Buscando America: Why Integration and Equal Protection Fail to Protect Latinos

Abstract

Equal protection doctrine, including the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, has done little to protect the equality of Latinos/as. This article provides an in-depth exploration of why equal protection fails to protect Latinos/as, focusing on inequality in education. Since at least the 1930s, Latinos have made legal challenges against school segregation and educational inequality. A paramount example of this struggle is demonstrated by Mendez v. Westminster School District, in which several Mexican-American families sued the school district to end the segregation of their children into inferior schools. This article discusses the many reasons why equal protection fails to protect Latinos in education, despite well-developed best practices for educating Latino/a students. First, the courts and society generally fail to recognize discrimination against minority languages like Spanish as a form of race discrimination. Second, the history of the education of Latinos/as demonstrates that the purpose of the educational system has been essentially to train Latino/as to become agricultural workers and laborers. The entire purpose of the educational system has been to assimilate Latinos into White, English-speaking society in a subordinate position. Equal protection jurisprudence also operates with assumptions of assimilation towards Whiteness and English-speaking. Implementing one-way assimilation towards Whiteness and English-speaking, however, denies the particularity and dignity of Latino/a identities and denies them equality. This is demonstrable in court decisions in various contexts, such as employment discrimination, jury service, and child custody decisions. Brown vs. Board of Education itself was based on similar, one-way assimilation towards Whiteness through attempted integration of public schools. This kind of reasoning denied equality both to Blacks and Latinos/as. The Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence has historically privileged Whiteness, and current conceptions of equal protection, while embracing integration, assimilation and “colorblindness,” continue to reinforce White privilege. This article then discusses what equal education should mean for Latino students and describes long-known, but rarely implemented, best practices for educating Latino students. Rather than integrating and assimilating Latinos into conformity with White, English-speaking norms, a system of bilingual education should instead provide them equal education through the acknowledgement and protection of their linguistic and cultural identities. To conceptualize equality as a one-way assimilation toward a White, English-speaking norm is irreconcilably opposed to the concept of equality for minority cultures.