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.
About California’s diverse student population, Alejo says,
“We recognize those unique values and history, language and literatures – all
of that should be included in California’s high school curriculum.”
Supporters say such a curriculum is necessary to help the
burgeoning Latino student population feel better about themselves by delving
into their own cultural heritage. Opponents say that such classes politicize
students and breed ethnic resentment. Devon Peña, former director of the
National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, smears
opposition as McCarthyism: “It’s just a witch hunt of a different color. Now,
instead of going after the reds, they’re going after the browns.”
What, really, is ethnic studies all about? Ask proponents
and among the responses you will find a common thread: social
justice. Santa Monica High School teacher Kitaro Webb, for example, says
that ethnic studies is about “civic engagement, responsibility and fighting for
what you believe in.” “From its origins in the late 1960s, Ethnic Studies
scholars have been committed to issues of
social justice,” reads the mission
statement of the University of Oregon’s Ethnic Studies Department, which
analyzes “inequalities as they relate
to whiteness and white privilege.” The UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Department’s
mission statement reads,
in part: “Inquiries into the nature of racial, ethnic, and gender inequality are informed by a commitment to social change and social
justice.” [emphases added] Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, an Ethnic Studies
professor at San Francisco State and a “community-engaged-motherscholar-of-color”,
says
that “What ethnic studies is really about is creating opportunity for young
people to learn about themselves and the world around them and make the world a
better place.” By making the world a better place, she means social justice, of
course – the progressive euphemism for racial payback and wealth
redistribution.
“It is unethical and unprofessional for teachers to use their
power over students to get the students to be activists in support of the
teachers’ political causes,” says Arizona Attorney General Horne. Absolutely
right, but enlisting youth in the cause of social justice is the very raison d’etre of multiculturalist educators.
“For multiculturalists there is no unifying American
culture” as James S. Robbins puts it in Native Americans: Patriotism, Exceptionalism,
and the New American Identity. “They define people within groups and
cultures that are present in the United States but are not to be thought of
primarily, if at all, as American.” Multiculturalism is the politics of
victimhood, and its proponents must “rewrite history to serve as a platform for
their endless grievances.”
I’m no community-engaged-motherscholar-of-color, and forgive my unfashionable belief in
American exceptionalism and my politically incorrect yearning to see my country
lead the free world into the future. Allow me to put forth a crazy concept:
instead of aggravating racial division and radicalizing ethnic students to
despise their adopted country and white people, I recommend we expel
subversives disguised as educators and concentrate our educational efforts at
the high school level on the following common-sense points:
· 1) ground
students in critical thinking skills and the crucial basics of math, science,
and English communication expertise;
· 2) rather
than explore what Alejo calls “the unique values and history, language
and literatures” of a multitude of ethnicities, celebrate the history and values of the greatest country in the history
of the world, the United States, and encourage our melting-pot unity as
non-hyphenated Americans;
· 3) instill
in students the conviction that individual achievement through competition and
hard work will lead to personal and national economic success, while wallowing
in the collective grievances of identity politics will lead only to poverty and
racial division.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 6/12/14)
