Mestizos in the United States

Mestizo Americans are Latino Americans whose racial and/or ethnic identity is Mestizo. The term refers to someone of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry from Latin America (usually being of Iberian and Amerindian descent).
This group does not include Métis people of the United States (a specific community with shared culture and history, often with French-Indigenous mixed ancestry) or Métis people of Canada (usually with Franco-Indigenous or Scottish-Indigenous mixed ancestry) residing in the United States. Their commonality is that they are descendants of Indigenous Amerindians and Europeans. Many Mestizos identify with their Amerindian ancestry while others tend to self-identify with their European ancestry. Others still celebrate both.
The exact number of Latino Americans who self-identify as Mestizo is unknown, in part because "Mestizo" is not an official racial category in the Census. According to the 2010 United States Census, 36.7% of the 52 million Latino Americans identify as "some other race", and most of the remainder consider themselves white. Further complicating matters is the fact that many federal agencies such as the CDC or CIA do not even recognize the "some other race" category, including this population in the white category.
Representation in the media
Mestizos as Latinos are overrepresented in the US mass media and in general American social perceptions, as Latino is often mistakenly given racial values, usually non-white and mixed race, such as Mestizo or Mulatto, in spite of the racial diversity of Latino Americans, while they are overlooked in the US Latino mass media and in general US Latino social perceptions; critics have accused the US Latino mass media of overlooking the Mestizo, Mulatto and other multiracial Latino populations, the Latin American Indigenous peoples and the black Latino populations by excluding them in favor of blond, blue/green-eyed white Latino Americans, along with light-skinned Mulatto and Mestizo Latino Americans.

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