Zoot Suit Analysis

White sailors invaded Mexican American communities and attacked Zoot Suitors. The city police did nothing to restrain the sailors, who grabbed the Hispanic teenagers, tore off and burned their clothes, cut off their hair, and beat them. However, when Hispanics tried to fight back, the police moved in and arrested them. After the Zoot Suit riots, LA passed a law prohibiting the wearing Zoot Suits” (www.stufflikethat.org, 2010)

              The Chicano way was the way it was during the 1940s in the city of Los Angeles. The title of my book is “Zoot Suit and Other Plays” written by Luis Valdez. This story takes place on the year 1942 in the city of Los Angeles, California. The way the story is that the main character of the story by the name of Henry Reyna, the ringleader of the 38th street gang, is unjustly charged for the Sleepy Lagoon murder of a man  and is sentenced to life in prison. He wasn’t the only one charged a few of his gang members were charged as well. Their lawyer George Shearer and a news reporter Alice Bloomfield worked for several months to get them out and after many protests and petitions the 38th street gang was released for lack of evidence to hold then guilty. The main character Henry Reyna is very prideful, brings a big influence to his people, and very optimistic. .

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics

Have you ever been too filled with hate and pride to see the obvious truth right in front of you? The year was 1935 in the small town of Maycomb Alabama. During this time an important trial would be taking place. The trial of Tom Robinson, an African and American who had been promptly accused of rape by the one man who had seen the incident. Bob Ewell a despised person throughout the community and the father of the victim, Mayella Ewell, Bob’s abused, lonely, unhappy daughter. Though one can pity Mayella because of her overbearing father, one cannot pardon her for her shameful indictment of Tom Robinson.

In his book Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice, Ian F. Haney Lopez studies the change that in racial politics brought about by the Chicano movement. He examines why Chicano activists embrace their identity as members of the Brown race, an action that is a rejection of previous generations ' attempts to gain civil rights by claiming to be White. He analyzes this racial transformation in the context of race as a socially constructed idea meant to preserve power dynamics.

Despite the war efforts by many Mexican Americans in both fronts of the war, brutal discrimination was still rampant even in the very neighborhoods (barrios) that they called home. The Sleepy Lagoon Case, dubbed as such by the LA press, was an example of racial tension brought to light. In the heat of August 1942 gang member Jose Diaz was found unconscious near a swimming hole named the Sleepy Lagoon where many young Latinos and gang members would go to swim as they were not permitted to frequent Anglo only natatoriums. Diaz who never regained consciousness had apparently suffered a skull fracture, but no murder weapon or proof of murder was ever found. In the face of these facts, authorities blamed twenty-four youths, only one of which was Anglo. Citing Mexican American 'lawlessness and mischievousness ' as proof enough that they were to be at fault. The notoriously corrupt Los Angeles Police Department charged the twenty-four who were involved in a gang clash earlier in the day with murder. It was no secret that Judge Charles Fricke was blatantly racist and he repeatedly allowed prosecutors to stereotype the defendants. He also refused to allow the defendants change of clothes or haircuts so as to have them resemble in the courtroom how he viewed Mexican Americans: as criminals and hooligans, because of the belief 'only hoodlums wore zoot suits '. In January 1943, the jury without any solid evidence found

The Zoot Suit represents a changing society that the general population isn't ready to accept it so they blame the crimes and the murders on those who dare to vary from "normal." This is going on during World War II and many of the Mexican Americans feel like they have no place fighting the war and that the real war is the war between soldiers with their tight button up collars and the hang loose Zoot Suiters who are mostly Mexican American.

Racial tensions began heightening in the city of Los Angeles on June of 1943. It’s what came to be known as the Zoot Suit Riots. Racial tension between Mexican Americans who were called both pachucos and zoot suiters. They were known for their fashion which had a symbolic meaning towards them, it was a way in expressing themselves which white sailors and servicemen disliked. They saw Mexican Americans as thugs, gang members, and delinquents. White servicemen and sailors were unfamiliar with hispanics, but it was so easy for them to discriminate by appearance. Several Mexican Americans served in white units. Tension was rising between them, especially when marines and sailors assaulted both Mexican and African Americans in their own neighborhood. Also, for a false rumor towards Mexican Americans which stated that they had attacked and stabbed a sailor. Both races were being discriminated and were treated unjustly. The day came on June 3, 1943 where these conflicts led to the Zoot Suit Riots. This incident of violence lasted a whole week. Zoot suiters were beaten and arrested for no reason at all. The issues that led to the Zoot Suits in 1943 was Jose Diaz, the Sleepy Lagoon Case, and racial attacks between whites and people of color. This filled the atmosphere with a lot of hatred and discrimination that had erupted in the summer of 1943. The riot led to a compromise of all military personnel being banned from the city limits with in Los Angeles

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a

While wearing oversized trousers that pegged at the ankle, long coats, and floppy hats, also known as zoot suits, it was hard not to take notice of the Mexican American teenagers in Los Angeles, California during the 1940s. These Mexican Americans, referred to as zoo suiters because of their apparent attire, quickly became targeted by American sailors who were stationed in the city. To the sailors, their clothes signaled not only defiance, but lack of patriotism as well (pg 664). The tension between the two groups continued to

I went back to reading more of Sarris’ essay. This definition helped me see the question Sarris was unearthing within me; what determines our ethnicity? After all, by implementing this definition, we know there is no constant, ‘regular’/normal life or person, and none of us are 100% ‘rightly’ deduced. Does that make us all illegitimate? Or simply do we over-estimate knowledge about our self and part of those around us, while taking the liberty to apply this mysterious label to whom WE deem should wear

Eleven sailors were assaulted in a Mexican neighborhood. Although it was too dark to see who the attackers were, the sailors claimed that they were attacked by a group of Mexican gangsters in zoot suit without any sound proof. Disappointed by the police’s inaction, as the servicemen said, hundreds of sailors decided to "take the laws into their own hand."( McWilliams, 1945) The sailors then grouped up and stopped everyone who wore a zoot suit on the streets. Without any explanation, the sailors beat up all the zooters who appeared in their sight and left the zooters’ bleeding bodies on the streets. Moreover, McWilliams states that the inaction of policeman, the overemphasis of the press, as well as the misunderstanding of the public made the situation even worse. At the same time, the local press like LA Times praised sailors’ brave actions and referred to zooters as notorious gangsters. Instead of reporting the assault that happened on the streets, the press emphasized the number of Mexicans in jails and the retaliation of the few gangster

The prejudice in Tom’s trial is also visible by the segregated seating arrangements of the whites and the blacks in the courthouse. The portrayed segregation not only takes place at the Maycomb court of law but had appeared through out the novel in all aspects of Maycomb life. This segregation is illustrated by Harper Lee through imagery and is strengthened through the realist aspect of the novel. The author shows prejudice through this segregation by revealing the two contrasting places where the ‘white and blacks’ lived and even where they went to separate churches. The author paints a vivid picture of the blacks living in a ghetto

When Octavio Paz first visited the largest Mexican population center outside of Mexico’s international borders, Los Angles, he said the city had a "vague atmosphere" of Mexicanism in that manifested itself through "delight in decorations, carelessness and pomp, negligence, passion and reserve." But he felt that his "ragged but beautiful" ghost of Mexican identity rarely interacted with "the North American world based on precision and efficiency." Instead, this Mexicanism floated above the city, "never quite existing, never quite vanishing.1By the time Paz visited the exterior Mexico, a generation of Mexican revolution immigrants had their children in the United States and they had matured. These people had heard the corridos of the Revolutionary

The Zoot Suit play, Luis Valdez notices the in-depth look picture into the cultural struggling and the young generation by El Pachuco and his people. They are Mexican-American. Their equality rights do not accept in America society. They and their family always spend the life by examining of American government. Henry Reyna, El Pachuco, the Navy during the World War II. He is the young Mexican-American generation. He lives in the South Central Los Angeles, California. They are a mythical figure, a rebellious, street-smart, young Chicano. They make up their hair style. He dresses a long jacket, a baggy trousers, and a lengthy watch chain. He and his people dance with their girlfriends. They wear the zoot suit, the big pride of Mexican-American