Lemon Grove Incident Case Study

Seeing someone as a lesser person based on their skin color is indeed discrimination. In the Lemon Grove Incident, Americans violated the Fourteenth Amendment of Mexican students. The Fourteenth Amendment has a clause, which is the equal protection clause. The equal protection clause States that “No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”(Amendment XIV section 1). In other words the Fourteenth Amendment forces states to treat anyone with the same laws as others in a similar situation. The Lemon Grove incident was caused by the Lemon Grove school board. The Lemon Grove school board built another school (La Caballeriza) for Mexicans with the reasoning that Mexican students didn’t know enough English. The Lemon Grove Incident was an event that did not show meritocracy. Mexican children tried very hard to learn English, but American parents didn’t want their children hanging out with children who had a darker shade of skin. Even though in courts Mexican children were classified as white. During the case the judge said “To separate all the Mexicans in one group can only be done by infringing the laws of the state of California”(E. Michael Madrid 18). It seems as the harder Mexicans tried to succeed, the more white Americans started to see Mexicans as inferior and a threat.