Congrats goes out to Sylvia Mendez, the daughter of Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, the parents who joined four other Mexican parents in Orange County to sue the Westminster, Garden Grove, El Modeno (now part of Orange) and SanTana unified school districts for their Mexican-only schools. Earlier this week, President Barack Obama named her as one of his Presidential Medal of Honors for this year.
Too bad he got the name of the landmark case wrong.
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Mendez received the honor because, unlike the other families involved in the case, she has lectured about it across the country for a good decade. Her proselytizing is a great thing, but also fraught with historical weight, and the press release shows it: instead of calling the case by its proper name, Mendez, et al v. Westminster, et al, the Obama administration refers to the landmark decision as Mendez v. Westminster, thereby erasing the contributions of the Estrada, Ramirez, Guzman, and Palomino families with one fell swoop.
Just another reason to hate the Obama administration…but for her part, sources tell the Weekly that Mendez has started to refer to the case by its proper name in her many lectures. Good–now, if only Chapman University's proposed archives on the case could do the same…
