Desperate Housewives and the Chicano Identity

This past weekend I also watched the episode of “Desperate Housewives” that Jane talks about in her blog post with the scene of Lucy assuming that two girls playing in her office were the children of the cleaning lady when they were actually the daughters of her boss. In addition to Jane’s discussion of common sense racism, I related this scene Haney Lopez’s discussion of “Inventing Chicanos” in chapter 9 of Racism on Trial.

I was really interested in Haney Lopez’s descriptions of the reasons why Mexican Americans involved in the Chicano movement sought to change their identity by primarily changing their racial title. Haney Lopez explains that “the Chicano movement worked constantly, creatively, and self-consciously to fashion a new racial identity” (205) that was a “positive identity” with a lot of meaning behind it. He says that “Mexican Americans understood race to have relatively little power to determine identity” (206) while Chicanos felt that the color of their skin went hand in hand with the often negative or degrading societal images associated with the Mexican culture. The Chicano movement fought to change their title to therefore separate themselves from the white identity and create an identity that could differ from the stereotypes around them. This new identity would be positive in the sense that their efforts went towards representing the positive aspects of their culture and who they were collectively, which provided depth and meaning by emphasizing the many dimensions to their racial and ethnic community.

Haney Lopez breaks this racial identity into three “lines:” characteristics as the traits of groups; categories as the racial group itself; and properties as the cultural conceptions of the racial group, or the “supposed attributes of race.” (205) By creating a new category (Chicanos), the Chicano movement distinguished their characteristics from those of the white category that Mexican Americans were associated with, in attempt of developing the properties of their identity into positive conceptions that would positively develop the Chicano’s place in society.

The scene from “Desperate Housewives” symbolizes the reason why Chicanos did not want to be considered part of the white racial category because they were not treated as white and were associated with disrespectful, careless, and generally poor behavior. Lucy exaggerated the situation because of the color of the girls’ skin, and her association of the behavior of the girls with lower class minorities. These assumptions and properties are what the Chicano movement fought to change by creating their new identity.

Additionally, this scene was an example of the “whitened Mexicans” Haney Lopez discusses. “According to Chicanos, ‘whitened’ Mexicans identified with and aspired to the status of whites. They were also those who, because of physical features, wealth, profession, education, or business position, possessed characteristics associated with whites.” (207) Carlos, the father of the two girls, is an example of a whitened Mexican because even though his skin color is the same as the skin of the Chicanos, he has been successful, represented by his high business position and apparent wealth. Although the show does not characterize Carlos with “possessed characteristics associated with whites,” it is clear that Lucy treats him as she would a white man because of his status. Lucy’s behavior represents the behavior of many people in society who today only treat minorities as equals when they have achieved the power and status of what people like Lucy consider to be properties of the white racial group.