Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post-Civil Rights America

FAIN: FA-252520-17

Danielle R. Olden
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9049)

A book-length study on school desegregation in Denver, Colorado, focusing on the impact on the Mexican American community.

Racial Uncertainties complicates understandings of school desegregation and racial formation in post-civil rights America. In a school desegregation case that was built around a black-white color line, Mexican Americans presented a challenge. Were they white or nonwhite? This debate was pivotal to the transformation of racial knowledge in the 1970s. As the courts wrangled over this question, Denverites tried to maneuver around the desegregation plan by claiming alternative races or by highlighting the arbitrariness of race, the elimination of which would have made it nearly impossible to create racial balance. Mexican Americans were central to these processes. The existence of such racial uncertainty is one of the hallmarks of the operation of race in modern America. It served an important ideological and political purpose: in the post-civil rights era anti-integrationists utilized the indeterminacy of Mexican American racial identity to frame their opposition to school desegregation.

Associated Products

Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post-Civil Rights America (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post-Civil Rights America
Abstract: Drawing on several decades of Critical Race Theory scholarship and historical studies of race in the United States, this project challenges the black/white binary by demonstrating the centrality of Mexican Americans to one of the most important school desegregation cases in U.S. history, Keyes v. School District No. One (1973). The case hinged on Mexican American racial identity. If they were white, then many Denver schools were not segregated. If Mexican Americans were nonwhite, however, then those same schools were segregated. Beyond the courtroom, Denver citizens contemplated this issue on their own, a debate that remained relevant long after the Supreme Court ruled. Many people, moreover, used Mexican American children’s ambiguous racial identity to challenge the court’s desegregation plan. The existence of such racial uncertainty, I argue, is one of the hallmarks of the operation of race in modern America. People’s inability to categorize Mexican Americans as either white or black, and subsequent debates about Mexican Americans’ location along the racial spectrum, raised questions about the legitimacy of court-ordered desegregation. Racial uncertainties thus served an important ideological and political purpose: in the post-civil rights era, when overt racism was no longer socially acceptable, anti-integration voices utilized the indeterminacy of Mexican American racial identity to frame their opposition to school desegregation. That some Mexican Americans were among these voices only added credibility to the idea that court-ordered desegregation was not only illegal, but un-American.
Author: Danielle R. Olden
Date: 03/06/2018
Location: Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

Laying Down the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Laying Down the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West
Author: Danielle R. Olden
Abstract: Panel discussant
Date: 11/02/2017
Primary URL: https://www.westernhistory.org/2017
Primary URL Description: Western History Association, San Diego, CA, 2017, includes link to conference program
Conference Name: Western History Association

Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post–Civil Rights America (Book)
Title: Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post–Civil Rights America
Author: Danielle R. Olden
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520343351/racial-uncertainties
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780520343351

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