Brown, Not White: School Integration And The Chicano Movement In Houston Book Review

Review the book: Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston by Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr.

Background of Brown not white book

The book “Brown not white: school integration and the Chicano movement in Houston”, was composed by Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr, a Scholar of U.S history and has completed his Ph.D from the Stanford University and has been extensively working in social and ethnic issues governing Mexican Americans. San Miguel Jr. has served as an executive of the History Department and the Graduate Committee and has also been the president of the National association of Chicana and Chicano studies. He was awarded for the book “Brown not white”   in 2001.  The book was published in 2001 by Texas and A&M University Press (Guadalupe 2005).  

The book is set in the backdrop of the semantic segregation of the Mexicans in America which aroused activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. Guadalupe San Miguel has travelled throughout the various episodes of Hispanic activism, and has explored the social crisis that they have faced due to policies that classified them with as ‘Whites’ by completely eradicating their identity as Mexican ‘Browns’. The struggle for their identity has been continuing over demands that San Miguel has examined closely and has described that in the first part of the book.

The history of Mexican descent in Houston, Texas started during the later part of the 1800 and earlier half of the 1900s with the expansion of the railways and with the change of the government in Mexico. The Porfirio Diaz, government started modernization which created hardships for the people and encouraged them to migrate to Houston. The expansion of the transport system facilitated the migration (Gratton, Brian, and Merchant 2013). The major migration took place during the 1942 to 1964 wherein the United States sponsored large scale worker programme which was undocumented and was termed as the Bracero programme. During this period, the list of migrants increased many folds and resulted in the Hispanic settlement in Houston.

With the segregation policies and classification of the Mexican Americans as ‘Whites’ in order to desegregate them and integrate them with Afro Americans in elementary and secondary schools. The orders were passed with the efforts of the HISD or the Houston Independent School District and were faced with extensive criticism and activist movement from the Mexican American community or the ‘Chicanas’. The term Chicano was a racial reference to the Mexican community in America, which was picked up by the movement as a symbol of pride rather than a symbol of discrimination. The Sociedad Mutualista Mexicana Benito Juarez stressed in serving the working class of the community than serving the other social classes. This promoted cultural expansion of the community in Houston and in America. This also provided relief services to the community during the period of the great economic depression.

Within its narration of the events that happened, Miguel talks about the various organisations that formed during the time. The ‘la federacion de sociedades mexicanas y Latino latinoamericanas’ or the FSMLA was the most prominent organisation formed in the 1930s and was involved in looking after the promotion of diversity of their cultures and loyalty to the United States during the period.

Mexican-American history and migration to Houston

The Lorenzo de Zavala Elementary School, in Houston was involved in parting elementary education and was the first institution responsible in serving Hispanic children. The school was established in the Magnolia park region and Mexican Americans were mostly accommodating Anglo American students, which gradually changed to Hispanic American students.

The Book Brown not white revolves around the integration of the Mexican American community with Afro American schools by classifying them as Whites. This led to the one of the greatest civil activism in America by the Hispanic community and led to the development of the ‘Chicano movement’. The movement as mentioned by San Miguel was the first grass root level of activism that developed with the demand of educational opportunity and opposes the discrimination that was being done by classifying them as Whites. The aim was also to gain legal recognition for the Mexican community in the Houston (Lauri 2003). The movement also marks the plight of the Mexican community who has been facing discrimination in spite of being an integral part of the American community for over few decades. The non inclusion of Mexicans in the school boards and faculties was due to the stigma that they were treated with inferiority and though the schools were established in the barrios, they did not include Mexicans in the administration of these institutions. The Mexican school started imparting education in the bilingual format. With the introduction of both English and Spanish, these schools helped the community to get formally educated by reducing the school dropout cases. The movement led to an upsurge that united the community and that helped the growth of the community as a whole. The political mobilization brought into effect several impacts that included the growth of the nationalist ideology with the Chicano movement (Arias, Beatriz 2007)

Student and Youth organisations have been proactively participation by organizing boycotts, walkouts and protest marches. The Chicano movement saw victory with the verdict that segregation was unconstitutional in the Mendez vs. Westminster verdict.

San Miguel has evaluated the Chicana movement brilliantly and has named them with intrinsic meaning. The second part of the book travels through several chapters that include the various elements of the movement described lucidly. Chapter four, start with identifying the growing resentment among the Mexican Americans in Houston. The chapter includes the various efforts that were made by the several old and new Mexican American associations and organisations in order to establish their solidarity for recognizing their distinguished identity and to create equal opportunities for the Chicano community in Houston (Montoya, 2000). The author seta the background of the struggles and efforts made them in this chapter of the book. The following chapters oversee the development that happened throughout following the series of events and the implementation of the HISD policy. The next episode includes the various radical activities that have been carried out by the various Youth organizations of the Mexican American origin. The Mexican American Youth organisation commonly called the MAYO, the ARMAS or the Advocating Rights for Mexican American Students were introducing radical activism that involved boycotts, strikes, and walkouts in order to create an effect in the system (Arias 2007). The Chicano community argued that the segregation and amalgamation of the education did not provide equal opportunities rather they segregated them from the rights and opportunities and would only make the community vulnerable. San Miguel takes us through the struggles and activities that were undertaken and the outcome has been reviewed in the chapter 8 which discusses the verdict that identified their claims. In the preceding chapters, Miguel tries to make an understanding of the results of the movement and evaluates the outcome which gives us the view that the though the community were legally identified as a minority, yet the segregation continued in the educational institutions. A struggle followed thereafter which aimed at solely culminating the segregation of the schools. The succeeding chapter discusses the struggle that continues for equal rights in education and talks about the activities of the Mexican American Education Council or the MAEC in the 1970s. Miguel terms the next episode as the ‘Most Racist Plan yet’ where he understands the modifications that were made post the movement, but the plan to ‘buse’ the underprivileged sections, excluding the Mexican Americans (Rosales 2002). The plans for funds were only to certain sections that excluded the Chicano which the author refers as to the most racist plan yet.

Though Miguel has very well managed to understand the conflict of the Chicano community, he fails to a great extent to identify the real reason of conflict of the community with regards to the Afro-American community and which has been largely asked by his reviewers. The protest against appointment of Afro-American Superintendent by the community is largely doubted because of the real cause behind it. Although Miguel stresses the equality of the Mexican American community over their equality and desegregation in education, yet he sheds no light in the aspect of the relation between Chicano and Afro Americans. The several aspects that he emphasizes throughout the book revolve around the Chicano community and their perspectives to the unequal system of education (Rosales 2002).

Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr, narrates the history of the Mexican Americans and their lineage in the city of Houston, with context to the struggles that had governed the Chicano lives. The book is a narration of facts put in an interesting way from the perspective of the community and does not give a dictate or a view. He keeps it an open end argument for the readers to decided based on facts, though the amount of neutrality needs to be valued since the resentment against the Afro American community has not been justified and only stated bluntly by stating that there was not racial hatred against them. The book is a good reading and provides a clearer picture of the story that moulded the history of Houston with respect to the Chicano community.

References

Arias, Beatriz. "School desegregation, linguistic segregation and access to English for Latino students." Journal of Educational Controversy 2, no. 1 (2007): 7.

Gratton, Brian, and Emily Merchant. "Immigration, repatriation, and deportation: The Mexican?Origin population in the United States, 1920–1950." International Migration Review 47, no. 4 (2013): 944-975.

Johnson, Lauri. "Multicultural policy as social activism: Redefining who'counts' in multicultural education." Race, ethnicity and education 6, no. 2 (2003): 107-121.

López, Gerardo R., and Rebeca Burciaga. "The troublesome legacy of Brown v. Board of Education." Educational Administration Quarterly 50, no. 5 (2014): 796-811.

MacDonald, Victoria?María. "Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, or “Other”?: Deconstructing the Relationship between Historians and Hispanic?American Educational History." History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2001): 365-413.

Montoya, Margaret E. "A brief history of Chicana/o school segregation: One rationale for affirmative action." Berkeley La Raza LJ 12 (2000): 159.

Quiroz, Anthony, and Guadalupe San Miguel. "Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston." Journal of Southern History 69, no. 1 (2003), 228.

Rosales, Rodolfo. "Brown, not white: School integration and the Chicano movement in Houston." (2002): 86-88.

San Miguel, Guadalupe. Brown, not white: School integration and the Chicano movement in Houston. Vol. 3. Texas A&M University Press, 2005.

Wilson, Steven H. "Brown over “Other White”: Mexican Americans' Legal Arguments and Litigation Strategy in School Desegregation Lawsuits." Law and History Review 21, no. 1 (2003): 145-194.

Yosso, Tara J. Critical race counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano educational pipeline. Routledge, 2013.