Chavez, Linda. Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic
Assimilation . New York: Basic Books, 1991: 48-9

The decision to grant Hispanics the same extraordinary protections southern black voters had been given did not occur in a public policy vacuum. Between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, a dramatic shift on the meaning of discrimination took place. Indeed, this shift in definitions made it possible for MALDEF and other Hispanic organizations to claim, on the basis of quite shallow evidence, that Mexican Americans and other Hispanics were systematically being denied the right to vote. The civil rights legislation of the 1960s was based on the principle that race, color, sex, national origin, or religion should not be an impediment to the enjoyment of rights granted to all persons in this society. The premise underlying all of the laws passed during the 1960s to protect civil rights was that the rules that applied to one group-namely, whites-should apply to all other groups, whether in employment, education, housing, or voting.

By 1975 the civil rights movement had changed its goals. It was no longer content to have the same rules apply to whites and blacks, men and women. Rather, it now urged that the rules themselves be changed so that minorities and women could compete under separate standards, provided that the results obtained improved the status of these groups. In other words, as long as more minorities and women were admitted to universities, were hired and promoted, and had their earnings go up relative to those of white males, disparate treatment of minorities and women was not only tolerated but encouraged. In the mid-1960s, the byword was equal opportunity; by 1975, it was equal results. Ultimately, results could be "equal" only if they were proportional. Everything was seen in terms of the group's right to its share of the pie. A "fair share" came to mean one equal to the group's proportion of the population. This definition applied whether one was talking about the distribution of jobs, the racial composition of schools and neighborhoods, or the voting rates of minorities. If minorities did not vote in the same proportion as nonminorities, discrimination was presumed to be the cause. Moreover, by 1975 the right to vote was being equated with the right to elect minority candidates. The voting process was no longer the focus; the voting outcome was.

Given this context, it is not surprising that Congress declared Hispanics the victims of voting discrimination. It was not essential to show that Hispanics were being kept from casting their votes because of their ethnicity. All that Hispanic organizations really needed to demonstrate was that proportionally fewer Hispanics voted and fewer Hispanic candidates were elected than non-Hispanic whites. (That fewer Mexican Americans were eligible to vote because far fewer of them were citizens apparently made no difference.) MALDEF's argument that Mexican Americans were underrepresented was sufficient rationale for Congress to transform the way elections could be conducted in more than 375 jurisdictions in the nation.

Carl Gutierrez-Jones,

Department of English

University of California

Santa Barbara, CA 93106

E-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu