Mestizos in the United States

Mestizo Americans

Total population
≤6.20% of the 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 cross-border Tohono O'odham Nation, the Kumeyaay people, the Kickapoos, the Chiricahuas 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 a racial category in the Census. Like mentioned above it is a specific bi-racial category. According to the 2010 United States Census, 36.7% of the 52 million Hispanic/Latino Americans identify as "some other race", such as mestizo or mulatto.^[1]

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 and 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 (often deemed as white persons in U.S. Hispanic and Latino populations if achieving the middle class or higher social status), especially some of the actors on the telenovelas.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

See also

• Bronze (racial classification) - term used to refer to mestizo as a new race.
• Race and ethnicity in the United States Census
• Multiracial American
• Métis people (United States)
• Métis people (Canada)
• Ladino people
• Melting pot (a metaphor for cultural fusion)

External links

• Mestizos in America
• Chicano/Mestizo/Latino/Hispanic?

References and footnotes