For over a decade, “Chicanos” have been treated differently especially in the rural East Los Angeles area in 1968, “It is a community of small Mexican restaurants painted in reds and greens… where people and their complicated lives spill into the streets” (p.15). From the Mexican students who did attend school that did not live in LA “just over a quarter had completed high school, while in Los Angeles as a whole 62 percent had high school degrees” (p.16). The Mexican community was tired of discrimination, and had to put a stop to this even if it called for walkouts and marches.
A new generation was about to emerge, by creating groups and student unions. “During the 1960s, various Mexican groups coalesced …show more content…
There was many argument in the family, students proclaiming to their parents they did not want to be white. Mexican activists made fun of Mexicans’ who were too white calling them “whitened”, using terms such as agringado or agabachado” (p.207). During the 1960’s a mestizo Mexicans’ were favored than lighter Mexicans “The lighter skinned Mexican is no longer the favored son; quite the contrary, the darker Indian type is now idealized as are other characteristics and customs which derive from our Indian heritage” (p.208). Mexicans became proud of their mestizo heritage; “ Chicanos began to celebrate themselves as a mestizo people” …show more content…
In the year 1968, the Los Angeles Police Department treated Mexicans’ with out respect, “Common sense racism also explains the police practices in East Los Angeles, practices that involved pervasive hostility and brutality toward Mexicans” (p.8). Chicanos and Chicanas wanted to prove to the LAPD that they were not white, “Law carried out on the street as opposed to law on the books convinced many Mexicans that they were Chicanos” (p.9). William Parker, “ the Los Angeles chief of police from 1950 to 1966” (p.134), supported the city’s racist power structure against African Americans and Mexicans. Chief Parker said that discrimination “wasn’t” a factor “…If a persons of Mexican, Negro, or Anglo-Saxon ancestry, for some reason, contribute heavily to other forms of crime, police deployment must take that into account” (p.137). Chief Parker was a racist man, “Mexicans committed five times more offenses per capita than whites”