Race, Whiteness, and Mexican Americans in 1930

The premise is historically inaccurate: Americans did not collectively "want Mexicans to no longer be white" by 1930.

Racial classification of Mexican Americans has been complex and contested:

• Legal whiteness: Under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans in ceded territories were granted U.S. citizenship, which at the time was restricted to "white" persons. Legally, they were white.
• Social non-whiteness: In practice, Mexican Americans faced segregation, discrimination, and exclusion akin to non-white groups, especially in Texas and California.
• 1930 Census: For the first and only time, "Mexican" was listed as a separate race. In 1940, they were reclassified as white unless "definitely Indian or other non-white."
• Fluid boundaries: Whiteness has always been a social construct with shifting boundaries, shaped by politics, labor needs, and nativism—not a fixed biological fact.

The 1930 census change reflected growing anti-Mexican sentiment during the Great Depression (repatriation drives), not a unified desire to "make them non-white." Racial categories serve power, not biology.