ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author contends that twenty years and more of Black activism revealed deep links between community protest, legal repression, and racial identity, and that those involved in the Chicano movement drew on these conceptual connections as the notion of a Chicano race evolved. He considers the particular contribution of legal violence to Chicano racial formation. The development of a non-White identity within the Mexican community arose with the Chicano movement, an episode of broad political and cultural mobilization that can be partly explained by social movement theory. The frustration Acosta expressed raises a larger point, Mexicans embraced the Black Power movement's model of identity mobilizadon, but they did so from the distinct social position they occupied in the Southwest. The waning influence of Mexican-American assimilationist ideology both allowed and resulted from the increasing influence of Black activism in the Mexican community.
