Prologue
Pandora's Box is said to be a bad thing. As the story goes, one little crack open and the evils of the world emerged, causing fear and destruction. I would like to argue that when opened correctly in the context of teaching history, a Pandora's Box approach can be exciting, enlightening, and engaging. In this unit, I will be using the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 as a key to unlock the Pandora's Box of domestic social and cultural tensions that haunted home-front mobilization during World War II. The riots serve as a spotlight, using the zoot suit culture to illuminate complex issues of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality on the home front.
The major objective for students learning this unit is for them to examine the ways in which one might use consumer culture as a daily tool of political protest. They will understand that consumer culture is a vast category that includes all of the buying and selling we do, the spaces we do them in, and the meaning we bring to the products and process involved. Through analyzing the context and consumer choices of wartime zoot suiters, and particularly Mexican American pachucos and pachucas, students will discuss the complex social forces at play on the American WWII home front and their impact.
The unit includes commonly taught aspects of the WWII home front such as liberty bonds, defense industry growth, and opportunities for women in the workplace, but approaches them in the context of consumer culture, particularly around zoot suits. The traditional aspects of WWII content are necessary to understanding the zoot suit culture and the social and political context of the riots. After all, the wartime home front was a place of churning. The inequalities that inspired the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s churned as the war changed the nation. Even the mighty defense industry growth that launched the country out of the Great Depression was a source of massive social instability on the home front. The Zoot Suit Riots open Pandora's Box and let the rich political and social complexity of the WWII home front emerge.
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