Customer Reviews

Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice

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Racism on Trial offers a powerful rethinking of race and racism.
The author looks at how Mexican Americans went from thinking of themselves as white in the 1930s to the 1960s (who knew?), to brown in the context of the Chicano movement (a self-conception that seems alive and well today). This rapid change provides Lopez with an opportunity to further develop the idea that race really comes down to ideas and practices, rather than biological differences. Of course, it's also true that race is not something the Mexican American community had full control over, as they were responding to a legacy of colonialism and conquest that treated them as if they were non-white.

To get at this legacy, the author looks at the way the police and the courts mistreated Mexican Americans, and offers a theory of what he calls "common sense racism." This theory really helps explain how racism is tied into to taken-for-granted ideas as well as the way our world has been structured by centuries of racism. Lopez may overclaim when he says most racism is now of the common sense variety, but he certainly contributes an important way of thinking about how racism continues even when there is no individual racist.

On the whole, this is a great book. It tells an amazing story about Chicano activism. It gives a concise history about how Mexicans have been treated as a race in this country, and about how they have responded. And it offers a sophisticated way of thinking about how race operates as social knowledge, both in the hands of racists and those opposed to racism. I would definitely recommend this book.

An academic text that's also page turner, Racism on Trial is an excellent companion to "White By Law" ... but it has it's own appeal and original ideas beyond Haney-Lopez's past work. As this becomes a more common text in ethnic/chicano studies classes a constitutional and social discussion delves deeper with Professor Haney Lopez provoking new thought and analysis regarding these uniquely American issues.

I love this book. Haney Lopez gives us an intriguing description of the history of Mexican-descent peoples in the United States since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, with a focus on the rise of Chicano identity and the Chicano movement in Los Angeles during the tumultuous 1960s. What sticks with me most about this book is the rupture and transformation in identity politics. From the 1930s to the early 1960s, mainstream Mexican-American organizations advocated a hard assimilationist line, lobbying larger (white) American society to accept Mexican-Americans as part of the Anglo-Saxon cultural core. At the time, such organizations were staffed by and represented the relatively small Mexican-American middle class (which consisted largely of lighter-skinned individuals who were capable of "passing" as white). As part of this strategy to accomodate White America, Mexican-American leaders at the time (again, mainly middle class and mainly light skinned) declared that Mexicans were essentially "white" and thus emphasized Spanish/European heritage of Mexico over its indigenous and to a lesser extent, African, roots. Such persons often looked down on poor, dark, or indigenous persons of Mexican descent in efforts to distance themselves from their "undesirable" co-ethnics. From 1930-1960, the U.S. Census officially classified Mexican-Americans as "white," unless such individuals were visibly "Indian" or "Black."

The efforts of appeasement and accomodation on the part of the lobbyists did not result in the elimination of individual and insitutional discrimination against Mexicans, however. As a result, a new movement arose in the 1960s that thoroughly rejected the older generation's assimilation/accomodation agenda. Three decades of accomodation had been virtually ineffective in eliminating anti-Mexican prejudice, discrimination, and police malpractice. It is within this context, which manifested during the 1960s, that the Chicano identity/movement was born. Ian Haney Lopez provides all the detail you need.

I could personally relate to much of the book's content, as I've been engaged in numerous debates and arguments over the politics of identity labels. I have seen first-hand the adamant demands of people with relatively high levels of cultural and structural assimilation to be called "Hispanic" over "Chicano" or "Latino," while I've seen countless Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans voice just as strong a disgust for the term "Hispanic" as essentially a term of elitism and arrogance. Haney Lopez's book hits hard and strikes home. Be sure to read it.

This book is readable, something of a rarity for a legal scholar. It analyzes an important piece of Chicano history, the Chicano protests in East Los Angeles in the 1960s. The book offers an important explanation of the radical lawyering strategy of Oscar Acosta, who previously has been depicted as an irrational (if not crazy) child of the 1960s. However, the book suffers some serious deficiencies. First, it ignores class and immigration in the analysis of the historical relationship between Latinos and Anglos in Los Angeles, a city with complexities that the author does not come close to fully portraying in the book. Second, the book seriously overstates the argument that Chicanos "discovered" a racial identity in the 1960s; the racial identity of persons of Mexican ancestry in what is now known as the American Southwest dates at least as far back as the U.S./Mexican War of 1848. Third, the "common sense" theory of racism articulated in the book is hopelessly simplistic and fails to offer an explanation of the racial and class dynamics, and their interaction, at work. Rather, it is more of a post hoc rationalization rather than a "theory" of racism. Overall, the book is fine in describing historical events. However, it is weak when it moves beyond that aim.

This book rocks! It's a very well written history of Mexicans in Los Angeles that not only tells their story, but also offers a way to understand why some Mexican Americans say their White, and others that they are Brown. A must read for persons trying to understand race and Latinos.

For those of us who didn't know the Chicano history this is the book to read. I was very naive to my history. Growing up in North East Texas I'm so happy to read this book. GMartinez

This is a great book for anyone wanting to know about chicano/a history and the the way the struggles in communities of color are still going on today.

An important addition to the growing body of literature on the Chicano/a movement, Racism on Trial, however, is in need of original sources. Haney-Lopez's footnotes suggest a rather liberal use of unpublished scholarship. An interesting synthesis on the politics of race, though.