Mexican Inclusion: The Origins of Anti-Discrimination Policy in Texas and the Southwest by Matthew Gritter (review)

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Political scientist Matthew Gritter argues that contrary to popular belief the federal government included protection of Mexican-descent people by the Federal Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), which monitored racial discrimination in employment from 1941 to 1945. Most people would not expect the federal government to include Mexican-origin people under its protection in the 1940s; they would expect only protection of African Americans. Gritter’s focus is why, how, and who was involved in this inclusion in individual southwestern states as well as how and why it was partly successful for La Raza. Framed within political science and history, he refers to state-building, institutional development, and transnationalism to address these issues. The FEPC is treated as both a weak and strong federal agency with several phases of development in the context of a government bureaucracy.

Like Clete Richard (Chicano Workers and the Politics of Fairness, 1991) and Emilio Zamora (Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II, 2009), Gritter shows that New Mexican Senator and LULAC member Dennis Chavez played a key role in establishing the FEPC. Like Zamora, he reveals the significant role of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and Mexican consuls in establishing themselves as the government mediators betweens the feds and Mexican-origin workers during World War II, when the Good Neighbor Policy created an opportunity for equal opportunity through labor rights.

LULAC played the most significant role in keeping the FEPC true to La Raza. LULACers included Dr. Carlos Castañeda; Alonso S. Perales, and New Mexican native Dr. George I Sanchez. (Sanchez even sought to include Puerto Ricans and extend protection to Chicago.) The author also shows that a few white liberals such as FEPC director Malcolm Ross made a major difference in providing access. Gritter, however, may have minimized the role of LULACer Manuel (M.C.) Gonzales, who worked for the Mexican Consulate service. Future studies should address Mexican consuls as individuals, though this will require use of Spanish-language Mexican consulate records.

Gritter assesses individual southwestern states’ successes and failures and, according to him, “community-based leadership had the potential to produce results” (67). Texas Mexicans and New Mexicans had the most success due to the strength of LULAC there. Arizona had the most Mexican American state legislators but was still less successful. Likewise, California lacked strong statewide Latino organizations and consequently had less success. In California African Americans received more attention. Nonetheless, each state saw some coalition work with African Americans. Like Zamora, the author shows that LULAC treated labor rights as civil rights and supported workers who complained in English and Spanish. In successfully showing that “the Mexican American civil rights movement was given access and support” (7) by the federal government Gritter revises political scientist John Skrentny’s book The Ironies of Affirmative Action (1996), which ignored Mexican-descent access to the FEPC.

Gritter does not address gender or sexuality, but we can assume that most politicians and civil rights activists ignored gender and sexuality discrimination in the 1940s. Ironically, the author gives little...