Del Rio Independent School District - Essay Example

There has not been any country in the world where the issue of race and ethni is as controversial as in the United s of America. It is most probably due to the fact the America, as a new frontier, spawned into a territory where all races and ethnicities converge. Since the nation, although founded on the ideals of liberty and equality, had to evolve politically, diversity on ethnicity, race and even religion brought challenges on the country's democratic ideals still untested or unproven to be viable.

America's history, therefore, is replete with legal and constitutional issues and landmark cases related to the issues of race, ethnicity and equality which made it the strongest democratic country in the world whose justice system, however imperfect, is unsurpassed in terms of fairness and perspicacity. Many of these issues with regards race and ethnic background strengthened America's democratic fundamentals. One of these landmark cases was of Loving vs. Virginia, a civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court proclaimed that Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal constraints on marriage in the United States.

The accused, Mildred Jeter, of African descent and Richard Perry Loving, of Caucasian race, reside in the Commonwealth of Virginia but married in June of 1958 in the District of Columbia. They had left Virginia in order to elude a state law prohibiting marital union between a 'white person' and a 'non-white person.' The Supreme Court declared Virginia's law unconstitutional which in turn paved the way for the abolition of all race-based marriage statutes in the United States. Another case significant to the equality of race was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, barring immigration for ten years.

When the US workers resented the Chinese immigrants and laborers for their cheap labor, accusing them of 'reducing their wages,' the US Congress passed a law which heightened racial tensions especially in California. The law was repealed 61 years later when on December 17, 1943, the United States Congress pass the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act, allowing Chinese immigrants to enter the United States legally once again. This case was significant in history as it illustrated how America even in the second half of the 20th century excluded other races and treated them inhumanely.

The case of Jess Salvatierra against the Del Rio Independent School District was the first class-action lawsuit against segregated schools in Texas. Jess Salvatierra and several other parents inn 1930 filed a suit against the Del Rio School Board on the allegations that students of Mexican ethnic background were being denied of the advantages and benefits bestowed on children of other white races. In May of the same year, the district judge declared judgment on Salvatierra's favor and granted an injunction.

This case is important as it depicted the racially unjust school system which segregated the students into three groups: blacks, Mexicans and whites. The district court in Texas asserted that that sustaining segregated schools for children of Mexican ethnicity or descent violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.The case of Shelley vs. Kraemer in 1945 is one of the most important civil rights cases in the 20th century. In 1945, the Shelley family, of African descent, bought a house in St.

Louis, Missouri. The family, at the time of the purchase had no knowledge that a 'restrictive covenant' had been placed on the property since 1911. This law, the restrictive covenant prohibited 1"people of the Negro or Mongolian Race" from owning properties. Shelley's neighbors filed a suit against them to restrain them from possessing the property they had paid for. The Supreme Court declared that a state's enforcement of a racially-based restrictive covenant is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, as the Fourteenth Amendment forbids a state from enforcing restrictive covenants which would restrain a person from 'owning or occupying property on the basis of race or color.

' The last of these issues of considerable importance to the US judicial and legal system and which is also related to race and ethnicity, is the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), United States federal law and a joint resolution of Congress, passed in 1978 which vowed to safeguard and protect the traditional religious rights of American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians.2 Before the implementation of the AIRFA, various U.S. federal laws hindered with the customary religious traditions of many American Indians.

American Indians were not permitted to enter several of their sacred places utilized during religious ceremonies before the passing of the law as these sites had been declared as national parks or other federal government owned lands. As a result American Indian religious customs often came into clash with the notion that American public lands subsist for the exploits and benefit of the American people. The passing of this law is crucial as it respected the rights of ethnic minorities in US.The cases and issues as aforementioned were significant in that they strengthened democracy in America and challenged our erroneous contentions about race, ethnicity, equality, skin color or ownership of property.

Above all, these experiences cement our belief that in order for our country to advance, we need to change. REFERENCESAlcala, Carlos and Rangel, Jorge. "Project Report: De Jure Segregation of Chicanos in Texas Schools." Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. March 1972.Case transcript Loving et ux. v. Virginia (UMKC School of Law)Case transcript Shelley et ux. v. Kraemer et ux. McGhee et ux. v. www.law.comFrancis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, volume 2.

Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.1984, p. 1127Jones, Maldwyn Allen. American Immigration. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago.1960.