Racial Identity and Racial Treatment of Mexican Americans Essay

Brown face refers to the creation of racist Latino/Hispanic stereotypes. "Latino" is the umbrella term, meaning they fall under one category for people of Latin American descent that in recent years has made into a more imprecise term "Hispanic." Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and any people who trace their ethnic roots back to Central or South America are considered Latino if they live in the United States. Hispanic Americans, like many other minority groups in the US, have long suffered from the effects of racial stereotyping. Typical stereotypes include the Greaser, the Lazy Mexican, the Latin Lover, the Mamacita, maids, slum dwellers, drug addicts, gang bangers, feisty Latinas, the Mexican Spitfire, and the Exotica.
What these stereotypes all have in common is that they reduce to a one-sided, and exaggerate the real variety and depth of a struggling people. Significantly, they degrade the social issues affecting Latino life in the United States.They have seldom been addressed in Hollywood films, and hardly ever have Latinos been portrayed as people in control of their lives, capable of standing up for their rights, or having an interest in their own future.
Hispanics have been portrayed by the media as lazy, unintelligent, greasy, criminal, and alien. Their contributions culturally, economically, and historically have never been documented or even accepted. Instead, Hispanics in general, and American Hispanics in particular, have been the victims of racist stereotyping that began with the battle over Mexican land in the Southwest as America expanded during the frontier era.
In the United States, especially in the Southwest, "Manifest Destiny" meant taking land from Mexico, displacing Mexican landowners, exploiting them for cheap or unpaid labor. In order to divide up the displacement of the Southwest Hispanics, as they had done with American Indians in the East. Latinos whether U.S. citizens or not, we still thought as to be the bottom half of the the population at the time. Though they began to be treated horribly in America Latin Americans in their own countries were thought of as lesser humans.
An anti-Mexican law enacted in 1855 in California was thinly disguised as an anti-vagrancy statute but commonly known as The Greaser Act. The law defined a vagrant as "all persons who are commonly known as 'Greasers' or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood and who go armed and are not peaceable and quiet persons." The law was repealed a few years later.
In the 1940s, imagery in newspapers and crime novels portrayed Mexican American zoot suiters as criminals. Pronounced "Zuit" the suit was high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders, which was adopted by Americans in later years . Anti-zoot suiter's sentiment sparked a series of attacks on young Mexican American males in Los Angeles which culminated in what became known as the Zoot Suit Riots. During the worst of the rioting approximately 5,000 servicemen and civilians gathered in downtown Los Angeles and attacked Mexican-American zoot suiters and non-zoot suiters alike.