Mexican American Exceptionalism

New Mexico's long-standing Mexican American population, known as "Nuevomexicanos," often see themselves as distinctive from other Mexican-origin people across the Southwestern United States. In this book, Casandra Salgado theorizes this distinction as "Mexican American exceptionalism," and interrogates how present-day Nuevomexicanos residing in Albuquerque make sense of race and racism within this context. Nuevomexicanos' view their long history and numerical dominance in New Mexico buffers them from racism. Yet Salgado finds they still confront anti-Mexican racism and are seen as foreign. While Nuevomexicanos' racial frames are rooted in their colonial history to elevate their racial status, Salgado argues this strategy no longer serves contemporary Nuevomexicanos as such frames are imbued with colorblind racism – ignoring white supremacy and perpetuating intra-group discrimination. As multi-generational Latinos are predicted to become a larger proportion of the Latino population in the United States, Salgado's findings are suggestive of larger trends in the country's evolving ethnoracial landscape - trends toward region-specific identities that buck against common binaries.