Mestizos in the United States

Mestizo Americans
Total population
(6.2% of total United States population)
Regions with significant populations
 United States
Languages
Spanish, American English
Religion
Roman Catholicism, other
Related ethnic groups
White Hispanic, Ladino, Latin American Indian

Mestizo Americans are Hispanic or Latino Americans whose racial and/or ethnic identity is Mestizo, i.e. a mixed ancestry of white European and indigenous Latin American (usually Iberian-Indigenous mixed ancestry).

This group does not include Métis Americans (usually with Anglo-Indigenous mixed ancestry) or Métis Canadians (usually with Franco-Indigenous mixed ancestry) residing in the US, nor does it include Multiracial Americans whose ethnic identity is US Native Americans or Latin American Indian.

While Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Inuit, Native Hawaiians and Métis are legally indigenous to the US, Mestizo Americans are not considered indigenous peoples to the United States, because most of them and their American Indian ancestors where born south of the United States border. Although they are indigenous to the American continent and have cultural, racial, ethnic and genetic relation with the Métis and other Native American tribes (like the Indegenous cross-border Tohono O'odham Nation, the Kumeyaay people, the Kickapoos, the Chiricahuas, the Yaquis and the Cocopah), their presence in the US requires the proper authorization by the government, because it is the result of immigration into the country. However their commonality is that they are all descendants of the indigenous American Indians and White Europeans. In fact the words Metis and Mestizos have the same meaning which is someone of American Indian and White European descent. Many Mestizos identify with their American Indian ancestry while others tend to self-identify with their European ancestry, others still celebrate both.

It is difficult to know the exact number of Hispanic/Latino Americans self-identifying as Mestizo, in part because "Mestizo" is not an official racial category in the Census. According to the 2010 United States Census, 36.7% of the 52 million Hispanic/Latino Americans identify as "some other race",[1] and most of the remainder consider themselves white. Further complicating matters is the fact that many federal agencies such as the CDC[2] or CIA[3] do not even recognize the "some other race" category, including this population in the white category.

Representation in the media

Mestizo Americans are overrepresented in the U.S. mass media and in general American social perceptions, as Hispanic and Latino are often mistakenly given racial values, usually non-white and mixed race, such as mestizo or mulatto, in spite of the racial diversity of Hispanic and Latino Americans, while they are overlooked in the U.S. Hispanic mass media and in general U.S. Hispanic social perceptions; critics have accused the U.S. Hispanic mass media of overlooking the mestizo and other multiracial Hispanic populations, the Latin-American Indigenous peoples and the black Hispanic populations by over-representation of blond and blue/green-eyed white Hispanic and Latino Americans, and also light-skinned mulatto and mestizo Hispanic and Latino Americans.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

See also

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ "Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010" (PDF). Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  2. ↑ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/nvsr.htm
  3. ↑ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
  4. ↑ Quinonez, Ernesto (2003-06-19). "Y Tu Black Mama Tambien". Retrieved 2008-05-02.
  5. ↑ "The Blond, Blue-Eyed Face of Spanish TV"
  6. ↑ "Blonde, Blue-Eyed Euro-Cute Latinos on Spanish TV"
  7. ↑ "Latinos Not Reflected on Spanish TV"
  8. ↑ "What are Telenovelas? – Hispanic Culture"
  9. ↑ Racial Bias Charged On Spanish-Language TV
  10. ↑ Black Electorate
  11. ↑ "Skin tone consciousness in Asian and Latin American populations", Boston Globe
  12. ↑ "Corpus: A Home Movie For Selena", PBS
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