The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin in the United States - Essay Example

They formed organization among Mexican Americans in the Southwest of United States. A number of local southwest social and political clubs were mainly comprised of both Mexican Americans and Mexicans that united and formed the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). LULAC played a significant in establishing how Mexicans racial identity was derived from their class status and how whiteness played a role in racial and class construction in the Southwest. The leaders voted to limit membership in the organization to U.S. citizens, but half of the members left the conference in protest.

However, the LULAC had significant success helping the Mexicans Americans fight for their identity. Carrigan and Webb (412) indicate that the LULAC was the regional equivalent of the national association for the advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It financed a couple of anti segregation and antidiscrimination cases that were brought on behalf of Mexicans Americans in California, Texas and New Mexico. It derived victories in education and jury selection identity. Meanwhile, parents of migrant children won a suit against a California school district for segregating Mexican American and Mexican children from whites.

These children travelled miles by bus to attend Mexicans schools in other school districts because it was illegal to attend white neighborhood schools. The origins of this case were due to inconsistency of the binary racial logic of the United States and the racial complexity of the Mexicans based on their unique claims to white identity. Meanwhile, Americans Mexicans fought for their identity by presenting their claims in jury hearings because they were discriminated against as a class. Discrimination indicated there was a lack of their jury rolls in United States.

Although they fought for their rights, the discrimination cases indicated that abstract identity was itself internally fractured by class difference. Carrigan and Webb (415) indicate that the fight for identity revealed what is referred to as whiteness and the social construction of Mexicans in Southwest. Mexican Americans were legally referred to as Whites due to the treaty obligations with Mexico that allowed Mexicans to become United States Citizens. The federal laws practiced at that period required that an alien to be White he or she was supposed to become United States Citizen.

Thus, the government of Mexico and the U.S department of state forced the United States census Bureau to reclassify Mexican as white. In the Texas school desegregation case, the Jury ruled that Mexican children could not be segregated on the racial basis but it allowed segregation based on linguistic issues or migrant status. Institutions that are controlled by dominant groups have established the legal definitions of a racial group and force them to adhere to their status quo. Thus, the law in United States considered racial group identity when such identity was based on exclusion and subordination of Mexicans.

For instance, the Texas court ruling that imposed a definition of Whites on Mexicans Americans and caused them to protest against segregation as a district group in the Southwest. Meanwhile, the court rejected the Mexican American claims for class representation in a class action suit demanding for equal education opportunities. Despite Mexican Americans being legally constructed as white, this status had only marginal