The difference that ‘one drop’ makes: Mexican and African Americans, mixedness and racial categorisation in the early twentieth century

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Aragon, Margarita. 2014. The difference that ‘one drop’ makes: Mexican and African Americans, mixedness and racial categorisation in the early twentieth century. Subjectivity, 7(1), pp. 18-36. ISSN 1755-6341 [Article]

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Official URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/sub.2014...

Abstract or Description

Using archival materials, I will examine how the mixed ancestry of African and Mexican Americans was treated, both in law and discourse, in distinctly contrasting ways in the early twentieth century. I will argue that black and Mexican subjects were positioned in qualitatively different ways in relation to whiteness. Furthermore, the singular treatment of ‘black blood’ as a social toxin, a construction emerging within the specific circumstances of American slavery, also informed the subjective positioning of Mexicans, as well as shaping some Mexican Americans’ responses to racism.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2014.1