At one time we were classified as Latinos, Chicanos, Mexicanos and Hispanic. Even the census records back then indicated white, black or others as far as race was concerned. My family was always considered white going back to the 1900 census.
When I was overseas, the populace didn’t recognize me as an American because of my brown skin color. Only white people were Americans according to what they see in advertisements and the movies. It took some explaining to make them understand that immigrants from third world countries were also Americans because they became citizens by naturalization or by being born in the United States.
I don’t like to be called Mexican Americans. It’s a hyphenated term used to identify us as a race. Our parents are from Mexico, however, some of them are not Mexicans. They’re natives from Mexico. We can tell by their facial features which indicates what part of the country in Mexico they’re from. Here we call them Indians, In Mexico they call them indigenous people because they’re made up of different ethnic tribes who speak both their own language and Spanish. There are over 300 indigenous tribes in Mexico.
The current DNA testing is proving that a lot of people who classified themselves as Hispanic in the United States are finding out that they have a mix of native American and European bloodlines and now changing to Others when they’re asked what race they belong. The other problems are marriages of mixed races. The same thing that happened in Mexico with white Spaniards marrying Mexican women. It went so far as to identifying the children of the mix marriage as mestizos and so forth. They actually had a name of all children of mixed races from creole from blacks and Spanish couples and other names not so popular.
Even in America one cannot say they’re 100% Spanish, Jewish or others because of the mixed races. So, we have to take the word Race off the census record and just write in We are all Americans.