3.3 Racial attitudes and religious social work: the texas-mexican

This manuscript has been peer-reviewed, accepted, and endorsed by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) as a significant contribution to the scholarship and practice of education administration. In addition to publication in the Connexions Content Commons, this module is published in the International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, Volume 5, Number 1 (January – March 2010). Formatted and edited in Connexions by Julia Stanka, Texas A&M University.

Racial attitudes and religious social work: the texas-mexican and the u.s. catholic church

Roberto R. Treviño

“They came, hopeful of finding respect and love,” a Catholic priest lamented, “but there is no love — only contempt and hatred.” Father Esteban de Anta was referring to the thousands of Mexican immigrants who inundated Texas and the American Southwest searching for a better life in the early 20 ^th century. As pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Houston’s only “Mexican” parish in the early 1910s, Father de Anta was well acquainted with the plight of Mexican Catholics. “‘Greasers’ they are called and looked down upon and considered as pariahs,” he decried. Reverend Esteban de Anta, “Missionary Work in the Diocese of Galveston,” Extension Magazine, August 1913, 22. In a time when most Americans made no distinction between native-born Mexican- Americans and newly arrived Mexican immigrants, there was widespread ostracism of both groups; Jim Crow shackled their aspirations regardless of nativity or citizenship. Discussions about Jim Crowism evoke images about racism against African-Americans in the Deep South. But Mexican-origin people in the United States also have a long history of struggle against institutionalized racism, as historians Arnoldo De León and David Montejano, among others, have amply documented. Texas Mexicans have resisted the barriers imposed by a race-conscious society bent on preserving white supremacy and Euro-American privilege since their incorporation into the United States; for them, Texas historically has been a place where “Jim Crow Wears a Sombrero.” See Arnoldo De León, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983); David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987); John Rechy, “Jim Crow Wears a Sombrero,” The Nation , 10 October 1950, 210-13.