Thread by @NonHumanMedia1

#JuanCrow 📃 🧵
"...lawyers who established the Mexican Americans' legal "canon" employed arguments—which were also based on the Fourteenth Amendment—that called for better policing of the existing boundaries of Jim Crow, rather than for the dismantling of the system." 🧐

"The state law defined the 'colored' class to include "all persons of mixed blood descended from Negro ancestry."

"..that as Hispanics, Mexicans belonged to the white race, albeit to an inferior branch in the taxonomy."

"..all Mexicans, without discrimination as to color."🧐

"The founders of LULAC aimed to intergrate Mexican-descended persons into the U.S. mainstream, that is, to 'Americanize' the community."

"Mexican Americans grew dependant on legal arguments that relied heavily on alleged advantages derived from their "white" status."

"all classes must be open to all children...regardless of lineage."

"Cadena and Garcia sought to persuade the Texas court to apply this reasoning to Mexican Americans. The failure to do that, they said, would be tantamount to extending "special benefits" to blacks." 🤔

"..these Spanish surnames provide ready identification of the members of this class."

This part is crucial for #ADOS because they are making the argument that they are "distinct from whites" and get different treatment based on their surname.
🤔

"The 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA)..also extended similar protections to "national origin" minorities."

"...perhaps it was a ploy to make the second largest minority group in the country non-White."

"no less protection should be fashioned for the districts Mexican Americans than for its Negroes because Mexican Americans [had] experienced deprivation and discrimination similar to those suffered by the blacks"

"...in some cases suffer "identical discrimination."

So there you have it.

Mexican Americans went from defending and wanting more Jim Crow policies against Negroes to being considered to have suffered "identical discrimination."

As @NoTetherZone says it was truly the finesse of the century.

"..African American lawyers, by contrast, planned and executed a constitutional revolution because they needed one."

It turns out everyone else didn't need to plan or execute anything but instead just grift off the work that Black Americans put in and say "I'm a POC too."