Monday, July 11, 2022
Sunday, July 10, 2022
Mendez case "was NOT based on racial equality"
School desegregation brings to mind famous photos of African-American children integrating classrooms after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. But over seven years earlier, five Latino families fought and won a case that helped integrate schools in California. On its 70th anniversary we look back at the mostly forgotten Mendez v. Westminster case.
When attorney David Marcus filed the lawsuit in 1945, his case was not based on racial equality. At that time, the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling allowed for the separation of races as long as there were equal facilities, so the courts were rejecting the argument that segregation based on race was unconstitutional. For Marcus, the key would be to prove not that segregation was wrong, but that Latino students were white and being discriminated against....
On Feb. 18, 1946, U.S. District Judge Paul McCormick of Los Angeles ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage,” he wrote. This rejection of the idea that schools could be “separate but equal” stirred excitement among civil rights groups, who thought Mendez v. Westminster might be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a victory could be used to integrate schools across the country.
In the end, an appellate court narrowed Judge McCormick’s decision to apply solely to Latino students in the specific districts listed in the lawsuit. The case fell into obscurity and the civil rights spotlight focused on racial integration.
Kelly, Brigid. (2016, Feb. 22). 70 years ago, California ended a type of segregation. KCRW.
"The niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!"
The biggest problem facing the Houston Independent School District in implementing its court-ordered desegregation plan is a city-wide boycott of public schools by an estimated 3,500 Mexican-American students.
The strike was called by the Mexican-American Education Council (MAEC) following a meeting with the school board on August 27 concerning HISD's proposed pairing plan. The plan has zoned neighborhoods so that Chicano students, considered "white" by the federal court, are integrated with black students, leaving anglo schools largely unaffected and still lily white.
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The underlying racism in many students' decision to boycott, however, was obvious again at the Enrichment school. One ninth grader told me he was boycotting because "the niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!" A common feeling was that the students were afraid of going to schools that were predominantly black because "black kids are always bossing us around, picking fights."
Duncan, Cam. "La Raza vs. School Board." Space City News, September 19, 1970 , p. 3
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Thursday, May 12, 2022
"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
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
"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?
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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.
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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.
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.