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This book deals with an important but neglected area of study—the experience of Chicanos before the legal and judicial system. Other works have addressed specific topics such as social bandits, the Texas Rangers, the zoot-suit riots of the 1940s, and contemporary Chicano gangs, but this work attempts to trace the relationship of Chicanos to the legal and judicial system from 1848 to the present. Although my training is in sociology, I am convinced that the contemporary situation cannot be divorced from its historical context. Historians may well be critical of my treatment of materials, but my intent is to provide a historical context, not to write a history of Chicanos.
Titles such as Law, Justice, and the Chicano and Chicanos and the Legal and Judicial System were considered and discarded because they implied that the American legal and judicial system had been just and equitable in its treatment of Chicanos. The title Gringo Justice seemed to more accurately capture the reality of the Chicano experience before the American tribunals. An underlying premise of the present work is that since the end of the war between Mexico and the United States, displaced Mexicans, or Chicanos, have been subjected to prejudicial and discriminatory treatment-a double standard of justice that applied one system to Anglo-Americans and another to Chicanos. A related premise is that while there have been obvious differences between undocumented Mexican nationals who enter the United States and American citizens of Mexican descent, there are also important commonalities between them. Racism knows no borders. All too often Mexicans on both sides of the border were labeled as "greasers" and members of an inferior, mongrel, treacherous, and innately criminal race.
A final caveat is in order. Those who believe that academic scholarship is a value-free process where one arrives at objective observations and detached conclusions will not be pleased with Gringo Justice. As a Chicano scholar, it is my contention that it is neither possible nor desirable to be indifferent towards racism or the unequal system of justice that has prevailed. On the other hand, I do not wish to suggest that a Chicano has never committed a crime or perpetrated an injustice. Every racial/ethnic group has its share of good and bad persons; its saints and sinners. The issue is not one of individual differences, but, rather, of collective experiences. The point is that subsequent to the American takeover, Chicanos were displaced politically and economically and subjected to an alien, inherently unequal legal and judicial system which placed them at a distinct disadvantage, and functioned to maintain their subordinate status.
Until very recently, historical and social science depictions of la raza were written by members of the dominant group. Since I do not believe that value-free scholarship is possible, my intent is simply to join a number of Chicano scholars who have started to tell the other side of the story. I do take comfort in the knowledge that truth and justice are ultimately on the side of the oppressed and only the oppressor finds it necessary to distort history so that it will conform to and justify the socially created order.
(excerpted from the preface)
