Mexican American Ethnic Labels

Ethnic Labeling and Identity among Mexican Americans In Buriel’s essay, he writes about the ethnic labels that the Hispanic population has dealt with in the past. He starts off by defining ethnicity as an individual’s membership in a group sharing a common ancestral heritage. In his article, Buriel states that the population is biologically Mestizo, which is a genetic mixture of European Spanish and New World Indian. Early on, there were labels put on the Mestizos and by the 1800s’ they outnumbered the Spanish and were the dominant group in Mexico. Due to that, they choose to identify themselves with a Mexican identity instead of Spanish or Indian. Buriel’s article goes on to say that the European colonist’s discriminated the Native Americans …show more content…
Due to that they had proven themselves as loyal American and they grew a pride for being both American and Mexican. In the 60s’, many realized that being Mexican descent put them at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. That was the beginning of the Chicano movement which was a large civil rights movement in the 60s and early 70s. The origin of the word Chicano is unclear, but it has always been slang for the Spanish speaking people in Mexico and Southwestern US. The way I have heard Chicano being used is when someone was being born in the US but would have rather been born in Mexico. I had many friends who identified themselves as that but I never understood it to be honest. Now I guess they identified themselves as Chicanos because they didn’t want to strongly identify themselves as either Mexican or …show more content…
They were asked about their perceptions of opportunities for success, equality before the law, and the efficacy of collective action. The study was conducted to students who were in 7th through 12th grade. Almost all of the students identified as either Chicano or Mexican American. In the study, the students were given three stories that described different people involving police officers. The students who identified as “Chicano” were more likely to say that the police officer was racist but the “Mexican Americans” said the officer was just doing his job when the story involved a man named Juan Gonzalez. The study involved two other men and when the story switched to a man named John Grant, the “Chicanos” said he would have no issues and would most likely get off without a ticket. The last man whose name was Beulah Johnson the results were uninterpretable due to the students’ uncertainty to his