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RED, WHITE and . . . --. BROWN and BLACK and YELLOW

Although Black Americans, by far, received the worst treatment in America’s insidious war against the kaleidoscope of humanity, the truth is that America hated color—period. Its practice was as diabolical as that of South Africa’s apartheid, but more internationally hypocritical and domestically sarcastic and subtle in application.

Without the up-front, personal experience of White Supremacy as it was practiced in the United States, it is difficult for fair-minded people with no experience with the era of full-force White Superiority, as practiced in the United States, to comprehend the toxicity and daily consternation applied to the lives of those who perforce were relegated to the shitty end of that social stick. So comprehensively was this evil practiced against African Americans, that the bias against other minorities sometimes goes undetected—as well as a pre-World War II anti-Semitism that rivaled that afoot in Germany before the Brown Shirts began to make hate physical.

Recently, PBS television ran back-to-back documentaries of two successful legal cases against racial discrimination brought by Mexican-Americans in Texas and California, successively in the 1930s and 1950s.

Following is a synopsis of each of the legal cases refered to above. Significant in these cases is the peculiar position occupied by Mexicans on the kaleidoscope. Because of its geographical proximity and sensitive political and diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico, for all practical purposes Mexicans were denominated as “White.” As it came up in those legal cases, that consideration of “White” was subject to all sorts of interpretation—both legal and social. Considering Mexicans as “White” was a cruel, transparent and cynical sop. As an example of the blatant, broad and curious expanse of the practice of White Supremacy, here is a paraphrased declaration from the bench of the judge in the below California case:

“Since Mexicans are considered as “White,” they are not subject to the rules of segregation covering Negroes, Orientals and American Indians.”

CALIFORNIA, 1930

In Lemon Grove, adjacent to San Diego, the school board conspired with business leaders to build a separate, sub-standard elementary school for Mexicans. They then, with no official notice to the families, transferred all Mexicans to the other school.

The parents, with the aid of a sympathetic Anglo lawyer were able successfully to sue the school board, with the outcome that prompted the above pronouncement by the presiding judge. The school board decided not to appeal.

Within the context of a skewed and cynical racial designation, this case was considerably more tolerant on the local level than was the next one, over thirty years earlier—and in a considerably less tolerant part of the country.

TEXAS, Mid-fifties

In a small town murder trial, no Mexicans were empanelled on the jury. Savvy, big-city Mexican-American lawyers decided this was the ideal case to test their discrimination, even while being considered as “White.” As a matter of fact, that was their problem; with that designation, they could not seek coverage under the post-slavery amendments to the Constitution. They lost on the local level, but appealed to the Supreme Court. Little is known of this case, because it happened during the time the NAACP was extracting landmark decisions from the high court.

Mexican-American lawyers were a novelty for the Supreme Court justices. To support my contention of general racial insensitivity, one of the justices, in response to a statement of surprise that Mexican-Americans actually existed, responded, “They call ‘em “Wetbacks.” Well, due to the brilliance of one of the “Wetback” lawyers, they, too, were able to attain a landmark decision.

Be ye not confused by the hypocritical voices that forever have beaten the drum, proclaiming liberty, justice and freedom as an innate character of America, while turning a blind eye to the marginalization of those with pigmented skins and the wrong religion.

Those voices are diminishing in number, but they have not been extinguished. As a case in point, with African Americans prominent in the hierarchy of both major political parties and the Department of Justice, recently from the halls of politics and the mass media, we have seen:

• An e-mail circulated among Republicans containing a song entitled, “Barack the Magic Negro.”
• A chimpanzee depicted in a cartoon, with the unmistakable allusion to Barack Obama.
• An e-mail cartoon depicting a watermelon on the White House lawn, with the caption: “I guess there won’t be an Easter Egg roll this year…”