Book Review: “Latino Professionals And Racism”

Many Americans feel the playing field in the U.S. was leveled after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 officially desegregated the country. These people are usually in cahoots with the people that believe racism does not exist in our great republic, and that affirmative action initiatives are simply a way to appease minorities. We have a black president so racism can’t be that prevalent, can it?

Maria Chávez is the author of Everyday Injustice (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011) an unsettling study that investigates the pervasiveness of racial injustice by focusing on Latino lawyers. If Chávez’s subjects seem like a strange bunch to study, Chávez writes:

By looking at how one successful group of professional Latinos has achieved success, this study adds to our understanding or race and ethnicity in America today. It also provides a measure of American democracy and citizenship.

Therefore, Chávez’s reasoning is that she can somehow quantify how much Democracy is being cultivated in America by focusing on how Latino lawyers fare through our systems and bureaucracies.  I am unsure, though, that an increase in lawyers means an increase in Democracy and democratic ideals; I am of the persuasion that there are too many lawyers in the U.S., litigating their little hearts out to the highest bidder, so I read Chávez’s book with great trepidation and a minor sense of nausea.

But, Chávez’s book presents qualitative and quantitative data concerning Latino lawyers. “Quantitative data are derived from two survey questionnaires mailed to lawyers…[and]…Qualitative date were obtained by conducting seven initial interviews.” There are three main implications that arise as a result of this study:

that Latino professionals remain marginalized, that notions of color-blindness are misguided, and that Latino professionals are highly engaged in their organizations and communities.

In other words, for the incumbent Latino lawyer in your life, the symptoms of racism still persist, especially when access to higher education continues to be such an immense obstacle in the life of many poor Latinos. The good news, then, is that once authorized with juris doctorate degrees, Latino lawyers, as a whole, are extremely involved in community and professional organizations. That is, Latino lawyers generate impressive returns on civic engagement and democracy building, but must suffer the slings and arrows of prejudice and bigotry from people in their educational, professional, and personal lives.

The qualitative data in Everyday Injustice allows us to peer into the lives of several Latino lawyers, and the struggles they endured. As a study or piece of research,  I feel it makes a few sweeping assumptions. For example, more lawyers, regardless of their race, doesn’t necessarily mean more Democracy. But as a serious work of reference, guidance, and laboral history,  Chávez’s book is always thinking big picture.

The reader is never pushed to subscribe to an easy answer or feigned solution, and Chávez’s books contains comprehensive, current data on education, household wealth, and immigration. This book is perfect for business libraries, but could also easily be accommodated in a general collection, or ethnic or Latino-oriented index. And, the foreword is written by  Joe R. Feagin, the author behind The White Racial Frame (2010), a book in which Feagin posits that “traditional social science models and traditional social scientists” only think of racism “as an exception to societal norms rather than a systematic problem.” According to Feagin, racism is part and parcel of American society; it is not a “disease [or cancer] but is rather a central aspect.”

I am not sure Chávez would agree, she might be too busy collecting valuable, human data.