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The history of Mexican American school segregation is complex, often misunderstood, and currently unresolved. The literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced defacto segregation because it was local custom and never sanctioned at the state level in the American Southwest. However, the same literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de jure segregation because school officials implemented various policies that had the intended effect of segregating Mexican Americans. Rubén Donato and Jarrod S. Hanson argue in this article that although Mexican Americans were legally categorized as "White, " the American public did not recognize the category and treated Mexican Americans as socially "colored" in their schools and communities. Second, although there were no state statutes that sanctioned the segregation of Mexican Americans, it was a widespread trend in the American Southwest. Finally, policies and practices historically implemented by school officials and boards of education should retroactively be considered de jure segregation.
The segregation of Black children in American schools is familiar to most in the United States. Americans learn that Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) overturned Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), that separate schools for Black children were deemed unconstitutional, and that separate educational facilities were "inherently unequal" (Kirp, 1982, pp. 3-5) . Americans are also aware of the fierce and often violent opposition to the integration of Black students into White schools and the heated discussions about busing (Carson, 1991; Orfield, 1978). Indeed, for a time, Black school desegregation was one of the most contentious issues in American life.
Since the civil rights era, scholars have produced a proliferation of studies that tried to understand the politics of school segregation, school desegregation, and school integration (Orfield & Eaton, 1996). Two issues are unequivocally clear from these studies: first, de jure segregation, as shown by state statutes and constitutional provisions requiring racial segregation in schools, reflected the desire of Whites to intentionally separate students based on race; and, second, given the attention the Brown decision and its aftermath received, Americans have come to understand school segregation as a Black-White issue (Lee, 2009; Linn & Welner, 2007; Orfield, 2008; Orfield, Bachmeier, James, & Eitle, 1997).
As the second largest minority group in the United States, Mexican Americans have a long history of resistance to school...