Vol. 13 No. 6 (June 2003)

 

Racism on Trial:  The Chicano Fight for Justice by Ian F. Haney-López. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.  324 pp.  Cloth $27.95.  ISBN:  0-674-01068-X.

 

Reviewed by Henry Flores, Department of Political Science, St. Mary’s University.  Email: hflores@stmarytx.edu .

 

Ian F. Haney-López, Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, has written a valuable and insightful volume in the tradition of critical legal theory, clearly outlining the link between the legal system and racial identity.  The author accomplishes this by discussing the now legendary and infamous trials of the “East L.A. Thirteen” and the  “Biltmore Six.”  These two trials were the most publicized and notorious of those held against Chicano political activists and were the result of police overreaction to demonstrations against the quality of public education Chicanos were receiving in East L.A. and the eastern parts of Los Angeles City.  The defendants had been charged with criminal conspiracy in organizing what eventually came to be known as the “East LA Blowouts”—the student strikes that shut down the three predominantly Chicano high schools of East Los Angeles, Garfield, Lincoln and Roosevelt.

 

Haney-López has three goals, as he clearly states in his “Introduction.”  They are “to describe the evolution of a non-white racial identity among Mexicans in East Los Angeles during the Chicano movement years; to illustrate how racial thinking leads to and stems from legal violence; and to offer a general theory of race as ‘common sense’ that helps us to fathom not only the rise of the Chicano movement but also current racial dynamics” (p. 2).  In the end, he accomplishes all three of his goals by presenting brief narrations of the incidents leading to the arrest of the activists, their trials, and subsequent convictions and acquittals.

 

What makes this book unique is Haney-Lopez’s methodology that spreads across the three parts of his book.  He begins by describing the legal and racial battles that took place before and during the two trials.  In Part Two the author argues that racism generally—and, specifically, the legal racism that occurred in both trials—“proved” that Chicanos were not “white.”  Haney-López culminates his analysis in Part Three by linking the evolution of Chicano movement ideology to the “legal violence” suffered by the activists and the larger Chicano community at the hands of the legal authorities.

 

Haney-López provides compelling evidence that the “legal violence” experienced by the defendants in the two trials heightened the levels of racial identity in the Mexican-American community at-large.  “Legal violence,” dramatized by both the local and national media, ranged from arbitrary beatings meted out by the police during public demonstrations and alleged police shootings of demonstrators to the more subtle exclusion of Mexican Americans from Los Angeles Grand Juries.  A famous and well-respected Mexican American journalist writing for the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Ruebén Salazar, perished, allegedly at the hands of the police, while covering the largest of the demonstrations. 

 

The author contends that ongoing “legal violence,” which reached an apex before and during the trials, fueled the deconstruction of the dominant racial identity constructs held by the Mexican-American community.  Prior to this time large segments of the Mexican-American community, particularly its leadership, had clung to the belief that Mexican-Americans were not a separate racial group, and many believed themselves to be “white.”  The author insists that this misguided belief was a principle cause for the inability of local leaders to effectively organize the community politically.  Haney-López points out that the legal violence caused a paradigm shift in perception, among both the general community and its leadership.  This shift, from considering themselves to be Mexican-American to identifying as Chicanos, was the transformation that allowed political mobilization to occur.  In the long run, the transformation in identity did not last, but the lasting effect of the transformation is that today the Los Angeles Mexican-American community is sufficiently cohesive that it has become a formidable political force throughout the entire state.

 

The author’s narration of the trials features the flamboyant behavior of the “only” Chicano movement lawyer, Oscar Zeta Acosta, who dared to subpoena 33 Superior Court judges to determine how Grand Juries were chosen in Los Angeles County.  In pursuing this avenue of inquiry, Haney-Lopez unmasks the face of racism in the courtroom.  The principle legal difficulty facing Chicanos in a court of law has been that they have been treated differently, because those choosing grand juries perceive them as different.  Essentially, because they are classified by the census bureau as Caucasian, Mexican-Americans were legally invisible to the judicial system—but different in the eyes of the legal authorities.  In short, through an explication of the trial transcripts, the author points out that Mexican-Americans were both legally “white,” legally “other,” and therefore legally “invisible.” The author also contends that many Mexican-Americans have assisted in perpetuating this invisibility by identifying themselves as “white” either in social discourse or in legal documents.  However, when the legal system acts against Chicanos it does so because they are perceived to be different from Anglos by the Anglos, who predominately populate the judiciary, police and legal professions.  The author concludes that what has defined Chicanos as a separate race has been the perception and treatment by the legal system as a different group of individuals simply because it “makes common sense” to treat them differently because they are different.  The author points out that this argument, first utilized by Chicano civil rights attorneys in the landmark HERNANDEZ v. TEXAS (1954), showed that Latinos were systematically excluded from petit juries.  These attorneys, Gus Garcia and Carlos Cadena, argued that Mexican-Americans were a different racial group, not because Mexican-Americans said so, but because Anglos, of all social classes, treated them differently in most social settings.  So, although the census bureau rendered them invisible, the treatment they received in everyday life marked Mexican-Americans as different and subject to discrimination in public education and accommodations, elections and the political process, and in jury selection. 

 

The HERNANDEZ trial was different from the trials discussed by Haney-López, because the Los Angles trials had ideological and political mobilization implications; whereas HERNANDEZ did not in Texas.  The definition of Chicanos as different by the legal system played into the hands of activists, because it presented the perfect rationale for the cultural nationalism that defined Chicano movement ideology in the late 1960s and 1970s.  Although cultural nationalism met a quick demise, it did make a significant contribution because it provided a starting point—common pride in Mexican identity—from which the “movement” could evolve.

 

As a result of the trial and subsequent agitation, there have been no reforms to date in the manner in which Grand Juries are chosen in Los Angeles County, nor has there been meaningful educational reform.  In addition, Chicanos are still systematically denied equal protection of the laws, and “common sense racism” continues to dictate the “war on crime.”  Consequently, the author concludes that we “are still, and long will be, living in the distant past…in which race powerfully defines social and material relations in the United States” (p.250).  Haney-Lopez also concludes that as a result we have no choice but to use race, constructed as non-white, as a central organizing tool.

 

I recommend this volume for undergraduate and general reading audiences.  This volume also makes compelling reading for any scholar wishing to begin an inquiry into the use of “common sense” as the basis for racism and discrimination.  This approach may go far in explaining why children still are discriminated against in classrooms, why white voters tend not to vote for Latinos, and why housing discrimination continues in today’s society.

 

CASE REFERENCES:

HERNANDEZ v. TEXAS, 347 US 475 (1954).

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Copyright 2003 by the author, Henry Flores.