It has always been difficult to
convince Anglo-Americans that they should know more about Latinos. It did
not seem to matter to Anglos that their ignorance spawned stereotypes that
damaged Mexican American children.
This brings me back to Tucson, which
as you all know has been on my mind. Right now the issues are being played out
in the courts where the state courts punctuated by intellectual light weights
are beholding to politicians beholding to the same special interests as those
influencing the Supreme Court.
Red flags went up when United States
District Judge, David C. Bury, held “This Court finds that discontinuance of
the MASD courses during the remainder of the USP’s life expectancy will not
violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution by intentionally
segregating or discriminating against student’s based on race or ethnic group.”
The issue with many of us was the enforcement of the law, which Arizona has
avoided with impunity since Brown v. The Board of Education.
Bury acted on the recommendation of
Special Master Willis Hawley who on paper has a good record in supporting
progressive education. But most of his experience is with African Americans in
Maryland and he has had little exposure to Latinos and even less with Arizona
politics. The decision alarmed many of us since we have seen the
decimation of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program
and the retaliation against teachers through retaliatory, disparate, and
discriminatory practices.
At this very moment the Tucson Unified
School District is refusing to renew the contract of Sean Arce, the coordinator
of its highly successful Mexican American Studies program – his crime, he
defended the community.
Thus far, Hawley has chosen to consult
with TUSD leadership rather than Mexican American educators who know the needs
of the Mexican American students. At this point, it does not appear that Hawley
or Judge Bury are considering fifty years of non-compliance as well as the
manipulation of the appointment of school board members. Intellectual incest
has a way of distorting reality.
It is a scary process not only for
Mexican Americans but society in general. I don’t want to be a pessimist but
consider, “Would you want to be judged or taught by someone home schooled
by Rick Santorum?”
Even after World War II and the Korean
Wars when Mexican American proportionately received more Medal of Honors than
any other group, just convincing Anglos that Mexican Americans were entitled to
veterans benefits was difficult. This rejection forced Mexican Americans to form
the American GI Forum and other organizations to demand equal rights.
I remember that as late as the 1970s
when Mexican Americans students began to enter graduate schools, counselors
would refer them to the foreign student office.
Mexican Americans had to sue and
convince judges that they were an identifiable minority who had been historical
discriminated against and consequently entitled to equal protection. This right
was not clarified until Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School
District (1970).
It was a frustrating experience for
those struggling for fairness and equality. We tried to explain the
consequences of benign neglect of a group. Mexican Americans were disadvantaged
because of poverty, unequal schools, racism, and a society that did not care –
not because of their genes.
The problem was exacerbated during the
War on Poverty in the 1960s when many some whites tried to play blacks against
browns, trying to frame the Civil Rights Movement in Black-White terms.
When this did not work, they brought up arguments such as “If we give it
to Mexicans, how about Asians and Native Americans?”
The majority society could not
overcome its tunnel vision. They could not get it that it was not solely a
matter of color. It was about human rights; it was justice rather than “just
us.”
Liberals could not understand that the
best way to insure fairness and correct problems was to know about
people. Not all Mexicans played a guitar and not all blacks tap danced.
Not all Mexicans craved jalapeños and not all blacks liked watermelon.
Mexican American (AKA Chicano Studies)
came about because of the failure of the educational establishment to deal with
systemic problems such as high school drop outs. Chicana/o Studies proposed
improving the education of Mexican Americans (who by 1970 were 22 percent of
the LA Schools) by increasing knowledge about them.
It was not just about Mexican
Americans knowing about themselves but about others knowing about them.
Very really in 1969 many white people could drive to and from work without
seeing a Mexican American. The only white people Mexicans saw in the
barrios were teachers, cops and some merchants.
In the San Fernando Valley,
neighborhoods were neatly separated. It was the land of the Valley girl and San
Fernando/Pacoima was like foreign colony – a gated community within a gated
community.
When the upheaval began at San
Fernando Valley State in 1968, Mexican Americans were fortunate that there were
enough faculty members on campus who knew what a black American was and knew
enough history to realize that blacks were oppressed.
At SFVSC and on other campuses there
was not overwhelming support for outreach to Mexican American high school
students. This lack of support should not be confused with the black-white
syndrome –seeing every issue in terms of black and white. It was more a matter
of Mexicans being invisible – an issue that I addressed more fully in my book Anything
But Mexican (Verso 1996).
When I arrived at Valley State in the
spring of 1969 to set up a Mexican American Studies Department there was
resistance. Some faculty members could understand that African Americans had a
corpus of knowledge and a history of oppression. However, they did not have the
same awareness about Mexicans in the United States. I would venture to say that
most did not even have a Cliff Note level background on the Mexican American
War, remembering only the movie versions of the Alamo.
I soon found that you could not equate
their ignorance to ideology. Many were good liberals –against the Vietnam War
and in support of civil rights for blacks. These people were color blind to the
extreme. They failed to see a lack of equality in having an institution with
18,000 students with only fifty students Mexican Americas. They had a harder
time with demands for a Mexican American Studies program.
While blacks were begrudgingly
acknowledged as Americans, it was up to Mexicans to earn this right. It was not
a matter of citizenship. At the time, most Mexican Americans were born in this
country, and many of their fathers were veterans.
The ignorance was systemic. For
example, when I was doing my teacher training at Los Angeles State College very
few of my education professors were from the southwest; fewer had taught in
Mexican American schools; but they were there to teach us how to teach Mexican
students.
When I expressed my desire to go into
higher education, I was advised to go to the East Coast because California
universities were reluctant to hire PhDs from local universities. They wanted
to avoid intellectual incest which is when where too many people in a group all
think alike. They rationalized that intellectual incest would “exclude
legitimate diverse viewpoints.”
Outside of academe, this principle has
fallen apart with the growing popularity of fads such as home-schooling where
it is taken to a ridiculous end.
Cal State Northridge has the largest
Chicana/o Studies Department in the nation, offering 166 sections per semester,
which is larger than some small colleges. Over 11,000 students are Latino;
however, over 75 percent of the academic departments do not have a single
person of Mexican descent. Why?
It is not because of color blindness
but an adherence to it. Most conservative and liberal professors want to select
people that look like them. They tend to repeat the ideas of their professors.
While I believe that the notion of
intellectual incest in the first instance was wrong, it goes on all the time in
life.
Take the Supreme Court. Most
justices in this and the past century have come from three law schools,
Harvard, Yale and Columbia. This term is no exception. Most of these justices
are from upper middle-class families and worked for large firms representing
corporate interests. Their friends are from the corporate world and some even
receive honorariums to speak before the one percent. Is it being divisive to
point this out as an example of intellectual incest?
Bill Clinton nominated my friend and
former student Samuel Paz to the U.S. District Court. Sam did even make it out
of committee. Many Republican and Democratic senators said he could not be fair
and objective. Sam had been president of the local chapter of the American
Civil Liberties chapter and he did not practice the right kind of law,
representing the poor against police brutality. Sam also did not go to the
right law school – the University of Southern California.
Can we accept the logic that Clarence
Thomas and his gaggle can be fair?
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