in boundary making between themselves and Mexican immigrants and perceived undocumented immigration as inherently wrong due to violations in the law (Vega 2014:1769-1775). Finally, García Bedolla (2005) finds negative stigma surrounding Latina/o immigration becomes a strong determinant in intra-group relations and whether native-born Latinos identify with immigrants, noting that native born Latinas/os hope to be able to distance themselves from the negativity associated with Latina/o immigration (2005:99).

The Significance of Race and Citizenship

Citizenship has been defined as a type of membership that an individual has in relation to a nation; it is the connection that an individual has to the nation-state (Beaman 2016). People use the status of citizenship as a legal demarcation to denote their sense of belonging to the United States, often without paying attention to the ways that this constructed status has been contested or renegotiated over time (Glenn 2011). In the United States, the legal status of citizenship has been imbued with the social construction of race. Historically, in the case of naturalization, the legal status of citizenship was tied to “whiteness,” with people of color being denied citizenship by the courts on the basis of scientific proof or common sense racial classifications (Haney Lopez 2006). For instance, Gross (2008:7) argues that the “Caucasian Cloak” was used during Jim Crow segregation in order to justify the exclusion of Mexican Americans from white schools, political institutions, and other public accommodations with white people often being used in these instances to represent Mexican Americans in these institutions. More specifically, due to their perceived cultural deficiency, people of Mexican origin were relegated to second-class citizenship and often excluded from serving on juries in cases against people of Mexican origin (Gross 2008; Stefancic 1997). Furthermore, immigration policy in the United States was designed to be constituted in the American imagination as national membership and citizenship, where boundaries are drawn to determine inclusion and exclusion that articulate a desired composition of the nation, whether real or imagined (Ngai 2004:5). In the case of people of Mexican origin in the United States, immigration laws have been highly racialized, and therefore citizenship and naturalization requirements have often worked to support the racial hierarchy of the country (Sáenz and Manges Douglas 2015). Moreover, previous research examining US Latinas/os found that a “citizenship divide” exists as ethnic boundaries are created based on citizenship (Morales, Murga, and Sanchez 2013). That is to say, “ethnic boundaries are formed along citizenship lines, thus constricting the usage of pan-ethnicity as a tool for political mobilizations” (Morales, Murga, and Sanchez 2013:49).

Though citizenship has typically been examined in terms of legal rights, it has also been theorized as social and cultural. Beaman (2016) notes that people of color and marginalized communities can possess legal citizenship and still be considered second-class citizens, suggesting that citizenship goes beyond legal definitions and is also defined by cultural and social statuses. For instance, Rosaldo’s (1994) work on cultural citizenship stresses that although Latinas/os may technically be US citizens, they often do not enjoy the full benefits of legal citizenship as a result of discrimination therefore, conceptualizing cultural citizenship which gives Latinas/os the space where they can gain access to resources enabling them to be included as part of the imagined American community.

Racialized Identities

A myriad of factors affects the intra-racial relationships between people of Mexican origin living along the US-Mexico border. Prior research addresses Latina/o racial self-identification as a crucial aspect of the way that Latinas/os, and, more specifically, persons of Mexican origin, relate to each other (Dowling 2014; Ochoa 2004). Ochoa’s (2004) work on Mexican Americans in California discusses the significance of how racial/ethnic identifications matter for informing intra-ethnic relations, in this case—Mexican American/Mexican immigrant relations. She finds that this analysis can inform our understanding of intra-ethnic relations because for Mexican Americans, identifying with a racial/ethnic category can signify who does not belong to a group or category. In addition, Dowling (2014) finds that race is a complex issue affecting Mexican Americans’ perceptions of Mexican immigrants and Mexican immigration. Dowling’s (2014) focus on how Mexican Americans identify with race highlights some of these complications since she finds that identifications are often context specific and can be related to peoples’ own experiences with discrimination. Though racial/ethnic self-identification may be a process that is recognized at the micro level, we understand that processes of racialization occur in meso level situations, such as public discourses, and through structural forces at the macro level (Aranda and Vaquera 2015; Byng 2012).

Theoretical Frame

We use Feagin’s theoretical perspective of a white racial frame (WRF) to understand how historic and contemporary forms of racism, nativism, and xenophobia impact Mexican Americans’ perceptions of Mexicans, whether transnationals or undocumented immigrants, and of current undocumented immigration to the United States. The WRF functions as a dominant and foundational frame that encompasses a “broad and persisting set of racial stereotypes, prejudices, ideologies, images, interpretations and narratives, emotions, and reactions to language accents, as well as racialized inclinations to discriminate” (Feagin 2013:3, emphasis in original). We utilize this approach in our analysis since frames are embedded in our minds. We use them in order to make sense of situations occurring in our everyday and they play a role in our collective memories and histories. The WRF is not merely an overarching ethnocentric and negative frame, but it also serves to assert “a very positive view of white superiority, virtue, and moral goodness” (Feagin 2013:10). Moreover, frames “directly shape the scripts that whites and others act on, such as in acts of discrimination in important social settings—thereby re-creating, maintaining, and reinforcing the racially stratified patterns and structures of society” (Feagin 2010:16).

As mentioned above, not only does the WRF operate within the minds of whites, it has become normalized among people of color. Research by Feagin and Cobas (2008) examined middle class Latinas/os across the nation, presenting them with scenarios regarding stereotypical perceptions of Latina/o groups as well as African Americans. They found that Latinas/os have internalized the WRF and hold negative stereotypes about others Latinas/os as well as themselves. The authors also note that Latinas/os use the WRF to perpetuate racial stereotypes toward other people of color, primarily blacks. Feagin and Cobas (2008) found that while Latinas/os may experience white racial framing from whites, they also use the WRF within their communities. The theory of the WRF helps us examine the ways that Mexican Americans along borderlands have internalized white racism and how that, in turn, affects the relationships they have with Mexicans.

Additionally, in order to understand the way that the WRF permeates the U.S.-Mexico border, knowledge of some of the history of Mexican origin persons in Texas is useful. Legally, following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans residing in Texas were able to claim U.S. citizenship if they choose to remain within U.S. territory. Gross (2008) explains that a “Caucasian Cloak” was used by Anglos in Texas in order to claim that Mexicans, who were socially and politically treated as their own race, could not file racial discrimination claims since they were considered “white.” Consequently, Mexicans were classified as white when it was beneficial for whites, yet they were not actually able to benefit from the privileges of whiteness.

Data Collection and Methods

We draw from 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with self-identified Mexican American adult residents of El Paso, Texas in this research in order to address intraracial divides between people of Mexican descent along the US-Mexico borderlands. Respondents were recruited by the first author and after initial contact with prospective respondents a snowball sampling methodology was used. Respondents ranged in age between 20 and 63 years and included seven female- and eight male-identified individuals. The majority of respondents were born and raised in El Paso with the exception of three who grew up in other cities in Texas and moved to El Paso as children or young adults.

El Paso, Texas is located along the US-Mexico border with the overall population of El Paso county estimated at 831,095 (U.S. Census Bureau 2015) and the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez international metropolitan area reaching approximately 2.7 million residents, making it the largest bilingual and binational workforce in the western hemisphere. In 2010 El Paso was ranked seventh in the nation in metropolitan areas with the highest concentration of immigrants (Wilson and Singer 2011). According to American Community Survey five-year estimates (2011–2015), the foreign-born population of El Paso County was estimated at 25.5 percent or 212,112 of the total residents of the county. Moreover, US Census figures estimate that 81.3 percent of residents in El Paso County identify as being of Hispanic or Latina/o origin (of any race), while 82.8 percent of residents in the county racially identify as “white.” We note these figures because we want to address how our respondents identify racially in order to examine how racialized identities inform responses. Understanding the social and political implications of how Latinas/os are identified and classified on the Census and in other legal domains is important. For instance, Stokes-Brown (2012) argues that understanding how Latinas/os are classified and measured on official and legal forms can have important implications toward political inclusion as well as for the measurement of social inequality. Prior work has shown that the way that Latinas/os identify racially, provides insight into how that identity can shape their social and political lives (Flores-Gonzalez, Aranda, and Vaquera 2014; Morales, Murga, and Sanchez 2013; Ochoa 2004). However, because of the transnational nature of the region, these estimates do not account for people who move regularly across the US-Mexico border for work, school, or entertainment.

Interviews with respondents ranged from 30 minutes to two hours in length and were completed by the first author between fall 2015 and spring 2016 at locations convenient for respondents. The project was granted exempt status by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), so written consent was not required at the time of the interview; informational sheets were provided to respondents in lieu of informed consent forms. The interview guide included questions focused on language, generational status, family history, experiences at work, racial-ethnic identity, attitudes toward immigration, and attitudes about the socio-political atmosphere at the time of the interview. Respondents were asked to indicate their racial identity in an open question format during interviews and subsequently asked to explain why they chose that identity and what it meant to them. Skin color determinations were based on the assessment of a co-ethno-racial interviewer (Morales 2008). Respondents’ names have been changed and pseudonyms assigned.

Findings

Racialized Identities

As discussed previously, work in the area of racial identification among Mexican Americans has suggested that Mexican American racial/ethnic self-identification can be impacted by a myriad of factors. In addition, it can also be an indicator of one’s perceptions of Mexican immigrants and immigration (Ochoa 2004). With this in mind, we address the ways our respondents have chosen to racially self-identify. We will discuss how our respondents chose to identify to contextualize their responses and build on the notion that how one identifies can highlight an inclination to pro- and anti-Mexican immigrant sentiment.

Respondents in this study were initially asked to discuss their racial/ethnic self-identifications with follow-up questions prompting them to consider what influenced these decisions. Our respondents pointed to language, ancestry, phenotype, and childhood experiences as factors influencing their racialized identities.

A major factor that contributed to respondents’ racial identification was place of birth and ancestry. For instance, they preferred to identify as American as opposed to Mexican American because they associated racial identity with nationality, in this case not being born in Mexico. While respondents’ initial replies to questions regarding racial identity pointed to a specific term, with follow up questions, some alluded to different terms, sometimes emphasizing, “I know I am Hispanic, but I am an American” or “I am not Mexican American but American.” While none of them self-identified as white, some did choose to select white as their race on legal documents (more on this later). Some respondents showed an affinity for whiteness and a lack of connection to being Mexican. For instance, Alicia, a 25-year-old native El Pasoan who identified as Hispanic, an identity that she had grown up with, explained that since her father is of Mexican ancestry she felt that because of her family heritage she could not call herself white. When she was asked about her family’s heritage and history she stated,

It’s funny because on my mom’s side, where my mom is from, they’re Spaniards, they’re literally from Spain…you know sometimes even when I am on job interviews and stuff, they ask what race are you and it’s just like, I always put white, I might get a better job…on my birth certificate, it says white so that is what I put down whenever it is anything formal. Nowhere on my birth certificate does it say Hispanic or Latin American, so I put white for everything.

When Alicia was asked to elaborate about her Spanish family history, she was unable to do so though she did know of family that was from and lived in Mexico. Although Alicia took care to disassociate herself from her Mexican origins, she did connect herself to her European ancestry, thereby placing it and whiteness above her Mexican ancestry. Her use of “Spanish” heritage facilitates “passing” for Spanish and therefore white, which is reminiscent of the “passing” of other racial minorities as white (Johnson 1997). Alicia employs what Gomez (2007) refers to as the reverse one-drop rule among Mexican Americans, in which they have the ability to claim one drop of Spanish blood marking them as white compared to African Americans with one drop of African blood who were considered black (hypo-descent). Alicia recognizes the privileges and benefits of being white in the US and acknowledges that by selecting “white” on legal documents she might incur the benefits (i.e., employment) of whiteness. It is evident that Alicia views her own identity through a WRF. That is, she claims the benefits of an ideology of white superiority via European/Spanish ancestry with which she cannot fully connect with except for knowing that her mother’s family came from Spain, yet she is able to name family that lives in Mexico or has recently migrated from there. Furthermore, by asserting her connection to whiteness through the use of her birth certificate, Alicia neglects to acknowledge her own ancestry. Instead, she points out that being white is “better” and that she can use this in order to get a better job.

“Looks” or phenotype (i.e., skin color, eye, and hair color) was also a factor influencing racial/ethnic identity. Some respondents did not feel that they looked “Mexican”; in essence, that meant that they did not have a dark complexion or indigenous features. Phenotype, in this case “looking Mexican,” affects people’s life experiences differently. For instance, for people living along the border, looking more “Mexican” could lead to a greater likelihood of being questioned by border patrol (Johnson 1997). Likewise, having fair skin or “looking” white may provide some people with “false hopes of assimilation” (Johnson 1997:489). Interestingly, some of our respondents did not feel comfortable claiming a Mexican or Mexican American identity because they felt they could pass as white or did not look the way they believed a Mexican should look (i.e., brown skin, dark hair) and therefore did not feel that they could claim a Mexican identity. Respondents often shared stereotypical views of what “looking like a Mexican” meant and agreed that because they were not “Mexican-looking,” they did not have to deal with the same issues as someone who “looks Mexican.” For example, they felt that they were able to get away with not being bilingual. That is, they were not socially sanctioned by people for not understanding or speaking Spanish because they did not look Mexican. On the other hand, if they looked Mexican—for instance, if they had a darker complexion—they were often expected to speak Spanish.

Moreover, when making determinations about what a Mexican should look like, respondents shied away from identifying as Mexican for fear that too much would be expected of them and that they would not be able to prove themselves Mexican enough. For example, when Jaime, a 22-year-old, was asked about his perceptions of his own self-identification he stated,

Well…I’m trying to better my Spanish, um I don’t, I don’t look like, I don’t even wanna say that because that is too strong, I’m not like typical looking Mexican American, but I don’t want to say that one is better than the other, cause I will be quite honest like white people scare me and some Mexican people scare me…I will be honest sometimes I do rely on my appearance to not necessarily assert but kinda just maybe I do rely on other people to assume cause I think it might also protect me.

Jaime found that his appearance protects him from having people assume that he is of Mexican origin, and this allows him to “get away with” not speaking Spanish. He explained that he holds a narrow view of what a Mexican or Mexican American should look like, suggesting he uses a WRF to make this determination. People’s use of the WRF also connects to their use and knowledge of racial and ethnic stereotypes, which we see respondents engage and use as they explain their strategies for associating or disassociating Mexican-ness and whiteness. For example, respondents based how much they looked white, or how close to white they look, on how closely they could identify as American. In comparison, “looking Mexican” meant that there were higher expectations for the respondents to act Mexican, for instance regarding speaking Spanish, and were less likely able to ignore the fact that they were of Mexican origin. Thus, looking American was code for looking white.

Many of our respondents did tend to conflate racial identity and nationality and indicate their racial identity as American; however, some did identify as Mexican or Chicano. For these respondents, identity was much more complicated than simply saying they were American. For instance, Humberto who was 58 at the time of the interview, is light skinned, has lived in El Paso for most of his life and grew up during the Chicano movement. His parents were farm workers and he worked in the cotton fields in El Paso until he was 15 years old and bore witness to segregation as a child. Although segregation was not legal in schools when he was growing up, Humberto described segregation between the “gabachos” (white children) and the Mexican children. He explained that as a child, he had been slapped by a monitor for running in the lunchroom: “I think that because I was sitting on the Mexican side of the gym; maybe if I had been a gabacho, white, blue-eyed, maybe they wouldn’t have slapped me.” Humberto reflects on his experiences growing up to understand the complexities of his own racial identity, acknowledging that he is not white. He was never able to take advantage of any of the privileges that come with whiteness. Still, he notes that “white” is one of the only options he has to choose from on legal forms, such as governmental documents. Still, Humberto chooses to identify as Chicano. In this use of a counter-hegemonic perspective, Humberto is rejecting the norms of whiteness by claiming a Chicano identity but still holds onto his American identity. His critical understanding of the significance of race is something that he developed from a young age and that he continues to use to criticize the strict racial categories afforded him.

Notions of Illegality

Anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States produces and maintains a racist nativist climate that has fueled xenophobic discourses and policies affecting undocumented immigrants, particularly immigrants of color, across the country. People living in communities along the borderlands have not been immune. Still, it may often be assumed that because people along the border share a common ancestry, culture, and language that they also share a sense of solidarity on issues related to immigration, but that is not necessarily the case (Jimenez 2007). Research on intra-racial and intra-ethnic relations shows that divisions exist between groups of people as a result of citizenship, language barriers, and nationality (Dowling 2014; Ochoa 2004). The WRF provides a framework with which to examine this phenomenon among people of Mexican origin in a transnational border context. It provides us with a tool for understanding the ways internalized white racism has shaped intraracial relationships, including negative stereotypes, images, and metaphors of African Americans and other people of color as well as the positive and superior views of whites that have been created and maintained.

Respondents differed in terms of generational status, with some being the children of immigrants and others being fourth-generation Mexican Americans. Many had family residing in Mexico, yet we found that despite these familial ties and connections with Mexico, respondents internalized the dominant WRF. We see the effects of this as they explain their perceptions of Mexicans residing in the border community. For instance, Cynthia, a 32-year-old tanned skinned woman who identifies as American and has lived in El Paso for 14 years, firmly believes in the American Dream, individualism, and meritocracy. Similarly, to what was found in Dowling’s work on Mexican Americans in Texas, Cynthia asserts defensive whiteness in order to prove her American-ness (Dowling 2014). Dowling (2014:50) explains that defensive whiteness is when Mexican Americans use whiteness and their citizenship status in order to assert their identity as American and combat discrimination as well as any presumptions that they are immigrants. While Cynthia does not call herself white, she claims an American identity in order to negate her own Mexican ancestry which is further exemplified in her discussion on immigration. The ideal of the American Dream can be considered a white racial framing of life in the United States since it promotes ideas of a meritocratic system and provides a “big picture” narrative that is often deeply emotionally connected to the ways whites view life in America (Feagin 2010:13) and to the firm belief that hard work leads to achievement. This ideology often negates the realities of structural inequalities that are deeply rooted in systemic racism. Indeed, these embedded beliefs fail to critically address the systemic oppression and marginalization of people of color, who have been historically and contemporarily disenfranchised in the United States. In the case of Cynthia, her mother is a Mexican immigrant who moved to the U.S. when she was 18 years old. However, Cynthia considers her mother to be the “right” type of immigrant because she worked hard and moved to the U.S. “legally.” When asked about her own perceptions of and feelings toward Mexican immigrants and Mexican nationals she stated,

The whole immigration issue, I disagree with how people say you are racist if you don’t want people to come in. It’s not against immigrants, it’s against something that, yes the system needs fixing but my views are based on it being illegal…if you are going to come into our country, you assimilate, you work hard, you don’t live off food stamps and you don’t have an anchor baby.

Cynthia’s assurance that she is not “against immigrants” and her firm belief in the stereotypical “illegal” Mexican immigrant who does not assimilate and is a public charge or “lives off” of the system guide her views of immigrants and immigration. Negative stereotypes have influenced her anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly when referring to Mexican immigrants. Moreover, Cynthia fails to acknowledge the complexities of the US immigration system, affirming that because her mother was the “right” type of immigrant, others should follow the law as well. Using a WRF perspective we see how Cynthia’s perceptions of Mexicans and Mexican immigrants are framed by concerns about “legality” and the overall belief in following a meritocratic system that serves to support a sense of moral righteousness.

In another case, Michael (32) has lived in El Paso his entire life, is light skinned, works as an assistant manager at a major retailer, and while he identifies as Mexican American he states that he is “American first.” Michael is the son of Mexican immigrants and, like Cynthia, places a strong emphasis on issues related to “illegality.” He asserts that his parents are the “right kind” of immigrants since they arrived in the US the legal way, and, as a result, he believes that all “illegal” immigrants should do the same. When asked about perceptions of Mexican immigrants and Mexican nationals, he responded,

The way I see it is if my parents did it the right way, why can’t everyone else? I mean that is just the way I see it, like all my friends did it the right way. People are saying why are you going to deport immigrants back to Mexico who get caught and it’s like well, do it the right way, you know what I mean?…. I think for me the biggest thing is following the law. I guess that is something that I don’t understand as to why people don’t do it the right way. They want to reap the benefits but not work for it.

Michael uses a white racial framing of Mexican immigrants as “illegal,” which is a common ideology that defends the volatile and highly racist treatment of Mexican immigrants. This results in undocumented immigrants often being viewed simply as lawbreakers and criminals, thus making them undeserving of basic human rights, including the right to migrate. Thus, while Michael and other Mexican Americans share a common ancestry with Mexicans and may even have family ties in Mexico, they still have internalized white racist views that operate out of a WRF. “Illegality” and foreignness are very often associated with undocumented immigration with little to no consideration for the circumstances leading to migration or the suffering that undocumented persons experience as a result of these processes (Abrego 2014). Respondents’ suggestions that all immigrants from Mexico are illegal and their assertions that there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to enter the United States evoke the stereotypical view of what conservatives deem to be the illegal immigration of aliens. Through white racial framing, stereotypes of people of color and those seen as “other” become embedded in the subconscious of “Americans,” and this affords those working through a WRF the opportunity to feel absolved of being thought of as in any way racist or of making any racist assumptions. Indeed, these common racist and xenophobic discourses on the criminality of immigrants were created by white politicians in order to invoke a fear of the other. In the end, this provides people with a justification for inhumane policies and legislation that strip undocumented immigrants of their dignity.

Belonging to a Nation

While respondents used anti-immigrant rhetoric to separate themselves from Mexicans they also employed internalized connections to citizenship, evoking belonging to a nation by identifying as “American” or “born in the US” to distinguish themselves from Mexicans. Since Mexican Americans have experienced processes of racialization through the statuses of immigrant and foreigner, we can see why Mexican Americans in this study were quick to stress their American-ness. Through the use of a WRF perspective we can problematize this usage of “American” as a code for white. While our respondents live in El Paso, where the majority of residents are of Mexican origin, they believed that emphasizing their American-ness and nationality was particularly relevant because having been born in the United States and having American nationhood, was used in order to clearly mark their difference from Mexicans. When asked whether she believed that El Paso and Juárez exist as one community and that Mexicans and Mexican Americans are the same, Melissa, 21 years old, who is light skinned and has lived in El Paso her entire life, stated:

Well…I live here and they live there. And I was born here, I guess that’s why I am fortunate and they are probably not because they wanna come over here. Yeah, it’s just where we were born…I don’t consider us one, I am different.

Although Melissa recognizes why Mexicans choose to frequently move across borders and seems to sympathize with people that make these decisions, she clearly states that she also recognizes that the border does separate her from those on the other side. Additionally, Melissa states that she realizes that she is of Mexican origin and not white but that her birth in the United States, her nationality, distinguishes her from Mexicans. This construction becomes increasingly essential in the lives of Mexican Americans living on the US-Mexico border because of their close proximity to Mexico. There is a need to differentiate themselves from immigrant others, and Mexican Americans living in El Paso, despite their Mexican ancestry, emphasize their nationality and birthright US citizenship to further distinguish themselves from Mexicans.

Another example of a respondent who felt the need to make his American nationality and birth in the United States the focal point of how he chose to identify in terms of race, as well as an important marker of difference from Mexico and Mexicans, was Nick. Nick addressed his relation to Mexico and Mexicans by stating,

If I would have been born over there I think that I would be slightly more patriotic for there [Mexico]. Because I was born there, but I think that eventually I would have been an American citizen. I mean I am not denying that I have Mexican heritage because I do. But I mean I was just, I was born here, this is my country. My kids were born here. To me, my kids are American, they don’t speak Spanish. Then you start going to school and you were born in the United States…this is my country [United States] this is what I should relate to. I understand that my parents were born there [Mexico] and that I have family in Mexico but this is where I was born, this is the country that has given me a job, school, and stuff like that.

Nick reiterates the importance of his having been born in the United States to center his lack of connection to Mexico and Mexicans. While clearly acknowledging that his family is Mexican and that he has Mexican ancestry, Nick believes it is important to recognize that he is American and not Mexican. When asked if he considers himself to be Mexican American, he replied, “American first.” Dowling (2014) argues that Mexican Americans who reside closer to the border will typically select white as a defense mechanism in order to assert their American-ness. While Nick does not discuss his legal citizenship status the way he discusses his American-ness and birth in the United States, his legal status is implied. Likewise, Nick makes sure to emphasize his American-ness in his response, as if to make it clear that while he has Mexican ancestry, he is not Mexican. In a similar vein, Correa and Thomas (2015: 246) in their study of Mexican American border patrol agents, find that the agents signify repudiation of their ethnic-racial origins by asserting that they are Americans. In doing so, they are unable to see themselves as racial-ethnic Others and this has strong material impacts for the way that they interact daily with these communities (Correa and Thomas 2015:246). Feagin and Cobas (2008) found that Latinas/os often find ways to curb discrimination by making claims that they are not foreign but rather American [citizens], where American citizenship is understood to mean “white American.” Nick’s extensive discussion of his nationhood and birth in the United States underscores his use of the dominant racial frame by highlighting not only his difference from Mexicans but also the importance of this nationality in marking him as different from his foreign-born neighbors.

The Dangerous Other

Moreover, in order to gauge how respondents felt about Mexico and Mexicans, we asked them a series of questions regarding the El Paso/Juárez community. Respondents were asked about their stance on whether El Paso and Juárez were “sister cities” and how they felt about the two cities being treated as one big community. Vila (2000) writes that during Operation Blockade, a border enforcement strategy established in El Paso in the early 1990s and which sought to prevent migration through deterrence, it became overwhelmingly clear that much resentment existed between the two communities.

A common narrative that arose in discussions with respondents was that Mexico, and specifically Juárez, was a dangerous place, and this perceived danger was a main reason for establishing a distinction between Mexican Americans and Mexicans. During the late 2000s, then Mexican president Felipe Calderon declared a war on drugs, which had tragic effects on the country (Campbell 2011). Following this declaration, the residents of Ciudad Juárez experienced some of the worst violence the city had ever seen (Campbell 2011). It is estimated that between 2007 and 2010 there were roughly 7,643 deaths related to the drug war, although the actual figures could be much higher due to the underreporting of deaths, with Juárez deemed the most dangerous city in the world (Campbell 2011; Morales, Morales, Menchaca, and Sebastian 2013). While Juárez no longer holds this distinction, memories of those times continue to resonate with many residents of El Paso. This context influenced respondents’ apprehension about traveling to Juárez. The violence in Juárez caused respondents to fear that El Paso would also become a dangerous city, especially if border enforcement were to relax or if borders were to become more open. As a result, respondents not only painted Juárez as a dangerous place, but people from Juárez as well. For instance, Mary, a 24-year-old who has lived in El Paso all her life, indicated she does not go to Juárez because she does not feel safe. She added that because she is a woman and does not speak Spanish, she thought she would be placing herself at risk if she were to visit Juárez. When asked how she would feel about the borders being opened she stated,

I don’t know. I think that it [the border fence] is a good thing, too, because I don’t know if I would want to be one big community. I don’t, I just feel safe knowing that there is a border fence there…all of the things you hear…they do seem to be a little bit more rebellious and I am glad that America has its ground rules. I have heard that people in Mexico are a little out of order sometimes and I don’t know if I want that to come over here.

Mary expresses a general fear of borders being opened because she has heard that Mexicans do not follow “the rules” and feels as though the Mexican government allows people to just “do what they want.” Her sentiments align with common ideas that Mexicans are dangerous and that the Mexican government is “uncivil,” along with the fear that crime will “spill over” from Juárez into El Paso. Mary’s statements illuminate the way that the WRF operates. Her views of Mexico and Mexicans have been influenced by racist and xenophobic notions embedded in historic and contemporary national discourses affecting her perceptions of the “other.”

Although our respondents expressed only subtle fears of Mexico and Mexicans, it was evident they greatly appreciated being able to distance themselves from both the country and the people. For instance, Melissa, a 21-year-old who has lived in El Paso her entire life and identifies as Hispanic, when asked if she feels that Juárez and El Paso could be considered one big community, stated,

No, because it is a whole different country, they have different laws, different things going on and people think that El Paso is super dangerous because of what happened in Juárez, so I don’t think that it’s all one….

Melissa was then asked if she believed that people’s perceptions of Juárez cause her to want to disassociate herself from Mexico and Mexicans and she stated, “Well yeah, of course, I wouldn’t want them [Americans] to feel threatened by us. Like we are not going to kill them.” Melissa does not want to be associated with Juárez and Mexico because she would not want other Americans to feel unsafe around her. This aligns with a common discourse surrounding Mexicans that is often fueled by conservative anti-immigrant leaders who frame Mexicans as dangerous “illegal aliens” who have no right to be in the United States. These ideas have been popularized by the current US president, Donald Trump, who, while announcing his bid for the Republican nomination, referred to Mexicans as criminals and rapists. People like Melissa who live in El Paso and have firsthand knowledge of the violence in Juárez, have more complex beliefs about Mexicans being different and dangerous. The WRF posits that both whites and other people of color operate out of this dominant frame in which they perceive white Americans as superior, righteous beings and everyone else as inferior. This framing affects the beliefs and behaviors of everyday Americans, and it happens so subtly that most do not realize that they are projecting these beliefs (Feagin 2013). Despite El Paso’s proximity to Juárez and their daily interactions with Mexicans, Mexican Americans internalize this dominant racial frame and often do not question the problematic ways in which they use it. While some respondents claimed to have no issues with Mexican immigration, when considering the two communities as one, they quickly reported their discomfort with the idea.

Additionally, Alicia, when asked her thoughts about Mexicans who cross the border regularly, stated,

I don’t mind them, I mean they’re ok…if you go over there it’s like their side of the country. There are more people against you as far as; they just might not be as nice. I am nice and understanding, but some people may not be. That is why my mom told me all those horror stories [about Mexicans]. I think a lot of them [Mexicans] have been mistreated so they might just be angry.

Alicia considers El Paso her home and her mother’s horror stories about Juárez have influenced her ideas about Mexicans being angry and possibly mistreating her if she were to visit the neighboring city. She has come to believe that Juárez and Mexicans are just too different from El Paso and Mexican Americans. Like people in Vila’s work (2000), Alicia projects an “otherness” toward Juárez, Mexico and while she does not report Mexico and Mexicans as dangerous, she believes that Juárez and its people are from a completely different world.

Conclusion

This study examined the ways in which Mexican Americans along the US-Mexico border perceive Mexicans and immigration, and how their outlook may influence the intraracial divides of a population that is often assumed to be united because its members share common ancestry and geographical proximity. Using Feagin’s (2010; Feagin 2013) white racial frame perspective, we focus on how being in a border space does not exempt people from the dominant frames out of which the majority of people living in the United States operate. Our findings suggest that Mexican Americans living on the border rationalize their perceptions of Mexican stereotypes. These perceptions are not only informed by the experiences they have had with people they assume to be foreign-born Mexicans, but also shaped by stereotypes of Mexicans that are deeply embedded within an ideology of white supremacy.

The common themes raised in our study illustrate the ways that Mexican Americans use notions of illegality, national belonging, and the dangerous other to differentiate themselves from Mexicans and address immigration. We began by addressing the ways that racialized self-identifications are created and used by our respondents to contextualize how race is negotiated in their everyday understandings of different statuses, which are positioned within a racial hierarchy. In the same vein as previous work where respondents struggled with external expectations and internal standpoints of racial identification (Flores et al. 2014), our respondents recognized over and over again that they were not white, yet continually positioned themselves closer to American-ness than to Mexican-ness. By claiming racialized self-identities associated with whiteness, our respondents were able to distinguish themselves from “those Mexicans,” making it easier to project white-centric views and ideologies that mark Mexicans as “other.” Moreover, we understand race in the United States as embedded within a racial hierarchy that is centered within white dominance and thus elucidate the importance of contextualizing racialized processes. Our findings suggest that people of color, in this case Mexican Americans, living in a historically and contemporarily racialized and marginalized geographical space such as the US-Mexico border will also use and reinforce racialized meanings when making sense of their positions within a racialized hierarchy. Future research examining the complexities of inter-racial relations between Mexican Americans, Mexicans, and whites would further elucidate the ways in which these groups use and reinforce racialized meanings, since previous work notes that “Mexicans and Anglos construct and borrow culturally from each other” (Campbell 2005:25).

We found that our respondents of Mexican descent navigated internalized social statuses as they engaged discourses that draw on socially constructed differences between themselves and Mexicans and issues of immigration. We argue that the larger implications for understanding how Mexican Americans use the white racial framework are significant because their embedded ideas and beliefs are founded upon racist nativist differences that are used in the creation and support of policies and laws attacking the racialized other. For instance, recently, Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 4 (S.B. 4), referred to as the “sanctuary cities” ban, which not only targets undocumented immigrants and attempts to abolish sanctuary cities, but also aims to criminalize local officials who refuse to follow government orders to help enforce immigration law (Hing 2017). Although there remain challenges to S.B. 4 in the courts the law proves to be an additional attack on immigrants by Texas lawmakers and their supporters. These actions connect to larger discussions of the significance of contextualizing people’s experiences with anti-immigrant sentiment. Donald Trump’s stance on immigration—when he claimed that Mexico was not sending its best folks over, but instead sending rapists and criminals—has incited further anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican rhetoric, thereby marking Mexicans’ racialized identity as inferior to Americans and whites, it also has implications for how people act in supporting, reinforcing, and continuing to produce beliefs, ideas, emotions, and, in the long run, laws and policies against immigrant populations.

Our Mexican American respondents’ own assertions of American authenticity reflect the continued complexities affecting people of Mexican descent in the United States. Indeed, for those people of Mexican descent living on the US side of the border, their everyday lives are constantly under surveillance by border patrol agents around the city and at various checkpoints along the international border. As a result, respondents’ adamant distinctions between themselves and Mexicans serve to assert their American-ness and cement Mexicans as “the other” along the borderlands.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

Early versions of this project were presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Sociological Association in Las Vegas, NV, and the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Philadelphia, PA.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the “Borderlands” special editor(s) and anonymous reviewer for their feedback. They would also like to thank Patrisia Macias-Rojas for their critical feedback and suggestions on this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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