Essentializing Mendez v. Westminster: The Emplotment of the African American History Narrative Onto Mexican Americans

• In Event: Teachers’ and Students’ Beliefs and Understandings About History: Toward a Critical Engagement With the Past

Abstract

Mendez v. Westminster School District has become that new vehicle for Mexican American inclusion into the US history narrative. Its introducion into the class curriculum is part of an effort to challenge the black-white racial binary present in the US history. However, Mendez, despite being an example of how Mexican Americans experience discrimination differently from blacks, is essentialized as the “Mexican American Brown v. Board.” With the help of their narrative tools and instructional materials, the students in this study emploted the Brown history narrative onto Mendez, latching on to a reductionist interpretation of the case. Issues not applicable to African Americans and unique to Mexican Americans, such as language discrimination, are lost in the narrative translation.

Author

• Maribel Santiago, Stanford University