'Obsessed' with Segregating Mexican Students
- Resource Type
- Authors
- David G. García
- Source
- Strategies of Segregation
- Subject
- Language
This chapter presents a close examination of the publicly documented blueprints for school segregation from 1934 to 1939, as Oxnard school officials formalized a school-within-a-school model of separating Mexican children from Whites. Considering the school board meeting minutes during this six-year period, this chapter follows the trustees' incessant tinkering with classroom racial composition and social interaction practices within schools. It shows how they adjusted residential enrollment boundaries between schools and swiftly accommodated White parents' demands for segregation. These board actions facilitated racially disproportionate attrition rates for Mexican students before high school. Thus, though they attempted to portray themselves as dutiful administrators without any particular agenda, their documented segregation plans during this six-year time period reveal the racism of their actions.