The information discussed in the book really showed a different side of the civil rights movement that is often overlooked in most history classes. The author, Brian D. Benhken, explores in detail the largely untold political battles of the Mexican American civil rights movement. Spanning from the post-world war 2 era all the way to the early 1970’s, the duration of the civil rights movement was a long and often bloody period in time. Furthermore, I believe that Benhken did an exceptional job explaining how the concept of race, among other things only inhibited the idea of a united movement for the African American and Mexican American races. Tensions in the social classes along with cultural dissimilarities would greatly erode at the idea …show more content…
As Texas is not only part of the southwest, but also the south, both the African American and Mexican American populations were significantly large. Like much of the South, Texas segregated African American minorities. But since Texas also had a significant Mexican American population, they were segregated as well. This created a triracial society most evident in the school systems as they often had Anglo, African American, and Mexican schools. Additionally, both African Americans and Mexican Americans suffered racial discrimination and other unpleasant realities. This did not stop the Mexican Americans in attempting to assimilate into the Anglo …show more content…
as we all know the very definition of race can be a very complexing and ever changing concept. As the government continuous to define the various divisions of our population, we define and refine ourselves simultaneously. This explains why Mexican American leaders and organizations could move from classifying themselves as racially white during the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement to brown and an ethnic minority during the latter stages. As highlighted in the book, during the late 1950s and the 1960s most Hispanic activists and organizations embraced the idea of appeasement, as using whiteness as a strategy for obtaining first class citizenship. Whiteness, however, eluded most Mexican Americans based on their skin color. For a multitude of reasons such as, culture, language, and class, identifying themselves or being identified by others as white was not a reality for most Mexican Americans, yet it remained a practice. Diving into and studying the complexity and ambiguity of race, and more specifically whiteness, explicitly showed why the African American and Mexican American Civil Rights movements remained so