Chicano Social Ladder

Climbing the Economic and Social Ladder Japanese planes took to the sky in a suicide mission directed towards Pearl Harbor. The “unprecedented attack” caught the American naval fleet and citizens of the Hawaii Island, Oahu, by surprise. Hearing of the attack back at stateside, the American people were enraged and a sense of nationalism filled the country with many young people volunteering to go off to fight the war and reclaim justice for the fallen people of Pearl Harbor. Amongst the many recruits that went off to fight in the war, many are Chicanos. The bravery of the Chicano recruits opens up new job opportunities, ultimately gains them the sense of their self-worth, and it helps them gain support for their children to continue an education. …show more content…
For the many Mexican women and men back home they were given new opportunities for better jobs. “The War gave them economic opportunities and weakened the institutions of social control” (Acuna, 252). Mexicans now had the opportunity to move up on the social and economic ladder, some moving up into the middle class. Chicana women who once filled the roles of men throughout the industrial and farm work force had gained some independence, and had proved that they were capable of doing the same work as their male counterparts. “In 1930, only 10 percent of Mexican women workers in the Southwest held clerical or sales positions, but by 1950 this figure had risen to 23.9 percent” (Ruiz, 84). Throughout the states, Chicanos became involved in their communities, fighting for better working wages, as well as better working conditions. Women also advocated for better working conditions in part for their husbands. From Out of the Shadows explains how three wives joined a negotiating team of a miners union in which “an arbitrated settlement was reached in favor of the mine families in one of the few labor victories during the 1950’s, a successful strike that achieved both higher wages and hot water” (Ruiz, 84). Because of the War, Chicanos and Chicanas obtained new opportunities to advance on the social and economic ladder as well as a sense of …show more content…
Parents were deeply concerned with the progress of their children and wanted to assure that their children would have more opportunities to succeed than the ones they had. Due to nativist’s ideologies, Anglos wanted schools to be segregated. However, “On April 14, 1947, the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court decision, holding that Mexicans and other children were entitled to ‘the equal protection of the laws,’ and that neither language nor race could be used as a reason to segregate them” (Acuna, 258). Upcoming years would prove that Chicanos were entitled to an equal education, such as the cases of Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District on 1948 and Mendez v. Westminister in 1946. “In 1946, federal Judge Paul McCormick ruled in Mendez v. Westminister that the segregation of Mexican schoolchildren was unconstitutional; his interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment would later serve as a precedent for Brown v. Board of Education” (Acuna,84). Chicanos wanted to learn and receive an equal education, and their efforts reflected their

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