187k views
4 votes
Was there discrimination against the Tejanos that were still in Texas?

1 Answer

2 votes

Final answer:

Tejanos in Texas faced significant discrimination including land dispossession, legal and social discrimination, and segregated schooling, which eventually led to civil rights struggles and landmark court cases.

Step-by-step explanation:

Yes, there was discrimination against the Tejanos who remained in Texas after the Texas Revolution and during the westward expansion of the United States. The Anglo-American settlers and the Texan government treated Tejanos and Native American residents with contempt, often seizing their lands and pushing them out. Tensions escalated as the Mexican and Spanish land deeds were declared 'imperfect' and the lands once belonging to Tejanos were taken by others, relegating many former landowners to laborers on their ancestral territories.

Such systematic dispossession was accompanied by legal and social discrimination, including targeted legislation like California's 'Greaser Act' and educational segregation as seen in the separate schooling system for Mexican American children. Over time, this historical discrimination fueled a push for civil rights and legal battles, such as the case of Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District, which acknowledged Mexican Americans as an identifiable minority and ruled that their segregation violated the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

User Molitoris
by
7.8k points