Dennis Chavez

If the Constitution is worth anything, if the Declaration of Independence is worth anything, if the boys who died on the field of battle did not die in vain, fair-employment practices are correct and necessary

The implications of discrimination, however, are not always so well known or understood. That an American citizen of Mexican descent in Arizona or Colorado may not occupy public office is a national disgrace.

Most speakers try to be as circumspect as possible when handling a subject as delicate as racial discrimination. But the world situation today is so critical, the fate of western civilization is so precarious, and the future of our nation as a great power is so imperiled that we find circumspection out of order; it is time to speak out boldly let the chips fall where they may. Discrimination endangers our country, and a threat to our national safety is a matter which vitally concerns us all, and it behooves us as good citizens to study and understand the problem. And if we find that racial discrimination presents such a threat to our safety, then we should immediately, with every ounce of resolution and determination at our command, seek to eradicate it from our way of life.

I have been fighting for the so-called underprivileged all my days, because I was one of them. I was reared in that atmosphere, and I am proud of the chance I had in America under the government of the United States, and I want my fellow beings to have the same chance I had.

I am opposed to dividing them in times of peace into racial or religious groupings, as I am opposed to so dividing them in times of war.

These things are wrong. I know that there are many among us who refer to the Italians as "Wops," to the Mexicans as "Greasers," to the Jews as "Yids," and the Irish as "Harps," but if we stop to consider how important it is that we be united now, we would forget our differences, forget that we are of Irish, Spanish, English, or Italian extraction and concentrate on being Americans.

And what about Latin America? We can't expect the nations of this hemisphere to break their necks to help us in the event of another war if we continue to mistreat their cousins in our own country.

It is most regrettable that some persons think that it was all well and good to use such men and call upon them to make the supreme sacrifice in foreign fields, to land on a deadly beach at Okinawa or Guam or elsewhere, but that they are not good enough to receive equal treatment in our country.

Every great crisis in American history has thus far had the moral result of increased protection and increased liberty for the individual. This country's first great crisis-the American Revolution-gave us political and religious independence. The crisis which was the Civil War gave us freedom from bondage for all menand women. Out of the crisis of the First World War came women's suffrage. Out of this World War II, with all its terrifying implications, comes: What?

Hitler believed in discrimination. We know what happened. He carried it to its finality. He believed in a superior race. He believed in a superior people and the power of might and dictatorship. I believe in the law. I prefer due process of law to paying tribute to any individual in this country.

These senators, recognizing that the tide of human progress has out-paced them, would try to stem its onrush by the extreme tactic of filibustering the bill.

Imagine the feelings of the Japanese-American, who fought so valiantly in Italy-we had no better troops, not excepting the Marines-fighting for democracy and all the while his country was gathering up his father, mother, and sisters and herding them like cattle into concentration camps.

What we want most now is action. We know that practices growing out of discrimination and intolerance, which are thoroughly un-American, must not be allowed to continue.

No discrimination was shown by the Japanese enemy in his treatment of the Negro or the Jew or the Mexican or the so-called Anglo-Saxon stock-he murdered them all irrespective of their religion, color, or politics. On the beachheads of Tarawa, Okinawa, or Guam there was no discrimination. Along the sandbanks of Anzio no discrimination was shown by the German or any other common enemy. But here in our own country by people who should know better, and do know better, discrimination at times becomes rampant. Even now, the ugly head of racial and religious prejudice shows itself too vividly to be ignored. To outlaw the discriminatory employment practices stemming from racial and religious bigotry is the new task which must now engage us.

I do not know any Communists, but personally I am becoming tired of hearing men who are merely interested in human beings and in human rights accused of being Communists.