Racism, Nationalism, and Scapegoating Theme Analysis

In Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit, a play about discrimination against Los Angeles’s Chicano population in the 1940s, Henry Reyna and his fellow members of the 38th Street Gang face institutionalized racism and prejudice. Valdez makes it clear that Henry and his friends are at the mercy of a biased court system, as the men are held accountable for a murder they didn’t commit. As the gang go through the legal process, the judge presiding over the case does everything he can to help the prosecutor frame the men as malicious and dangerous. Although it’s clear from a legal perspective that the 38th Street Gang wasn’t responsible for the death of José Williams (the dead man in question), the public prosecutor insists to the jury that to let Henry and the others free would mean unleashing “the forces of anarchy and destruction” into American society. Because this trial unfolds during World War II, this rhetoric is especially effective, since the prosecutor takes the worst fears of the American citizenry at that time—“anarchy” and “destruction”—and pins it on people of color, conflating the fight against extremism in Europe with completely unrelated domestic matters. By spotlighting the government’s unjust targeting of the Chicano community in the early 1940s, Valdez invites audience members to consider an unfortunate part of the country’s history, ultimately calling attention to the ways in which prejudiced authorities sometimes manipulate patriotism and fear to villainize minority groups.

Zoot Suit shows audiences the consequences of racial profiling, a term that refers to biased policing based on race and ethnicity. This is made quite clear by the play’s title, since it’s named after a style of suit that was wildly popular in the Chicano community during the 1940s—a style that police officers eventually treated as a sign of criminality. Baggy suits with long jackets and high-waisted trousers, zoot suits weren’t exclusive to the Chicano population, but the police largely associated the style with young minority groups. For this reason, racists took a dim view of the trend, ultimately coming to see the zoot suit as a uniform that represented everything they hated, including anti-American sentiments. Henry’s brother, Rudy, encounters this unfair attitude when he gets swept up in the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. For three nights, Navy officers, sailors, civilians, and other white servicemen run through Los Angeles attacking anyone wearing a zoot suit. While out dancing on one of these evenings, Rudy suddenly finds himself embroiled in a violent altercation simply because of his clothing. One white man even insists that “zoot suiters” like Rudy are trying to “outdo the white man in exaggerated white man’s clothes.” This accusation underscores not only a racist and intolerant attitude toward the Chicano population, but also the man’s anxiety that white people might lose their power in American society—a bigoted fear that leads to violence. What Rudy and his community face, then, is a brand of hatred motivated by insecurity.

What’s worse, prejudiced white authorities try to validate their insecurity and aggression by framing the Chicano community as threats to the American war effort in Europe. During the Zoot Suit Riots, one member of the press tells El Pachuco (a character who serves as the play’s narrator) that the “Zoot Suit Crime Wave is even beginning to push the war news off the front page.” It’s worth noting that the member of the press who says this goes out of his way to conflate the zoot suit itself with a “crime wave,” as if anyone who dresses like a member of the Chicano community (or for that matter, like somebody from any minority group) is not only involved in crime, but also responsible for diminishing wartime patriotism. In this regard, racists take issue with the zoot suit in order to vilify and further disenfranchise minorities like Rudy and Henry, who aren’t actually doing anything to detract from the American war effort.

In fact, it’s quite unfair to suggest that people like Henry and Rudy are undermining American wartime values. After all, Henry originally signed up for the Navy before getting arrested, and Rudy joins shortly after his brother goes to prison. This is why George, the lawyer defending the accused members of the 38th Street Gang, tries to emphasize in his closing statement that they are committed members of American society. To find Henry and his friends guilty of a murder they didn’t commit (without even furnishing any evidence) would be deeply unfair, George upholds, adding that this decision would “murder the spirit of racial justice in America.” Put another way, George tries to show the jury that the accused members of the Chicano community aren’t others—they’re Americans. This, in turn, means that to treat them unfairly would be to go against core American values, which is exactly what racists claim the “zoot suiters” are doing in the first place. And yet, people like the public prosecutor work tirelessly to suggest that Henry and his friends symbolize “anarchy” and “destruction,” thereby using them as scapegoats to advance racial prejudices simply by upholding that they are, as a member of the press puts it during the Zoot Suit Riots, “enemies of the American way of life.”

Thankfully, Henry and the rest of the 38th Street Gang are eventually let out of prison, but this doesn’t mean that this kind of fearmongering rhetoric doesn’t do lasting damage to the Chicano community, unnecessarily and unjustly interrupting the lives of these young men by forcing them to undeservedly spend time in prison. By putting this fact on display, then, Valdez warns audience members against giving into false nationalist claims about the supposed threat that minority groups pose to the country, since this is nothing more than a way to oppress people who are already vulnerable to racism and discrimination.