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5. “Mexican versus Negro Approaches” to the War on Poverty: Black-Brown Competition and the Office of Economic Opportunity in Texas
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FIVE “Mexican versus Negro Approaches” to the War on Poverty Black-Brown Competition and the Office of Economic Opportunity in Texas WILLIAM CLAYSON As early as 1965, the Office of Economic Opportunity (oeo), the agency charged with fighting President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, employed affirmative action to preempt criticism of racial bias or exclusion. Bill Crook, the head of the oeo’s Southwest Regional Office in Austin, prioritized placing minorities in high-profile positions. Crook hired an African American, Herbert Tyson, as deputy director and a Mexican American, Tom Robles, as regional manager of the Community Action Program (cap), the oeo’s largest effort. Crook felt that hiring these two men “would fill our top three spots with an Anglo [himself], Negro, and Mexican American . . . while this wouldn’t be the most popular thing [in Texas], it is something that I would like to do.”1 The oeo also required that each regional office submit a monthly “Minority Gap Report” to the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The report detailed how many members of minority groups worked for each regional office. By November 1968 the Southwest Region employed fifty-six members of minority groups out of a total of 217 employees, including twenty -three African Americans, twenty-eight Mexican Americans, four American Indians, and one “Oriental-American.”2 CLAYSON 126 The use of affirmative action policies, long before they became a divisive political issue, illustrates the significance of race to the history of the War on Poverty. As the oeo groped for solutions to alleviate poverty, the agency also had to wrestle with the complex race politics of the 1960s. Both unrepentant racism and the reluctance of low-income whites to become involved in antipoverty programs created insurmountable political obstacles for the oeo. But competition over limited funding among nonwhites also hindered the War on Poverty. Unexpected difficulties like race competition stymied the oeo, an agency already overwhelmed by the Great Society’s lofty ambitions. Lyndon Johnson charged his antipoverty warriors with nothing less than ending poverty in the United States. Rather than a cure for poverty, however, the oeo primarily generated controversy, particularly in the agency’s main local effort: the cap. Conservatives viewed the oeo as, at best, another expensive layer of federal bureaucracy and, at worst, an attempt to extend the civil rights agenda into economic policy. The Johnson administration expected this, but failed to foresee the divide the War on Poverty created among liberals. Mayors and governors complained that the oeo, through local Community Action Agencies (caas), funded civil rights groups and radical community activists in battles against local political establishments , including those run by Democrats allied with LBJ. At the same time, the militant agenda shifted the ideological bent of the civil rights movement away from an emphasis on integration toward one of self-determination and cultural identity, leading both black and Mexican American groups to criticize the oeo’s effort to make the War on Poverty a “colorblind” fight. Black and brown leaders demanded control of local oeo programs within their own communities and without interference from even well-intentioned outsiders. Competition for oeo funding, in short, pitted groups within the liberal coalition against one another, injuring the spirit of consensus that had ushered Johnson into the White House in 1964.3 [174.129.59.198] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:57 GMT) “MEXICAN VERSUS NEGRO APPROACHES” TO WAR ON POVERTY 127 Historical memory tends toward a romantic view of the sixties , when those left outside the affluent society joined together to fight the white establishment. The history of the War on Poverty suggests that racial identity trumped black-brown solidarity in regard to race politics in the era. An analysis of oeo programs in Texas reveals that tensions emerged between African Americans and Mexican Americans as legal barriers to racial equality collapsed in the 1960s. An increasing proportion of the Mexican American population concluded that their values and the practical needs of their communities often conflicted with those of blacks. Latino leaders also took exception with the assumption that they merely followed the lead of blacks in civil rights struggles. After all, Delgado v. Bastrop ISD came before Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, as the Mexican American population poised to surpass African Americans as the nation’s largest minority, many black leaders came to view Mexican Americans as a threat to their political agenda and the economic...