Latino Politics

So far in class I have been very interested in the lectures and readings about Latino politics, migration, and assimilation into American Culture. I was particularly interested in the information about LULAC. The way they approached this situation was very different from anything I had thought of before. From the lecture we learned that many groups including LULAC focused on assimilation into American culture. I also think it was smart for LULAC to stay out of politics because this gave the group the chance to focus on one of their main goals which to be classified as white Americans. Also when an organization aligns themselves with a political party sometimes the organization has to compromise on its own goals. Also by not picking a party they would be able to vote for any candidate that would help their cause. In order to gain membership to LULAC you needed to be a legal citizen and many of their members will white collar men as well. LULAC made good points about how education should be formed in the United States. I am quite shocked that so much of my history classes only told one side of the story. I have learned about so many more issues and events in history in this class that I did not know about before involving colonial power and the creation of our nation in the south. Since LULAC was very concerned with being classified as white and nothing else they did not join together with any African-American groups to rise up against the injustices both groups were being subjected to. I wonder how history would have been shaped if the minority groups banded together in order to obtain equal rights. In my opinion both parties still are not treated completely equally, not everyone is treated the same and many times it is because of the color of a person's skin. The Zoot Suit Riots are very unsettling because young men were targeted because of the way they looked. All of the police that went after them and rounded them up to only find out that many of them were to be shipped off to war in a few days is awful. I think the treatment of these men is not acceptable considering they were willing to go to war for the country. Also I wonder what LULAC would have focused on if more women were involved. From the clip we watched of West Side Story it seemed that the women were enjoy America while the young men were feeling that America was not that much of an improvement in opportunities for them.