Prejudice and Discrimination isn’t a new concept in the United States, especially for minorities. One community that has been put through the wringer, are people of Mexican descent. Not only is this a hot topic in today’s day and age but the ostracizing of Mexicans has been done before. This blog post is going to talk about what it’s like being brown under the Trump administration, but we’re also going to take a trip back in history. Has being Mexican in America always made you an easy target? I’m going to focus only on the Mexican community, since I can personally relate.
Donald Trump is an avid tweeter, and here is one of many tweets talking about the Mexican community.
Our textbook immediately delves into the stereotypes of the Mexican people, such as “lazy”, “criminal” and “unintelligent”- all which are completely demeaning (Healey/O’Brien, 236). As I stated earlier, these racist tendencies have always been around, but with the campaign and election of Donald Trump, these remarks have come into fruition. I found many similarities between the injustice treatment of the Mexican people and conflict theory. Once again, conflict theory is how the elite control the poor and this is shown with the passing of laws, criminal justice system and scapegoating. Our society is literally based off of inequality and social order, making Mexican people on the lowest of lows. In the article by Norma Mendoza-Denton, she states that the word choices Trump has used is to mock the Mexican people and criminalize them. One of the biggest promises from the Trump campaign was the building of the wall on the United States and Mexican border. The magical wall is intended to keep the “bad hombres” out of America because they’re all criminals. Denton writes about the conversation between Trump and Mexican President Pena Nieto and how Trump kept reiterating how criminalistic the Mexican people are (Denton, 2017) President Trump has focused on the illegal immigrants from Mexico, but all Mexican people are living in fear. Fear of how others will react towards them, fear of being stopped by police and fearful of their friends and family. One last issue under the Trump administration is the discrimination of ‘dreamers’. The DACA program had just been rescinded and this means that thousands of people may be forced to leave America. Many of these dreamers are of Mexican or other Hispanic descent and it seems as if this is another roadblock for the Latino community.
This image shows a protester and her sign in trying to #DefendDaca.
Let’s go back to 1943 Los Angeles, in the midst of the Zoot Suit Riots. This riot was an attack on the Mexican community that lasted for two weeks. The premise of this violent behavior was based off of the zoot suit and how the excess amount of fabric wasn’r patriotic due to the war. Zoot suits were staple outfits for the Mexican youth and they didn’t believe that their suits were an attack of the American people. I wanted to discuss this event because it seemed as if all of Southern California was against the Mexican people. They were ostracized to the fullest extent and many lost their lives. In an article by Richard Griswald Del Castillo, he states that soldiers, civilians and navy men would hire taxis and go in bundles to find Mexicans and beat them (Castillo, 2000). Police officers would follow along and arrest the bruised and bloodied Mexican zoot suiter for public disturbance (Castillo, 2000). This was an entire process and no one did anything to stop it. All of these people didn’t necessarily hate Mexican youth for wearing extra fabric, they hated Mexican youth because they were brown.
Here is a line of Mexican men being arrested for wearing zoot suits.
We may think that everything is better now, it’s 2017- shouldn’t it? I’m Mexican American and living in a world that wants you to fail and expects you to fail is disheartening. I’m proud of who I am and the idea that my people are all criminals, rapist and “bad hombres” is complete foolishness. The words that our President spews out about the Mexican community makes me angry and I can’t believe we’re living in times like this. I can’t believe the leader of the free world, actually believes in all this. I asked a question in the beginning of this post, and I want to answer it now. Being Mexican in America has been, is and will always be an easy target for injustice.
This video is from a show called, “What Would You Do?” and it shows a Spanish speaking family being told racist and ignorant remarks. (My mother and I watch this show all the time, and we always get angry watching this episode)
Here are some links that I wanted to share:
http://time.com/4473972/donald-trump-mexico-meeting-insult/
– Here is an article that shares every negative comment President Trump has made on Mexico and the Hispanic community.
– This article shares stories from the past on how Mexican people were treated and how similar they’re being treated now.
References
Del Castillo, R. (2000). The Los Angeles “Zoot Suit Riots” Revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives. Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 16(2), 367-391. doi:10.2307/1052202
Healey, J. F., & O’Brien, E. (2015). Chapter 8: Hispanic Americans. In Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class(pp. 235-236). Sage .
Mendoza-Denton, N. (2017). Bad hombres: Images of masculinity and the historical consciousness of US-Mexico relations in the age of Trump. HAU : Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(1), 423-432.
Quinones , J. (Host). (2016, April 6). Spanish Speaking Family Faces Racial Discrimination [Television series episode]. In What Would You Do? ABC.
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