The great irony of segregation is that despite it being defined by boundaries, it has remained boundless. The preservation of racially segregated spaces, as discussed in Strategies of Segregation, has been a calculated, precise, and forceful racial project in American history. It has affected private and public spaces with a fury and has required federal, state, and community intervention to challenge its existence. Even so, David G. García reminds us that there is a perceived frailty to segregation that has obsessed whites for more than a century. White educators, property owners, policy-makers, students, and parents have indulged in techniques to publicly disavow their incessant segregationist strategies predicated on an ideology of white racial supremacy.
Strategies of Segregation is part of a larger body of work that has recently redefined the origins and persistence of school segregation. Most scholarly accounts, however, have largely restricted their analysis to the United States South and North, provided a metropolitan-urban-rural comparison, or benefited from a black-white binary. García's study contributes to the field by investigating how segregation thrived in the City of Oxnard, California, from 1903 to the late 1970s. At its heart, this is a local study that challenges a de jure-de facto model of segregation. García argues, “Local histories remind us that narratives about race, schooling, and equality are complex, sometimes contradictory, and never complete” (p. 163). Oxnard was founded as an agricultural town where white growers and Mexican workers were central players in the development of the city. By the mid-1930s, segregation was codified in most private and public spaces. Oxnard, a beach town nestled along an agricultural section of Southern California, was shaped by railroad tracks that bisected the town. The east side, an area with higher property values in close proximity to the beach, was restricted to white owners. Mexicans, consequently, were restricted to living on the west side of the tracks in a barrio best known as “La Colonia.” Unlike historians who have chronicled barrio formation and segregation, García centers public schools and Mexicans in the narrative to discuss how space and place have been an important part of “rurban” space.
García's study shows how Mexicans, whites, blacks, and Asian Americans lived in a city defined by racial exclusion from the outset. He develops a concept he calls “mundane racism,” a phrase he introduced in earlier work. Mundane racism is exactly what the phrase means. He characterizes it by the everyday practices that created, fostered, and protected racial segregation. If school segregation persisted, then it could be described as unintentional, and white supporters needed no further rationalization. In Oxnard, mundane racism entailed casually blaming Mexicans for their social condition, and was defined by a municipal system that neglected people of color altogether. It was supported by a tradition of implementing polices that adversely affected the educational achievement of Mexican students and was maintained by policymakers who provided no explanation whatsoever for creating segregated spaces. Although the tenets of the term might seem contradictory—it required city leaders to ignore the existence of a group, yet acknowledge them by describing them negatively—García argues that its seemingly disorderly strategy is what fueled its power. As García argues, mundane racism was a “concerted effort to make racism appear normal” (p. 39).
The overarching argument binding the book is that residential and school segregation, through mundane racism, was interconnected “not by chance, but by design” (p. 2). In chapter two, “Pernicious Deeds: Restrictive Covenants and Schools,” García examines housing deeds of educational practitioners who benefited from racial covenants by restricting the sale, transfer, and occupancy of their properties on the eastside of town to residents who belonged to the “Caucasian race” (p. 50). His examination of deeds provides a new way of understanding how educators reaped the monetary benefits of racism. School segregationists were capitalists whose property investments were protected by exploiting the color line. García identifies teachers, principals, and school board presidents by name who, as land developers or owners, were invested in preserving racial covenants. Playing both roles—as private citizens and public servants—allowed these “white architects” to create policy that coupled educational and residential segregation.
To support the argument, García organizes his book in six main chapters that explain how a four-stage process of segregation transpired in Oxnard. In the first stage, the “white architects” formalized a racial hierarchy that positioned Mexicans at the lowest rungs. Segregating Mexicans was justified, since separating them was rationalized as socially just and necessary for their educational good. In the second stage, residential and school segregation became interconnected through the efforts of educators who were property owners. In this stage, school officials created a system of intraschool segregation, since a lack of funds and low student enrollment stymied their efforts to create separate schools. This strategy of in-school segregation normalized difference and, consequently, made it easier for educators to sanctify the construction of separate schools decades later. In the final stage, white educators attempted to omit all the rationales for segregation from public record and memory. Without any evidence showing that race was used to assign students to distinct schools, white educators claimed that segregation was nonexistent and, if it did exist, was a result of natural and unintentional processes that shaped most American cities.
The last stage is crucial in García's argument. Here, García recovers the history of the grossly overlooked school desegregation class-action lawsuit Debbie and Doreen Soria et al. v. Oxnard School District Board of Trustees et al. (1971). Soria is significant because it was the first court case that challenged President Nixon's eighteen-month busing moratorium and the first desegregation case to be jointly filed by Mexican and black plaintiffs. García argues that “though triggered by a locally contentious matter, the Soria case reflected national concerns about race, schooling, and equality, concerns that remained largely unresolved sixteen years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling” (p. 130). Using local and historical data to make their case, attorneys representing the Soria plaintiffs argued that school officials had strategized to maintain a segregated school system since its inception. The court ruled in favor of Soria and is, perhaps, one of the most significant desegregation cases that remains understudied.
Although the book is successful in making its central claim, García leaves room for future historians to explore. For example, the role private schools played in the segregation and desegregation process is not discussed fully. How did Catholic schools, or perhaps other Christian entities, respond to local interests? Did they absorb white students after the Soria case or lend support to Mexican and African American students? And, as García makes the case, the story of segregation is a story of space and place. Oxnard began as a small agricultural town that became a “city” by the 1970s. García applies a rurban analysis to describe Oxnard, yet does not fully explore how this unique quality is important as it changed over time. Did white students leave the district? And how did its rurban trait affect the dogma of segregation?
Overall, however, the book is impressive. Strategies of Segregation is supported by primary and unpublished sources and is complemented by forty oral histories that García helped collect. These untapped sources provide a new narrative to our understanding of segregation. As García argues, one of the most essential strategies of mundane racism was to omit the perspectives of Mexican and African American students, parents, and community members who continually challenged segregation. García found that even though a Mexican parent led the desegregation lawsuit, the experiences of Mexicans were not integrated into the court record. It is an engaging read that makes interventions in multiple fields. There is no doubt that historians, community organizers, educators, attorneys, and policymakers interested in curbing racial inequities in housing and education will find it remarkably helpful.
