Brown Is Beautiful

Law & Society Review, Mar 2005 by Romero, Mary

"It wouldn't make any difference who came before if they are qualified as a nominee, but I don't want to nominate people I don't know."

"I think it is the duty of each Judge to pick a nominee who he feels is qualified for the position, regardless of what race, nationality, or religion he may be." (pp. 123-4)

In regard to the issue of diversity on the grand jury panels, the judges' testimonies sounded quite similar to affirmative action discourse today. For example, Judge Richard Fildew's exchange with Acosta focused solely on the issue of "qualified" rather than answering the question concerning the need for minorities to sit on grand juries: ". . . if they are qualified. If the end result is you are getting unqualified people on there, my answer would be definitely no" (p. 125). Judges' commonsense racism interpreted racial discrimination as the demand for the inclusion of unqualified minorities.

López argues that the significance of understanding racism as common sense is that most racism is action stemming from taken-for-granted racial beliefs that do reinforce racial hierarchy but do not necessarily intend to discriminate. Three implications stemming from this argument are that "racism is ubiquitous," racism can occur even with the purest of intentions, and "racism is highly intractable" (pp. 128-9). However, the Superior Court only recognized racial discrimination when it occurred from actions with intent to discriminate. Consequently, most racism is not acknowledged by the judicial system. Rather than applying the concept of institutional racism to explain the intractable and ubiquitous nature of everyday racism, Lopez argues that institutional racism fails as a theory of social behavior and is assumed to be purposeful discrimination.

The last segment of Racism on Trial establishes links between protest, legal repression, and racialized identity. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report, "Mexican Americans and the Administration of Justice in the Southwest," found that police used excessive force, "stop and frisk" techniques, and "investigation" arrests. It also found discriminatory treatment of suspects and differential enforcement of motor vehicle ordinances alongside a general discourtesy in the behavior of law enforcement agents. Mexicans faced numerous obstacles in bail proceedings, from the absence to bail hearings to bails resembling punishment rather than a guarantee of a court appearance (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1970). Lopez's examination of law enforcement and legal violence argues that police brutality and racial profiling by officers are not only purposeful racism but also constitute another example of "common sense racism" because the practices were routine behavior. Legal violence thus becomes the pivot for López's claim that during this period of history there was a transition from the ethnic identification of Mexican Americans to an adoption of the racialized label "Chicano." He argues, "Race and law constituted each other, in the sense that law influenced how people understood their racial identity, and race shaped how they conceived of law" (p. 153). Presenting a portion of Morales' 1972 survey of police-community relations that disaggregates responses about police behavior in East Los Angeles by respondents' self-ascribed ethnic identity (Mexican American vs. Chicano), López concludes that first individuals become politicized, and then they define police behavior as abusive. Morales found that persons who identified as Chicano were more likely to report observing (as well as being a victim of) abusive police behavior. Morales interpreted the results as indicating that persons self-identifying by the self-ascribed political ethnic label Chicano were politicized and thus more likely to be critical of police practices (cited p. 153).