Question of race not simple for Mexican Americans, author says
Those are assumptions drawn from the experience of European Americans, but they don’t match with the experience of Latinos, particularly those of Mexican origin in Texas, according to Dowling, the author of the new book “Mexican Americans and the Question of Race” (University of Texas Press).
For most European Americans, marking “white” likely means they experience little discrimination based on their racial background, Dowling said. For a Mexican American, it’s often a response to discrimination. “It’s for them a way of saying, ‘I belong, I’m an American citizen, and I want to be recognized as such,’ ” she said.
Her case in point: the border counties of southern Texas. Most are more than 80 percent Latino, and more than 80 percent of those Latinos marked “white” on the 2010 census…
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