Martha Menchaca’s Recovering History, Constructing Race describes how racial hierarchies were first established in the border region by the Spanish elite and later by American settlers looking to justify their expropriation of Native and Mexican lands.8 Even some longstanding Mexican Americans have attempted to achieve whiteness by encouraging the exclusion of new immigrants who undermine their attempts to equate themselves with Americanness—though, by embracing a racialized system of exclusion, they reinforce a racial caste system that in turn defines and treats them as less than full
...more
