Mexican School Segregation

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Chicanos/as have been victims to discrimination involving school segregation for the past century. Educational opportunities were commonly limited for Mexican and Mexican American children in segregated schools (Montoya 2001, p.162). School segregation has separated children of Mexican descent from a predominant White society. School segregation and segregation in general, has been around for many years but has progressively improved. Desegregation cases have addressed various types of conflicts that minorities, including Chicanos/as, faced throughout the years and have changed how evident segregation is being depicted in a society. Leading up to instances of segregation in schools today, past issues of school segregation demonstrate how cases …show more content…
George Shone (1914) was a school desegregation case where “the racial background and linguistic needs of Mexican American children were contested” (Donato, Guzman & Hanson, 1912-1914, p.3). This case was one of the earliest school segregation cases involving Mexican Americans. This desegregation case was filed by Mexican Americans in Alamosa, Colorado, against the Alamosa School District Superintendent and Board of Education in 1913, according to (Donato et al., 1912-1914). In this case, Francisco Maestas stated that school officials were segregating Mexican American children by putting them in a separate school, away from the White society. This case surfaced when a school official “established a policy to send all Mexican children into the district’s newly constructed Mexican School in 1912” (Donato et al., 1912-1914, p.5). The plaintiffs of this case argued that their children were distinctively Mexican and that they were being racially classified and discriminated against based on the color of their skin. According to Donato et al. (1912-1914), the defendants argued that the Mexican American children were to be considered “White” and stated that they were not different from other White children in the district, and therefore are not being segregated from other races. It was “one issue for Mexican Americans to be legally White and United States citizens and another to understand what their lived experiences were truly like” (Donato and Hanson, 2012, …show more content…
George Shone (1914), regarding that the Mexican American community would “never gain full equality in this country” and that these “short-lived victories [will] slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance.” Derrick Bell’s (1992) concept is demonstrated in this case due to it being the beginning of a long fight against school segregation. This case demonstrates the “short-lived victories” idea because the problem never went away and did not reflect on the rest of the country, it just represented the Alamos School District. Segregation did not go away and although it was a small victory, this case was the start of cases challenging segregation in the future. The critical race theory concept applies to this case as well because the five themes highlighted throughout the case. The centrality and intersectionality of race and racism, was depicted in the legal arguments of segregation in the lives of the Mexican American children and in the fact that they oppressed these children due to their race. The school official oppressed the children due to them wanting to “[protect] White privilege” (Valencia, 2010, p.2). Maestas challenged the dominant ideology that Mexican American children should be held in separate schools. They wanted to put these children in separate schools and Maestas challenged this, by arguing that all children should be given equal opportunity and
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