Which Mexicans Are White? Enumerator-Assigned Race in the 1930 Census and the Socioeconomic Integration of Mexican Americans

2023/11/25 by Brian Duncan, Stephen J. Trejo · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies #Racial and Ethnic Identity Research #Latin American and Latino Studies

paper · doi:10.1177/00197939231213055

openalex publication_date 2023/11/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21

Abstract

The authors explore unique complete-count data from the 1930 Census in which a respondent’s race was assigned by enumerators and “Mexican” was one of the possible responses. Census enumerators frequently and selectively assigned a non-Mexican race—predominantly “white”—to US-born individuals of Mexican ancestry. As a result, using enumerator-assigned race to identify Mexican Americans misses a sizeable fraction of the relevant population and significantly understates this group’s socioeconomic attainment. The propensity for Census enumerators to identify Mexican Americans as white varied enormously across US counties, and this variation is strongly associated with both the educational attainment of US-born Mexican Americans observed in the 1940 Census and the amount of return migration by Mexican immigrants during the 1930s. As such, this variation may help to identify local environments that were more favorable for the integration of Mexican Americans.

Citations

• El Sueño Americano? The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II
• The Complexity of Immigrant Generations: Implications for Assessing the Socioeconomic Integration of Hispanics and Asians

Cited by

• A History of Local Racial Housing Covenants and Federal Housing Policies

Discussions

• #Mexican #Americans were often recorded as “white” in the 1930 Census, masking their true numbers and socioeconomic progress. New research by Brian Duncan #CUDenver and Stephen Trejo #UTAustin shows [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

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