White dreams and red votes: Mexican Americans and the lure of inclusion in the Republican Party

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White dreams and red votes:Mexican Americans and the lureof inclusion in the RepublicanPartyCarleen BaslerPublished online: 27 Sep 2008.

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White dreams and red votes: Mexican

Americans and the lure of inclusion in

the Republican Party

Carleen Basler

Abstract

The significance of racial self-identification formation and how itinfluences voting or political affiliation of Latinos has been neglectedin sociological analyses of whiteness and white identity formation.Whiteness studies can benefit from an analysis of how Latinos residingin the United States wield their vote as an expression of racial identity. Asthe racial, linguistic and cultural forms of ‘American identity’ in theUnited States are currently being contested, the question arises, whatracial identity will ‘new’ citizens to the United States adopt, and underwhat circumstances? When the invisible marker of ‘true’ citizenship is theunquestioned acceptance of hegemonic whiteness, how will raciallystigmatized ethnic groups respond politically? The project analysesMexican American voting patterns on California’s Proposition 187 andthe 2004 United States presidential race. The data show that MexicanAmerican vote choice is significantly related to their racial identity.Interviews with 156 naturalized citizens reveal that Mexican Americansare confronted by identity interplay between nationalism, ethnicity andrace when considering how to vote. The research suggests shifting identitynegotiations within the Mexican American community that explain therise in Latino votes for Republican candidates and that Latinos may usetheir vote instrumentally to express a racial identity that breeches theborders of ‘whiteness’.

Keywords: Citizenship; electoral politics; Latinos; Mexican Americans; Repub-

lican Party; United States.

I’ve always hated that Democrats put us together with the blacks � Imean, actually we’re white. Well, I mean, I’m a Mexican, don’t getconfused, but I’m more white than black. I don’t want to beassociated with the blacks � they’re criminals. Mija, don’t give me

Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 31 No. 1 January 2008 pp. 123�166

# 2008 Taylor & FrancisISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01419870701538950

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that look. You know what I mean. You don’t see any blackRepublicans. The Republicans don’t want them, but they reallywant us. Bush really supports Latinos. (Lola, a 66-year-oldnaturalized Mexican American retiree)

Introduction

This study examines the significance of racial self-identificationformation and how it influences voting or political affiliation ofLatinos,1 a socio-political aspect that has been overlooked in many ofthe significant studies on whiteness. Whiteness studies may bebroadened by understanding how individuals’ political orientationsrelate to the internalization of political values and how individualswield their vote as an expression of racial identity. As the racial,linguistic and cultural forms of ‘American identity’ in the UnitedStates are currently being contested (see Huntington 2004), thequestion arises, what racial identity will ‘new’ citizens to the UnitedStates adopt, and under what circumstances? When the invisiblemarker of ‘true’ citizenship is the unquestioned acceptance ofhegemonic whiteness, how will racially stigmatized ethnic groupsrespond politically? The changing racial and ethnic demography of theUnited States has generated wide interest in the political behaviour ofLatinos. A significant amount of research on Latino politicalparticipation2 demonstrates that ethnic identity has a powerfulinfluence on the political dynamics of Latinos. However, virtually noresearch exists that is devoted to the issue of how a Latino individual’sracial identity affects their vote choice.3 The study posits the questions:If Mexican immigrants in the United States choose citizenship andattempt to become integrated into the ‘American mainstream’, how dothey believe this happens? How do naturalized Mexican Americans, or‘Hispanics’,4 perceive their voting behaviour as an expression of theirracial identities, as ‘white’ or non-white, and reposition themselves as‘unhyphenated’ Americans? I propose that some Latinos use their voteinstrumentally to express their racial identity and attempt to breechthe borders of ‘whiteness’.

The ‘some’ Latinos in this study are naturalized Mexican Amer-icans. The naturalized individual, unlike the native-born citizen, mustconsciously engage the choice and process of joining the ranks oflegitimate society. The acquisition of citizenship marks the beginningof full political and social membership in the US. The individualacquires new civil and legal rights, with the opportunity to vote andto participate in the electoral process being perhaps the mostimportant. The stakes are also economic. Naturalization is a momentof re-definition, not just as a citizen, but in contemplating what the

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citizenry offers its members based on their inclusion in the bodypolitic.

In the United States’ growing anti-immigrant climate, citizenshiphas become a litmus test for inclusion in ‘America’s social contract’.Acquiring citizenship and participating in society are general publicindicators of the ability and willingness of an individual to assimilateand to be ‘Americanized’ rather than remaining a permanent alien. Thenaturalized citizen has to confront identity choices that are distinctlydifferent from the native-born � he or she actively chooses to join the‘us’ in the larger ‘us versus them’ immigration dialogue. Hownaturalized citizens see the ‘us’ becomes highly significant in termsof their self perception as a new member. Do they see themselves ashaving equal access and opportunity that American citizenshipproffers, or are they insightful enough to see through the rhetoricand understand how skin colour, economic class and gender privilegedictate the terms for access and opportunity within the United States?This study suggests that naturalized citizens consciously navigate theAmerican racial landscape and all its consequences, and they oftenalign themselves with ‘whites’ (and against blacks) in order to obtainthe social and political capital inherent in whiteness.

Choosing a white identity becomes a profound statement fornaturalized Mexican Americans � it emphasizes the socio-politicalstakes of racial power relations, especially for marginalized groupswho stand to benefit from being considered white by the dominantsociety. Their racial identity is an indication of how they perceive theUnited States and their place in it. Politically aligning themselves witha party that dominates the rhetoric of who is and who is not‘American’ illustrates an instrumental decision to parry (or at leastattempt to parry) the negative associations, both legal and racial, thatthe majority of white Americans attribute to ‘dark people’ whetherthey be Mexican or Arab or black. Choosing to identify as ‘white’,either for protection or inclusion, provides naturalized MexicanAmericans a pathway into the ‘imagined community’ of Americans �well-off, well educated and overwhelming white.

Hispanics in the United States

Upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848,Mexicans became Mexican Americans with the stroke of a pen. Thetreaty ended the Mexican War, recognized the annexation of Texas tothe United States (consummated nearly three years before) and cededto the United States Upper California (the modern state of California)and nearly all of the present American Southwest between Californiaand Texas.5 The United States’ annexation of California and themomentous discovery of gold in 1848 sparked the rapid immigration

Mexican Americans and the Republican Party 125

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of diverse populations into the newly acquired territory. California wastransformed from a sparsely populated Mexican frontier into a newstate in which European American immigrants quickly provided themainstay of its population. As Anglo6 Americans occupied the newterritories, the ideology of white supremacy followed, under the guiseof ‘manifest destiny’, providing justification for the displacement ofnot only lands and property but also of language and culture (Velez-Ibanez 1997).

European American immigrants in nineteenth-century Californiainherited and routinely relied on Eurocentric cultural criteria tohierarchically evaluate and racialize the various cultural groups theycontended within California. Such ‘racial formation’7 clearly privi-leged and elevated the status of white immigrants in the socialstructure and placed below them, in descending order, the Mexican,black, Asian and Native American populations. The conferral of racialgroup position (Blumer 1958)8 in the state had important socialconsequences for the life chances of all racial and ethnic groups duringthe last half of the nineteenth century (Almaguer 1994).

The influx into California of a diverse European Americanpopulation, both foreign and native born, created a process in whichethnic differences among these groups were overshadowed by theconstruction of a collective racial designation as ‘white’. Their newracial identity was secured at the national level and the racialization ofvarious non-European groups facilitated the construction of socialboundaries around the white population creating a link between raceand nation in the United States that manifests still (Omi and Winant1986). As Mexicans became Mexican Americans they racializedthemselves in response to the Anglo hegemony they encounteredand many Mexicans recast themselves as ‘white’ Americans.

Race or ethnicity: which means more?

Hispanics of Mexican origin, who comprise about two-thirds of thetotal Hispanic population in the US, are almost evenly dividedbetween those who identify as white and those who pick ‘some otherrace’ (US Census 2000).9 Yet, Hispanics are characterized as aminority group that are differentiated from the white majority in theUS due to historical factors of discrimination and persistently lowereducational outcomes and incomes on average. Categorizing Hispanicsas a minority group becomes much more difficult when they are almostevenly divided between those who identify with the white majority andthose that claim ‘some other race’. The resounding message is thatindividual Latinos in the United States experience race differentlyfrom one another. For them, it is not something that pertainsexclusively to skin colour, let alone history and heritage. The

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differences in characteristics and attitudes between those Hispanicswho call themselves white and those who identify as some other race,suggests they experience racial identity as a measure of belonging. Thefact that changeable characteristics, such as income, help determineracial identification among Latinos, versus permanent markers such asskin colour, does not necessarily mean that the colour lines in theUnited States are fading. On the contrary, these findings indicate that‘white’ has a broader sense of meaning and the boundaries ofwhiteness may indeed be ‘expanding’ (Warren and Twine 1997).Whether Hispanics choose to identify racially as white is not merelya matter of personal preference, it reflects the social position of groupmembers. Barreto (2005) found that Latino preference for Latinocandidates indicates that with a high degree of shared ethnicity, partyties are less significant than ethnic attachment. The study presentedhere considers not only the competing influence of partisanship andethnicity, but focuses on another social identity that is often ignored inthe study of Latino political participation � race. The paper argues thatsince race plays a significant role in determining the life chances andsocial positions of groups in the United States, racial self-identificationwithin the Latino community influences the voter’s decision in castinghis or her ballot. Moreover, Hispanic voting behaviour demonstratesthat inclusion in the ‘boundaries of whiteness’ is an important measureof belonging, stature and acceptance to many Latinos.

The resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the United States andaround the world has inspired social scientists to rethink models ofethnicity rooted in assumptions about the inevitability of assimila-tion.10 Traditional theories of assimilation presuppose that the absenceof ethnic bloc voting is solely explained by the weakening of ethnicidentity. The resilience of cultural, linguistic and religious differencesamong people has prompted a more accurate understanding of notonly the resurgence of ancient differences among people, but also ofthe emergence of ‘new’ ethnic groups.11 As the world becomes moremulti-racial and multicultural, individuals may maintain an ethnicidentity that is complicated by their racial identity, especially when thetwo offer contradictory benefits to the individual. Consequently, amodel of ethnicity that emphasizes the fluid, situational, volitional anddynamic character of ethnic identification, organization and action isessential. Moreover, such a model must consider the relationship thatindividual racial identity plays in the larger ethnic group. The socialconstructionist model appropriately accommodates such criteria.Literature managed under the social constructionist paradigm in-cludes studies on ethnic/racial identity, whiteness and national identity.The social constructionist model emphasizes aspects of ethnicity whichare expressed in the negotiation, definition and production of racial


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and ethnic boundaries and identities inside and outside ethniccommunities.

Why focus on Latinos?

In the 2000 United States Census, 90 per cent of the population wascounted as either white, black, Asian, American Indian or PacificIslander. Hispanics12 were expected to provide an additional identifier.The 2000 Census asked respondents first to mark off whether theywere ‘Spanish/Hispanic/Latino’ and then in a separate question tospecify their race.13 Among those who identified themselves asHispanic, nearly half (48 per cent) were counted as white.14 Accordingto the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics who identified themselves aswhite have higher levels of education, income and greater degrees ofcivic enfranchisement. Thus, the report concludes that Hispanics seerace as a measure of belonging and whiteness as a measure ofinclusion, or at least perceived inclusion (Tafoya 2005).

The US Census 2000 indicates that the Hispanic population of theUnited States is the fastest growing minority in the country, and couldhold considerable political clout within the next fifty years (see Tables1A and 1B). Will Hispanics in the US vote as an ethnic bloc or arethere variables that may undermine ethnic allegiances? UnderstandingHispanic voting behaviour is important since they now constitute thelargest ‘minority’ population and are concentrated in states with themost electoral votes, California receiving the most. Hispanics differslightly on their political views but recent research suggests thatRepublican identity, more so than Democratic partisanship, results inHispanics’ increased acceptance of ‘Latino’ as a racial identity(Stokes-Brown 2006; Logan 2003). For example, many Cubans andColombians tend to favour conservative political ideologies andsupport Republicans. Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans leanmore towards the Democrats; however, because the latter groups arefar more numerous (see Table 2), the Democratic Party is generallyconsidered to be in a stronger position among Latino voters.Consequently, candidates from both major parties openly court andtarget Latino voters, often interjecting Spanish into debates, runningSpanish language television and radio ads and utilizing informationgathered from Latino-only polls and focus groups. Strategically,President George W. Bush and the Republican Party have regardedthe growing Hispanic community as a potential source of growth forthe conservative movement � particularly because of the Catholic andsocial values that many Hispanic Americans share with the politicallyconservative.

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Table 1A. Hispanic or Latino: total population census 2000

United States Arizona California Colorado Illinois New Mexico Texas

Hispanic or Latino: 35,305,818 1,295,617 10,966,556 735,601 1,530,262 765,386 6,669,666White alone 16,907,852 599,353 4,353,269 357,125 701,331 400,758 3,866,192Black or African American alone 710,353 8,932 81,956 6,620 20,723 3,689 40,311American Indian and Alaska Native alone 407,073 22,509 154,362 15,259 12,774 12,023 49,503Asian alone 119,829 2,921 48,653 1,936 3,687 998 7,874Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone 45,326 1,094 13,225 776 1,494 511 3,677Some other race alone 14,891,303 590,654 5,610,560 304,419 709,233 306,873 2,418,043Two or more races 2,224,082 70,154 704,531 49,466 81,020 40,534 284,066

Source: US Census 2000

Note: For information on confidentiality protection, nonsampling error, definitions, and count corrections see http://factfinder.census.gov/home/en/datanotes/

expsf1u.htm

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Table 1B. Hispanic: total population census 1990

United States Arizona California Colorado Illinois New Mexico Texas

Hispanic origin: 22,354,059 688,338 7,687,938 424,302 904,446 579,224 4,339,905White 11,557,774 337,001 3,495,201 246,529 402,770 381,864 2,483,082Black 769,767 5,715 116,355 5,089 20,570 2,568 45,272American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut 165,461 13,436 58,099 5,708 3,623 6,287 13,074Asian or Pacific Islander 305,303 3,676 135,306 3,089 9,743 1,537 15,634Other race 9,555,754 328,510 3,882,977 163,887 467,740 186,968 1,782,843

Source: US Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population and Housing

Note: For information on confidentiality protection, nonsampling error, definitions, and count corrections see http://factfinder.census.gov/home/en/datanotes/

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Table 2. Percentage of United States Hispanic population by ethnic or nationality group

Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Dominican Central American South American Spaniard All other Hispanics

United States 58.49% 9.58% 3.52% 2.15% 4.8% 3.8% 0.3% 17.4%

naciR otreuP%56.9

nabuC%25.3

nacinimoD%71.2 nacixeM

%64.85

spuuorg rehto llA%4.71

drainapS%3.0

naciremA htuoS%8.3

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Significance of California and Mexican Americans

California is the most populous state in the nation. California isresponsible for 14 per cent of the United States’ gross domesticproduct (GDP). The gross state product (GSP) is about $1.5 trillion(as of 2004), making it greater than any other US state and mostcountries in the world (by Purchasing Power Parity). If California werean independent nation, it would have the fifth largest economy in theworld. It has some of the nation’s largest cities, including Los Angeles,San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco. The Hispanic population inLos Angeles County is the largest of any count, numbering over 4.6million (US Census 2000).

California’s Latino population is growing rapidly. About one inthree Californians is Latino � a total of about twelve million residents.In California, Hispanics are 32 per cent of the population, and of thatHispanic population, 77 per cent are of Mexican descent (see Table 3).Mexicans and Mexican Americans comprise 25 per cent of the entirestate of California (US Census 2000). By the 2020 Census, Latinos areexpected to outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the state.

Most Latino likely voters in California are Mexican American andreside in the southern part of the state.15 The nearly 60 per cent ofCalifornia’s likely Latino voters are Democrats, 26 per cent areRepublicans, and 9 per cent are registered as independents or with athird party16 (see Tables 5 and 6). But California Latino voters defysimple political labels. Latino likely voters are about as likely to saythey are politically conservative (35 per cent) as liberal (35 per cent)and 30 per cent say they are moderate (Pew Hispanic Center Report2002). Overall previous surveys indicate that Latino likely voters areconservative on many social issues and liberal on fiscal and environ-mental issues (Public Policy Institute of California 2005).

In California, George W. Bush garnered a ten percentage pointincrease of Latino votes in the 2004 presidential election as comparedto the 2000 presidential election (National Exit Poll, as reported in thePew Hispanic Center Report 2005), possibly indicating a conservativeshift in political ideology among Latinos. Moreover, ten years earlier anotable portion of California’s Latino population voted in favour ofProposition 187 in 1994, elucidating a division within California’sLatino community on the issue of illegal immigration.

As Mexican Americans are the largest of the Hispanic groups, bothin California and the United States, interpreting their voting rationaleis central to the question of how Latinos vote. Understanding MexicanAmericans voting behaviour is crucial because of the broader politicalstakes � the expansion of the white category in socio-political termsthat could mean the dilution of any ethnic-based Latino constitu-ency17 and, potentially, the expansion of the Republican Party’s base.

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Table 3. Percentage of California’s Hispanic population by ethnic or nationality group

Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Dominican Central American South American Spaniard All other Hispanics

California 77.07% 1.28% 0.66% 0.05% 5.3% 1.5% 0.2% 14.0%

naciR otreuP%82.1

nabuC%66.0

nacinimoD%50.0

nacixeM%70.77

scinapsiH rehto llA%0.41drainapS

%2.0 naciremA htuoS

%5.1

naciremA lartneC%3.5


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The examination of interviews with naturalized Mexican Americansin California presented here indicates a conservative trend that is tiedto the Latino individual’s racial identity and their understanding of thepolitical meanings of race in the United States. I argue that the trendtoward conservatism among Mexican Americans is influenced by adesire for inclusion, validation and protection. Interviewees continu-ally recast themselves as ‘white’ for purposes of political, economicand societal inclusion. Moreover, their ethnic and racial identitychoices are responses to public and private perceptions of politicalpartisanship. The findings presented here challenge the veracity of a‘Latino vote’ based on ethnic allegiance and suggest that a morecomplete understanding of the Latino voter is necessary to have anypredictive or generalizable value in determining the political efficacy ofLatinos as an ethnic group.

Table 4. Party affiliation of Hispanic voters by ethnic or nationality group, 1999

Political Party

Republicans Democrats Indenpendents

Mexicans 17.2% 39.4% 43.4%Puerto Ricans 19.9% 60.8% 19.3%Cubans 38.1% 32.1% 29.8%Dominicans 9.1% 66.7% 24.2%Salvadorans 21.4% 42.9% 35.7%Other South/Central Americans 9.1% 46.7% 44.2%All Hispanics 18.9% 43.3% 37.8%

Source: Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard Latino Survey, July 1999

N�1,630; x2�106.7; p50.0001

Table 5. Percent of Hispanics in the population, voting population, andidentifying as Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, by state, 2000

StateTotal

Population*Voting

Population Republicans Democrats Independents

Arizona 25.3 10.5 25.9 58.9 11.6California 32.4 11.1 25.8 60.3 9.7Colorado 17.1 13.3 13.9 61.7 20.0Florida 16.8 8.6 38.7 44.2 12.2Illinois 12.3 4.4 23.2 48.2 28.6Nevada 19.7 11.6 20.0 63.0 13.0New Jersey 13.3 2.2 33.8 42.3 23.9New Mexico 42.1 27.7 21.2 62.0 16.1New York 15.1 6.5 10.5 72.5 13.5Texas 32.0 7.9 16.7 42.9 29.8

Source: VNS Election Day Exit Polls, November 2000

*2000 US Census

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Whiteness and Mexican Americans

Through the efforts of historians, sociologists, anthropologists andcultural academics, whiteness as an analytical object, is beingestablished as a powerful means of critiquing the reproduction andmaintenance of systems of inequality within the United States andaround the globe.18 Whiteness specifies the cultural construction ofwhat Ruth Frankenberg (1993) characterizes as a structural position ofsocial privilege and power. In whiteness studies of socio-politicalsettings, whiteness has been identified as a core set of racial interestsoften obscured by seemingly race-neutral words, actions or policies(Frankenberg 1993; Lipsitz 1995). But to date this viewpoint has beentaken from whites themselves. White identity is transforming rapidly inrelation to changes in the political landscape (Alba 1990) and thedemographic makeup of the United States, within and outside ofwhiteness (Lierberson 1985). Another approach to the transformationof racial realities is found in the studies on ‘racelessness’ and ‘actingwhite’ (Fordham 1993; Johnson 1997).

If scholars interrogate how whiteness gets configured and reconfi-gured when there are more than two or three groups contending forprivileged racial status, the theoretical insights of looking at ‘whitenessconstruction as a process’ will be more fully illuminated. SeveralEuropean immigrants in the early nineteenth century were firstdeemed ‘non-white’, such as the Irish (Ignatiev 1995) and the Italians(Roediger 1991; Frye Jacobsen 1998; Guglielmo and Salerno 2003),but then later were enveloped by the ‘ever-expanding boundaries’ ofwhiteness (Warren and Twine 1997). Remarking on the historicallysituated, contingent, fluid character of whiteness, Takaki (1989) hasreported on how Armenians became white in the first part of thetwentieth century in California. Lopez (1996) chronicles the similaremergent development of Armenian transformation into whitenesswith his review of case law. More currently, in response to the‘minority as majority’ debate in the United States, Warren and Twine(1997) suggest that in the United States the ‘white’ racial category hasexpanded across time to include groups previously considered ‘non-white’.

While the consistency of white hegemony speaks to a unifieddefinition of whiteness, the changing demographic and politicalcircumstances unfolding in the United States suggest a focus towardthe changes underway in how racial identities are established andcontested (Hartigan 1997). There is a need to analyse the ways inwhich non-whites might attempt to breach the boundaries of whitenessby examining beyond cultural indicators of ‘whiteness’.

Although there are many indications of weakening ethnic bound-aries in the white American population (due to intermarriage,


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language loss, religious conversion or declining participation), anumber of studies show maintenance or increase in ethnic identifica-tion among whites (Alba 1990; Bakalian 1993; Kelly 1993, 1994;Kivisto 1989; Waters 1990). Such a contradictory dualism is in partdue to what Herbert Gans (1979) calls ‘symbolic ethnicity’. However,for traditional ‘non-whites’ the ethnic boundaries may not necessarilybe ‘weakening’, but the racial boundaries of ‘whiteness’ may beexpanding (Warren and Twine 1997) or may be ‘crossed’ (Alba andNee 2003).

For naturalized Mexican Americans, ethnic identity is the result of adialectical process involving internal and external opinions andprocesses, as well as the individual’s self-identification and outsiders’ethnic designations (Nagel 1986). Debates over the placement of ethnicboundaries and the social worth of ethnic groups are centralmechanisms in ethnic and racial identity construction. Ethnic andracial identity is created and recreated as various groups and interestsengage contending visions of the ethnic composition of society andargue over which rewards or sanctions should be attached to aparticular ethnic and racial group. Current examples of the contesta-tion of ethnic and national boundaries are found in examiningnaturalized Mexican Americans response to restrictionist and anti-immigrant legislation (such as Proposition 187) and their increasedpercentage of votes for Republican candidates (such as George W.Bush) over recent elections. The assumption that ethnicity is simply apersonal choice risks over-emphasizing agency at the expense ofstructural factors. In fact, for many naturalized Mexican Americans,ethnic and racial identity are both optional and mandatory, asindividual choices are circumscribed by the ethnic and racial categoriesavailable at a particular time and place.

As a stigmatized ethnic group, Mexican Americans must negotiateindividual racial identity in response to external (and consequently,internal) boundary construction.19 According to Alba and Nee (2003),the boundaries into the ‘American mainstream’ may be crossed orblurred. California’s naturalized Mexican American population’sability to cross into the dominant group (white) will depend on factorssuch as forms of immigrant capital, racial appearance,20 andgeographical location, among other factors. Moreover, the politicalenvironment of California has provided the state’s Mexican Americanswith an ‘intermediate zone’ between the two racial/ethnic populations.The ethnic origins of individuals in the zone (of whiteness) have notbecome invisible to either California’s white or Mexican Americanpopulation, but the social and cultural distances between them hasbeen reduced.

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Whiteness as inclusion

In the examination of naturalized Mexican Americans I find thepursuit of collective shelter (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991)21 manifestsin one of three identities: economic, political, or ethnic/racial.

Table 6. Socioeconomic comparison of naturalized Mexican Americans (casestudy)

N�156 Respondents

AgeMean�51.3 Years

Educational AttainmentBHigh School Diploma 77High School Diploma 49Some College/Technical 13Bachelors Degree 19�Bachelors Degree 6

GenderFemale 53Male 103

Interview LanguageSpanish 35English 121

Family Incomeless than $9,000 33$9,000-$30,000 46$30,000-$50,000 21$50,000-$70,000 39$70,000 and up 17

Occupational StatusProfessional/Managers 31Sales/Clerical 36Crafts/Operatives 22Farm Laborers/Managers 11Service Workers 56

Years Residency in U.S.15�20 4320�30 4630� 67

Political Party AffiliationRepublican 19Democrat 133Independent/Third Party 4


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Individuals with aspirations for a perceived higher ‘group position’sought collective shelter from various forms of threat (economic,political and group) in either higher socioeconomic class status,political party alignment with Republicans, or a re-racialization intowhite group membership. Naturalized Mexican Americans’ symbolicethnicities are shaped and reshaped in response to varying situationalcontexts and growing social needs (Alba 1990). As Mexican Amer-icans move along the continuum of citizenship, they choose an identitythat best reflects their position (either real or imagined) in society.Moreover, as citizenship status in California is continually questioned,the naturalized Mexican Americans in the study dissociate fromMexican ethnic group membership and shift towards an identityinfused with markers of ‘American-ness’, both politically and racially.They move from being ‘Mexican and brown’ to being ‘American andwhite’. Naturalized Mexican Americans perceive such a shift to bearsignificant social benefits. For Mexican Americans, ethnic and racialidentity is becoming the product of personal choice � a social categoryindividuals actively decide to adopt or stress.

The acquisition of US citizenship is associated with Latinos’ claimto whiteness and is positively associated with distance from theimmigrant experience. Consequently, the US-born children of Latinoimmigrants are more likely to declare themselves white than theirforeign born parents, and the share of whiteness is still higher amongthe grandchildren of immigrants.22 Socioeconomics indicates thatnaturalized Mexican Americans with higher income are more likely toidentify as white, regardless of skin colour (Tafoya 2004).

Naturalized Mexican Americans in this study (see Table 4)ethnically dissociate from the primary ethnic category to shift to thegreater ‘community lacking in individual cost’ (Waters 1990) � theAnglo community. To protect themselves, naturalized Mexican Amer-icans shifted to communities they identified more with the discourse ofcitizenship and nationality, a decision which allowed them to re-racialize as white thus distancing themselves from blacks, blackLatinos and poorer, browner and undocumented Mexican Americans.In doing so, the Mexican Americans are hoping to reap the structuraland social privileges associated with being enveloped in the category‘white’, similar to the Irish (Ignatiev 1995), the Jews (Brodkin 1998)and other European immigrant groups (Frye Jacobsen 1998).

If informal ethnic meanings and transactions can shape the every-day experiences of minority groups, formal ethnic labels and policiesmay be even more powerful sources of identity. There are several waysthat ethnicity is ‘politically constructed’, such as the ways in whichethnic boundaries and identities are negotiated, defined and producedby political policies and institutions (Nagel 1986). Official ethniccategories and meanings are increasingly political. In current immi-

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gration debates, ethnic identity shifts are sociopolitical phenomena(Conzen 1992; Frankenberg 1993; Ignatiev 1995; Nagel 1994b;Smedley 1993; Williams 1990). The ramifications of political partisan-ship may be the underlying cause of the counter-intuitive shift invoting behaviour found among naturalized Mexican Americans.

For naturalized Mexican Americans ethnic and racial identity arefashioned as rational choices (Hechter 1987). The construction ofethnic and/or racial boundaries (group formation) or the adoption of aparticular ethnic and/or racial identity (individual identification), canbe seen as part of a strategy to gain advantages politically, economic-ally, or socially. Scholars studying the ‘borderlands’ have demonstratedthat the nature and shape of ‘whiteness’ can change, morph (Duster2001) and expand (Warren and Twine 1997) to include historicallydesignated non-whites.

Whiteness as protection

Naturalized Mexican Americans, while maintaining strong ethnicidentification with Mexican descent, can create a strong nationalidentity based on their US citizenship. The intensified nationalidentification may be especially apparent when citizenship is ques-tioned during times of anti-immigrant sentiment, such as the publicdebate over Proposition 187.23 Phrased in punitive language andfuelled by a public relations campaign blaming ‘illegal’ immigrantsfrom Mexico for the many problems confronting California’s econ-omy, Proposition 187 created chilling new categories of publicobligation and citizenship. Over time, and with repeated attacks onMexican immigration, I found that many naturalized MexicanAmericans adopt a national identity that reflects one of ‘whiteness’and less Mexican ethnic group membership. As the national discourseon immigration and ‘guestworkers’ divides political parties, states,communities and neighbours, Mexican Americans find themselves in aliminal space faced with choices between a Mexican ethnic identity ora more neutral national identity as an American citizen.24 Mostnaturalized Mexican Americans imagine themselves as belonging tothe greater ‘American’ community (Anderson 1991), and often thatimagination is framed as racially white.

The combination of ‘natural continuity’, conscious manipulationand the ‘need for community’ (Smith 1992) distinguishes nationalidentity, making it the most fundamental of collective identities.25

Naturalized Mexican Americans’ creation of a stronger identitybased on national belonging fulfils their social psychological ‘needfor community’ (Smith 1992) and meets the perceived need forprotection against forms of potential threat. Gutierrez (1995)explains that the value of ‘whiteness’ and its concomitant imperatives


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of racialized exclusion have divided Mexican American communities.A chasm exists between those who favour citizenship as well ascultural incorporation in the United States and those more orientedtoward maximizing group resources by maintaining solidarity withall people of Mexican origin on both sides of the border. ForGutierrez, the power of ‘the possessive investment in whiteness’(Lipsitz 1998) means that ethnic identity among Mexican Americanschanges boundaries over time. Internal politics and external oppor-tunity structure help shape Mexican Americans as assimilationists orseparatists, united in defence of immigrants or divided into inclusiveand exclusive factions, eager to identify as ‘white’ or determined toally with other aggrieved communities of colour. Mexican Americanswho claim ‘whiteness’ do so through their interactions with othergroups. It remains of the utmost importance that scholars ofwhiteness view ethnicity as relational rather than atomized ordiscrete.

Mexican Americans face a unique and ongoing identity processthat involves ethnicity, nationalism and race. Naturalized MexicanAmericans are often on the frontlines of such identity battles as ‘new’and rising citizens of the United States Their identity choice does notexclusively reflect permanent phenotypical markers, race is alsorelated to characteristics that can influence economic status andperception of civic enfranchisement. Navigating the social andpolitical battleground and its relationship to race is a significantchallenge for naturalized citizens as they re-cast themselves as‘Americans’.

Case study background

The case study analyses two of California’s most divisive ballot votesfor Mexican Americans: Proposition 187 and the 2004 United Statespresidential race. These two elections reflect how the ‘politics of fear’can influence a racially marginalized voter to make a decisionincongruent with previous patterns of ethnic or political allegiance.

California’s Proposition 187

In November 1994, the California electorate passed Proposition 187by a margin of three to two. The initiative banned undocumentedimmigrants from accessing many social services such as publiceducation, all non-emergency medical care and prenatal clinics. Itrequired providers of health, education, social services and the policeto report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service anyone whocould not provide proof of legal residency.26 The vote on Proposition187 was preceded by a four-year economic recession led by defence

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downsizing, a particularly unstable period of geo-political, economicand cultural restructuring. The Proposition was supported by thenRepublican California Governor Pete Wilson who was running for re-election.27 Wilson directed the fears and discontent of the California’selectorate toward the issue of ‘illegal’ immigration, and especially,‘illegal aliens’.28 Much of the anti-immigrant discussion implicitlytargeted Mexican immigrants and newspapers often employed termssuch as the ‘brown tide’ of immigration. Such propaganda created theinteresting paradox of the ‘illegal alien’ being racialized. Largesegments of California’s minority citizens voted in favour of theinitiative.29 According to exit polls, two-thirds of whites, a majority ofblack and Asian voters, and even one-third of Latino voters voted‘Yes’ on the referendum (Martin 1995, p. 259).

As dialogue over Proposition 187 ensued, California’s Latinopopulation was thrust into the centre of a debate not limited to legalresidency, but one of ethnic identification, citizenship and ethnic groupmembership.30 Perceptions of stigma associated with ‘illegals’ causedsome naturalized citizens to seek a distance between themselves andundocumented immigrants. The distance was articulated with raciallanguage, developing a more positive identification in a white identityand opposed to the racially profiled ‘brown’ undocumented immi-grants. The respondents’ ethnic identity contemplations and thuspolitical choices set the stage for the conservative trend manifestamong naturalized Mexican Americans in the 2004 United Statespresidential election.

2004 Presidential election

Much of the current scholarship on Latino political socializationand partisanship focuses on the core values of the Latino communityand how those values might impact a voter’s choice on measures andcandidates. Recent literature overwhelmingly suggests that Latinos,with the exception of Cubans, will identify primarily with theDemocratic Party (de la Garza and DeSipio 2004). Most politicalpundits and scholars suggest that Latinos are primarily drawn towardthe Democratic Party because of their identification with minoritygroup politics, issues of education and healthcare (de la Garza, Falconand Garcia 1992). Using such hypotheses, some opinion surveys justdays before the 2004 presidential election predicted the Democraticnominee, John Kerry, would get as much as 65 per cent of the Latinovote. Based on exit polls conducted by the Associated Press and NBCnews, many ‘expert’ projections were off the mark. Although SenatorAl Gore did win 65 per cent of the Latino vote in the 2000 presidentialelection, Kerry only collected 55 per cent. President George Bushgarnered 42 per cent of the Latino vote in the 2004 presidential


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election, outperforming his 35 per cent four years earlier. Roughly ninemillion Latinos voted in the 2004 presidential election, a 40 per centincrease from the number who voted four years prior. Many politicalpundits and ethnic scholars dismiss the conservative trend amongstLatinos because Latinos remain solidly Democrat. While Latinosalone may not have swung the vote for Bush, it is crucial to recognizeLatinos as a possibly increasing conservative political force.

The sample

All 156 respondents were naturalized citizens who were immigrantsfrom Mexico and of Mexican descent living in southern California (seeTable 3). Collected from a snowball sample and posted requests atlocal community centres, all respondents claimed to have voted onProposition 187 in November 1994 and in the November 2004election. The sample included 103 men and 53 women, ranging inage from 19 to 86 with a mean age of 51.3 years. Age and gender hadno direct correlation to party affiliation or vote choice in the sample,but duration of residence was significant to respondents’ higherincome levels, affiliation with the Republican Party, and anti-undocumented immigrant stance. While these correlations werenotable, they are not explored in depth here.31 Incomes ranged from$20,000 to $300,000 per year. The sample is similar to the largerHispanic American population in that higher income was positivelyassociated with a respondent identifying as ‘white’. Yet severalrespondents who had significantly lower incomes identified as ‘white’.Usually this was correlated to lighter skin and fluency in Englishacross all descriptive variables, which is comparable to the largerLatino community as well. Those in the sample with higher incomeswere most likely to have voted both for 187 and to re-elect George W.Bush. In addition, they were more commonly allied with either theRepublican Party or ‘Republican values’.

The majority of respondents had a high school diploma andvery few had any post baccalaureate education. Higher levelsof education were positively correlated to Democratic Party member-ship and seemed to temper some of the incendiary political rhetoric,but it did not have a significant effect on vote choice which alsoparallels the national data on Latino party membership and votechoice.32

One hundred and thirty-three were registered Democrats, nineteenwere Republicans and four were independents. The sample reflects thelarger party affiliations of Mexican Americans in the United Statesand in California. Compared to some of the larger ethnoracialimmigrant groups in California, Latinos have the second largest firstgeneration (naturalized) voter pool with 16 per cent of the adult

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Latino population. Blacks have the least with 7 per cent, Asians (notbroken down by ethnic groups) have 8 per cent and white naturalizedcitizens have 68 per cent (Citrin and Highton 2003). Interestingly,immigrants from Mexico are less likely to vote than those from otherLatin American countries.33

Eighty-five respondents voted in favour of Proposition 187 andseventy-one voted against. Ninety-three voted for Bush and sixty-threevoted for Kerry. Here the sample diverges from the overall MexicanAmerican population in the state. The majority of Latinos inCalifornia voted against the proposition.34

The in-depth interviews35 were tape-recorded and transcribed. Onehundred and twenty-one interviews were conducted in English andthirty-five were conducted in Spanish. Notes were also taken duringthe interview. Interviews ranged from twenty-five minutes to threehours. All interviews took place in the homes of the respectiverespondents.

Findings for Proposition 187

On the issue of ‘illegal’ immigration

From the interviews of those who voted in favour of Proposition 187,three consistent themes surfaced from the interviews. First, thesubjects felt compelled to distinguish themselves from undocumentedimmigrants both nationally and racially. Second, they expressed agreat deal of internal conflict regarding their own racial identity.Third, the struggle with their racial and ethnic identity options led tothe need to definitively select an identity salient to meeting their mosturgent needs at the time.1) Defining the ‘other’A majority of the respondents felt a strong desire to differentiatethemselves from both the status and depiction of an undocumentedimmigrant. Respondents were very specific about how they themselveswere not like ‘illegal aliens’. The need to be different from ‘illegalaliens’ is elucidated in the language they chose to describe undocu-mented immigrants and their perceptions of how they were actuallydifferent.

The vocabulary the respondents employed reflected the heatedpolitical rhetoric surrounding the immigration debate. Not only didsubjects use disparaging terms such as ‘illegal aliens’, ‘wetbacks’ and‘beaners’, they spoke of undocumented immigrants with the sametenor as many anti-immigrant groups. Cesar,36 a 26-year-old dish-washer gave a poignant example of respondents not wanting to beconflated with undocumented immigrants:


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Look. It’s hard to explain, but it’s important that you understand Iknow the difference between a beaner and Mexican American. It’snot that I don’t understand . . . I mean I came here just like they do,but I learned English and I took the test. It’s not easy. No one wantsto help you become an American. Like my uncle. He’s been hereseven years and he’s still a wetback. He’s lazy and won’t become anAmerican. I think he is just stupid. I’m not like that . . . I know thatbeing an American means I’m not just another Mexican here for afree ride.

Cesar believes that being a citizen is somehow qualitatively differentthan not being a citizen. Cesar discusses his uncle using disparagingethnoracial labels and judges him as being ‘stupid’, yet Cesar lives withhis uncle. So even though respondents share homes with undocumen-ted immigrants, and are often related to them, they see themselves asdifferent from the undocumented persons they know. Respondentswanted me, as an interviewer, to understand the difference as well.37

Cesar’s comments indicate a sense of internalized racial deprecationtoward Mexican immigrants, even those in his own family. Cesar’ssentiments as well as similar comments made by other respondentssupport the claim that an individual’s racial and ethnic identity ismorphable (Duster 2001) when engaged in distancing oneself from theracially degraded members of the larger ethnic group. Cesar’s referenceto the ‘free ride’ undocumented immigrants receive places himsquarely in the contestation over which rewards or sanctions shouldbe attached to a particular group � ‘us’ or ‘them’. In asserting hisstrong work ethic, he aligns himself with ‘traditional American values’that are implicit in white identity.

News coverage of the legislation quoted prominent pro-Proposition187 individuals as wanting to ‘save the state from the Mexicantakeover’, hold back the ‘tidal wave of illegal aliens’, and retreatfrom the ‘browning of California’. Respondents claimed that thebiased public discourse on undocumented immigrants motivated themto distinguish between their self-definitions and the racialized verbaland visual portrayals of Mexicans on television, radio and in print.Luis, a 38-year-old plumber, discussed how the media’s depiction ofundocumented immigrants affected him:

I saw pictures of the border patrol storming the fields at nightlooking for aliens. I thought how hard it must be for the Mexicans.But then, I realized how hard it must be for the patrols. They have todeal with these damn Mexicans everyday, day and night. What aload! I mean you’re surrounded by chili-chokers all day, all night andthey never stop coming. I read where the government spendsmillions of dollars a years to keep them out, to educate their

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children and to pay for their births. These women, they think if theycross over, drop the kid stateside, they have a ticket. No wonderpeople here hate Mexicans. They think we all take advantage. That’sthe pisser. My wife [Luis’ wife is a native American of Mexicandecent] . . . when I took her to the emergency room for her brokenarm, the nurse starting speaking to her in Spanish and asked if shehad a green card. God dammit � my wife was born here. You seehow they fuck it up for the rest of us. We had to explain to this nursethat we were Americans and had insurance. I think she almostfainted when I gave her our insurance card!

Luis’ comments indicate that he can understand the perspective ofboth the Mexican immigrant and the white American nurse. Ourconversation highlighted the liminal space that Mexican Americansoccupy when contemplating their ethnic, racial and political identity.Luis assumed the claims of the overwhelming costs associated withundocumented immigration were true, yet he never related this cost tohimself as a citizen or a taxpayer. He resented the presence of ‘illegalaliens’ and their public condemnation. According to Luis’ interpreta-tion of the hospital exchange, his wife’s is dark-skin and Spanishsurname caused the white nurse to assume they were ‘illegal’. Luisclearly has accepted mainstream depictions of undocumented immi-grants and feels compelled to distance himself from them. Hisemphasis is important because it simultaneously supports and contra-dicts the prevalent literature. The search for collective shelter iscommunicated when respondents invoked their national identity ascitizens instead of asserting their ethnic identity. Allegiance to thecommunity of ethnic Mexicans cost more than the benefit of claimingtheir legal status and aligning themselves with unquestioned whitecitizens. Because Mexican ethnicity is highly racialized in the publicdiscourse surrounding immigration, Luis’ choice is understandable. Aclaim to citizenship is perceived as a declaration to whiteness. Manyrespondents also felt they may be racially identified as ‘brown’, andconsequently profiled as ‘illegals’. So their need to assert theirdifference from undocumented immigrants became all the moreimportant. In order to express their difference from ‘illegals’ manyvoted in favour of the restrictionist legislation believing that its passagewould leave them unharassed, unquestioned, and ultimately closer to‘white’ Californians.2) Internal conflictUsing undocumented immigrants as a backdrop, several respondentsdiscussed the interplay of ethnic and national identity and the conflictit created within them. While the prevailing literature on ethnic groupallegiance suggests that Mexican Americans would feel a ‘natural’bond to their undocumented counterparts (Padilla 1985), many of the


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respondents challenged such assumptions. Rudy, a 41-year-old con-struction worker, discussed his internal conflict:

I want to be something else. I hate the idea that people think I’msomething I’m not. I’m a Mexican, but I’m an American. I knowthey [undocumented immigrants] don’t want anything more that abetter life. But they aren’t Americans. Why should I give away mymoney to them? Because they’re Mexicans? Because I’m Mexican?But I’m American. There’s a difference. It’s just hard to say.

Rudy’s comments highlight the difficulty many respondents had injustifying their vote for Proposition 187. When I pushed respondentsto untangle their ethnic and national interplay, racial identity wasoften unveiled as the muted factor that guided their vote choice. Formany respondents their racialization of ‘American’ convinced them tovote counter to ethnic allegiances. Respondents spoke candidly abouthow ‘everybody knows Americans are white’. When I confronted suchgeneralizations by discussing the unquestioned citizenship status ofAfrican Americans, one respondent, a Vietnam War veteran andretired baker, claimed that ‘Blacks don’t really count. They don’t haveany real choices. Nobody thinks of them when they think ofAmericans.’ The ‘choices’ to which the respondent referred indicatethat these naturalized citizens believed in the interchangeability (FryeJacobsen 1998) of their race, by both self- and social definition. Byequating whiteness with ‘Americanness’ while defining themselves as‘real Americans’, it becomes apparent that the respondents seethemselves not only as part of the larger Anglo community, but aswhite themselves. Respondents’ claim to ‘Americanness’ was adamanteven if their ethnic values were salient to their lives. For example, Ilena,a 34-year-old daycare provider who could ‘pass’ for white, says:

As a Mexican woman it’s hard. I can’t be like these Americanwomen, and the way they leave their families and husbands. But I’man American, too. It’s very hard to see these [undocumentedMexican] women come over and keep the old ways. I want to belike the white women you know � but so many times I think I willnever be like them � but I’m not like those illegals either. I want agood job and respect like those white women � I mean the Americanwomen. You know what I mean.

Here we see that Ilena is torn between her gendered visions ofMexican ways and American ways and the racial implications of each.It is also important to note that when she discusses ‘American’ women,she only notes white American women � not black or Asian. Ilena saidshe voted for Proposition 187 because ‘then nobody will assume I’m

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just an educated illegal who can be their nanny or housekeeper. I needa real job. I need respect.’ To Elena, racialized undocumentedimmigrants hinder her ability to gain respect and access to a whitesociety.3) Choosing an identityConfronted with California’s contentious immigration debate manyrespondents felt ‘obliged’ to signal their white identity and parry theracially charged public discourse. By voting for Proposition 187,respondents’ indicated a racial and national allegiance which theybelieved could provide protection from the economic, political andgroup threat that surrounded the issue.

Economic threat

The economic threat posed by undocumented immigrants was evidentin the depictions of the financial costs incurred by the state ofCalifornia as a result of ‘illegals’. The undocumented immigrantbecame a convenient scapegoat for many politicians who cast them asa costly expense to the taxpayer and threat to very fabric of Americanculture. Governor Pete Wilson actually sued the United Statesgovernment on behalf of the people of California for federalgovernment’s inability to stop illegal immigration efficiently. TheCalifornia taxpayers, he argued, were paying for the social servicesprovided to undocumented immigrants. Conversations with therespondents revealed that the perceived taxpayer cost was a factor intheir decision to vote in favour of Proposition 187. Ernesto’s commentsare quite cogent:

Why should I pay for someone else’s baby to be born? It’s badenough that my tax dollars support those deadbeats on welfare. Whyshould I pay for someone who’s not even a citizen? I work hard andpay my fair share. I’m sure as hell not going to pay one dime more sosome wetback can get her kid a US birth certificate. It’s bad enoughevery God damn sign downtown is in Spanish. Did you know thatwe have to pay for translators on the job? Someone else gets paid tointerpret to people who are too lazy to learn the God damnlanguage. I’m sorry. This just pisses me off to no end. I mean here’s[Pete] Wilson handing out IOUs and their using our tax dollars tosupport the aliens. Enough is enough.

Ernesto’s level of anger was not common among the respondentsbut most did express some frustration with ‘paying hard earnedmoney’ for services for ‘dirty illegals’. In referring to ‘our tax dollars’,Ernesto identifies himself with the California citizens that are mostvocal on the issue � Republicans and white nativists. Ernesto identifies


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as ‘white and middle class’. He is a civil servant with strong unionaffiliations. Ernesto says he was frustrated because he was ‘caught’ inthe dialogue of illegal immigration. Even though he is light-skinned,he felt his ethnic surname would cause others [whites] to question hislegal status. He insisted that voting for 187 was a ‘way to make sure thewhites [at his job] knew he was with them’ so they wouldn’t think hewas ‘some Mexican traitor who felt sorry for the wetbacks’. Hereagain, the disparaging epithets for undocumented immigrants providesErnesto with the social distance to claim an alternative racial identity.For Ernesto, and many other respondents, the perceived ‘economicthreat’ of undocumented immigrants warranted the effort to castthemselves as non-threatening white Californians.

Political threat

Respondents who voted for Proposition 187 said the measure provideda way to clearly separate themselves from ‘illegal aliens’. Althoughmaintaining a shared ethnic identity with undocumented Mexicanimmigrants, the subjects who politically united themselves with 187’sadvocates were signalling a non-Mexican racial identity. If Proposition187 passed, respondents believed that their legal status in Californiawould no longer be challenged. Even if a person was ‘brown’ they arenot profiled as ‘illegal’. One respondent said that eliminating whites’suspicion would ‘make us white too’. Many respondents felt thatvoting for 187 was a strong signal to white Californians about theirlegal status. Elsa’s remarks indicate her interpretation of ‘illegals’’political threat to her status:

This was my first time voting. I was excited. But I have many friendsthat are illegal. Many in my family are illegal. But I am a citizen andit was my turn. I feel bad for illegals. I wish everyone could comeand be an American, but no. I am a citizen and it was my turn tovote. I felt I should vote as a regular American would. So I votedyes. Now I am an American. No one should question that.

By using the term ‘regular American’ Elsa indicates how sheinterprets the racialization of the immigration debate. If white nativistsare ‘regular Americans’ and she feels the need to express her identity asa ‘regular American’, her move toward more of a white identity isimplied.

Elsa speaks very little English and we spoke almost entirely inSpanish. She lives with her husband and in-laws who are undocu-mented immigrants. She is a 29-year-old waitress in a Mexicanrestaurant. When asked how she thought Proposition 187 wouldaffect her family, she replied that she did not think it would have any

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effect. She thought it would have more of an effect on Americans andcause them to ‘worry less about immigrants’. She mentioned that herin-laws had been in the United States for eight years without gainingcitizenship. She said that they speak no English and felt no need tobecome citizens since there would ‘always be work and no one reallycares’. She felt that if Proposition 187 passed people would ‘forget’about undocumented immigrants and go on. Unlike Cesar, Elsa claimsto have voted for Proposition 187 as a personal expression of her‘American-ness’, not to distance herself from her ethnic counterparts.But her comments reveal that she believed by being a citizen alongwith the passage of Proposition 187, she would be more readilyaccepted as ‘a regular American’, as a white American.

Group threat

Lastly, the notion of group threat38 was the decisive factor in manyrespondents’ decision to vote for Prop 187. Several respondents spokeabout the rhetoric of violence that surrounded the debate. Oneexample of visible group threat was found in the comments of HaroldEzell, the founder of the Save Our State (SOS) Committee said, ‘Thepeople are tired of watching their state run wild and become a thirdworld country. If you catch ‘em [illegal aliens] you ought to clean ‘emand fry ‘em’. Respondents quickly drew the parallel between racializedgroups and ‘third world’ countries. Group threat, while apparent inboth economic and political discourse, was the most compellingmotivation for respondents to favour Proposition 187. Severalrespondents noted the verbal and physical hostility they encounteredwhen illegal immigration became the focus of the election. Most feltthey were targeted because of white Californians’ racism andethnocentrisms acceptance in the public sphere. Angel described aconversation he overheard at the barber:

They were serious. You know you usually hear jokes about the lazywetbacks or the hombres, but these men were serious. They wereangry and kept saying ‘‘those stupid spics have got to go’’. Themood in the shop was usually light and people laughed, but all thistalk of illegals had people upset. I sat very quietly and said nothing.You can still hear Mexico in my words and I did not want them tothink that I was an alien.

Angel’s fear and conscious decision to remain silent is a significantexample of the respondents’ perception of and response to groupthreat. As Angel elaborated, ‘If they knew I was a Mexican, I’dprobably be dead right now. They did not care if I was legal. I was justanother stupid spic to them.’ By saying nothing, Angel was able to


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capitalize on his light skin and eyes to project a whiteness that left himunscathed, at least physically. This interaction was pivotal in Angel’sdecision to vote for 187. He claimed that if ‘whites think there aren’tany illegals, no one will care if I have an accent. They might think I’mjust Spanish.’ It is clear that the privilege accorded to white Europeansin the US was not lost on Angel; white skin privilege was something heintended to employ beyond the barbershop interaction. With publicrhetoric that dignified the physical violence of ‘rounding them all upand deporting them’ had a profound effect on respondents need toboth mentally and physically distance themselves from their affiliationwith Mexican immigrants. Repeatedly, the lighter skinned respondentsexpressed relief that they might not be racially profiled as Mexicans,and the majority of respondents were anxious for the focus onMexicans in general to be over. As Tomas, a 43-year-old painter sadlysaid, ‘Maybe after the election . . . maybe after it passes . . . at leastthey’ll [whites] know we are like them and leave us alone.’

The respondents’ perceptions of threat, in its various forms, wereclear in their reasoning for a pro-187 vote. Their choice to exchange aracialized ethnic identity for a whiter national identity supports theclaim that, when possible, racial and ethnic identity may be theproduct of personal choice; that it represents a social categoryindividuals decide to adopt or stress in response to their perceptionsof threat. Of course identifying as ‘white’ and having white skinprivilege are not the same. But the relationship between the two areinfluential when a vote in favour of Proposition 187 could distancethem from the racially and socially degraded, unempowered target andundocumented immigrants. Identifying with the Mexican communityat large provided no sense of protection and came at immeasurablecost. Thus, many respondents filled their need for community amongthe protected and legal white Californians.

In the polemical controversy over Proposition 187, their raciallyconnoted legal citizenship provided respondents with a ‘safe’ identityand a potential conduit to the body politic of white Californians.Proposition 187 pressed many respondents to assert their racialidentity which directly influenced their vote choice. Most of therespondents who voted in favour of Proposition 187 also voted to re-elect George W. Bush as President of the United States ten years later.Both Proposition 187 and President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaignwere moments when US citizens drew very clear boundaries aroundthe ‘us’ and the ‘them’ in the ‘imagined community’ of ‘Americans’.

Findings on 2004 presidential election

Bush’s 2004 success with Latino voters39 left many public opinionresearchers attempting to account for the discrepancies between the

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pre- and post- election results. Some political pundits claim the answerlies in the diversity among Latinos. Others insist that Bush’s long-standing relationship with the Latino community in Texas highlighthis emphasis on conservative social values. In particular his oppositionto gay marriage potentially made the difference in the Latino’spredominately family-oriented Catholic contingency. Yet, pre-electionpolls indicated that Latinos more often agreed with Kerry on themajor issues. I contend media pollsters improperly gauge the Latinovote. In order to understand the Latino vote, and thus Latino politicalidentity, questions must reflect broader dimensions of the community.Any analysis of the Latino vote must consider the naturalized MexicanAmericans’ perception of themselves and how the meanings attachedto the issues translate into a cohesive identity for the individual. Theinterviews produced three major themes which help explain George W.Bush’s increased popularity among California’s Mexican Americans �validation, protection and inclusion.

1) Validation

During an election, validation is realized by the voter if the candidate’sviews and values mirror those of the voter � the voter sees themselvesin the candidate, or they believe he’s ‘our guy’. Many respondents saidBush’s ‘values’ resonated with their own socially conservative opinions.Most importantly, they felt ‘validated’ by his outreach to the Latinocommunity. Several commented on Bush’s presence (and Kerry’sabsence) in their media mediums and felt that he ‘recognized’ themoutside of minority politics. Elsa, a 29-year-old Democrat and waitressexplains:

He [Bush] sees us. He gets us. He’s from Texas, so he understandsMexicans. I heard him on the radio speaking Spanish � that meanssomething, especially when we are told not to speak Spanish in somany places � our President speaks to us in our own language.

Language is a primary facet of identity and in California language isa volatile issue. While the majority of Latino voters in Californiaoppose bilingual education, they do expect to be able to speak Spanishin their homes, their churches and their community without inter-ference from the government. The fact that Bush reached acrossseveral media channels in Spanish convinced several respondents hecared about their vote, effectively moving them to choose him overKerry even if they had voted for Gore in 2000.

Jesse, a 72-year-old, was among many Mexican American Demo-crats I interviewed that supported Bush. Although he voted for AlGore four years ago and Bill Clinton in 1996, he cast his ballot for


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Bush in 2004. ‘I just think he has the right ideas’, the retired printersaid. ‘Stem cell research, abortion, marriage � on issues like that, I justlike his philosophy. I trust him. He’s like a Mexican in a strange way.We share many of the same values and when we make a decision, westand by it. Some gringos call it machismo, I call it character � thispresident has character.’ When Jesse discusses ‘values’, we find hisgender ideology in align with that of President Bush’s and theRepublican Party. Jesse spoke extensively how ‘good Mexicans aresimilar to white Americans because they are against abortion andsame-sex marriage, not like’, he said, ‘those Jews, blacks andDemocrats’.

Other respondents resented the ‘cookie-cutter’ approach that JohnKerry took toward the Latino community. They felt he made noaggressive efforts to reach Latinos in California and many of therespondents felt ‘taken for granted’. Armando, a 35-year-old investorand newly registered Republican, said:

The Democratic Party is a great party, but I really think they’ve losttouch with the mainstream Latinos and you’re beginning to see thatreflected in how people vote. Kerry thought he could assume theMexican vote because he’s a Catholic and because people see us asminorities and minorities always side with the Democrats � right? �But look, so many of us are in a different position now that it isabout taxes and economics and our self-interest. I’m not going tofeel bad about looking out for my own family. Kerry thinks thatbecause he’s got the blacks and the Jews in his pockets that thestupid Mexicans are right in there too � well he needs to wake upand take a better account of Hispanics today � we’re not all busboysor fruit vendors anymore.

Armando also exemplifies naturalized Mexican Americans’ identi-fication with hard work. Contrastingly, Armando’s denigrating re-marks about ‘stupid Mexican’ and ‘busboys and fruit vendors’ echonot only the negative stigma attached to ‘illegal’ immigrants but alsothe racialization of manual labour.40 Armando is tapping into thestereotypes he believes are attached to Mexicans but whites and theDemocratic Party. He actively distances himself from his perceivednegative stigma by voting for Bush, a candidate he believes is ‘a manwho sees whites and Mexican Americans standing together to keep thiscountry on the right track’. By choosing not to use the term ‘whiteAmericans’, he conflated whiteness with ‘Americanness’, a commonperception across both sets of interviews. Bush’s strong showingamong California’s Mexican Americans can in part be traced toLatinos who no longer feel bound to vote for a Democratic candidate.

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According to Armando, ‘Those days are over. It comes down to whothe candidate is and what they stand for.’

For many respondents class mobility was another motivating factorin voting for Bush. They often mentioned Bush’s vision of an‘ownership society’ of all as an inroad to ‘safe white neighborhoods’in affluent areas with ‘better schools and opportunities for theirchildren’. Voting was not the only way to signal their class aspirationsfor many respondents. They often placed Bush placards in their lawns,bumper stickers on their cars, and volunteered to have or help organizefundraisers for the Bush re-election campaign.

Bush’s stance on domestic issues was important to many respon-dents. Republicans succeeded in mobilizing a large segment of Latinovoters by focusing on ‘traditional’ conservative moral ‘values’ withissues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. According to Nacho, a62-year-old retired ironworker and an active Republican Partyorganizer:

The goals and ideals of the Republican Party are more in line withthe goals and ideals of the Hispanic community. The RepublicanParty offers a better way to go. It is not a crisis on conscience for usto vote for Bush � his values are our values.

Bush also won Latino votes by publicly reversing many traditionalRepublican positions which conflict with the interests of most Latinos.He verbally endorsed bilingual education, reversing decades ofRepublican agitation for English-only policies (Bush’s No Child LeftBehind programme actually eliminates most bilingual programmes).He opposed benefit cuts to documented aliens and rejected thecontention that children of undocumented workers should be deniedpublic education. Bush even embraced a version of amnesty thatpermitted illegal immigrants to gain lawful status and eventualcitizenship, much to the chagrin of the Republican Party.

Based on the interviews, the Bush message resonated with natur-alized Mexican American voters who were seeking a candidate that notonly represented their ‘values’, but that also offered them a chance to‘move up’. His outreach to the Latino community in California and hisability to connect with Latino/a individuals swayed many voters in theresearch sample.

2) Protection

One’s commitment to an ethnic or racial identity may stem from aculturally based need for community � a community withoutindividual cost. When the cost of belonging becomes too significantselective ethnic or racial dissociation may occur. While a person might


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not completely discard his/her ethnic identity, the individual mayattempt to distance themselves from the ethnic group by manipulatingmore salient aspects of their identity to convey such dissociation.When an individual makes the choice to dissociate from the group, he/she must find an amenable opportunity to do so.

September 11, 2001 had a momentous impact on the United States’national imaginary, as well as the discourse on race, ethnicity andcitizenship. The nation’s ever-present ‘other’ transformed from the‘illegal alien’ or the perpetual ‘Asian foreigner’ to the racialized‘terrorist’. ‘Racialized’ is an important distinction because the UnitedStates has recent experience with terrorists such as Timothy McVeighand Ted Kaczynski who seemingly avoid being categorized into thecastigated ‘other’ collective group because they have less threateningracial characteristics. Yet continuously viewed photos of the MiddleEastern terrorists responsible for the 11 September attacks permittedmany white Americans to set free their internalized fear and loathingof the darker skinned among them. Despite their brown skin manyrespondents said that 11 September offered them an opportunity tobreak from the foreign ‘other’ and assert their membership inAmerican citizenry without question.

The national pressure to exhibit American patriotism after 11September provided many interviewees a chance to get on the ‘right’side of white California’s perception of them. By flaunting theirallegiance to the United States, many respondents believed they couldavoid the racial profiling they had endured during California’s visceraldialogue on ‘illegal’ immigration. Across the United States, many‘brown’ or ‘foreign looking’ individuals expeditiously attached USflags to their cars, homes and businesses to alert the white populationthat they were indeed on the side of the US. Many of the respondentsfelt that after the attacks, Bush was a ‘true leader’. They also pointedout that Bush made clear to them that there was a choice to be either‘with us or against us’. Many respondents were desperate to prove theywere a member of the ‘us’, both legally and racially.

The respondents residing in predominately white upper-class com-munities within California’s Orange and San Diego counties claimedto have ‘good jobs’ and maintain a stereotypical ‘American lifestyle’.They are Mexican Americans living in politically conservative Repub-lican ‘red zones’. In the history of racial politics, minorities areassumed to be politically liberal ‘blue’ Democrats. To avoid socialsnubbing and potential suspicion by their neighbours, many respon-dents employed conspicuous behaviour to indicate their ‘American-ness’. As one respondent explained, it became necessary to signal totheir neighbours that they were ‘just like them � not like those otherminorities � not like the blacks � not like the terrorists’. Implicit in thisrespondent’s comment is the continuum of colour internalized in a

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racially polarized country. By distancing himself from the ‘terrorists’,‘blacks’ and ‘other minorities’, the respondent affiliates himself withan identity closer to ‘white’, believing it will make him less threateningto his white neighbours. While some of the sample’s more socially andeconomically affluent respondents were Democrats, most voted forBush in 2004.

The experience of naturalized Mexican American Democrats mustbe contextualized long before election day in order to fully understandwhy they would vote to re-elect Republican George W. Bush. Maria, a46-year-old consultant who lives in a very wealthy Orange countycommunity explains:

I mean it just never stopped. I couldn’t go to the market that peopleweren’t talking about how Bush was going to take care of thoseArabs � how he was going to show them � and how we should allstand behind him because he is such a good President. Nowremember, I voted for Gore. I’ve never liked Bush because I thoughthe was stupid. But you know, the more I listened to my friends, Ibegan to see why they liked him � it wasn’t just about the tax cuts �he was actually uniting our country. I began to become glad that ofall people he was our President at this particular moment. Hereminded me of Reagan. I wasn’t a citizen then, so I wasn’t thatpolitically involved, but I liked the way Reagan made me want to bean American. Bush made me proud to be an American again � it’ssad I guess that it takes something like that to make you understandthat you’re not on the outside � I’m an American � so I decided tovote for Bush.

Maria is one of many respondents who felt pressured by their non-Latino communities to vote for Bush. Even in the wealthier parts ofCalifornia, neighbours live in close proximity and relations betweenneighbours can be of great import when maintaining formal covenantsgoverned by fellow neighbours.

Respondents’ desire for protection from misguided anti-Arabviolence combined with the collusion of their white communitiescreated a social pressure cooker that cornered them into making achoice � ‘go against my neighbors and be excluded, or go Republicanand be included’.

3) Inclusion

Many of the Mexican Americans in the sample were eager to assert anAnglo identity that could offer them social benefits, access to powerand inclusion in once restricted white communities. Being includedtakes on a new dimension in the arena of power. Arguably there is


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nothing more powerful in the United States than money and whiteskin. Logically, members of marginalized groups would capitalize onan opportunity to be included in the group with the most power.

Similar to breaking with the foreign ‘other’, many respondents feltthe election gave them a chance to separate themselves from a race-based minority status � a proactive dissociation from a perceivedderogatory category. More poignantly, they felt voting Republicanallowed them to distance themselves from African Americans, theultimate ‘other’ in a racialized United States. Luis, a 42-year-oldconstruction worker and registered Democrat explains:

By voting for Bush, I think I made it clear that I’m not just someminority. We aren’t like the morenos o los Negros, we can think forourselves. Maybe if the Republicans see that we support them,people will stop putting us together with them [blacks].

Bush lost the African American vote 89�11 but his gains amongLatinos permitted him to make inroads into a community that wantsrecognition not only as a group, but as individual Americans. Lola, a66-year-old retiree who switched to the Republican Party six monthsbefore the election, said:

I’ve always hated that Democrats put us together with the blacks �I mean, actually we’re white. Well, I mean, I’m a Mexican, don’t getconfused, but I’m more white than black. I don’t want to beassociated with the blacks � they’re criminals. Mija, don’t give methat look. You know what I mean. You don’t see any blackRepublicans. The Republicans don’t want them, but they reallywant us. Bush really supports Latinos.

I: But what about Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice? You don’t thinkhe [Bush] supports blacks when he put these folks so high in thegovernment?

No, come on, that’s just for show. Bush actually likes Mexicansbecause he knows us � I mean, look at how he fought for thosejudges, what were there names? Yeah, Estrada and now the otherone. No, I think he thinks of us as like him � white.

Although Lola admits she is ethnically Mexican she adamantlymaintains that she is white in comparison to black, so she concludesthat by default she will be associated with Anglos and be free fromnegative stigmas attached to racial minorities. Another raw example isCarlos, a 21-year-old first time voter and registered Republican, whosaid:

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I had to go with the Republicans. I don’t wanna be no fuckin’minority. Everybody knows the Republicans is the man’s party. I’ma man. I may be a Mexican, but I’m a man.

I: But do you think the Republicans represent the best interests of the

Latino community?

See, that’s the problem right there. What community? I’m no fuckin’wetback and I’m no fuckin’ nigger. All the democrats want is someminority yes men to vote for them and they don’t do nothing anydifferent anyway. At least Bush speaks Spanish.

I: Bad Spanish.

But it’s still Spanish, not Ebonics. Get it. He’s white, we’re white. It’sall good.

For Carlos, ‘the man’ is the establishment, the white establishment.By associating with the white establishment, he then has theopportunity to claim a white identity in opposition to AfricanAmericans. Such opportunistic dissociative racial identity construc-tions cut across all the education and income levels in the study. JuanCarlos, a 26-year-old graduate student in Chicano studies andregistered Democrat, explained how his vote for Bush was instru-mental:

Look, they put us in the box � they can take us out. Wait a minute �think about it. It was Congress and judges that decided we weredifferent � they’re the ones who came up with ‘Hispanic’ and decidedwhen and where we would be, right � hell, they’re the ones whodecide if we are even legal. He[Bush]’s got the Congress, he’s got theSupreme Court, and we can tell by the vote he’s got the heart andminds of the nation � he also appreciates Mexican Americans andour relationship with Mexico. He has the power to change howAmerica sees us. This could be our chance at the mainstream.

I: But don’t you think illegal immigration will sustain the negative

association with Mexican Americans?

No. I think if he can pull off this new immigration policy and keeppromoting Latinos in the Administration, he can change the waymuch of the country sees and thinks about Mexicans. We’ll be likethe Irish, Italians and Jews. We’ll become white. I think he’s our bestbet � Kerry just saw us as another minority group � hell, he didn’t


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even bother pandering to us. To the Democrats, were just anotherstatistic � to Bush, we’re people � his people.

Many of the respondents expressed similar sentiments thatreflected possibilities of re-racialization from both outside andinside the community. Many felt they had moved into Anglodominated areas through hard work. Bush’s acknowledgment ofthem and their mobility may encourage Anglos to accept them intotheir privileged circles. In addition, many respondents claimed thatthey were indeed ‘white’ and that’s why the Latino vote was soimportant to Bush. They felt that Bush did not differentiate themfrom other white voters and worked just as hard to capture theirvotes.

Most respondents, even those who did not vote for him, appreciatedBush’s plainspoken style. Many appreciate his declarations to meanwhat he says and believe he is strong. ‘He walks like a jefe’, one femalerespondent said with a smile.

Bush made Latinos feel like individuals and made them feel like theywere included in his campaign efforts and his vision for America’sfuture � a future that saw Mexican Americans as equal. Unlike Kerry,the Bush campaign did not make the axiomatic assumption thatLatino voters would all vote for the Democratic Party because of theirracialized past or the external depiction of their ethnic group.

Conclusion

California’s Proposition 187 and the events of 11 September 2001opened a national debate about what defines an ‘American’. Anadditional question should have been: Who is defining Americans?While much of the political rhetoric focused on who was not trulyAmerican, few challenged the tacit link between whiteness andnationalism. Racialized ethnic individuals at the margins of citizenrywere compelled to prove their loyalty to the nation. Proving theirnational allegiance would instigate internal identity dilemmas thatproduced counter-intuitive political outcomes. Enacting oppressivewhiteness (by voting to pass 187 and re-elect President George W. Bush)was a social currency naturalized Mexican Americans could publiclyexchange for an unmolested existence and a socio-political path todominant group membership.

Perceptions of stigma associated with ‘illegals’ caused somenaturalized citizens to distance themselves from a shared ethnicitywith Mexican immigrants. They articulated this distance in raciallydisparaging language, emphasizing their ‘whiteness’, and vehementlyopposing undocumented Mexican immigration.

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George W. Bush’s use of fear rhetoric after the 11 September attacksresonated through racial and ethnic communities. The success ofBush’s tactic is evidenced in the voting behaviour of California’sLatino population in the 2004 presidential election. Republicans didnot campaign heavily in the Democratic state, but Bush’s ‘You areeither with us or against us’ re-articulation of citizen obligation createdan environment which required people to publicly align ‘with’ theUnited States. Many of the Mexican Americans discussed hereinterpreted Bush’s challenge as an opportunity to construct a‘politically white’. The prospect of inclusion was particularly attractivefor upwardly mobile segments of the Mexican American community,principally those with ‘whiter’ skin and economic means, as theydissociated from other ‘people of colour’.

Voting for 187 and for Bush offered naturalized citizens a chance topro-actively defend themselves against the racialized stigma anddeviant images of non-citizens that were articulated in the publicdebates surrounding illegal immigration and terrorism. Moreover, byclaiming a white racial identity, and aligning themselves with whitedominated political parties, naturalized Mexican Americans believedthey would be included in the conceptualized American communitythat would offer them the collective shelter from racial antagonismand profiling. The collective shelter would be a place bounded by theties of whiteness and safety from slurs, violence and discrimination.The respondents claimed a white identity to place them in the‘imagined community’ of ‘real Americans’ like California nativistsand President W. Bush � unquestioned and uncompromised whiteAmericans.

The work presented here provides insights into the reproduction ofa certain form of stratification along party lines in the CaliforniaMexican American community that has been overlooked in previousstudies on Latino voting behaviour. As society in the United Statesbecomes increasingly diverse and more xenophobic, it can beexpected that those within the borders who have been traditionallytargeted for acts of hate, violence, removal, internment, or shame willact in ways that are primarily more protectionist to the self,foregoing ethnic allegiances, seeking collective shelter in the realms‘whiteness’, be they social or political.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank France Winddance Twine and the anonymousreviewers for Ethnic and Racial Studies for their critical comments andencouragement on this paper.


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Notes

1. I use the terms Latino and Hispanic interchangeable with the awareness that each label

has its own political baggage. ‘Hispanic’ is more often used by those who wish to affiliate

themselves with the ‘Spanish’ part of their heritage whereas ‘Latino’ tends to be more

common with those who have a stronger ethnic identity. Occasionally I conflate Mexican

American into both of these terms because the subjects, all Mexican Americans, used these

labels to describe themselves and their communities.

2. For extensive research on Latino political participation see: de la Garza and DeSipio

1992; de la Garza, Garcia, and Falcon 1992; DeSipio 1996; Garcia 2003.

3. Political scientists (Stokes-Brown 2006; Logan 2003) have examined the influence of

racial identification and voting and have shown that personal and social constructions of

one’s identity have implications for Latino political behaviour, as race is a significant

determinant of Latino vote choice.

4. Hispanic, as used in the United States, is one of several terms used to categorize US

citizens, permanent residents and undocumented residents whose ancestry hails either from

Spain, the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, or the original settlers of the

traditionally Spanish-held southwestern United States. The term is used as a broad form of

classification in the US Census, local and federal employment, and numerous business

market researches. In this paper, it is often interchanged with the term Latino and Mexican

American.

5. Its provisions called for Mexico to cede 55 per cent of its territory (present-day Arizona,

California, New Mexico, Texas and parts of Colorado, Nevada and Utah) in exchange for

fifteen million dollars in compensation for war-related damage to Mexican property. Other

provisions stipulated the Texas border at the Rio Grande (Article V), protection for the

property and civil rights of Mexican nationals living within the new border (Articles VIII and

IX), US promise to police its side of the border (Article XI), and compulsory arbitration of

future disputes between the two countries (Article XXI). When the US Senate ratified the

treaty in March, it deleted Article X guaranteeing the protection of Mexican land grants.

Following the Senate’s ratification of the treaty, US troops left Mexico City. Source: Library

of Congress.

6. The term ‘Anglo’, which is commonly used by Mexicans and Mexican Americans,

means white and is used interchangeably with the term ‘white’ in the paper.

7. Omi and Winant (1986, p. 55) define ‘racial formation’ as a ‘socio-historical process by

which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed.’

8. According to Blumer, race relations are fundamentally organized at the group level,

through a collective process by which a racial group comes to define and redefine another

racial group.

9. However, in Texas many more native-born Latinos of Mexican descent say they are white

(63 per cent) compared to those who live outside of Texas (45 per cent). One may suppose that

the unique and complex history of race relations in Texas is a major influence. Texas is the only

state in the United States where a large Latino population was caught up both in Southern-style

racial segregation and then the civil rights struggle to undo it.

10. For further discussion, see Alba and Logan (1991). They point out that while some

groups have assimilated, particularly white groups, white ethnicity does not generally involve

high levels of ethnic exclusiveness or ethnic group affiliation.

11. An ethnic group can be described as ‘new’ or ‘emergent’ when ethnic identification,

organization, and collective action is constructed around previously nonexistent historical

identities (W. L. Yancey, E. P. Ericksen and Juliana 1976).

12. For the purposes of federal data collection Hispanics constitute a unique ethnic group �the only one identified with a specific question. The Hispanic origin question helps satisfy a

1976 law (Public Law 94-311, 16 June 1976) that requires the collection, analysis and

publication of statistics on persons of Spanish culture, origin or descent, regardless of race.

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13. The only racial identifier, other than white, that captured a major share of the Latino

population (42 per cent) was the non-identifier, ‘some other race’ (US Census 2000).

14. Blacks made up 2 per cent and American Indian, Asian and Pacific Islander categories

each accounted for small fraction (US Census 2000).

15. About two in three Latino likely voters live in southern California: Four in ten (41 per

cent) live in Los Angeles county, 15 per cent live in Orange and San Diego counties, and 11

per cent live in the Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino. While 33 per

cent of Latino likely voters live in the less urban Central Valley (15 per cent), Inland Empire

(11 per cent) and more rural areas of the state (7 per cent), only 19 per cent of black and 18

per centof Asian likely voters live in these areas (US Census 2000).

16. White voters are more likely to be registered as Republicans than as Democrats (41 per

cent to 38 per cent), Black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic (73 per cent), and Asians

are the most likely to be registered as independents or with other parties (30 per cent).

17. For more on the political possibilities of Latino ethnic consciousness see Padilla (1985).

Padilla claims that Latino ethnic-conscious behaviour represents a collective generated

behaviour which transcends the boundaries of the individual national and cultural identities

of the different Spanish-speaking populations and emerges as a distinct and separate group

identification and consciousness.

18. The influential work of Richard Alba (1990), Mary Waters (1990), David Roediger

(1991), Joane Nagel (1994b), Ruth Frankenberg (1993), Matthew Frye Jacobsen (1998), and

numerous others have led scholars to examine processes or racialization that now count

‘whiteness’ as a fundamental variable. The current upsurge of interdisciplinary approaches to

whiteness has been the subject of several reviews; see Brody (1996), Fishkin (1995) and Hyde

(1995).

19. For more on the redrawing of racial boundaries see Gallagher (2004). Gallagher refers

to ‘racial redistricting’ where the boundaries of whiteness are expanding to include groups

who had previously been excluded.

20. Song (2004) and Telles (2004) provide excellent discussion on white skin privilege in

multiracial societies.

21. Balibar and Wallerstein (1991) discuss the search for collective shelter in a broad,

analytical landscape, considering race in conjunction with nation and class. I use the idea

of collective shelter similarly, in that it provides an identity where the imagining of a

nation-state where individuals would, ‘by their very nature be ‘‘at home,’’ because they

would be ‘‘among their own’’ (their own kind)’. I argue that naturalized Mexican

Americans, in adopting a white identity, see themselves as ‘at home’ among white

Americans and believe they will reap the benefits of the privileges accorded to white

citizens in the United States.

22. As a comparative note, second generation Asian Americans are more likely to identify

as ethnically ‘American’ than their immigrant parents who more commonly identify as

‘ethnic Asian’. For more on Asian American ethnic identity and politics see Lien, Conway

and Wong (2004).

23. For further discussion see Bellah (1985, 1991), Brubaker (1992), Gillis (1994), Hewitt

(1989) and Hobsbaum (1992).

24. See Soysal’s (1994) discussion of postnational models and changing definitions of

national membership and discussions of ‘new institutionalism’ (Birnbaum 1988; Jepperson

and Meyer 1991; Skocpol 1985).

25. Complimentary work includes Conner (1990), Greenfield (1992) and Hutchinson

(1987). Calhoun (1993) and Hutchinson and Smith (1994) offer extensive literature reviews.

26. It is necessary to point out that the California Supreme Court found Proposition 187

unconstitutional. An appeal by the Save Our State (SOS) Committee, a major proponent of

the referendum, is still pending.

27. A political consultant, holding focus groups for Pete Wilson mentioned the topic of

undocumented immigrants and their role in the state. Instantly, a focus group of non-

Hispanic whites lit up. Angrily they denounced the immigrants for ruining the state; they


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took away jobs, they crowded schools and hospitals, they sucked up government

expenditures fuelled by tax dollars, they overused welfare, they increased crime rates, they

rioted and broke into stores. As wave after wave of invective poured out, the consultant

realized he had found the governor’s ‘red-meat’ issue. By supporting 187, which would

require teachers and social service workers to deny services to anyone ‘who appeared to be

illegal’, Wilson racially articulated his position toward California’s Latino population.

Magazine covers constantly depicted an America being invaded by dark-skinned foreigners

(see Leo Chavez (2001) for a detailed analysis of this phenomenon).

28. Moehring (1988) discusses the rise in neo-restrictionism, including fears associated with

economicinsecurity.Day(1990)exploresconcernsoverimmigrants’undesirableculturaltraits.

29. After a long educational campaign by civil rights groups, African American voters

opposed Proposition 187 by a slight majority, but the utility of dividing African American

from Latino or Asian voters provided an unanticipated fringe benefit for the Republican

Party, which put thousands of dollars behind the campaign to pass Proposition 187 � and

which would later spend millions on a successful campaign � again affirmative action.

30. For further discussion of public attitudes toward unauthorized migrants see Espen-

shade (1995).

31. For an extensive analysis of how demographic variables correlate to political affiliation

for the larger Hispanic population in the United States, see the Pew Hispanic Center Reports

on Latino political participation.

32. For more on this see the large literature on Latino political participation by de la Garza

1992 and DeSipio 2004.

33. An analysis of vote choice across ethnoracial immigrant groups in the United States

would be complementary to the study but was beyond the scope of the research presented

here.

34. In the range of exit poll data, it is difficult and almost impossible to get a reliable

breakdown by generation.

35. I conducted all the interviews in person using both English and/or Spanish depending

on the interviewee’s preference. I am a second-generation Mexican American which may have

added to my ability to draw out certain responses from the interviewees.

36. All respondents’ names have been changed.

37. It is important to note here that an undocumented immigrant was depicted differently

by most respondents than a non-citizen holding a legal green card. Green card holders were

often praised for their desire to work hard and often for working in undesirable positions. I

did not note even one disparaging remark about non-citizens holding green cards.

38. Some research has already found that the threat imposed by ethnically or racially

charged ballot propositions in California captured the attention of and mobilized Latinos,

especially recent immigrants who are among the least likely to vote. For further discussion on

group threat see Pantoja and Segura (2001) and Pachon and de la Garza (1998). The

mobilizing effect of threat has its basis in psychology of emotions that can draw individuals’

attentions to important problems and concerns, and these can affect individuals’ behaviours

directly and autonomously (Marcus, Neuman and MacKuen 2000).

39. It is important to note that Bush was not successful with all Latino voters � he did

especially well with Cubans, and most poorly with Puerto Ricans. But he gained more of

the Mexican American vote between the 2000 and 2004 election, which is counterintuitive

as they are the largest Latino ethnic group in the United States and most directly affected

by the Republican’s anti-immigrant stance.

40. For more on the racialization of manual labour see Balibar and Wallerstein (1991).

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White dreams and red votes: Mexican Americans and the lure of inclusion in the Republican Party

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Transcript of White dreams and red votes: Mexican Americans and the lure of inclusion in the Republican Party