The difference that ‘one drop’ makes: Mexican and African Americans, mixedness and racial categorisation in the early twentieth century

Abstract

Using archival materials, I will examine how the mixed ancestry of African and Mexican Americans was treated, both in law and discourse, in distinctly contrasting ways in the early twentieth century. I will argue that black and Mexican subjects were positioned in qualitatively different ways in relation to whiteness. Furthermore, the singular treatment of ‘black blood’ as a social toxin, a construction emerging within the specific circumstances of American slavery, also informed the subjective positioning of Mexicans, as well as shaping some Mexican Americans’ responses to racism.