"No question of race discrimination"

  "Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County, 64 F. Supp. 544 (1946), Conclusions of the Court"

"I don't see myself as a great victim of discrimination"

SHE IS BRIGHT, smart, tough. "I'm a very controlled person," says Linda Chavez, 36, the new U.S. Civil Rights Commission staff director who sent out shock waves by denouncing hiring quotas. In her Thomas Circle office, she sits with hands folded on her desk, business suit and blouse flawlessly neat, not a hair out of place. She is smiling. Her voice is warm and low, her speech energetic.

She talks about how it feels to be treated differently because your skin is brown.

"I have had more difficulty with what I consider discriminatory and prejudiced behavior from liberals who thought they were doing me a favor than I have ever experienced from bigots," she says. "Maybe it shaped some of my attitudes on the whole affirmative action and quota business." 

...

She was denigrated by Anglos, called a Mexican. "I don't see myself as a great victim of discrimination . . . Blacks have experienced the most severe discrimination in our society."

 

McCombs, Phil. "The Civil Struggles Of Linda Chavez." The Washington Post, January 30, 1984

"White Persons of Spanish Surname"

 

 

Chicano, Boricua. Mexican American. Latino. Puerto Rican. Spanish American. Raza. Latin American. Hispanic. Spanish Origin. White Person of Spanish Surname. The list of names seems endless and confusing. Which term is correct? 

...

This leads to a legal complication: with confusion in methodology, eligibility for civil rights and affirmative action benefits can be capriciously applied, favoring persons who do not meet the spirit of the law but fall within its literal interpretation due to methodological inconsistency. This capriciousness is beginning to generate a potentially devastating legal backlash.

...

Continued use of the term "Hispanic" or "Spanish Origin" denies the very basis upon which discrimination has been based, and confuses the basis for civil rights and affirmative action efforts. Because of this terminological and methodological confusion, not only is health research hampered, but legal efforts are placed in jeopardy. In 1979 in Maryland an Anglo named Robert E. Lee had his name legally changed to Roberto E. Leon in the hope he would qualify for affirmative action benefits because he would then have a Spanish surname. This transparent ploy served to mock affirmative action. Yet, in reality, he was mocking an imprecise methodology. Judge Weber in Pittsburgh ruled that Hispanics are not a race, and denied affirmative action benefits to a person who had submitted proof that his father was a Mexican. Judge Renfrew, a proposed Carter appointee, has stated that Hispanics are no more than "lazy Caucasians", and not eligible for affirmative action efforts. One can understand such confusion as long as such terms as "white person of Spanish surname," "Hispanic," or "Spanish descent" are used for identification purposes.

 

Hayes - Bautista, D. E. Identifying "Hispanic" populations: The influence of research methodology upon public policy. American Journal of Public Health, 1980, 671-687

Passing for an oppressed minority

 

In 1985 I found out that the affirmative action office of the university where I work was counting me as a “minority faculty,” member of the so-called “Hispanic ethnic group.” It was then that I became interested in the label and its implications for the people it identifies. I found its political construction and usage particularly worthy of examination because it abolishes, for all practical purposes, the qualitative historical differences between the experiences and life chances of U.S. minority groups of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin, and those of Latin American and Spanish peoples. The label imputes to Latin Americans a contrived “Hispanic ethnicity” while minoritizing them in the process (i.e., defining them as members of a minority group even though they have never been historically oppressed as such in the United States.)’ Because the label is used in the context of affirmative action, it places professional and skilled immigrants in objective competition with members of the U.S. minority groups and forces them to pass, statistically, as members of an oppressed group.

 

Martha E. Gimenez, "Latino/'Hispanic': Who Needs a Name? The Case Against a Standardized Terminology," International Journal of Health Services 19:3 (1989), pp. 557-571. 

"Huelga! I don't want to go to school with those black people"

SR: What did you think about the huelga school movement that emerged in response to HISD’s so called integration plan? And what role did U of H MAYO play in this huelga movement? 

MJ: Well I think we were ambivalent about the huelga movement. Some people became teachers; I never did. I was always ambivalent about it because I think the leadership was saying this was an injustice but I think the community was saying, “I don’t want to go with those black people.” And so that’s what always there was a lot of that within the community. So it wasn’t like clearly…it wasn’t a clear movement of fighting for equality. The leadership may have been different in its conception but the grassroots had a different. There was a lot of racism. So I think we had ambivalent roles. Individually I think a lot of the Houston MAYO get those teachers out of the schools. 

SR: And did the… was the huelga school movement and CMAS connected in terms of leader faculty members or those who support CMAS? 

MJ: I don’t remember that being there. Because I think that the leadership of the huelga schools was entirely based in the neighborhoods. I mean if you looked at the leadership they were neighborhood leaders or political leaders or even religious leaders who were leading it. And again for the leadership, the question was one of fighting the bad plan of integration but the reason I think of the community response was there was a lot of racism.

 Jimenez, Maria. Oral history from the Houston History Project

Race relations in Texas

 

Growing up White in Texas

 

I am white, and grew up outside of Houston in the 1950s and 1960s. Jim Crow was still strong, but my parents taught me that racism and segregation were wrong, so I learned at an early age that the accepted way of doing things is not always the right way to do it.

I went to segregated schools until my senior year in high school, in 1966. Every morning, while I waited for the school bus (we lived in the country), I watched our neighbor Mr. Mitchell drive by in one of our school buses. It took me several years to figure out that the reason Mr. Mitchell didn't pick us up (he kept the bus at home) was because he was driving into Alvin to pick up all the black children to take them to the "colored" schools down the road in Dickinson. The Alvin schools only integrated in 1966 because Dickinson closed its separate and unequal high school.

I remember the little things, like the first time I realized that the gas station where we did business had three restrooms: women, men and "colored." I recall being particularly appalled (I was about 11) that the "colored" restrooms weren't separated by gender. It seemed very rude to make women and men use the same restroom.

Because our school had no black students, a lot of racist attitudes were directed at Mexican-Americans. Some of the teenagers would always say, when two Mexican-American girls got on the bus toward the end of the route, when seats were few, "Don't let those Mexicans sit down." I did, though, when I could.

Nancy Jane Moore
Washington, DC

Whites Remember Jim Crow