impact of Brown on the education of Latinos, The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Summer 1994 by Contreras, A Reynaldo, Valverde, Leonard A

INTRODUCTION

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) was the basis for a number of initiatives and strategies to improve the educational treatment of people of color. While it had a dramatic impact on the quality of education for African American youth in the United States, Brown also became a major force for improving the educational experience of other ethnic and racial groups as well, notably Latinos. The Court's decision in Brown created not just desegregation strategies such as busing and the changing of school funding allocations but also instructional approaches such as Title I programs, magnet schools, and bilingual and multicultural education.

As with any movement, an evolutionary development rather than

radical change occurred after Brown. This article reports the progress made to improve the educational experience of Latinos incident to Brown by describing the legal history of Latino desegregation. Accordingly, it focuses on bilingual education as a remedy for educational inequity, and on the rise of multicultural education, the latest instructional approach to emerge in the evolution of desegregation, as a step toward integrating society. The article concludes with a review of the trends shaping future desegregation efforts.

LEGAL ROOTS OF LATINO EDUCATION

Prior to Brown, the educational conditions and treatment of Latinos and African Americans were very much alike. Members of both groups were disenfranchised. Most Latino children, like their African American counterparts, were denied access to formal schooling. The few who received instruction attended segregated schools, commonly referred to in the Southwest as "Mexican schools," that were clearly not equal to schools for Whites.

Segregation, strictly speaking, refers to the setting apart and isolation of individuals or groups. In the United States, that practice resulted in the exclusion of non-White students from a fundamentally adequate education. The segregation of racial and ethnic minority children from White students in U.S. public schools has always been rooted in unfounded misconceptions, better known as racist attitudes. To condone this banal irrational practice, various excuses were constructed. For example, prior to Brown, segregation was defended against attack by the misleading notion that "separate-but-equal" facilities were provided for Blacks and Whites. A similar excuse, based upon "language deficiency," was fabricated to justify the isolation of students with Spanish surnames. However, supporting separate and unequal school conditions throughout the U.S. for Latinos was not sanctioned by any state law except in California, where a statute providing for separate schools for "Mongolians" (Asian Americans) and "Indians" (Native Americans) was interpreted to include Mexican Americans as being in the latter category (National Association for Intergroup Relations, 1963). Generally, the placement of Spanish-surnamed students into separate schools or classrooms was an arbitrary action that lacked due process. No appropriate or systematic language assessment was made of these students for the purpose of pedagogical placement. Children with Spanish surnames who did not have a "language problem"--that is, those who were English-proficient--were automatically assigned to schools and classrooms composed of students of like ancestry.

For Latinos, the legal challenge against school segregation historically has been spearheaded by Mexican Americans. Judicial opposition to segregation of Latinos goes back to a 1930 Texas case, Independent School District v. Salvatierra, wherein the Del Rio Independent School District was charged with separating Mexican American children merely because of their race. In Salvatierra, the district successfully contended that the students' language deficiency warranted their separate schooling. The first federal court decision on the segregation of Mexican American students was handed down in California in Mendez v. Westminster School District (1946). In that case, the trial court ruled that separate schools with the same technical facilities did not satisfy the equal protection provisions of the Constitution. The Ninth Circuit Court affirmed the decision, finding that segregation of Mexican Americans denied them due process and equal protection. Despite this ruling, however, de facto segregation continued throughout California.

In Texas, where discrimination was more blatant and segregation more intensive than other states having large numbers of Spanish-surnamed people, Delago v. Bastrop Independent School District (1948) followed Mendez by stating that the district's segregative acts violated the 14th Amendment. Further, where the segregation of Mexican Americans was more by separate schools, the court directed that separate classes for non-English-proficient students must be held on the same campus. It thus forbade school authorities from further rationalizing the practice of completely separating Mexican American students into different schools based on their alleged language deficiencies.