Jim and José Crow: Conversations on the Black/Brown Dialogue

Abstract

This paper explores the parallel experiences of Black and Brown Americans which are often regarded as mutually exclusive. In discussing the divergent but similar histories of Chicanos and Afro-Americans, I utilize the notion of 'improvisation', a re-examination of the 1930 desegregation court case, Roberto Alvarez v. Lemon Grove focusing on how Jim Crow laws also affected the Mexican American Southwest as José Crow custom. Utilizing George Bond's critical narrative, I argue that the Black/Brown struggle is co-joined in history and the social justice movement. In the Bond tradition, my aim here is to refresh our historical understanding and also to reinvigorate the Black/Brown dialogue. KeywordsAfrican and Mexican American history, school segregation, social movement, race and collaborationIn this essay I reflect on conversations George Bond 1 and I called the 'Black/Brown dialogue'. They began when I arrived at Teacher's College, Columbia University (TC) in 1980. I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education and, fortunately, also assigned to and welcomed in the Program for Applied Anthropology. It was there that I met George. We both lived in New Jersey and would carpool to campus, chatting and getting to know one another. Those brief excursions from Jersey across the George Washington Bridge to New York became charged with current issues, speculations and good cheer. The drive itself into the city invigorated our conversations. We explored East and West Coast politics, our professional-academic interests, social anthropology, the value of ethnography and our 'area' interests -his in Africa and the American South, mine in the Southwestern United States and Mexico. We soon realized that although geographically distant, we shared parallel experiences that forged a mission aimed at equality, especially for our own discipline and the academy. A shared trust emerged based on this experience. Our dialogue began. It was then that I met Roger Sanjeck, Leith Mulling, Jerry Wright, Lambros Comitas, Alaka Wali and a host of others who joined the conversation and helped me in my own work.Our discussions were unplanned and creative narratives that took from both our personal and professional histories as anthropologists and our deepening friendship. These improvisations and master narratives exposed our understanding of the institutional racism in which we were caught.