{"id":5194,"date":"2010-02-12T02:25:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T02:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=5194"},"modified":"2010-02-12T02:25:53","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T02:25:53","slug":"%e2%80%9cthe-caucasian-cloak%e2%80%9d-mexican-americans-and-the-politics-of-whiteness-in-the-twentieth-century-southwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=5194","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Caucasian Cloak\u201d: Mexican Americans and the Politics of Whiteness in the Twentieth-Century Southwest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Caucasian Cloak\u201d: Mexican Americans and the Politics of Whiteness in the Twentieth-Century Southwest<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Georgetown Law Journal<\/a>
\nVolume 95, Issue 2<\/a>
\nPages 337-392<\/p>\n

Ariela J. Gross<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Law and History
\nUniversity of Southern California Law School<\/em><\/p>\n

The history of Mexican Americans and Jim Crow<\/a> in the Southwest<\/a> suggests the danger of allowing state actors or private entities to discriminate on the basis of language or cultural practice. Race in the Southwest was produced through the practices of Jim Crow, which were not based explicitly on race, but rather on language and culture inextricably tied to race. This Article looks at three sets of encounters between Mexican Americans and the state in mid-twentieth-century <\/strong>Texas<\/strong><\/a> and <\/strong>California<\/strong><\/a>\u2014trials involving <\/strong>miscegenation<\/strong><\/a>, school desegregation, and jury exclusion\u2014to see the way in which state actors used Mexican Americans\u2019 nominal white identity under the law to create and protect Jim Crow practices.<\/strong> First, it argues that whiteness operated primarily as a \u201cCaucasian cloak\u201d to obscure the practices of Jim Crow and to make them appear benign, whether in the jury or school context. If Mexican Americans were white, then they were represented so long as whites were represented. Second, it demonstrates that Mexican-American civil rights leaders as well as ordinary individuals in the courtroom did not simply identify as white; some showed a more complex understanding of \u201cMexican\u201d as a mestizo<\/em> race, and others pointed to the idea of race as a status produced by racist practice. Mexicans were nonwhite if they were treated as nonwhite under Jim Crow. Finally, it argues that, at least in twentieth-century Texas and California, cultural discrimination was racial discrimination, and that continuing discrimination on the basis of language ability and other cultural attributes should be scrutinized carefully under antidiscrimination law…<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION
\nMEXICAN-AMERICAN WHITENESS BEFORE 1930
\nA. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
\nB. WHITE BY TREATY\u2014IN RE RODRIGUEZ
\nC. SEX ACROSS RACIAL BORDERS: POPULAR AND LEGAL IDEAS OF THE \u201cMEXICAN RACE\u201d<\/p>\n

II. THE POLITICS OF WHITENESS IN THE 1930S AND 1940S
\nA. JIM CROW IN THE SOUTHWEST
\nB. MEXICAN-AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS AND POLITICS<\/p>\n

III. LITIGATING MEXICAN-AMERICAN WHITENESS
\nA. THE 1930S SCHOOL AND JURY CASES
\nB. THE 1940S SCHOOL AND JURY CASES<\/p>\n

IV. AFTER HERNANDEZ V. TEXAS: LIFTING THE CAUCASIAN CLOAK
\nA. FROM HERNANDEZ V. TEXAS TO CISNEROS
\nB. LA RAZA COSMICA<\/p>\n

CONCLUSION<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Caucasian Cloak\u201d: Mexican Americans and the Politics of Whiteness in the Twentieth-Century Southwest The Georgetown Law Journal Volume 95, Issue 2 Pages 337-392 Ariela J. Gross, Professor of Law and History University of Southern California Law School The history of Mexican Americans and Jim Crow in the Southwest suggests the danger of allowing state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,20],"tags":[873,2118,2119],"class_list":["post-5194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-usa","tag-ariela-j-gross","tag-georgetown-law-journal","tag-mexican-americans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}