[I]n Spanish mestizo reflected a relatively new hierarchy with whites on top, Africans and Indians at the bottom, and mestizos/as in the middle. Mestizos/as were stigmatized by the Spanish, but because they were closer to “whiteness” they were often afforded rights and privileges denied to Indians and Africans. By contrast, some mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-Americans placed mestizos/as closer to Indians and Africans, while others argued that Mexico’s mixed population made it an essentially Indian country. This ambivalence is also central to contemporary debates. Does mestizo/a identity stabilize hierarchies by partly “whitening” mixed people and dividing them from people of color? Or does it produce possibilities for oppositional coalitions by pushing mixed people closer to oppressed Indians and Africans?

This is an excerpt from Curtis Marez’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 158).