David G. García. Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality.

Abstract

David García’s rich study Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality delves into political tensions within Oxnard, California, and illustrates the board of education’s decisions enacting segregation and thereby shaping the education of Mexicans and blacks. García’s research reaches into numerous sources, including the local board of education’s meeting minutes, government archives, newspapers, books, and interviews. García’s careful analysis illustrates that decisions to segregate had the effect of silencing discourse on segregation, which García refers to as a kind of “mundane racism” (5). Oxnard, a small city, would therefore emerge as a major figure in national desegregation efforts. Nevertheless, Oxnard remained out of the histories of Mexican American civil rights struggles, and García’s research reveals that history. Yet segregation reached far beyond the schools. Divided by railroad tracks, Mexicans and blacks lived in a poor east-side community named La Colonia, while whites lived on the affluent west side. Restrictive covenants allowed nonwhites to reside in a west-side house only if they worked for the resident. García’s work underscores the vast social and political power dividing the city. Mexican children were deeply affected by segregation, which is made evident in the interviews García conducted for this study. Mexicans knew to sit in the theater’s balcony and to learn which restaurants would serve them.