Imposed Hispanicity: How the Imposition of Racialized and Gendered Identities in Texas Affects Mexican Women in Romantic Relationships with White Men

Jennifer Guillén

doi:10.3390/soc5040778

Abstract

Intimate, romantic spaces are important sites for the examination of self-identification and perceived identification, especially with regard to gender and racial power. In this article I examine how white men in romantic relationships or marriages with Mexican women and residing in Texas, impose “Hispanic” as a racial identity as a discursive tactic that reinforces the hegemonic power of being white and being a man in order to define the situation, impose ideals that distance Mexican partners from being “too ethnic” or “threatening” in order to achieve closer proximity to “honorary whiteness” and acceptability of racial others, and creates a romantic space that is coercive instead of loving and safe. This study thus finds that white men used their hegemony to not only employ imposed Hispanicity, which I define as an institutionally created but culturally and institutionally imposed label, and an action based on the use of direct and indirect coercion and force by others, in this case, white romantic partners, for the purpose of establishing power and determining the situation in which racial definitions are made. Therefore, “Hispanic” becomes an identity that is chosen by others and while participants of Mexican descent do employ agency, the socially imposed conditions and expectations associated with “Hispanic” serve to police the identities, bodies, lives, and actions of people of Latin American descent.

Highlights

As Latin@s1 become an increasingly growing population in the United States, significant attention, from government agencies and academics, has been given to issues of racial formation and identification among this population [1,6,7,8,9,10,11]
By examining the romantic relationships between Mexicans and whites in Texas, an area historically embedded in a deep racial history of Spanish and white, American colonization, the imposition of “Hispanic” as a racial and ethnic identity serves the purpose of coercively creating distinctions between whites and people of Latin American descent which simultaneously and forcefully makes the double consciousness evident
As a racial identity onto people of Latin American descent which is institutionally bound, culturally and institutionally imposed, and an action based on the use of direct and indirect coercion and force by others, in this case, white romantic partners for the purpose of establishing power and determining the situation

Summary

Introduction

As Latin@s1 become an increasingly growing population in the United States, significant attention, from government agencies and academics, has been given to issues of racial formation and identification among this population [1,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Participants, Mexican women, questioned, explicitly and implicitly, why white partners would use racial and ethnic labels that they themselves had not chosen for themselves These debates, laden with strong emotions and audible resistance, caused tension in these romantic relationships while simultaneously showing the gendered and racialized power dynamics present in these relationships. That of the “mainstream” (i.e., whites)—acting differently in each culture This was often a painful process that left African Americans feeling fractured. This same struggle exists among people of Mexican descent who navigate spaces where they must follow the cultural behaviors and norms of their culture as well as that of the “mainstream” (e.g., whites).

Methods

Results

Conclusion