The White House on Facebook sent out celebratory notifications this week in celebration of Title IX Gender equality that mandated equal funding in college sports but it also included admissions to programs in law and medicine. Forty years later the end result are more White women not only in college sports including Blacks and the occasional Mexican American female and others known as Latinas. But there are overall more females in college than males today amongst Whites, something that has caught the attention of many but to no avail. Moreover there are more White females in law schools--look at the over representation of female judges or attorneys, doctors via medical school and the fact that more women are now earning doctoral degrees than males. I am not sure this is something to celebrate because it means somebody has had the doors closed.
If we break it down racially, Mexican Americans continue to account state wide in California at 15-18% for B.A.'s and drops down to less than 2% in doctoral programs hence what has happened that one could really be happy about. If one accounts by lumping other Latinos and undocumented students from Mexico and raised in the US, the number of Mexican Americans drop much more drastically. Yours truly was rejected for 6-7 doctoral programs for all the reasons of having a penis, brown skin, not annointed by a college professor who valued my interest, no sobbing story of having been in the US without papers, etc.... or yeah and I am not gay so that does not help me. People can say I am a cry baby and sure I can accept their criticism yet it does not take away the fact that numbers speak for themselves. Since Title IX was signed Richard Nixon the end result is that Whiteness has still prevailed under the veil of inclusion and affirmative action in a skirt.
But why did this happen if one takes into account that White women were not historically discriminated, I don't recall a bus that stated, "White Women in the back", or "White women are not served", plus they had female colleges that the likes of Hilary Clinton attended to. So how were they discriminated? They couldn't vote argument until 1919 is then brought up but that was solved in 1919 and yet in the height of legal segregation they were still immune from colored places. Plus, White women were given the right to vote but Native Americans were non citizens in 1919 even if they had been born in this territory. In Arizona where my Apache grandmother Luz was born, she wasn't even given a birth certificate. She was assigned a number in 1926 only. Yes I have a reason to vent, where White women segregated like my grandmother?
Then after segregation was outlawed in 1954, White women as part of being from a White family were able to participate in the suburban funding of America and as a former older White female student once told the class, (her mother was a CIA operative for a Vice President in a US Airline), "the Black neighborhoods behind the our White houses in Florida were poorer and in horrible conditions". I thanked her for her honesty, she was great. She was an RN and would say many of the White male doctors were simultaneously idiots. Therefore, how were White women thrown into the Civil Rights equation plus they could marry up something Mexican American males cannot do today so lets put this in perspective.
The damage occurs when Lyndon Baines Johnson forced the South to sign on to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and they did so by adding legislation that included gender as a way to stifle the racial equalization the law was intended to solve. The focus was on Blacks and even though Mexican Americans were a national minority they were not included because they were not defined as a national minority until 1971 even though authors like Carey McWilliams mentioned that in California, Blacks were progressing in admissions to UCLA while Mexican Americans were numerically more and poorer. Stephen Pitti makes the same point in The Devil in the Silicon Valley, White administrators at San Jose State would advocate Blacks civil rights issues though they were only 2% of the population and Mexican Americans were 20%. And it did not help that on paper even until today, the Census classifies Mexican Americans as White, Hispanic Whites.
Thus White women inclusion was the devil in the language and when Title 9 is added in 1972, it was easy to make this legislation because they were included back in 1964 and the damage is visible today. White women have more access to college than Mexican American males and we are the minority so go figure. Yet who advocates for this position. Its worse, The White House celebrates it while Mexican American males, US born have the lowest college attendance rates and worse by generation, the longer in the US the worse the educational results are. Even in the political world, the results are seen because they do not vote but I don't believe voting does anything especially when I have to get in line behind, White women, gays, unions, undocumented students, corporation and so forth.
Hence I pose the question, what is there to celebrate if I am a Mexican American male. I've been let go of all the part time college positions I had because of budget cuts while women of all colors and White males along with the chosen brown people are given participation for something that I have paid into as a tax payer along with my parents, grandparents and even great grandparents. Honestly, I could care less about White women's issue while I have to beg for my existence but what do I expect, its not as if they care about my condition and obviously not even the White House.
Title IX was bad legislation and to promote it as good is both historically erroneous and contemporarily damaging as White women progress. And though I was rejected for doctoral programs, I have published 7 books hence their negative judgement of me was incorrect but what do I expect from a system that has their minds made up. Next time I'll check female on my applications.
