Ethnic Studies = Social Justice Posted By Mark Tapson
As Latinos overtake non-Hispanic whites as California’s largest ethnic group, a bill is now before the California state Senate which would require the Education Department to form a task force to study the implementation of a standardized ethnic studies curriculum in high schools across the state.
Sponsored by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, who has a bachelor’s degree in Chicano Studies from UC Berkeley, bill AB 1750 seeks to succeed where similar efforts to establish mandatory ethnic studies classes elsewhere have proven controversial – and failed.
Arizona, for example, passed a law in 2010 to shut down a Mexican-American studies curriculum that included books which Attorney General Tom Horne described as shockingly racist (even New Mexico state Rep. Nora Espinoza – herself Latina – called them “hate books”). Under a law forbidding classes “that advocate the overthrow of the United States, promote racial resentment, or emphasize students’ ethnicity rather than their individuality,” seven books were removed from high school classrooms to reside in the library (not banned, as opponents insist on describing it). Among them were titles such as Critical Race Theory, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Marxist activist Paulo Freire, and Message to Aztlan (Aztlan is a symbol for Latino activists who believe they have a legal right to the land the United States acquired from the Mexican-American War).
Tony Diaz, who co-founded the pro-ethnic studies movement Librotraficante to subvert the Arizonan law, says that anti-ethnic studies efforts are discriminatory and, curiously, “an attempt to turn colleges and high schools into finishing schools for corporations.” Diaz didn’t expound on why preparing students to succeed in the corporate workforce is bad or what it has to do with ethnic studies.
A movement to require Mexican-American courses in Texas recently fizzled out as well. Some Latino activists there say the public school curriculum reflects “institutionalized racism,” by which they mean that they resent being denied the opportunity to inflame students with their own anti-capitalist, racial supremacism.
Rodolfo Acuña, professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State University Northridge and author of the aforementioned Occupied America, claims to have worked on at least a dozen attempts himself to extend ethnic studies to public schools, but they never garnered legislative support. However, he said he doesn’t anticipate much opposition to the Californian bill. Assemblyman Alejo is optimistic too:
California is moving in a different direction, one that recognizes and values the history of the people who make up our state. This will put California on the cutting edge — while other states are trying to abolish ethnic studies, we can standardize and incorporate it into high school curriculum…
We’re trying to incorporate the histories and knowledge of different communities that make up our state — not limited to communities of color. Ethnic studies should be seen not just as Latino — but Irish, Jewish, Filipino — there is no limitation.