Maldef and the Legal Investment in a Multi-Colored America

Hamline University School of Law Working Paper No. 1106

Berkley La Raza Law Journal, Vol. 18, Forthcoming

17 Pages Posted: 15 Feb 2008

See all articles by Tom Romero

Tom Romero

University of Denver Sturm College of Law

Abstract

This is an essay that comes out of a roundtable on Mexican American Citizenship at the 2006 Annual Meetings of the Western History Association. This essay focuses on the early legal strategy of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to tentatively explore the role that color consciousness played in MALDEF's understanding of law and jurisprudence. Accordingly, the essay briefly explores the manner by which the organization began to conceptualize the non-Whiteness of Mexican Americans as a matter of law in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The analysis is therefore suggestive of not only an important transformation in the color consciousness for many in the Mexican American community, but of an emerging critique of the Black-White paradigm in American law. Indeed, the essay argues that as numerous Mexican Americans became legally invested in their non-White color status largely but not exclusively as Chicana/os, the legal strategy pursued by MALDEF in this formative moment reflected the extent that many in community remained similarly committed to a categorization that recognized Chicana/os distinctive status as a non-White and non-Black group.

Keywords: latinos and the law, race and the law, latino critical theory, legal history, law and humanities, MALDEF

Suggested Citation

Romero, Tom, Maldef and the Legal Investment in a Multi-Colored America. Hamline University School of Law Working Paper No. 1106, Berkley La Raza Law Journal, Vol. 18, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1091252

Tom Romero (Contact Author)

University of Denver Sturm College of Law ( email )

2255 E. Evans Avenue
Denver, CO 80208
United States

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