Interesting comments from the comments section. First a fellow named Robert posts a comment, then a White Mexican named Rafa responds. I very much enjoyed their interchange, and I will comment at the end:
Robert: As a White Latin American, I think a lot of the information you put was wrong. At least the part about White Latin Americans disappearing. The CIA World Factbook puts Mexico White population at
You can talk to a lot of Latin Americans about that. They’ll tell you the same thing. My friend who goes to Mexico says the same thing. And as for Brazil, Sao Paulo is 7
Personally I AM GLAD there are a lot of white people in Latin America. But then again, I personally think that if a person looks White, then they are obviously white. Even if they are 2
I don’t mean to come off as if I am insulting you but I think at least half the information you got was wrong. At least when it came to the decline of White population. However, remember, all mestizos do not look the same. The phenotype can range from more European to more Indian. The White upper class of Mexico and Brazil may be mixed, but the non-white ancestry may not be enough to show and vice-versa.
Basically its a color continuum.
Rafa: I find it interesting that you said that if a person is 2
There are even White Americans who are known to have claimed some sort of native indigenous ancestry such as Chuck Norris, the late Patrick Swayze, and Johnny Depp (this last one actually looks like a lot Mexicans I grew up with). The term Euro-Mestizo has even entered the lexicon of American English terms used to describe people according to their race, specifically light-skinned Mexicans who are predominantly White in appearance.
I don’t know about you, but I think that ever since the world got smaller through the invention of broadcast television and the internet, Latin Americans have gotten into a tendency of competing with each other to see whose country is whiter or has a larger population of Whites. What do you think?
By the way, as far as Northeastern Mexico being majority White, I would have to say that I agree with that statement. As you might have already guessed, I am in fact Mexican and from the Northeastern border city of Nuevo Laredo,Tamaulipas.
I grew up across the border in Laredo, Texas and it is basically an explicit fact that my native region is not as White as it used to be. Many people from Southern Mexico, and even some from Central America have established themselves in Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Matamoros, and Monterrey in neighboring Nuevo Leon state.
Most Mexican nationals who reside in Laredo, Texas are in fact White (as are most of their Mexican-American brethren in the region), and this often shocks non-Mexican Hispanics coming from the East Coast and California.
This is a sort of Latin American White Pride that I do not have a whole lot of issues with. To me, it resembles Black Pride in the US, which is generally healthy because it avoids some extremes and pitfalls. Some of the benefits vis a vis nasty US White Pride:
No emphasis on purity: If anything, in Black Pride there is an emphasis on less purity due to Black America’s obsession with light skin. That is, the less Black you have in you, the more proud you are, paradoxically. Now, that is not necessarily a good thing, but at least it gets us away from the purity poison.
Your average Black person in the US is 1
In contrast, US White Pride is utterly toxic in terms of racial “contamination.” If you have the tiniest bit of non-White in you, you’re automatically non-White. Even a lot of White ethnics are ruled out as Whites and described as non-Whites. Examples include Jews, Armenians, Turks, Eastern Aryans, Iranians, White Berbers, White Arabs, Georgians, the Caucasus, Albanians and Southern Europeans in general.
It’s absurd. Another thing to note is that in general, among races, the more emphasis there is on purity, the more violent, fascist and even genocidal the group is. It’s no accident that the Germans and Japanese were both genocidal and strongly emphasized purity of race. The two things go together quite well. As you get away from the purity trap, you become more loving and inclusive and less likely to engage in race-based violence, much less genocide. This is because, as a “contaminated” person yourself, you can’t much demand purity from others.
Increased love for others: Most White Latin Americans don’t hate the small amount of Indian or Black in themselves. It’s not the end of the world. They have a more relaxed attitude towards race, and they often love the non-White in themselves. If you love the Other in yourself, you are more likely to love the Other in others.
No demands for segregation. Latin American Whites don’t demand segregation. There was some segregation in Latin America, especially in Cuba and Ecuador, but it’s long gone. In Cuba, it lasted as long as the Revolution.
Let’s get real here for a second. What’s behind the demands for segregation? They are about fears of racial annihilation. This is what the fears of race-mixing and miscegenation were all about. But White Latin Americans are already somewhat mixed, so in a sense, they are already an annihilated race. There’s nothing to fear from dilution if you’re already diluted yourself, so there’s no need for segregation. Let the mixing begin!
A more relaxed attitude about race. White nationalists go on and on about colorism in Latin America, but at the end of the day, it’s not as big a deal as racism is here in the US. Colorism is simply not as virulent and nasty as White racism here in the US. It’s all a continuum, a sliding scale.
Thinking in a grey or continuum type manner is healthier than thinking in a black and white Manichean manner. Grey thinking is more relaxed and adaptive and leads to more tolerance and flexibility.
What problems there are in Latin America regarding race are ll tied up with class. Many Latin American so-called Whites don’t even look all that White. Indians are disliked due to class hatred, not necessarily racial hatred. The most hardened attitudes are found in South America, especially in the Andes.
It’s not that Latin America has overcome the race issue, but more that they have more or less transmuted it into a class issue. In a region where you can trade in your Indian clothes, stop speaking Indian, move to the city and then start wearing mestizo clothing and speaking Spanish and thereby automagically transform yourself from an Indian into a mestizo is a place were biological race is not so important anymore. It has been replaced by social race.
Less fear of miscegenation. I am not aware that Latin American Whites are zealously guarding their bloodlines anymore. If they are, let me know. You can hardly demand that others marry White if you are not pure White yourself. There are some Latin American Whites who would like it to be this way, but they are going against nature. In particular, Latin American White males are increasingly marrying and breeding with relatively light-skinned mestizas. The purists lament this, but what can you do? A man will be a man.
In addition, there is another operative trend, and that is the widespread tendency among Latin American mestizas to try to “marry White” in an effort to move up in the world themselves and to create a better future for their offspring. This is highly adaptive female thinking, and it leads to a paradoxical “Whitening” effect among mestizos that occurs concurrently with whatever “darkening” effect is going on among Latin American Whites.
It’s the wave of the future. As the world’s population gets more mixed, the sort of White Pride seen in Latin America will become more the norm for all groups. True, pure races will slowly die out and become more rare, but that’s neither good nor bad, it just is. If US Blacks, a mixed group, can be proud, then anyone can be proud of their racial elements. The progeny of a racial stew can feel proud of all of the elements that went into that stew. The result is an ethnic pride that is more tolerant, loving and unconditional.