Race not at issue in Mendez

Méndez, along with four other parents, decided to hire David Marcus to represent them in their suit on behalf of “some 5,000 other persons of Mexican and Latin descent and extraction”against four Orange County school districts. In California, Section 8003 of the Education read, “the governing board of any school district may establish separate schools for Indian children…and for children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage.” Because Mexicans were not one of the groups that the law permitted to be segregated, the school district’s attorney argued that the segregation was not based on race.

Mexicans, after all, were legally Anglo. Instead, the segregation was a result of Mexican children’s lack of English-proficiency. David Marcus, attorney for the Méndezes, also argued, “race discrimination” was not the issue at hand “since persons of Latin and Mexican extraction are members of the ‘white’ race.” If Mexican children were white, it was illegal to segregate them from other white children. Marcus had to prove, then, that language proficiency was not being tested equally and that many of the Mexican students unfairly segregated were actually fluent English speakers. Judge McCormick agreed, and on February 18, 1946 he ruled in favor of the Méndezes because the school district had failed to prove they were testing for English proficiency in ways that did not specifically target Mexican students.

The school district appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Marcus again emphasized the whiteness of Mexicans so the court did not have to confront Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal doctrine.” Because, as Marcus argued, the case was not about racial segregation, the court could uphold that the segregation of Mexican children was unconstitutional because they were Anglo, while preserving the legality of racial segregation.

 

 Cecilia Márquez, “The Strange Career of Juan Crow: Latino/as and the Making of the US South, 1940–2000,” PhD thesis, University of Virginia (2016) 

Mexican girl barred from black school

                                    

The Galarza family returned to Washington, D.C. so that Ernesto could continue his work for the Pan-American Union. In his capacity as an organizer for the Pan American Union, he was developing a booklet that “told the story of America” which would aid new immigrants in becoming “better acquainted with one another’s customs, habits and modes of dress.” While meeting with people he hoped would assist him in this project, he was introduced to Mrs. Cordelia Wharton who taught dressmaking at the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational School. Galarza and Wharton developed a friendship, and when his daughter expressed a desire to take a course in dressmaking, Galarza enrolled her in Wharton’s class at the M.M. Washington Vocational School. In addition to their growing friendship, Wharton’s particular skill-set made the M.M. Washington school an appealing place for Karla to learn dressmaking.

...

On February 3, 1947 Karla enrolled at the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational High School to take Wharton’s course on dress design and costume making. However, one month into her attendance at the M.M. Washington school, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Garnet C. Wilkinson, requested that Karla voluntarily withdraw and enroll instead at the white vocational school, Burdick Vocational High School. During their March 10, 1947 meeting, Dr. Wilkinson informed Karla that, in his assessment, she was white and as a result not “entitled to attend” the M.M. Washington Vocational school.

...

As a result of Karla’s refusal to leave the school voluntarily, the school board met on April 2nd, 1947 to make a decision regarding her attendance. The Superintendent, Hobart M. Corning, submitted a report to the board that outlined his case for removing Karla from M.M. Washington. He opened the report by writing: “Since the admission of Karla Rosel Galarza to the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational High School question has arisen to her racial status and as to whether she is entitled to the privilege of attending the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational High School.”... Corning argued that Karla, because of her prior attendance at white schools in the area, was “not entitled” to attend M.M. Washington. The schools she attended “do not admit Negroes as students,” and her attendance, Corning went on, “indicates that she is not a Negro.”

...

The white newspapers reported the case as a white girl being barred from a black school. The Toledo Blade referred to Karla as a “pretty, 22-year-old white girl,” The Times-Picayune chronicled “a white girl ousted from a Negro public school,” and The Sunday Oregonian introduced Karla as a “white girl” and the “daughter of former educational adviser to the PanAmerican union.” For the white media this was an interesting story of a reversal of the traditional

 

 Cecilia Márquez, “The Strange Career of Juan Crow: Latino/as and the Making of the US South, 1940–2000,” PhD thesis, University of Virginia (2016) 

Latin Americans are not to eat with the Negros.

 

Passing for "Latin white"

 

Early in Lena Horne’s career there were complaints that she did not fit the desired image of a black entertainer for white audiences, either physically or in her style…Noting her brunette-white beauty, one white agent tried to get her to take a Spanish name, learn some Spanish songs, and pass as a Latin white, but she had learned to have a horror of passing and never considered it…

Davis, F. James. Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition. N.p., Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

While touring with Barnet, Horne was noticed by an MGM talent scout during a stop in Los Angeles. She landed a contract with the studio but initially was cast only as "window dressing," appearing in the background. With her light skin tone, the studio had pressed her into trying to "pass as a Latin," which she refused.

Byrge, Duane. “Lena Horne Dies at 92.” The Hollywood Reporter, 9 May 2010, 

The light-complexioned Horne refused to go along with studio plans to promote her as a Latin American. She later said she did not want to be "an imitation of a white woman."'

Duke, Alan. “Legendary Singer, Actress Lena Horne Dead at 92.” CNN Entertainment, 11 May 2010.

She made "Hispanic" official

While success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, bureaucrat-ese, it turns out, sometimes has one proud author. During her long career in government, Grace Flores-Hughes spent some time working as an assistant in what was then called the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. It was there, in the early 1970s, that she helped establish "Hispanic" as the government's word of choice for people of Spanish origin -- a term that made it onto the official U.S. census form in 1980.
... 

How did the federal government come to use the term "Hispanic"?

There are many Hispanic activists who think that Richard Nixon did it. Well, no, Richard Nixon was very busy -- he didn't have time to be doing this. When I explain it, they get relieved. They were holding this anger that some nasty Anglo named them. Well, no, it wasn't. It was this little Hispanic bureaucrat.
...

So you and others in your office joined a committee to come up with the best name?

It was very contentious. Others were pulling for the word "Latino." I wanted "Hispanic." And I was the youngest one in the group. They said: " 'Latino' and 'Latina' is what we all are, that's why we should be called that." But to me the only way to accurately count us is by using the term "Hispanic."
...

It was an affirmative action decision?

Essentially it was guiding any affirmative action that was going to evolve.

Who is Hispanic in your mind? Who were you thinking of when you fought for the term?

All the people in South Texas I grew up with. So many of them were poor, so many were disenfranchised. I thought: How can we argue for more federal funds or more federal help if we don't know how many they are?

Washington Post, 2009. She Made 'Hispanic' Official.

"There is no connection!"

 

A year after Sweatt v. Painter, the U.S District Court for the District of Kansas heard Oliver Brown's suit against the Topeka School District for refusing to allow his third-grade daughter, Linda, to attend the white elementary school, which was nearer to her house than the segregated grade school on the other side of a railroad switchyard.

When Wirin suggested in 1953 that the Mendez and Delgado segregation cases in California and Texas would likely influence the outcome of the Brown cases, [George] Sanchez exclaimed: "There is no connection!" Our cases really were on the "due process' clause[that segregation was] ('arbitrary, capricious') much more than on the equality...clause - whereas the present [Brown] cases attack the right of the states to legislate segregation (something which has never been done for Mexicans). "Does one of the present cases attack Negro segregation where there is no law decreeing such segregation? Only in such a case would we be concerned."

For Sanchez the overriding issue was not the constitutional right of states to legislate segregation, but rather the illegality of segregating Mexicans from other whites in the absence of state law. While Thurgood Marshall sought to overturn a half-century-old Supreme Court decision, Sanchez challenged local school districts that arbitrarily segregated Mexicans for their alleged language handicap.

Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.  

The danger of becoming an "utterly bastardized race"

 

Mexico was not the only Latin American country that did not welcome black soldiers during World War II. When the U.S Navy assigned 250 African American enlisted personnel to the Panama Canal Zone, the U.S ambassador to Panama urged the secretary of state to cancel the assignment because of the risk of protest from the Panamanian government, which denied entry to "persons of the colored race." In 1941 the Panamanian president, Arnulfo Arias, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini while ambassador to Italy in the 1930s, amended the constitution to deny entry of all immigrants of the "black race whose native language is not Spanish, of the yellow race, and the races originating in India, Asia Minor, and North Africa." Article 23 of the new constitution also revoked the citizenship, retroactively, of children of Panamanians whose parents were of African or Asian descent.

President Arias spoke of the necessity of "improving the biological conditions" of Panamanians and was especially critical of the U.S policy of having imported thousands of "colored aliens" from the West Indies and Asia to construct the Panama Canal. The foreign minister defended Article 23, declaring that Panamanians were "anxious to guard against the danger that Panama, situated at the crossroads of the world, should degenerate from a Spanish-speaking, white nation into...a Babel of tongues, and an utterly bastardized race."

  Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.