Mexican Racial Segregation

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Mexican legal racial classification was a form to identify this group of people. For instance, when an individual is filling a form and must choose a group of ethnicities there are several options and this person can choose the group with which he/ she feels identified. In the year of 1848, the Mexican racial classification was under the term of “white.” They were classified as white to obtain the citizenship of the United States. A century later, in the year of 1930 to be more specific this group of people passed from “white” to the term of “Mexican race.” However, a decade ago, 1940, the term toward this minority changed again. This time the term that defined them was the word used during the year of 1848 through 1930, “White.” Time after, …show more content…

On the other hand, de facto segregation is when it is imposed by law, but this is not an impediment to happen. Factors such as race, and gender leaded to de jure segregation. The communities that suffered of this type of segregation were African- Americans and Mexican- Americans. Furthermore, de facto segregation was kind of social customs; therefore, it was something natural that was not seen as discriminatory. Mexican students suffered from both types of segregation. According to Donato and Hanson (2012) “Mexican Americans historically experienced de jure segregation in the American Southwest because official took actions that resulted in the intentional segregation of students.” Mexicans experienced de jure segregation because in some school the students were separated from the others to cover their necessities. For instance, the students that did not speak English were separated from the other who could spoke the language to help them with this problem. Nevertheless, at the same these people were suffering of de facto segregation because sometimes the students were separated from the others because of their color skin, or their name the did not sound “white,” they were separated because of outside appearances. On example of this is the case of the five Mexican American parents that sued a school from the …show more content…

In language and culture, people can observe one example of de-Mexicanization, when students who do not have English as their first language or they do not have a fluent English they are classified as ESL students. At this moment, these students are no longer seen as “normal” students because now their English is classified as limited, or not- proficient. The consequence of de-Mexicanization in this case, is that instead of making growth the students they are cutting their wings, because these people are making see that having English as a second language is a disadvantage instead of an advantage. They are making this look bad instead of something good. One example of this is when Valenzuela (2006) states that “ESL youth, for example, are regarded as “limited English proficient” rather than as “Spanish dominant” and/ or as potentially

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