For more than two decades, a mural on the wall of a public housing project in East Los Angeles has been exhorting the neighborhood's mostly Mexican-American residents to stop thinking of themselves as members of a minority group. "We are NOT a minority!" the image of a finger-wagging revolutionary declares.

After a generation of mass migration, this slogan is becoming a statistical reality in Los Angeles and other areas across the Southwest. Last week, the Census Bureau announced there are more immigrants in America than ever before in the nation's history -- numerically though not proportionally -- and the largest single block is from Mexico. While Latin American immigrants now live in all parts of the country, 1 in 2 Latinos are in two states: California and Texas. Even as the Census Bureau has announced that Hispanics are on the verge of becoming the largest minority group, many live in cities or states where they are either already the largest minority group or members of the majority. As a result, many 1970's-era policies designed to integrate nonwhites into the mainstream have been rendered moot or now serve to ensure white participation in predominately nonwhite programs and school districts. Indeed, in cities and counties where Latinos are either the single largest ethnic group or have become the absolute majority, it is often unclear what diversity means and at what ends integration policies should aim. More significant, class is replacing race as the primary political preoccupation of the predominately Mexican-American cities of the Southwest.

Last year, just days after the Census Bureau announced that the nation's most populous state, California, had become the first big state where whites were in the minority, the San Diego City Council banned "minority" from official documents and discussions. Arguing that the word was outmoded and demeaning, council members pushed the debate into the national spotlight. year, just days after the Census Bureau announced that the nation's most populous state, California, had become the first big state where whites were in the minority, the San Diego City Council banned "minority" from official documents and discussions. Arguing that the word was outmoded and demeaning, council members pushed the debate into the national spotlight.

For many Latinos in heavily Hispanic regions, the term has become too confining and parochial for their reality. Their growing demographic presence in the Southwest has translated into increased local representation and wider political aspirations. No longer playing a supporting role, Mexican-American officials are diversifying their political portfolios and expanding their electoral bases. "Now that we are no longer banging on the door to get in, but are seated at the table," said the Los Angeles City Council president, Alex Padilla, "we have the responsibility to address broader issues that affect the entire city, state and country. The Latino agenda becomes safer communities, good schools, jobs -- in other words, non-ethnic considerations." As Latino politics mature, race-specific issues take a back seat to matters of economic mobility.

The debate that has flared up over the redrawing of two California Congressional districts shows how changing demographics are reshaping Hispanic political strategy. Last year, when the Latino rights organization Maldef (the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) charged that the redrawing discriminated against Latinos, prominent Latino lawmakers and union officials argued that non-Latinos could well represent the interests of Latino constituents. In The Los Angeles Times, the liberal state senators Martha Escutia and Gloria Romero argued against creating Latino-majority districts through civil-rights litigation. "We should not relegate ourselves to a few court-imposed barrios," they wrote in an op-ed article.

Foreshadowing this transition toward majoritarian politics, California's lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, declared three years ago that Latino elected officials "have to de-ghettoize ourselves."

This sentiment is being felt in other fields. While cultural politics don't always adhere to the same internal logic as electoral politics, Latinos' shift toward majority status has also begun to affect the ethnic marketplace. Last year, for example, the film director Robert Rodriguez said he believed Latino audiences don't want to see Latino-specific films "because they don't want to feel like a niche."

In her book on the emergence of the Hispanic consumer market, Arlene Davila, a New York University anthropologist, argues that while ethnic marketing has brought unprecedented attention to Latinos, it also defines them away from the American mainstream.

What more and more Southwest Latinos can agree on is that they are becoming less content with the circumscribed opportunities that their official minority status and multiculturalism now afford them. For example, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is 71 percent Hispanic, Latinos' majority status actually puts them at a disadvantage when applying to magnet schools. Originally developed as an alternative to forced busing, the city's select magnet program was designed to integrate ethnic minority students and encourage them to look beyond their neighborhoods.

But today, whites' newfound minority status gives them an advantage when applying to magnet schools. While the district is only 9 percent white, 22 percent of its magnet students are. The racial formula used to balance the makeup of the magnets also ensures that blacks and Asians are over-represented, while Latinos make up no more than 40 percent. While such policies were designed a generation ago to allow members of ethnic minority groups in the door, today, in many parts of the Southwest, they are becoming glass ceilings.

None of this is to say that integration is not a major concern in the heavily Hispanic regions of the country. But the focus is shifting toward the socioeconomic integration of immigrants. Changing demography does not eradicate the traditional obstacles that newcomers still face in America. Indeed, politics in many cities that have survived wholesale ethnic succession indicate that future battles will be fought along economic lines.

Weeks before last year's mayoral race in El Paso, Tex., a city nearly three-quarters Mexican-American, Pat O'Rourke, a former county commissioner, declared that all longtime El Pasoans were culturally Hispanic. "We are all Mexicans in this valley," he wrote. "What causes resentment among groups today is not ethnicity, but economic differences."

Indeed, two years ago, in McAllen, Tex., a coalition of churches and schools working to improve the city's socioeconomic ills successfully championed a ballot measure that changed the at-large election system to create single-member political districts. Opposed by Mayor Leo Montalvo because it would dilute Hispanic voting power, activists argued that ethnicity was no longer as important as geography and class.

Of course, in most of America, Latinos remain a fledgling minority group. The immigrant experience in the South or Northwest, where Latino immigrants have a small but growing presence, bears little resemblance to life in the Southwest. In most regions, the term "minority" and traditional integration policies still make sense. "In Oregon, Latinos are the largest minority group, but we're still only 8 percent of the state," says Amalia Alarcon-Gaddie, director of the Metropolitan Human Rights Center in Portland. "Here we do still need to be vigilant about minority integration."

Still, last year demographers concluded that Texas, the second most populous state, could follow California and become the second majority-minority state by 2004. Hispanics are now the largest ethnic or racial group in its two biggest cities, Houston and Dallas.

Though the emergence of Latino America has been depicted as the addition of one more color to the nation's multicultural rainbow, the Mexican-American experience in the Southwest is subsuming the region's entire color spectrum and challenging American notions of minority membership.