Discrimination Against Mexican Americans

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By the end of the Mexican American war of 1848, the United States was able to gain possession of Mexican territory. Many whom were living in the new seized land of the U.S. were offered legal citizenship as an agreement to ending the war. However granted legal citizenship for the Mexican Americans would not mean that they gained equal treatment. The problem with the racial caste system was that Mexican American was mixed with Spanish and Indian ancestry and did not fit with the white and black racial categories. They were in fact to be considered white by law but their status, as citizens did not stop the unequal treatment. In the film “A Class Apart” and Juan Gonzalez’s Chapter five depicts the struggles that Mexican Americans had faced with discrimination.
Equal Rights
Separate and unequal treatment was usual. An attempt to stop the segregation was form assimilation and the acceptance of being equal citizens. To school, restaurants, courthouses and even funeral homes, discrimination followed Mexican Americans. They were to be kept further away from whites in all daily aspects of white. During World War II it is stated …show more content…

For Gus Garcia however, it was not whether Pete Hernandez shot Joe Espinosa but that fact that he would receive a fair trial because his fate depended on and all white jury. Gus Garcia takes Hernandez case as an opportunity to prove the discrimination towards Mexican Americans, Garcia disputed over the fact that Hernandez himself was not given the right of having a jury of his peers mentioning that prohibiting Mexican American jurors and those of higher authority were not fair. The real issue was that if Mexican Americans were ale to serve on juries with whites it would have discontinued the caste system of Mexican Americans being seen as second-class citizens proving that were capable of doing the same as

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