The danger of becoming an "utterly bastardized race"

 

Mexico was not the only Latin American country that did not welcome black soldiers during World War II. When the U.S Navy assigned 250 African American enlisted personnel to the Panama Canal Zone, the U.S ambassador to Panama urged the secretary of state to cancel the assignment because of the risk of protest from the Panamanian government, which denied entry to "persons of the colored race." In 1941 the Panamanian president, Arnulfo Arias, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini while ambassador to Italy in the 1930s, amended the constitution to deny entry of all immigrants of the "black race whose native language is not Spanish, of the yellow race, and the races originating in India, Asia Minor, and North Africa." Article 23 of the new constitution also revoked the citizenship, retroactively, of children of Panamanians whose parents were of African or Asian descent.

President Arias spoke of the necessity of "improving the biological conditions" of Panamanians and was especially critical of the U.S policy of having imported thousands of "colored aliens" from the West Indies and Asia to construct the Panama Canal. The foreign minister defended Article 23, declaring that Panamanians were "anxious to guard against the danger that Panama, situated at the crossroads of the world, should degenerate from a Spanish-speaking, white nation into...a Babel of tongues, and an utterly bastardized race."

  Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 

Ending discrimination against Caucasians.

 

LULAC leader Alfonso Perales ... believed that Mexicans ought to be entitled to rights and privileges routinely denied to African Americans. He proposed that Anglo-Americans conduct a "vigorous campaign" in Texas "to end all racial prejudices in so far as members of the Caucasian race are concerned." The Mexican foreign minister and Mexican consuls continued to insist that Texas and California end all discrimination against Mexicans with little concern for discrimination against African Americans or Asian Americans.

  Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 

Not a Puerto Rican? I can't serve you.

[Colin] Powell felt the sting of southern racism firsthand after he received orders to leave Birmingham and report once again to Fort Benning. One day, when he was trying to find a house in the area so his wife and son could join him in Georgia, he stopped at a restaurant for a hamburger. The waitress asked if Powell was a student from Africa. When Powell told her no, the woman asked him, "A Puerto Rican?"  

"No," Powell answered.  

"You're a Negro?" she asked.

"That's right."
"Well," the waitress responded, "I can't bring out a hamburger. You'll have to go to the back door."

Schraff, Anne. Colin Powell: Soldier and Patriot (African-American Biographies). Enslow Pub Inc, 1997.

Runaways not welcome

 

Examples abound in Mexican history of laws and circulars designed to prevent the immigration or settlement of Africans in Mexico. In 1833 the Mexican consul Francisco Pizarro Martinez refused to grant immigration rights to free-blacks from Texas because in his view "'people of color' were immoral and lazy."  

In the 1920s, the Mexican ministry of the interior (gobernacion) issued a circular prohibiting African Americans in the United States from crossing the international border for even a brief visit to Mexico: "The measure prohibiting persons of the black race from immigrating to Mexico applies to the entire border in such a way that no American citizens of this race can spend even a few hours of recreation in any of the Mexican border towns."

The Mexican consul in San Antonio, perhaps in response to pressure from the NAACP, recommended to the foreign minister that citizens of la raza negra, the black race, be allowed to visit Mexico within a zone of thirteen miles along the border for a period of three days. The Foreign Ministry relented and agreed to allow black Americans to visit Mexican border cities, but reduced the time of their cross-border visits from the proposed three days to fourteen hours and stressed that they be allowed only "occasional visits."

 Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

"Hispanic" was not a word.

Ms. [Linda] Chavez's ancestors emigrated to what is now New Mexico from Spain in the 17th century, and have been primarily English speakers since the 1870's, her mother said. In fact, after Ms. Chavez became active in politics, she served as president of U.S. English, a national lobbying group that has led campaigns to make English the official language of various states...

Before entering college, Ms. Chavez had been oblivious to racial differences, her mother said.

''Nobody thought to ask anybody what they were,'' Mrs. Chavez said. ''There was no such thing as Hispanic. That was not a word. Linda started noticing that when she went away to school. Race became important, and I think that is when the 'Hispanic' word was coined.''

 

Times, The New York. “Conservative and Hispanic, Linda Chavez Carves Out Leadership Niche.” The New York Times, 19 Aug. 1998

Hijacking Affirmative Action

Just what is a Hispanic?

It is a nouveau term cultivated from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Prior to that Mexican Americans demanded to be listed as Caucasian on government applications, etc.  When affirmative action started to kick in and “protected classes” began to formulate, their leadership abandoned the claim as Caucasian and demanded distinction as a protected class also.  Thus, the broad term “minority” started to include Mexican Americans and others who no longer saw the advantage in being separated from Blacks. Eventually, the term Hispanic began to be included among minority ethnicities... 

During the Jim Crow days of the South and various northern venues like Indiana, Ohio, downstate Illinois, etc. separate facilities were for “whites” and “colored” aka Blacks or Negroes.  People such as Mexican Americans and other Latino ethnicities walked through the “whites” door.  They were not reduced to the inferior facilities we Blacks had.  General Colin Powell describes it brilliantly in his first autobiography “Soldier” when he goes into a restaurant in Columbus, GA and orders a take out.  The waitress says, “Say you are a Puerto Rican and I can serve you.  If you don’t; I can’t serve Blacks.”  He left.

“BEYOND THE RHETORIC”, Harry C. Alford