Because I happen to have been rather fortunate, and when I go home I have a fairly good meal, or, at any rate, plenty to eat, it does not make me hap… - Dennis Chavez

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.

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.

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.