Book Reviews : Academics, Politics, and the 1972 Election. By EVERETT CARLL LADD, JR. and SEY- MOUR MARTIN LIPSET (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1973. Pp. 99. $3.00.)

• Author: Dale Vree
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297402700425
• Published date: 01 December 1974
• Date: 01 December 1974
• Subject Matter: Articles

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human dimension of the condition he describes. &dquo;These statistics all seemed to
reveal that a powerful barrier still existed which Mexican Americans could not
cross.&dquo;
This perhaps subconscious effort to question and indict the take-over is most
clearly evident in the conclusion. Here Shockley justifies the decades of Anglo
oppression. &dquo;But to be in the situation of a Crystal City Anglo was to find oneself,
like a South African white, surrounded by a racial majority of semiliterate,
politically inexperienced people.... Given this situation, one cannot say that it
was irrational for Crystal City Anglos to be more interested in retrenchment than
in compromise, for the stakes from the beginning were extremely high, involving
very nearly the Anglo’s whole way of life.&dquo; These actions are justified to Shockley
on the grounds that they are &dquo;in many ways the essence of what the dominant
groups in American society seem to have done for centuries.&dquo; In other words,
Shockley tells us that the racism and discrimination that he documents (even if
he is unwilling to recognize it) are acceptable because they are part of the Ameri-
can tradition!
This, then, illustrates the major weakness of the book. Shockley is either
unwilling or unable to come to grips with the broader moral and ethical questions
within which the political game is played, and on which ethnic political movements
try to focus. He describes what happened in Crystal City; he does not seem to
understand why it happened, nor does he evidence understanding of the implica-
tions of the &dquo;revolt&dquo; for American society in general. His focus is on means -
how
did the contestants win power -
rather than on ends -
what were the objectives
of the Chicano take-over. Thus, those seeking to know the sequence of events
leading up to and following the 1969 take-over will find the book very useful.
Those who condemn the Chicano movement as &dquo;racist in reverse&dquo; and who are
...