In this historical narrative I have outlined the racial history of the Mexican Americans, identified and explored significant events influencing their racial heritage, and offered a critical analysis of the relations that evolved between Mexicans of different racial backgrounds. Under Spain’s rule, Mexicans who were White enjoyed social and economic privileges not extended to Mexicans of color. However, as I have illustrated, due to a legacy of racial mixture under Spanish rule mestizos and afromestizos eventually shared some of the opportunities reserved for Whites. Following Mexican independence, both problems and progressive achievements transpired after Spain’s racial order was dismantled. For Mexicans this period was short-lived, because the United States conquered the Southwest and reinstituted a racial order that gave people of color few civil rights. During the Anglo-American period, Mexicans who were White were extended the legal rights of U.S. citizens, while Mexicans of color experienced diverse forms of racial discrimination depending on their racial phenotype.
Before bringing my narrative to a close, I would like to examine the issue of when Mexicans in the United States were finally extended the political rights of U.S. citizens. After all, we know that today people of Mexican descent are no longer forbidden to become U.S. citizens on the basis of race. This discussion covers a liberal phase in United States racial history, between 1865 and 1898, when democratic philosophers enfranchised people of color and drafted legislation giving them the right to vote. Sadly, as we have seen in past decades, liberal reforms are often followed by a backlash. De jure segregation followed the enfranchisement of people of color, and Mexicans became part of the “colored” races who were not allowed legally to move freely among White people. Though restrictions on space and movement were already common practice, the novelty of legally sanctioned de jure segregation orders was that people of color no longer had the court system as a forum to object to segregation.1
The legal foundation dismantling state and territorial laws preventing Mexicans from becoming United States citizens began in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Menchaca 1993:591). Though the amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude and was directed toward freeing Blacks, it became the foundation to improve the political status of Mexicans and other racial minority groups. Since Blacks had been emancipated, the question of whether they should be incorporated into the nation as voting citizens then arose. If Blacks were to be given such a right, the issue of whether all racial minorities should have the same rights had to be considered. The federal government determined that if racial minorities were to be allowed to vote, a federal law rescinding the states’ right to prescribe citizenship requirements had to be enacted (Hyman and Wiecek 1982). The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 with the intention of legislating a uniform citizenship law and eliminating the states’ rights to establish citizenship eligibility (U.S. Constitution, Amendment 14, Sec. 1, cited in Hyman and Wiecek 1982:517–531). Ironically, although the Fourteenth Amendment became the paramount law of the land and people born in the United States were granted full citizenship rights, including the right to vote, the amendment excluded the American Indians from its protection.
Throughout the late nineteenth century state governments prevented “American-born” racial minorities from exercising their citizenship rights under the Fourteenth Amendment (Kansas 1941). Anglo Americans argued that the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to Blacks and Whites and that therefore Asians, American Indians, Mexicans, and “half-breeds” were not entitled to its protection. The account of Pablo De La Guerra illustrates the reluctance of government officials to extend Mexicans U.S. citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. As previously discussed, in 1870 Pablo De La Guerra was accused by the State of California of illegally acting as a U.S. citizen. In People v. Pablo De La Guerra (1870) attorneys for the state attempted to deny De La Guerra the political rights of a citizen by arguing that he was not part of the population who received citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. Though De La Guerra won the suit and was able to prove that his Indian lineage was too insignificant to rescind his classification as a White person, the state supreme court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to Mexicans who were clearly of Indian descent.
The government refused to grant Indians the right to obtain citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment regardless of whether or not they adopted the lifestyle of Euro-Americans. A case in point is John Elk, an acculturated Indian who was denied that right in 1884. According to the U.S. Supreme Court in Elk v. Wilkens, Elk was technically a tribal Indian because his people had never enacted a treaty with the United States. Although Elk was a taxpayer, had terminated all relations with his reservation, and had served in the U.S. military, he was found unfit to claim citizenship. He was also denied the right to apply for naturalization, because Indians were ineligible: Indians could only become citizens by an act of Congress. With the Elk v. Wilkens ruling, the government made it clear that Indians were disqualified from applying for citizenship or naturalization. This law also applied to the Indians acquired from Mexico; the U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Sandoval, though adjudicated nearly three decades later, illustrates that many Christian Indians were part of the populations included in the Elk decision.
In 1913 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Elk decision in United States v. Sandoval. Indians, including the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, were not part of the populations who acquired citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court ruled that only Congress had the power to determine which communities were Indian and when peoples ceased to be categorized as such (U.S. v. Sandoval, 1913:46). The Court added that Congress determined who was no longer an Indian by considering residence, family lineage, and cultural criteria and elaborated upon the standards used to classify communities as Indian: “… considering their Indian lineage, isolated and communal life, primitive customs and limited civilization, this assertion of guardianship over them cannot be said to be arbitrary but must be regarded as both authorized and controlling” (U.S. v. Sandoval, 1913:47).
Asian Americans, like Mexicans and Indians, were denied the right to claim citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment because they were not White. An additional compelling argument was used against Asians. Paradoxically, government officials argued that American-born Asians who went on vacation to visit their parents’ country of origin were to be legally considered immigrants when they returned (Konvitz 1946; State of Nevada v. Ah Chew, 1881). The rationale for this argument centered on the seditious ideology such a person supposedly acquired while abroad.
As large numbers of American racial minorities began to challenge the states’ interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, their cases began to appear before the states’ supreme courts. The U.S. Supreme Court was then pressured to offer a final and uniform decision on two citizenship questions. Were non-Black racial minorities who had been born in the United States citizens? And if they were, should they be entitled to full political rights? In 1898 the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and the racial questions were resolved.2 The Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the United States acquired citizenship by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment and that race and national origin could not be used to deny a person the right of citizenship. The Court also ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (Chap. 31, Secs. 1–6) guaranteed all persons born in the United States (and not subject to any foreign power), regardless of racial background, full and equal benefit of the laws enjoyed by White citizens.
Ironically, the Court exempted the majority of the American Indians, the rationale being that the spirit and language of the Fourteenth Amendment were based on the principles of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which exempted most American Indians. Indians were allegedly exempt because they refused to relinquish their tribal government. Interestingly, the comments of Justice C. J. Fuller, who offered the dissenting opinion, evoke a glimpse of the opinions held by powerful men in those times. Justices Fuller and J. Harlan proposed that there was nothing wrong in denying certain races citizenship. Justice Fuller stated: “I am of opinion that the President and Senate by treaty, and the Congress by naturalization … have the power … to prescribe that all persons of a particular race, or their children, cannot become citizens” (United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898:732).
Following the Wong Kim Ark decision, Mexicans born in the United States were in theory guaranteed the full legal rights of citizenship. This ruling only applied to Mexicans born in the United States, however, because Mexican immigrants of color came under different racial laws. During the nineteenth century, many Mexican immigrants were denied the opportunity to become citizens because the naturalization laws of the period only applied to Whites (Menchaca 1993). This was damaging to the Mexican population as the era of Mexican migration began to unfold in the 1880s (Galarza 1964). Thousands of Mexicans were entering the United States in an attempt to reunite their families separated by the U.S.-Mexican border and to escape economic turmoil in Mexico. By 1890 there were over 77,853 Mexican immigrants in the United States, with the majority residing in Texas and California (U.S. Census 1894:cxxvi).3
During the late nineteenth century, as a result of economic problems in Mexico, Mexican migration steadily continued to increase (Acuña 1972). Because the Mexican government was unable to stimulate economic growth, there were insufficient jobs available in Mexico. The landed elite took advantage of the situation and continued to offer substandard wages because there was an oversupply of labor in Mexico. People working in agriculture did not receive a decent living wage (Galarza 1964). Exacerbating matters, in Mexico’s northern region small-scale farmers experienced several periods of drought and were unable to produce enough crops to sustain their families. With such economic problems confronting thousands of Mexicans, many chose to leave and migrate north toward the United States.
These events converged with an economic boom in the Southwest. Buildings were being constructed, canals and roads were being built, industries were growing, and agriculture was thriving. In particular, the economy of California was growing as a result of the success of the agricultural sector and the evolution of the Mexican land grant system. By the 1880s, throughout California, eastern capitalists purchased most of the Mexican land grants and converted them into agricultural estates or what are commonly known as factories in the fields (Galarza 1964). Thousands of farm jobs became available in California and in other parts of the Southwest. The availability of jobs stimulated Mexican migration to the Southwest, whereas the lack of jobs in Mexico pushed people out. Unfortunately, though the U.S. government allowed Mexican immigrants to enter and work, it only allowed White immigrants to become naturalized U.S. citizens.
In the nineteenth century Mexican immigrants who planned to participate in U.S. electoral politics and receive other political rights had to obtain citizenship by way of naturalization. For Mexicans and other racial minorities the process was arduous. Racial minorities did not have the right to apply for naturalization merely because they were immigrants (Hull 1985; Kansas 1941; Konvitz 1946). On the contrary, from 1790 to 1940 only “free white immigrants”—and after 1870 Black immigrants—were extended the privilege of naturalization (Naturalization Act of 1790, Chap. 3, Sec. 1; Naturalization Act of 1795, Chap. 20, Stat. 2, Sec. 1; Naturalization Act of 1802, Chap. 28, Stat. 1; Naturalization Rev. Stat. of 1870, Sec. 2169). If Mexican immigrants wanted to be naturalized, they had to prove that they were eligible to apply because they were White (Padilla 1979); they also had to prove that they were not Indian, because the naturalization eligibility requirements excluded Indians. In effect the naturalization process discouraged Mexican immigrants from asserting their indigenous heritage within the legal system.
It is difficult to determine how many Mexican immigrants were successful in obtaining naturalization and how many were turned down on the basis of race (Hull 1985). The case of In re Rodriguez (1897), however, delineates the type of rationale used by the naturalization board to exclude Mexican immigrants. In 1897 Ricardo Rodriguez, a citizen of Mexico, filed in the county court of Bexar County, Texas, his intention to become a citizen of the United States (In re Rodriguez, 1897:337). His application was denied on the ground that he was an Indian and therefore not eligible to apply for citizenship. Rodriguez appealed, and his case was heard by the San Antonio Circuit Court. In his defense, Rodriguez argued that although his ancestry was Indian he no longer practiced Indian traditions and knew nothing about that culture.
The naturalization board contested Rodriguez’s right to apply for naturalization, arguing that the federal government did not extend this privilege to non-Whites other than Blacks. The board, represented by attorney A. J. Evans, asserted that although many Mexicans were White and qualified for naturalization, most Mexicans, like Rodriguez, were Indian and thus ineligible to be naturalized (Naturalization Rev. Stat. of 1870, Sec. 2169). Evans argued that Rodriguez was unmistakably Indian in appearance:
I challenge the right of the applicant to become a citizen of the United States, on the ground that he is not a man or person entitled to be naturalized …. [The] applicant is a native-born person of Mexico, 38 years old, and of pure Aztec or Indian race …. The population of Mexico comprises about six million Indians of unmixed blood, nearly one-half of whom are nomadic savage tribes, …about 5 million whites or creoles …and twenty-five thousand …mestizos, or half-breeds derived from the union of the whites and Indians. … Now it is clear … from the appearance of the applicant, that he is one of the 6,000,000 Indians of unmixed blood …. If an Indian, he cannot be naturalized. (In re Rodriguez, 1897:346–347)
Evans’s colleagues, Floyd McGown and T. J. McMinn, presented supporting legal cases to contest Rodriguez’s naturalization application. Offering several precedents in which racial minorities had been denied the privilege of naturalization, they argued that the federal government had made it very clear that only Blacks and Americans of pure European descent were eligible. McGown and McMinn stated that the precedent for denying Mexican immigrants the right to apply for naturalization had been set in 1878 by In re Ah Yup. In that case the circuit court of California had ruled that the Chinese were not White and therefore were ineligible to apply for citizenship. The attorneys argued that In re Ah Yup indisputably applied to Mexicans because everyone knew that Chinese, Mexicans, and Indians were Mongolians. That argument was their ethnological analysis.
The attorneys then stated that the decision to exclude “half-breed” immigrants from citizenship had also been upheld by the government in the case of In re Camille (1880), in which the circuit court of Oregon had ruled that “half-breed” Indians were not White and therefore not eligible for naturalization. Using In re Camille as their precedent, the attorneys for the board of naturalization argued that Mexican mestizos were disqualified from applying for naturalization because the court had ruled that a person must be at least three-quarters White to receive the privileges of a White citizen. They also appealed to a Utah Supreme Court decision on a Hawaiian immigrant (In re Kanaka Nian, 1889) as evidence that racial minorities who inhabited conquered territories were ineligible for naturalization. Employing unsubstantiated rhetoric, Evans and McGown asserted that inhabitants of ceded territories, such as Hawaii and the Mexican northwest, could not apply for naturalization. Because Kanaka Nian had been born in Hawaii and Rodriguez in Mexico, neither one was eligible.
The final case used to challenge Rodriguez’s right to naturalization was the U.S. Supreme Court case Elk v. Wilkens (1884). The attorneys representing the board of naturalization argued that Elk v. Wilkens clearly indicated that the U.S. government had never intended to naturalize Indians, even those who were acculturated or had terminated their tribal relations. Therefore, they concluded Mexicans were ineligible because everyone knew that the true Mexican was an acculturated Indian. In sum, the attorneys for the board argued on the basis of race against extending Rodriguez the right to apply for naturalization. In supporting arguments they alleged that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo did not have naturalization powers, and they concluded by opining that acculturation did not transform an Indian into a White person.
The dissenting opinion was offered by T. M. Paschal in defense of Rodriguez. Paschal’s opinion clearly supported Rodriguez, yet it had a racist tone and indicated an intolerant attitude toward cultural diversity. Paschal argued that Rodriguez was an undesirable candidate for naturalization and should be denied that right based on the fact that he was an Indian and an ignorant Mexican who was unable to read or write Spanish or English. Paschal asserted, however, that the federal laws of the land had to be upheld by the district courts and that Mexican immigrants had to be given the right to apply for citizenship. He argued that when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified the United States agreed to extend Mexican citizens the same political privileges enjoyed by Whites. Therefore, Paschal proposed, if the U.S. government had agreed to treat the Mexicans of the ceded territory as “White,” then the same treatment had to be extended to Mexican immigrants, irrespective of race. Paschal concluded that although Rodriguez was an Indian, the racial precedents set by the In re Ah Yup, In re Camille, In re Kanaka Nian, and Elk v. Wilkens cases did not apply to Mexicans, for the U.S. government had agreed to extend them the privileges of Whites. Naturalizing Rodriguez, he argued, would not violate the racial clauses of the naturalization laws. To provide further evidence that Rodriguez was eligible, Paschal asked Rodriguez to testify in his own behalf and prove to the court that he no longer identified himself as Indian. The counsel’s questions and Rodriguez’s replies follow:
Q. Do you not believe that you belong to the original Aztec race in Mexico?
Q. Where did your race come from? Spain?
A. No, Sir.
Q. Does you family claim any religion? What religion do they profess?
A. Catholic religion.
Paschal then said: “The supporting affidavits show upon their face that the applicant is attached to the principles of the constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same” (In re Rodriguez, 1897:338). District Judge Maxey concurred with Paschal’s defense. Maxey concluded that Rodriguez was eligible for naturalization based on international laws of territorial cession and on his having proven that he was no longer an Indian.
Interestingly, Elizabeth Hull (1985) argues that although a large number of Mexican immigrants were naturalized in the early twentieth century it was not until 1940 that the U.S. government changed the language of the naturalization laws and without a doubt conferred that privilege on Mexican Indians. According to Hull, it was only with passage of the Nationality Act of 1940 that the U.S. government formally allowed indigenous immigrants from the Western hemisphere to obtain naturalization rights and only with several revisions of the act that it allowed all “non-White immigrants” to obtain citizenship. Chinese were granted that privilege in 1943, Japanese in 1945, Filipinos and East Indians in 1946, and all others in 1952 (Hull 1985:19–22; Konvitz 1946:115).
In the aftermath of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, when the legal foundations were set to forge a more equitable America where democracy could be shared by everyone in the republic, a backlash soon followed. Many government officials and White citizens who opposed the new liberal policies responded by demanding that limits be set upon the freedom of movement and civil rights extended to people of color. De jure segregation became the most appealing way to counterattack the gains made by racial minorities and liberal thinkers. In the late 1800s, when de jure segregation was enacted at the federal level, the question of whether or not the Mexican people came under the mandate of segregationist “Jim Crow” laws became salient. Because the federal government had failed to designate a racial category for Mexican people, their racial status in the courts remained ambiguous. The government acknowledged that most Mexicans were partly White, but because of their Indian ancestry it failed to classify them as Caucasian (Padilla 1979). Classifying them as Indian, since most were of that heritage, was politically problematic, however, because they did not practice a tribal government. There is evidence indicating that in the Southwest dark-complexioned Mexicans were segregated from Whites. In several judicial cases non-White people of Mexican origin were discriminated against by the U.S. legal system. To introduce this discussion, I will briefly review the first major segregationist cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court, Robinson and Wife v. Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). These cases illustrate both the rationale for passing national segregationist laws and the rationale for including non-White Mexicans under those laws.
In 1883 the landmark segregationist ruling in Robinson and Wife v. Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company legally allowed the exclusion of racial minorities from hotels, restaurants, parks, public conveyances, and public amusement parks. This ruling also upheld the right of business owners to provide segregated services for racial minorities or to refuse them services. The arguments of subsequent segregationist laws were structured or supported by this Supreme Court decision, and they were not completely overturned until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Salinas 1973).
The significance of the Robinson case was that it successfully overturned the liberal Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and national origin. Sections 1 and 2 of the act were overturned because of their allegedly unconstitutional implications, for the Court concluded that they advocated reverse discrimination against Whites. The majority opinion was that allowing racial minorities to be in public places forced Whites to interact with them and thus violated the civil rights of White people. It also stated that excluding non-Whites from public places was not a violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments because interacting with Whites was a privilege and not a right for racial minorities.
Thirteen years after the Robinson ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was deliberated by the U.S. Supreme Court. This case became the most devastating segregationist ruling to date, as the Court legalized all forms of social segregation, including school segregation. The ruling also provided more specific language about who could legally be segregated. In Plessy the Supreme Court justices addressed the problem of racial classifications, ruling that for purposes of segregation every state had the right to determine who was White and who was non-White. It also gave each state the power to decide if any racial minority group should be segregated. That is, although the Court did not mandate that “all racial minorities” be segregated, it supported the states’ rights to institute segregation if the state legislators so desired. The Plessy decision served to reinforce the Mexicans’ inferior political status. During the era of de jure segregation, the indigenous heritage of Mexican-origin people linked them to the people of color, and dark-complexioned Mexicans could be racially segregated.
In Colorado and Texas, for example, people of Mexican origin were legally excluded from public facilities reserved for Whites. In Lueras v. Town of Lafayette (1937) and Terrell Wells Swimming Pool v. Rodríguez (1944), the courts concluded that Mexicans were not White and therefore were not entitled to use public facilities. Although the two Mexicans in these cases argued that they were of Spanish descent, their dark skin color indicated that they were racially mixed, and thus they lost the trials. Furthermore, in Texas a study conducted by the Inter-American Committee in 1943 found that over 117 towns in Texas practiced social segregation against Mexicans and most passed de jure segregation laws (Kibbe 1946:211–223). These social customs and laws ranged from Anglo Americans’ prohibiting Mexicans from entering restaurants to demanding that they use separate facilities. Mexicans were forced to use separate bathrooms and drinking fountains and sit in separate sections of restaurants and theaters.
Social scientists Albert Camarillo (1984), Guadalupe Salinas (1973), and Gilbert Gonzalez (1990) report that similar civil rights injustices occurred in California and Arizona during the same period. Likewise, educational historian Rubén Donato and I have documented detailed case studies of social segregation in California. In Santa Paula city policies were used to maintain the Mexican and White students in separate schools, and violence was used by the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate Mexicans into accepting a segregated society (Menchaca 1995; see Photograph 40). For example, Mexicans were forced to live on the East Side of Santa Paula and only shop in stores on that side of town. Rubén Donato (1997) reported a similar situation in Brownfield, California, and found that educational segregation was the most blatant form of racial separation imposed by local policymakers.
Photograph 40. Ku Klux Klan Burning a Cross in Santa Paula, California, 1924. Courtesy of the Ventura County Museum of History and Art.
School segregation cases serve as further illustration of racial discrimination against dark-complexioned Mexican-origin people. Although the rationales used to segregate Mexican students ranged from racial to social-deficit justifications (including language, intelligence quotients, and the “infectious diseases of Mexicans”), some legislators attempted to segregate Mexican students on the ground that most of them were non-White (Wollenberg 1974).
California provides the best examples of how the indigenous racial ancestry of the Mexican students was used to place them under the mandate of de jure segregation. During the 1920s and 1930s, government officials attempted to classify Mexican students as Indians; their intent was to pass a paramount state law that would give all school boards the unquestionable right to segregate Mexicans (Donato, Menchaca, and Valencia 1991:35). On 23 January 1927 State Attorney General U. S. Webb offered the opinion that Mexicans could be treated as Indians and therefore should be placed under de jure segregation (Hendrick 1977:56). At this time, however, a state law allowing Mexicans to be segregated under Plessy v. Ferguson could not be applied to all Mexicans because many were White. Nonetheless, in 1930 the attorney general again issued a similar opinion (Gonzalez 1990). According to Webb, Mexicans were Indians and therefore should not be treated as White: “It is well known that the greater portion of the population of Mexico are Indians and when such Indians migrate to the United States they are subject to the laws applicable generally to other Indians” (cited in Weinberg 1977:166). The opinion of the attorney general, however, once again failed to convince state legislators that most Mexicans were Indian.
In 1935 the California legislature finally passed legislation officially segregating certain Mexican students on the ground that they were Indian. Though the school code exempted Mexicans who were White, it clearly applied to Mexicans of Indian descent. Without explicitly mentioning Mexicans, the code prescribed that schools segregate Mexicans of Indian descent who were not American Indians:
The governing board of the school district shall have power to establish separate schools for Indian children, excepting children of Indians who are wards of the United States government and children of all other Indians who are descendants of the original American Indians of the United States, and for children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage. (cited in Hendrick 1977:57)
The ambiguous school code made Mexican students the principal target of discrimination and released American Indians from mandated school segregation (Donato, Menchaca, and Valencia 1991; Gonzalez 1990). Dark-complexioned Mexican students could be classified as Indians, and the segregationist educational codes could be applied to them. California school boards now had the legal right to use race as a rationale to segregate certain Mexicans.
During the early 1930s, the two states with the largest concentrations of Mexicans practiced school segregation on a large scale. In Texas most schools teaching Mexican students were racially segregated by 1930 (Rangel and Alcala 1972:313–318). In California 85 percent of the Mexican students were in segregated schools or classrooms by 1931 (Hendrick 1977:90). The rationales for segregating Mexican students varied, however, as schools could not use race to segregate White Mexican students.
The case of Independent School District v. Salvatierra (1930) illustrates this point. In 1930 the Mexican community of Del Rio, Texas, won a partial victory when it proved in court that the Del Rio Independent School District had unlawfully segregated White Mexican students (Rangel and Alcala 1972). The attorneys for the school board justified the segregationist actions by arguing that the Texas legislature, the U.S. Constitution, and federal statutes allowed government agencies to segregate Mexican students when it was necessary. They also argued that the district had primarily segregated non-White Mexican students. Judge Joseph Jones ruled that because half the Mexican population in Del Rio was Spanish and belonged to the White race, not all of the Mexican students were subject to the mandates of de jure segregation. The judge also ruled, however, that the Del Rio school board would not be asked to rescind its actions. First, the school board had not acted with malice when it segregated the Mexican students of Spanish descent. The judge proposed that this error resulted from the failure of the Texas courts to determine whether all Mexicans belonged to the same race. Second, because federal statutes on treaties had recently allowed government agencies to reverse treaty agreements, the school board had the right to segregate any Mexican student who did not speak English (Independent School District v. Salvatierra, 1930:794). The judge concluded that because a large number of the Mexican students were White it would be unjust to segregate Mexicans arbitrarily. White Mexican students, therefore, could be segregated only if they did not speak English.
Gilbert Gonzalez (1990) proposes that the Del Rio Independent School District case set the legal precedent cautioning school boards in the Southwest not to use race as the only justification for segregating Mexican students. After the Del Rio incident other rationales were often used to legitimate school segregation, but they were only smokescreens for racism. A case in point is Roberto Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District (1931), in which a California school board used language as a justification for segregating Mexican students (see Alvarez 1986; Gonzalez 1990). In this case, however, the court ruled in favor of the Mexican community and ordered the desegregation of the Mexican students (Alvarez 1986), arguing that separate facilities for Mexican students were not conducive to their Americanization. Americanization symbolically meant the right to be acculturated into the Anglo-Saxon society (Gonzalez 1990).
In 1947 the era of de jure segregation in the schools finally came to an end for the Mexican community of the Southwest. Mendez v. Westminster (1946, 1947) ended de jure segregation in California and provided the legal foundation for overturning the school segregation of Mexican students throughout the Southwest. In that case, Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled that the school board had segregated Mexicans on the basis of their “Latinized” appearance and had gerrymandered the school district in order to ensure that Mexican students would attend schools apart from Whites (Wollenberg 1974). He decided that neither Plessy nor the 1935 educational code of California applied to Mexican students because there was no federal law stipulating that all Mexicans were Indian (Gonzalez 1990). The judge also concluded that the segregation of Mexican students was illegal because the Fourteenth Amendment had guaranteed Mexicans equal rights in the United States. The Westminster school board appealed the ruling, but the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the decision on 14 April 1947 (Gonzalez 1990).
Mendez was later used in Texas and Arizona to desegregate Mexican students (Delgado v. Bastrop, 1948, Gonzales v. Sheely, 1954, cited in Donato, Menchaca, and Valencia 1991:37–38). Educational segregation at the national level was finally overturned in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (1954) that all forms of educational segregation were against the law. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was finally overturned in the area of education: school segregation was ruled to be unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment because separate schools led to unequal education. Although schools were ordered to desegregate, many refused to do so. In the case of Mexican-origin students, at the national level, in 1968 nearly 50 percent of students in kindergarten to twelfth grade attended segregated schools (Donato, Menchaca, and Valencia 1991:28–29).
In 1961 the federal government acknowledged that racial minorities were socially segregated and discriminated against by majority group members (Austin American-Statesman, 26 March 1995, p. C-1). That year President John F. Kennedy issued an Executive Order creating the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, charged with recommending “affirmative steps” to achieve racial diversity in the labor force at all levels. Kennedy targeted the employment sector because it was common knowledge that racial minorities were underrepresented in many fields, often as a result of racial discrimination (Takaki 1990). By improving the employment opportunities of racial minorities, the adverse effects of racial segregation could be temporarily alleviated. All employers receiving federal funds were prohibited from discriminating in employment practices on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin.
A few years later, the federal government recognized that it had not gone far enough in its efforts to eradicate racial discrimination. Merely ordering equal opportunity in some sectors of the labor market meant nothing unless there was a mechanism to ensure equal access. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, and religion. Under the act all forms of de jure segregation became illegal, as well as employment discrimination (Takaki 1994). An addendum to the act a year later prohibited gender discrimination. In the area of employment the act of 1964 gave people the right to turn to the courts if they were discriminated against. If employers were found guilty of discrimination, the courts could order firms to reinstate and compensate employees. If necessary, employers could also be fined by the courts.
In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson continued to institute liberal policies and issued an order requiring all agencies receiving federal contracts to take affirmative action against employment discrimination in all business operations, not just in fulfilling federal contracts (Austin American-Statesman, 26 March 1995, p. C-1). The order required “numerical goals and timetables” for improvement but did not mandate specific dates or quotas. Employers were required to recruit women and racial minorities by ensuring that such people would be included in the interview process. They were not required, however, to hire any specific person. The goal of affirmative action was to diversify the applicant pool and thereby give women and minorities the opportunity to compete (Jones 1981). In 1972 the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, allowing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to bring civil lawsuits against companies for discriminatory employment practices. The law was amended to allow the federal government to sue state and local governments. In essence the federal government instated the legal mechanisms to make equal opportunity accessible to racial minorities and women by pressuring employers to comply.
During this liberal phase, the U.S. Supreme Court finally prohibited the states from passing antimiscegenation marriage laws. In 1967 in Loving v. Virginia the justices ruled that the states had the power to “police” marriage contracts, but could no longer prohibit Whites from marrying people of different races. They concluded that it was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to prohibit a person from marrying freely (Loving v. Virginia, 1967:1011).
Though Loving v. Virginia was a national landmark decision, for Mexican-origin people antimiscegenation laws had been struck down nearly two decades earlier in the case of Andrea Perez, a Mexican woman who had been prohibited from marrying a Black man because the state of California included her as part of the legally defined White population. She refused to comply and took her case to the courts. In Perez v. Sharp (1948) the California Supreme Court ruled that it was against the law to prohibit Catholics who were White from marrying Blacks or any person on the basis of race. Specifically, the court ruled that prohibiting Catholics who were less than one-half Indian from marrying Blacks violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Andrea Perez was finally allowed to marry Sylvester Davis, a Black man. To prohibit her from doing so would have violated her constitutional right of religious freedom. Perez v. Sharp subsequently became the precedent case allowing Mexicans who were White to marry freely, and most important of all it became one of the main cases used to strike down antimiscegenation laws at the national level (Sickels 1972). The California ruling had set the precedent allowing marriage to be included as part of the rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Accompanying this liberal decision were complementary congressional legislation and U.S. Supreme Court rulings improving the economic status of women. These rulings were very important because women of Mexican descent and other women of color were discriminated against by the double burden of discriminatory gender labor market practices. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, requiring that men and women receive the same pay for the same labor performed (Cary and Peratis 1977:75). As a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 women obtained the right to take their gender discrimination cases to court. When their cases reached the federal courts, specific language was drafted prohibiting discrimination on the basis of a woman’s body or because a woman was a mother.
In 1971 women won a series of federal cases litigated by the circuit courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Under Sprogis v. United Air Lines (1971; Cary and Peratis 1977:56) employers could no longer institute discriminatory marriage policies that only applied to women. Before 1971 it was legal to prohibit women from marrying in certain professions, while excluding men from the same requirement. Most important of all, in Rosenfeld v. Southern Pacific Company (1971; Cary and Peratis 1977:55) companies were ordered to cease using height and weight requirements to prohibit women from entering management positions or from being promoted. Requiring certain “body shapes” that had nothing to do with fulfilling a job description was deemed illegal. Under Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corporation (1971; Cary and Peratis 1977:57) employers could no longer fire or refuse to promote a woman because she was the mother of young children. Finally, in 1978 the U.S. Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, prohibiting employers from firing, not hiring, or discriminating against a woman because she was pregnant.
In sum, during the 1960s to 1970s the federal government attempted to protect racial minorities and women from different forms of discrimination. At this time gender and racial discrimination was not eradicated, but its legal infrastructure experienced a severe blow. Unfortunately, though many people in the United States favored the protectionist legislation directed toward women, they were not all in agreement with the federal positions taken on affirmative action and racial minorities. The political gains made by racial minorities came under attack.
The same year that the U.S. Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and warned employers not to discriminate against women, racial minorities lost ground when federal support began to erode. In 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke evoked a bewildering replication of the same reverse discrimination sentiments expressed nearly a century earlier, including complaints against the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments (Takaki 1994:24).4 Whites who perceived themselves to be harmed by the legal gains made by racial minorities cried out “reverse discrimination.” The issue of “space” once again entered the court for deliberation, similar to the way in which it had been litigated during the segregationist ruling Robinson and Wife v. Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company (1883). In both Bakke and Robinson the persons who benefited from federal protection were upwardly mobile racial minorities who were accused of benefiting from reverse discrimination policies. In Robinson and Wife an upwardly mobile light-complexioned Black woman and her White husband sat in the railway’s first-class section, reserved for Whites only. White passengers reacted by charging that these people were polluting their social space. In Bakke the question of space once again surfaced: the case dealt with the allegedly unconstitutional nature of reserving space in college admissions for racial minorities aspiring to become medical doctors. Interestingly, both cases dealt with White reactions against minorities who trespassed racially defined boundaries when they proactively attempted to enjoy the social privileges reserved for upwardly mobile Whites.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) was the first major antiaffirmative action case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court (Austin American-Statesman, 26 March 1995, p. C-1). Allan Bakke, who is White, claimed the medical school’s admission policy, which reserved 16 of 100 seats in each year’s class for racial minorities, was reverse discrimination. The Supreme Court ruled that quotas were unconstitutional for educational purposes, but also ruled that it was not unconstitutional to pay “some attention” to race in deciding which students should be admitted.
Since Bakke the charge of “reverse discrimination” has been taken up by many Whites who profess that racial minorities have improved their social standing at their economic expense (see Valencia and Solorzano 1997). In response to the mobility experienced by some racial minorities, many conservative Whites joined local interest groups to undo the policies of the 1960s (Omi and Winant 1994:118–119). People sharing these views range from neoconservatives to individuals organized into “Far Right” movements.
Neoconservatives argue that the United States should become a “color blind society” because race does not matter any longer. They believe that the federal government should not be involved in employee hiring practices because affirmative action constitutes reverse discrimination; they are also against the government’s participation in any form of school desegregation and propose that people should attend school with those who are similar to themselves (Valencia 1991). Instead, they promote the view that economic disparities between Whites and racial minorities are a result of the failure of racial minorities to value education and hard work (D’Sousa 1995). Neoconservatives profess that discrimination in the labor market is a myth—therefore they call for Congress to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (D’Sousa 1995).
Less sympathetic Far Right political activists share these views, but believe the root of all economic problems in the United States is racial desegregation. Their recommendation is to segregate racial minorities in neighborhoods or reservations and end immigration from Latin America, Asia, and Africa (see Valencia and Solorzano 1997; Omi and Winant 1994). To them, racial minorities are culturally and biologically inferior; when they marry or mix socially with Whites, they teach White people bad habits and contribute to the biological degeneration of the White race.
Though neoconservatives want to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and end all government intervention in school desegregation, they do not share the view that racial minorities should be resegregated in all domains of social life (D’Sousa 1995). I nonetheless wonder how this less antagonistic view on school desegregation can be justified when Mexican Americans and Blacks have yet to be desegregated. In 1988, 68 percent of Latinos (two-thirds of whom were Mexican-origin) and 63 percent of Blacks attended segregated K–12 schools (Orfield and Monfort 1992:3, 7). How can some people propose that there are no economic disparities between Whites and racial minorities when the 1990 U.S. Census reported that the median income of White families was $37,628, compared to $23,714 for Mexican Americans and $22,429 for Blacks (Feagin and Feagin 1999:98, 284, 310, 318) and $23,329 for American Indians (Feagin 1996:218; Feagin and Feagin 1999:224)? It is a paradox how measures to dismantle federal protectionist legislation are being called for when the federal government has not eradicated the vestiges of legally sanctioned school segregation. Is school desegregation not important in light of the fact that schooling has been identified as one of the main societal gatekeepers of economic success?
This is a bleak scenario of the present. History has taught me that this is merely a phase, however, and the battle to eradicate racial discrimination is ongoing. In writing this historical narrative, I have learned that under the governments of Spain, Mexico, and the United States there have been many White people who did not agree with their nation’s racial laws and actively sought to institute liberal policies that were more racially equitable. Though I must end this racial history of the Mexican Americans at a bleak moment in time, the Epilogue about my relatives’ personal racial history offers an upbeat note and a glimpse at how anthropological field methods can illuminate the way racial identity is conditioned by past experiences. These auto/ethnographic observations show that U.S. racial policies have strongly influenced the racial identities of some Mexican Americans and American Indians.