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D.Olden Dissertation.pdf (2.04 MB)

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Whiteness in the Middle: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation and the Making of Race in Modern America

Olden, Danielle R.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376959729

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
“Whiteness in the Middle” examines Keyes v. Denver School District Number One (1973) in order to trace the history of racial formation in the post-World War II United States. As the first case to address de facto segregation, or segregation that was not mandated by law but by social practice, in the North, Keyes is an important moment for understanding postwar racial processes. Historians have uncovered the malleability of racial constructions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Americans struggled to define who was white and who was not. By the 1940s, the argument goes, the boundaries of whiteness had been defined and racial categories were entrenched. So the great movements for social justice that swept through the nation in the postwar period—civil rights foremost among them—took place within a stable, even rigid system. Those movements thus sought not to redefine racial categories but to dismantle the inequalities that adhered to them. This project offers a dramatically different interpretation. Rather than being fixed, I show, race remained a fluid category well into the postwar period. To make my case, I look at the ambiguous racial space in-between black and white, the racial categories that permeate the history of race in the United States. Keyes provides an excellent case study into the dynamics of race-making because the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision ultimately hinged on whether Mexican American students were white or nonwhite. The battles that surrounded the case, both at the grassroots level and at the national level, demonstrate that the space in between black and white is where the bulk of race work is done. While white privilege remained constant, the boundaries of whiteness were ambiguous and unstable. People’s ability to transgress these boundaries or make them work for their own interests was always a possibility, even after World War II, by which time racial categories were supposed to be well established and unchanging. The struggles to define the boundaries of whiteness were at the heart of Denver’s school desegregation drama and Mexican Americans played a prominent role in determining its outcome.
Kevin Boyle (Advisor)
Lilia Fernandez (Committee Member)
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (Committee Member)
298 p.
American History; Bilingual Education; Black History; Education; Education History; Ethnic Studies; Hispanic Americans; History; Legal Studies; Multicultural Education

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Olden, D. R. (2013). Whiteness in the Middle: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation and the Making of Race in Modern America [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376959729

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Olden, Danielle. Whiteness in the Middle: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation and the Making of Race in Modern America. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376959729.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Olden, Danielle. "Whiteness in the Middle: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation and the Making of Race in Modern America." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376959729

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1376959729
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.