Swing music and jitterbug fans made the zoot suit popular in the 1930s. And Arcila says that they are part of Mexican American history and identity today.
But beyond fashion and dance, historians say that zoot suits, like the ones featured on the show, also became symbols of a counterculture. Gómez says that there is a tendency in the United States to look at people of color as homogenous, and this strips their identity of individual texture and variety.
She compares profiling then with more recent policies today, saying"you can draw a straight line" from 1943 Los Angeles to New York’s stop-and-frisk policies.
The 'riot,' in which no one was killed and only a few sent to the hospital, was in 1943 and caused by racist Pachucos who were tired of Navy men in bell bottom Zoot Suits buying their girlfriends, sisters, wives and mothers. Nice try re-writing history, though.
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Source: DEADLINE - 🏆 109. / 63 Read more »