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Juan Crow is political terminology that was coined by journalist Roberto Lovato. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] It first gained popularity when he used it in an article for The Nation magazine in 2008. [7] "Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants." Lovato utilized the term to criticize immigration enforcement laws by analogizing them to Jim Crow laws, and has since become popular among immigration activists.
In recent years, the term Juan Crow has also been used to discuss the historical discrimination against Mexican Americans in the U.S. as analogous to the treatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow era, specifically as related to mob violence and segregation in schools. [8] [9] [10] [11]
The term Juan Crow was first used to refer to immigration enforcement statutes in the United States that penalize illegal immigration and deny services to undocumented people living in the U.S. unlawfully. [12] [13] [14]
Laws in Arizona, [15] Alabama, [12] Georgia, [7] and Texas [16] [17] have been considered Juan Crow laws.
California's Proposition 187 was considered a Juan Crow law by immigration activists. It required citizenship screening of residents and denied social services like health care and public education to undocumented immigrants. [18]
The term Juan Crow has also been used to refer to historical instances of mob violence, as well as de facto discrimination that specifically targeted Mexicans and people of Mexican descent. [8] [19] [20] [21] Between the years 1848 and 1928, mob violence against people of Mexican descent totaled 547 lynchings. [22] Texas holds the highest tally with 232 victims. [22] Other Southwest states, which include California, Arizona, and New Mexico, range between 25 and 143 lynching murders. [22] [23]
In the 1850s, after the Mexican-American war, Anglo-Americans were concerned about the potentiality of Mexican-Americans responding to Mexican newspapers that called for the Reconquista (reconquering). [8] Consequently, Anglo-Americans advocated for the systemic inequity of Mexican-Americans through social exclusion and lynchings. [8] The mistreatment persisted for several decades, with the Texas Rangers acting as enforcers and overseeing 232 Mexican-American men to violent attacks by mob violence between 1848 and 1928. [8] [24]
Mexican-Americans were often victims of lynching by Anglo-American society, but there were also occurrences of Mexicans lynching Mexicans. [22] [23] In particular, Mexican-Americans of higher class status who were aligned with Anglo ranchers participated in such acts. [22] [23] The culture's acceptance of lynching impacted Mexican standards during the 19th and 20th centuries. [22] [23] Mexican Americans were not only hanged, but mob violence included other forms of brutality such as shooting, burning people alive, physical mutilation, and other deadly acts of persecution. [22] [23] [25]
During the 1870s and 1880s, the use of the derogatory term “greaser” promoted the Texas Rangers to carry out a campaign against the Mexican populace of the Rio Grande Valley. [8] They believed that by instilling fear, they could more effectively suppress the Mexican population. [8]
In 1918, a group of Anglo ranchers and the Texas Rangers arrived at a village in Presidio County, Porvenir, where 140 refugees, including women, children, and men, resided. [25] [8] [24] Despite no evidence of weapons or stolen goods, thirteen Mexican men and two teenage boys were killed on suspicion of banditry. [25] [8] [24] The Porvenir massacre, as described by historian Miguel A. Levario, exposed the violence committed by the Rangers against Mexicans. [8]
With a dual identity, the Texas Rangers are an emblem of Texan pride from an Anglo perspective. [24] They enhanced the quality of life for colonists by actively confronting and defeating Indigenous peoples, outlaws, and Mexicans. [24] However, for their Mexican victims, they are a source of terror and oppression. [24]
The segregation of Mexican American students in academia is a disputed topic with various perspectives. [26] Mexicans, who were then considered to be white, were never legally segregated and normally went to white schools, but some children were placed in special education within the white school system due to language. It is being asserted as racial segregation by some historians today. The state did not officially sanction their discrimination. [26] [27] Some scholars argue it was de facto segregation from the local customs that intentionally separated Mexican American students. [26] In contrast, others express it was de jure segregation as school officials enforced their policies. [26] Although legally classified as "White," some historians argue that Mexican Americans were socially perceived as "colored" and subject to segregation in schools and communities. [26] [27] Despite the lack of state-sanctioned segregation laws, it was a prevalent trend in the American Southwest. [26] [27]
In the broader context of racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as:
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle for maximum intimidation. Instances of lynchings and similar mob violence can be found in every society.
Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican heritage. In 2022, Mexican Americans comprised 11.2% of the US population and 58.9% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United States; they make up 53% of the total population of foreign-born Hispanic Americans and 25% of the total foreign-born population. Chicano is a term used by some to describe the unique identity held by Mexican-Americans. The United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world, behind only Mexico. Most Mexican Americans reside in the Southwest, with over 60% of Mexican Americans living in the states of California and Texas.
Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States and Canada that were most prevalent before the mid-20th century, which practiced a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation or violence. The term came into use because of signs that directed "colored people" to leave town by sundown.
Mexican American history, or the history of American residents of Mexican descent, largely begins after the annexation of Northern Mexico in 1848, when the nearly 80,000 Mexican citizens of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico became U.S. citizens. Large-scale migration increased the U.S.' Mexican population during the 1910s, as refugees fled the economic devastation and violence of Mexico's high-casualty revolution and civil war. Until the mid-20th century, most Mexican Americans lived within a few hundred miles of the border, although some resettled along rail lines from the Southwest into the Midwest.
Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence.
Lynching was the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings which began in the United States' pre–Civil War South in the 1830s and ended during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became the primary targets of white Southerners. Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimized ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South, as the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states. In 1891, the largest single mass lynching in American history was perpetrated in New Orleans against Italian immigrants.
Racism has been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices, and actions against "racial" or ethnic groups throughout the history of the United States. Since the early colonial era, White Americans have generally enjoyed legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights which have been denied to members of various ethnic or minority groups at various times. European Americans have enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure.
The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-black racism, was more open and pronounced than it had ever been during any other period in the nation's history. During this period, African Americans lost access to many of the civil rights which they had gained during Reconstruction. Anti-black violence, lynchings, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. Asian Americans were also not spared from such sentiments.
Legislation seeking to direct relations between racial or ethnic groups in the United States has had several historical phases, developing from the European colonization of the Americas, the triangular slave trade, and the American Indian Wars. The 1776 Declaration of Independence included the statement that "all men are created equal", which has ultimately inspired actions and legislation against slavery and racial discrimination. Such actions have led to passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Anti-Mexican sentiment, is prejudice, fear, discrimination, or hatred towards Mexico and people of Mexican descent, Mexican culture and/or Mexican Spanish. It is most commonly found in the United States.
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, "Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. Such laws remained in force until 1965. Formal and informal segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures (Redeemers) to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-white movement.
The city of Houston has significant populations of Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and Mexican citizen expatriates. Houston residents of Mexican origin make up the oldest Hispanic ethnic group in Houston, and Jessi Elana Aaron and José Esteban Hernández, authors of "Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation: Shifts in /s/ reduction patterns in Salvadoran Spanish in Houston," referring to another large Latino group in Houston, stated that as of 2007 it was the most "well-established" Hispanophone ethnic group there. Houston is the third city for Mexican immigrants after Chicago and Los Angeles.
The Longview race riot was a series of violent incidents in Longview, Texas, between July 10 and July 12, 1919, when whites attacked black areas of town, killed one black man, and burned down several properties, including the houses of a black teacher and a doctor. It was one of the many race riots in 1919 in the United States during what became known as Red Summer, a period after World War I known for numerous riots occurring mostly in urban areas.
Hispanic and Latino Texans are residents of the state of Texas who are of Hispanic or Latino ancestry. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Hispanics and Latinos of any race were 39.3% of the state's population. Moreover, the U.S Census shows that the 2010 estimated Hispanic population in Texas was 9.7 million and increased to 11.4 million in 2020 with a 2,064,657 population jump from the 2010 Latino population estimate.
In the United States, school integration is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.
The Porvenir massacre was an incident on January 28, 1918, outside the village of Porvenir, in Presidio County, Texas, in which Texas Rangers and local ranchers, with the support of U.S. Cavalry, killed 15 unarmed Mexican American boys and men. The Texas Rangers Company B had been sent to the area to stop banditry after the Brite Ranch raid. Despite having no evidence that the Porvenir villagers had been involved in recent thefts or the killings of ranchers, the Rangers separated 15 men and boys from the rest of the village and shot them on a nearby hill.
La Matanza and the Hora de Sangre was a period of anti-Mexican violence in Texas, including lynchings and massacres, between 1910 and 1920 in the midst of tensions between the United States and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. This violence was committed by Anglo-Texan vigilantes, and law enforcement, such as the Texas Rangers, during operations against bandit raids known as the Bandit Wars. The violence and denial of civil liberties during this period was justified by racism. Ranger violence reached its peak from 1915 to 1919, in response to increasing conflict, initially because of the Plan de San Diego, by Mexican and Tejano insurgents to take Texas. This period was referred to as the Hora de Sangre by Mexicans in South Texas, many of whom fled to Mexico to escape the violence. At least 300 Mexican Americans were killed in Texas during the 1910s, with total estimates of ranging from hundreds to thousands killed and according to William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb they estimate that at least 5,000 people had been murdered. At least 100 Mexican Americans were lynched in the 1910s, many in Texas. Many murders were concealed and went unreported, with some in South Texas, suspected by Rangers of supporting rebels, being placed on blacklists and often "disappearing".
After young African-American men volunteered to fight against the Central Powers, during World War I, many of them returned home but instead of being rewarded for their military service, they were subjected to discrimination, racism and lynchings by the citizens and the government. Labor shortages in essential industries caused a massive migration of southern African-Americans to northern cities leading to a wide-spread emergency of segregation in the north and the regeneration of the Ku Klux Klan. For many African-American veterans, as well as the majority of the African-Americans in the United States, the times which followed the war were fraught with challenges similar to those they faced overseas. Discrimination and segregation were at the forefront of everyday life, but most prevalent in schools, public revenues, and housing. Although members of different races who had fought in World War I believed that military service was a price which was worth paying in exchange for equal citizenship, this was not the case for African-Americans. The decades which followed World War I included blatant acts of racism and nationally recognized events which conveyed American society's portrayal of African-Americans as 2nd class citizens. Although the United States had just won The Great War in 1918, the national fight for equal rights was just beginning.
Martha Menchaca is an academic in the fields of social anthropology, ethnicity, gender, oral history, legal anthropology, immigration, and Chicana/o Studies on the relationship between U.S. and Mexican culture. Menchaca is recognized for her research on immigration, naturalization, and birthright citizenship. She is currently a professor at the University of Texas, Austin in the Department of Anthropology.