주트 수트(Zoot-Suit)와 규범에의 도전, 그리고 주트 수트 폭동(Zoot-Suit Riots)

Zoot-Suit, Challenge to the Norm, and Zoot-Suit Riots

In the years of World War II, Mexican American youths were challenging all the unwritten norms in America. In the racism-ridden and anglo-dominated society, they found the avenue to express themselves and tried to identify themselves through the zoot-suit. And they hoped to create the socio-cultural identity of their own making as an independent and distinct one that was un-American and at the same time, un-Mexican. But negative views on the zoot-suit and the zoot-suiter and wide-spread racism strengthened by war-time social tension resulted in a series of the crash between Mexican American zuit-suiters and white soldiers and in time, the mass riots. However, in public, the responsibility for the riots was given to Mexican American zoot-suiters, and the riots were defined as the riots caused by the zoot-suiter. Yet considering the nation-wide spread of the riots afterwards, Los Angeles zoot-suit riot can be understood as the beginning of the great storm of the race riots during the war years.