The “Other White”: Mexican Americans and the Impotency of Whiteness in the Segregation and Desegregation of Texan Public Schools

Abstract

This article analyzes the legal classification of Mexican Americans as “other white” as argued in a number of critical court cases that beginning in the 1930s up to the 1970s attempted to desegregate public schools in Texas. Since the Texas constitution declared school segregation as being only for “colored children,” Mexican Americans in their fight against de facto segregation sought to claim their legal classification as white. My objective is to further analyze these cases as presented in the literature in order to examine what the relationship between Mexican American whiteness as a legal category versus their “otherness” as a social category says about the vital role of public schools in reproducing, as well as creating, social, political, and economic marginalization.

Phoebe C. Godfrey is an assistant professor-in-residence at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests are on the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality as articulations of power and control.

Notes

¹ In this paper I will refer to persons who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. and those who were incorporated into the U.S. as a result of the U.S.-Mexican War, as either Mexicans and/or Mexican Americans depending on the context. Since in the case of Mexican immigrants it is much easier for them to return to Mexico and many maintain dual residences this distinction attempts (though it is not always easy to distinguish) to differentiate from those who have lived in the U.S. for several generations (and who have been Americanized) and those who have newly immigrated or who frequently travel back and forth (and who maintain their distinct Mexican identity). Later, I also refer to Latinas/os, which I am taking to include people from Central and South America and the Caribbean, and thus it includes Mexicans. I do not use the term Chicana/o since my focus is on Texas and although this term was/is used by Mexican Americans living in California it is not widely used in Texas.

² I will only be looking at a few of those cases that actually went to court, that involved public schools (i.e., not universities) and that took place in Texas. An example of a significant struggle in Texas that did not go to court is documented in Guajardo and Guajardo (2004).

³ In this article, I focus on issues of race while recognizing the inseparable role of social class. I do not, here, look at issues of gender although they are nonetheless significant and present an area for further research.

⁴ Eighty years later, The 1870 Naturalization Act limited American citizenship to “white persons and persons of African descent,” barring Asians.

⁵ Highly influential in this case was Mendez v. Westminster (1946, 1947) (Arriola, 1995), “ending legal segregation of Mexican Americans throughout the Southwest” (p. 207). The Judge appealed to the fact that Mexicans were not Indians and that they were protected under the Fourteenth Amendment (Menchaca, 2001, p. 291). However, according to Martinez (1994), “the court left open the possibility that Mexican-Americans could be segregated lawfully” based on English language difficulties (p. 578).

⁶ The Hernandez (1957) case was the first desegregation case to be decided by federal courts but not the first to be filed after Brown (1954). See Romero v. Weakly (1955).

⁷ Yet another case Ross v. Eckels (1970) went on to again declare Mexican Americans to be white, creating a situation that continued in the courts for several years, with the vital question once again being, were Mexican Americans ‘white’ or not? For this case, the question was, as in the past, answered in the affirmative creating further means of subverting the issue and perpetuating segregated and unequal schools. As a result, it was finally not until 1973 Keyes v. Denver School District No. One, that was filed by African Americans in relation to desegregation, that the question of Mexican American racial identity was again raised and “ultimately” settled. The U.S Supreme Court ruled, stating in effect that yes, all the rumors were true? Mexican Americans were an “identifiable minority” (Rangel & Alcala, 1972). Thus, this Supreme Court decision laid the legal myth of Mexican American social whiteness to rest.