ABSTRACT
The restriction of Mexican Americans and other Latinos to less desirable jobs and an extremely subordinated racial status in US society was a taken-for-granted state of affairs for the better part of US history. Under pressures from civil rights organizations and protests, a series of equal opportunity government measures that began to address these and other such racial injustices emerged during and after World War II. These efforts gradually evolved into what in the 1960s came to be termed “affirmative action.” This official phrase originally meant just “positive action” by government agencies to reduce or end discrimination against Americans of color, but for several reasons it has come to mean much that is negative in its racialized framing by white Americans.
