Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

One aspect of Anglo racism in the Southwest was not wanting their children to go to school with Mexican children. By 1928, segregation of Mexican American children in schools was widespread in California and Texas. In eight California counties, enrollment in sixty-four schools was 90 to 100 percent Mexican American, and in Texas, school boards created forty separate Mexican American schools. In 1930 in the San Diego County town of Lemon Grove, the local school board attempted to construct a segregated school for seventy-five Mexican and Mexican American elementary school children. The Mexican parents organized and took the school board to court and won. The Superior Court of San Diego County ruled that the move violated California state laws because ethnic Mexicans were considered white under the state’s Education Code.