The zoot suit culture was flamboyant embedded in fashion, unique patterns of speech, lindy hop dancing, jazz, swing music and jitterbug among other factors captivating the youth in the 1940’s. In this book, Luis Alvarez explains the relationship between race, region and politics of culture during the World War II in the urban America. He argued that most of the American youth from diverse communities such as African American, Mexican and American youths adopted the popular culture in opposing the commonly accepted modes of youthful behaviors. For example, the dominance of white, middle class expectations and behaviors was among the top norms opposed.
The zoot suit culture presented a new culture formation for the youth during the World War II. “Zoot suiters” acted as agents of change and reforms, since the majorities were victims of white oppression opposing dehumanization and discrimination to achieve dignity. The youths usurped different social spaces such as theaters, dance floors, movies and street corners to challenge social segregation. This was as a result of discrimination in job opportunities and housing where they were humiliated in public spaces such as parks and streets. For example, when William Dickerson completed the training course in aircraft metalworking at Bakersfield Junior College he was denied an opportunity, although there was an advertisement to recruit all youths in the federal contracts, who had completed the course successfully.
During these social events, the young people shared different cultural outlooks that transcended different races based on the popular culture. However, the white Americans perceived the Zoot Suiters as lazy, deliquescence violent and engaging in sexual violence. This led to intensified social class conflicts, as well as juvenile delinquency charges, which led to eruption of fighting between minority and majority youth. The white press portrayed the nonwhite youths as juvenile delinquents and gangsters, which made police, harass them on the streets. However, there was an intensified defiance against the white hierarchy, where they publicly challenged the status quo. Police resulted in criminalization, beating, convictions and jailing the young people with the aim of discriminating and segregating them, which resulted to mass violence in different states.
Although zoot suit culture was pluralistic, it presented diverse and overlapping ideologies, which in most cases contradicted with each other. For example, the common goal of the zoot culture was to fight dehumanization and discrimination and achieve dignity. However, the definition of dignity among different zoot suiters differed. For example, the definition of dignity by New York “suiters” was different from the definition used by Mexicans American suiters in Los Angeles. In addition, some zoot suit joined the war while other zoot suits were against the war. There were contradictions among suit wearers. For example, Malcolm X used the zoot in defying white military authority while Mexican Americans wore the zoot suits during the weekends, as well as while working in war related activities or volunteering in the military.
There was also a replication of power hierarchies especially based on gender and sexual attitudes and demands from women. Alvarez focused on both male suiters the pachucas, as well as female suiters Pachucos examining different ways in which they related with each other. The male zoot were commonly associated with effeminacy while female zoots portrayed as overly masculine and promiscuous. The Pachucas reinforced the submissive feminine gender roles expecting women suiters always submit to their sexual desires. However, there were conflicts on social behaviors and practices in regard to how young men and women should act.
The existence of generational differences among African American and Mexican Americans also presented diversity in the way they responded to violence. For example, in New York, the middle class organizations supported violence and riots stressing the need for reforms delinquents as an expression of youthful hoodlums. Therefore, the minority youth rescinded in their own racial class and generational social space, which was, marked by their zoot and their participation in the zoot culture. The zoot culture, also presented a different social space for women, and Alvarez examined a frequently overlooked issue when focusing on women and their role in the zoot culture. The Zoot culture presented a new social platform, where women secured freedom different from their home and workplaces in the zoot social scenes. The participation of women in a commercialized social challenged the tradition notions of patriarchy directly.
The multiracial youth culture struggled for dignity, which encompassed the politics of refusal to accept humiliation and quietly accepting humiliation and enduring dehumanization. They refused to conform to the common norms of discrimination. The feminine zoot not only fought and challenged the common norms of humiliation and discrimination, but also gender, sexuality and racial. Therefore, the interracial aspect of zoot culture is perceived as a struggle and opposition against the dominant segregation of the time. In this perspective, different Zoots articulated their own identities based on race, gender, sex and class affiliations. However, the zoot created a sense of pluralism identity during the war time. The zoot culture did not assimilate with the middle class activists, and neither did they affirm their alienation as reported in the press.
However, these interracial relationships alliances and relational identities laid the basis and ground work for rights movement in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. Additionally, they present a new way in which historians can examine the different cultural arenas of contestation. Alvarez also associated resistance by the whites with increased job competition and integration based on the protest put forth by different zoots. For example, when the zoot used riots and violence in protest, the white working class in different states across the country suffered from the violent acts. As a result, the increased nonwhite efforts to achieve dignity made the whites feel threatened as they would take up their opportunities. This made them respond similarly with physical violence against the nonwhite community. For example, the story of Vicente Morales a Mexican teenager at Orpheum Theater, where he was accosted by a group of white sailors, even though he had not provoked them. They started hurling obscene-laced insults, shoving, screaming and beating him.
In conclusion, Alvarez provides an explanation of how the Jim Crow era and white supremacy issues went unsolved in the 1940’s. The minority groups and youths fought against dehumanization and discrimination with the aim of achieving collective dignity. The adoption of popular culture was used to facilitate achievement of the rights to use public spaces and their inclusion as rightfully American citizens. During the World War II, the minority group sought to achieve a double victory in terms of democracy and the war on its own. The zoot suiters as expressed by Alvarez as the fighters on the other edge of the spear during this complex fight.
Works Cited
Alvarez, Luis . The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
