The Importance of Keeping Affirmative Action in the U.S.: The Struggle for Rights by the Chicano People
The Importance of Keeping Affirmative Action in the U.S.: The Struggle for Rights by the Chicano People
In a country like the US where racial and ethnic inequalities are a major social problem, affirmative action has become an important aspect of alleviating such differences and inequalities. Affirmative action programs are those policy actions that are meant at correcting past injustices that have been perpetrated against a group of people and any inequalities that exist between them and the native people in a country. In the US, such programs have been used historically to help reduce the racial inequalities that exist among the various racial and ethnic groups of people in the country. The Chicanos are examples of such group of people for whom the concept of affirmative action is important given the series of racial and ethnic discrimination and segregation against them. According to Ortiz and Telles (2012), many Mexican Americans have been racially disadvantaged through stereotyping and discrimination particularly in terms of education. The purpose of this paper is to explain the struggle for rights by the Chicana/o people and the history of the Chicano Movement. The paper will also provide an explanation of the politics of law and trials, and how these elements combine to reveal the importance of keeping affirmative action in the US.
The Chicano people are a group of Spanish speaking people in the US mainly found in the states of Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona (Anzaldua, 1987). It is estimated that by the end of the present century, Chicano Spanish speakers will make up the biggest minority group in the United States. The Chicano people have historically struggled to gain recognition and equal treatment in the United States. However, not much has been done to ensure racial and ethnic equality with other races in the US. Thus, with the Supreme Court deciding a case that would see affirmative action being faced out, this group of the American population is likely to be negatively affected by such a decision. This is because of the historical racial inequalities that they have experienced in the past is likely to continue.
According to Valencia, Garcia, Florecia and Juarez (2004), one of the challenges facing minority groups like the Chicano in the US has been that of the law and language. The law has always been used to discriminate against the minorities such as the Chicano while restrictions on the use of language by this group of people also constitute discrimination on racial and ethnic basis. Furthermore, the decade long struggle for the Chicano liberation in the 1960s and 70s represented a struggle for self-determination and equality in terms of education, employment and political representation. It was a struggle against the US capitalist economic system and politics by the Chicanas who formed a minority ethnic Spanish speaking immigrants. The Chicanos were also struggling for a change in the political and electoral systems whereby the reliance on the Democratic Party and the ballot box would be over for the Chicanas (Rosales, 2000). Through various movements, the Chicanos demanded the right to self-determination to form their own nation, the Aztlan. The Farah strike of 1972 in Ell Paso Texas involving more than three thousand workers was a also part of the struggle of the Chicana people for union recognition.
According to Rodriguez (1996), the Chicano movement was a struggle for access to higher education, gender equality and immigrant rights (p.1). The struggle differed from the Mexican-American war in that it was of a national character and had a strong student support base in universities and colleges. It was a struggle for liberation of the working class. This was followed in 1973 by the struggle by the farm workers. The Chicana struggle was an effort to end the police repression and Jim Crow segregation laws; struggle for self-determination and political representation. The anti- Bakke struggle of 1977 was also a manifestation of the demand by the Chicanos for affirmative action when a law that provided for affirmative action was struck down by the California court. This Bakke struggle was important in that it helped in the education of the Chicano student’s movement on the need to struggle against racial minorities. The struggle against imperialism, the Chicanas believed, could only be women successfully through a revolutionary movement. According to Rosales (2000), the Chicano struggle and subsequent movements or programs were premised on the liberation of the Chicano education systems of colleges and liberation of women (p. 369). Further, as Martinez (2015) observes, the Mexican American and Spanish speaking Americans struggle in the 1960s and 70s was a struggle for a free society where minorities would be recognized as being equal to the other Native Americans. According to Martinez (2015), the Chicana struggle was a struggle for liberation and against political manipulation or state repression (p. 520).
The Chicano Movement
The Chicano political movement in the US has its origins in the 1960s and hence coincided with the Black movement. It was both a movement for liberation and a human or civil rights movement in which public universities played a major role. One of the most important ways through which the Chicano people and other Mexican American people have struggled for their rights In the US is through the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Some of the issues that were the subject of this often less recognized struggle in the American history included the rights of farm workers, voting and political rights, enhanced education for minorities and the restoration of land grants (Educational Media, 2000). One of the most prominent personalities of the 1966 and 1967 New Mexico land grant movement was Rodolfo Corky Gonzales who played the key role of convincing the American Federal government to honor the provisions of the Treaty of Gaudalupe Hidalgo of 1848. He founded the Crusade for Justice in Denver. Cesar Chavez also helped in organizing farm workers in the California Central valley through strikes, fasts, pilgrimages and boycotts. The Chicano and Mexican Americans have also had to grapple with crumbling education systems and schools and lack of Mexican American teachers thus leading to poor quality of education among them as compared to the native White Americans. A Chicano Youth Conference was also held in Denver in 1967 to further advocate for the rights of the Chicano young people who were being treated less favorably than other Americans.
The struggle for Chicano liberation in the 1970s also helped bring to light the plight of the Chicano people as a less recognized minority group in the US was uncovered. The Chicano nationalism also represented another way through which the Chicano people struggled for equality rights in the US. This was a struggle against discrimination against the Chicano people on the basis of language, race, culture and language. The Chicano people were known to experience high unemployment rates, worst education systems, and high illiteracy rates, most overcrowded and dilapidated housing and have less political representation in politics and government in the Southwest. Language was identified as playing a critical role in promoting oppression and racial inequalities against the Chicano people. This oppression was mainly perpetrated in schools where the use of the Spanish language by the Chicano children was either banned or restricted. Moreover, the Chicano people have the lowest paying jobs due to a linguistic handicap, inferior education system and racist employment (Mexican Americans, 2004).
The American capitalism also perpetrated this state of affairs by subjugating the Chicanos as oppressed nationalities. This movement of the Afro-American people led to political disequilibrium, youth radicalization and also the student movement, the Women’s liberation movement or the Chicano movement that later initiated the push for equality for the Chicanas. Other Black and Spanish leaderships and organizations also spearheaded the Chicano movement which inspired the Chicano movement and gave it more momentum. Farm worker’s movement and the organization of grants by people like Ries Lopez Tijerina and Cesar Chavez also facilitated this movement in their struggle for racial and linguistic equality. The La Huelga or strike and the land grant movement in New Mexico also helped catapult the human rights movements. During these strikes, the Chicanos would shout viva la causa! huelga!, justicia y Libertad! and were mainly led by the liberal Democrats. According to Valencia, Garcia, Flores and Juarez (2004), the Chicana Movement and struggle were centered on educational equality and segregation under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Further, in the 1970, there was the emergence of the La Raza Unida Party which led the Chicano political movement and action. The Land Grant Movement led by Lopez and the Crusade for Justice which was a cultural and urban civil rights movements that were active in Denver also helped facilitate the struggle for independence and equality for the Chicano people. The Crusade for Justice, for example, led in the organization and support for high school strikes, mass actions and demonstrations against the police for brutalities committed against the Chicano youths. The Chicano Student Movement also came up during the struggle for equality rights to help in combating oppressive school conditions such as the prohibition on the use of Spanish language in schools. It led a series of school bow outs on strikes in the Southwest of Chicago in 1968.
The Politics of Law and Trials
The events of the Wounded Knee of the 1970s in which American Indian movement leaders, including Al catraz, Meaus Banks and Vermon was a clear indication of the nature of confrontational politics and law. According to Sayer (1997), the prosecutions and trials of these leaders were meant to silence and discredit the American Indian Movement and never was it aimed at upholding the law. As Sayer demonstrates, the Knee trials of the American Indian movement leaders depict hos the media and legal institutions influence and impact on political dissent. Some of the conspiracy charges brought against some of the leaders of this movement were legally defective and politically motivated, which shows how politics influences law and legal decision making process. The trial and prosecution of Russell Means who was the key leader of the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973 also reveals how the law may be used in a wrong way to suit the political interests of the state and politicians. Sayer (1997) observes that the political trials of these activists involved a subversion of the law to suit the political demands of the government.
The Importance of Keeping Affirmative Action in the US
All these elements involving the long historical struggle by the Chicano people to gain racial equality points to the fact that affirmative action programs cannot be done away with since there is still a lot more to do in terms of racial inequality in the US (Kennedy, 2013). While those who oppose affirmative action programs argue that they are likely to lead to reverse discrimination and therefore should be phased out for being outdated, affirmative action offers a lot of benefits to the American minority groups. By maintaining and improving the affirmative action program actions, the US will ensure that minority communicates such as the Chicanas that have historically suffered from racial inequalities and bias are liberated fully to be at par with other Americans.
Thus, affirmative action still matters in the contemporary American society. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of phasing out of affirmative action in the US, it will have erased the progress made so far in efforts to encourage more racial or ethnic inclusivity and diversity. To begin with, affirmative action is until relevant in that it reflects the changing face of the American society with institutions like schools and institutions that reflect the diversity. Affirmative action is also important, particularly in the public school education, employment and politics where there are still challenges bordering on racial inequality and prejudices. According Straus (2014), affirmative action, though an old measure, is till important in modern America especially in college education and admissions. This writer argues that by upholding affirmative action, Americans will be able to effectively deal with the problems of racial inequality that is affecting the quality of public education in colleges and universities.
Affirmative action as a set of policies, administrative practices, laws and guidelines is also still relevant in the American society in that it will help in correcting the specific impacts that racial and ethnic discrimination have had on the minority communities such as the Chicanas. It will ensure that racial minorities such as women are given special considerations in the areas of employment, politics and education. It will help redress some of the disadvantages that such minority groups have suffered so as to be able reduce the racial and ethnic gap that exists between them and other American majorities.
Conclusion
In summary, the struggle for the rights of the Chicana/o people in the US represented a struggle for civil rights movements and the need for the protection of the rights of the minorities. Through the Mexican American civil rights movement, the struggle was also a representation of political movements and struggle for equal treatment. The Chicano movement, as has been discussed, dates back to the 1960s and 1970s when farmworkers, employees and university students from Northern New Mexico revolted against what they termed as racial inequalities in school, colleges, workplaces and political institutions.
The key issues that formed part of the movement included nationhood, self-determination, oppression of racial minorities and, racial inequality. Thus, these elements and the struggle for civil rights by the Chicanas is a clear manifestation of the contemporary relevance of affirmative action in the US. Upholding or keeping affirmative action in the US is the only effective way through which the past practices and prejudices against minorities like the Chicanos may be alleviated.
References
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