Die Zoot Suit Riots und Style Politics in den 1940er Jahren

Besides its massive impact on the institutional side of Catholic higher education, World War II affected the thinking of Catholic educators. We have already touched upon this dimension in noting how the war and postwar growth required them to expand their horizons and redouble their efforts in research, fundraising, and administration generally. Here we look more closely at how Catholics were affected by the great ideological revival of democracy that accompanied the war. This kind of influence was sometimes explicitly noted by Catholic leaders, as when Archbishop Richard Gushing of Boston called attention to the “neo-democratic mentality of returning servicemen and the university-age generation generally”; others recognized that it created problems since the Catholic church was so widely perceived as incompatible with democracy and “the American way of life.” We shall postpone examination of controversies stemming from this source to the next chapter, turning our attention in this one to the assimilative tendencies reflected in Catholics’ new appreciation for liberal democratic values, and to the major curricular concerns of the era which were also affected by the war. In no area did the democratic revival have a more profound long range effect than in the impetus it lent to the movement for racial equality and civil rights for African Americans. The publication in 1944 of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma marked an epoch in national understanding of what the book’s subtitle called “the Negro problem and modern democracy.” Myrdal himself stressed the importance of the wartime context, which made it impossible to ignore racial discrimination at home while waging war against Nazi racism. At the same time, increasing black militance, the massive migration of African Americans to northern industrial centers, and above all the great Detroit race riot of 1943—reinforced by the anti-Mexican “Zoot Suit” riots in Los Angeles the same summer—suddenly made the improvement of race relations an imperative for American society as a whole. By the end of the war, no fewer than 123 national organizations were working actively to “reduce intergroup tensions,” and the civil rights movement began a steady advance that led directly to the great judicial and political victories it won in the fifties and sixties.

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Zoot Suit Riots

Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society ◽

10.4135/9781412963879.n603 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Luis Alvarez

Keyword(s):

Zoot Suit

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The Zoot Suit and Style Warfare

Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses ◽

10.1007/978-1-349-19999-0_1 ◽

1984 ◽

pp. 3-22 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Stuart Cosgrove

Keyword(s):

Zoot Suit

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mauricio mazón. The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. (Mexican American Monograph, number 8.) Austin: University of Texas Press. 1984. Pp. xiii, 163. $12.95

The American Historical Review ◽

10.1086/ahr/90.4.1029-a ◽

1985 ◽

Keyword(s):

Mexican American ◽

University Of Texas ◽

Symbolic Annihilation ◽

Zoot Suit

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The Los Angeles "Zoot Suit Riots" Revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos ◽

10.2307/1052202 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 367-391 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Richard Griswold del Castillo

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Los Angeles ◽

Ethnic Group ◽

Latin American ◽

Mexican American ◽

American Culture ◽

The United States ◽

Mexican Origin ◽

Latin Americans ◽

Zoot Suit

The so-called Zoot Suit riots in Los Angeles in June of 1943 made Latin Americans more aware of the negative racial attitudes within the United States toward Mexicans. Through the publicity surrounding the riots, they also first learned of the existence of a large ethnic group of Mexican origin. This knowledge, however, often came with an additional message that the Mexican American culture was not worthy of esteem by respectable people. / Los disturbios llamados "Zoot-Suit" que ocurrieron en Los Angeles en Junio 1943 hizo saber a los latino americanos que las actitudes de los norteamericanos hacia los mexicanos no eran muy positivas. A través de la publicidad durante los disturbios, aprendieron por la primera vez de la existencia de un gran grupo étnico de origen mexicano en los Estados Unidos. Desgraciadamente esta información vino con otro mensaje que la cultura de los mexicoamericanos no era digna de honor por la supuesta gente decente.

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