How Do Latino Immigrants Fit into the Racial Order?

“The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the color-line” (Du Bois 1903, 3). A century later, scholars are revisiting W. E. B. Du Bois’s famous proclamation and labeling it this century’s biggest puzzle. There is increased uncertainty about the issue of the color line and its meaning for US society (Lee and Bean 2007a, 2007b; Lewis, Krysan, and Harris 2004). Over the past fifty years the arrival of unprecedented numbers of immigrants from Latin America, in particular from Mexico, has radically changed the racial/ethnic mix of the United States and has challenged the continued relevance of the traditional black/white model of race relations.