Mexican American Studies in Texas.

and, in California?
See posts below. 

Texas- One step toward Ethnic Studies.

by Roque Palanco

Texas took a step toward instituting ethnic studies courses in public schools across the state on Wednesday, with the State Board of Education voting 11 to 3 to create instructional materials for such classes.

Activists had pushed since November for the Texas SBOE to create a statewide Mexican-American studies curriculum, arguing that such courses would help boost student achievement and foster cultural awareness in the state’s majority-Hispanic school system.

Instead, the more modest measure approved Wednesday mandates the adoption of textbooks for elective classes on Mexican-American studies, African-American studies, Native-American studies and Asian-American studies. Courses will be developed locally and schools will be able to adopt successful models developed in other districts using the state-approved instructional materials.

ed.note. What about California????

The idea won bipartisan support, with conservatives applauding the approach of giving local districts control over which curricula to adopt, while ethnic studies advocates looked forward to taking a greater role in developing the courses than if the state had been charged with the task.

Mexican American Studies in Texas Schools

            




One Vote Could Change The Course Of Mexican-American Studies

Texas State Board of Education member Ruben Cortez says he'll propose a vote to decide whether to create a statewide Mexican-American studies course at the agency's meeting next month.

If passed, the measure would mark a major victory for Latino education activists who have pressed for a public school curriculum more reflective of their state's majority-Hispanic student body.

Ed. note.  California does not have Mexican American Studies in the state approved curriculum. See https://sites.google.com/site/chicanodigital/home/why-california-students-do-not-know-chicano-history

"This is it -- we've been inching our way to a vote," Cortez told The Huffington Post. "Just the mere fact that we're going to have a vote is historic."

The group Librotraficante, formed in 2012 to protest the banning of the Tucson Mexican-American studies program, started calling last year for the Texas SBOE to include a dual-credit Mexican-American studies course when the state agency took up the question of new course design.

Chicano/a Studies- Not Hispanic

Identity Crisis: An Arrested Development

By  Rodolfo Acuña

The debate as to what to name Chicana/o Studies will have future repercussions. The proposals are not new; they are not innovative; and they are symptomatic of the historical struggle of Mexican origin people in the United States to identify themselves. 

The problem is that the group has grown so large and the stakes so high that the consequences will hurt everyone. Unfortunately, the level of the discourse lacks logic, and it prolongs a resolution to the identity crisis of Mexican Americans.

Admittedly, Latinos have a lot in common, but we also have a lot of differences, e.g., in social class, population size, where we live, and our history to name a few dissimilarities. These differences strew the landscape with landmines especially for those who already believe that all Latinas/os look alike. It makes it easier for them to lump us into one generic brand.

Arizona Court Ruling Against Mexican American Studies

Rodolfo F. Acuña

U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima has made his decision to uphold disparate treatment of Mexican Americans, and the constitutionality of HB 2281. The purpose of this law was to destroy Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program.  In doing so, Tashima returned us to the times of Joseph McCarty.  

The Arizona law broadly banned courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, foster racial resentment, were designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that advocated ethnic solidarity.

The penalty if Tucson did not comply was that the district would lose 10 percent of its annual funding -- some $14 million over a fiscal year.

Tashima ruled that the plaintiffs “failed to show the law was too vague, broad or discriminatory, or that it violated students’ first amendment rights.” On the positive side, he held that courses made-to-serve students of a particular ethnic group were not unconstitutional, which seems to imply that it is alright to ban ethnic studies programs.

The ruling raised more questions than it answered. The judge’s legal reasoning and wording was not consistent with his previous decisions, and it left me with the feeling that it had been written by law clerks and that the decision was not properly vetted by Tashima who has been more precise in previous rulings. A survivor of the Japanese internment camps, he had been expected to be sensitive to the rampant racism in Arizona.

Sisyphus Chicano Style

Abandonment or Struggle

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

When asked what I have learned from writing about Arizona and what is going to happen in the future, I feel like the legendary king of Corinth immortalized by Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” You remember the guy who was condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill.  Every time he felt that he was making progress, the giant rock rolled back to where he started. 

The moral of the story, according to Camus, is the absurdity of thinking we can learn the meaning of life.  This absurdity compels us to turn to religion for answers -- religious faith supposedly tells us the meaning of life without us having to find the answer for ourselves. It gives us faith that we can roll the rock up the hill even though it keeps rolling back.

For over forty-three years I have been pushing a rock called Chicana/o Studies, obsessed with the notion that we as a community can push the rock to the top of the hill. Chicana/o Studies would give a greater number of us access to knowledge that would free and enable us to solve the contradictions of American society. 

Instead of reaching the top, the rock has become heavier and it has slipped back to where we started in 1969. Still we believe that we can reach the top of the hill despite the size of the rock. Truth be told, it would be easier to leave the rock behind and “make it in my own.” 

Tucson - Mexican American Studies

From “Deliverance” to “The Godfather”

“Be Careful What You Wish for 'cause It Might Come True"

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

My dream was to live in Tucson. In the early 1970s I even applied for a job at the University of Arizona, but the interview invitation was withdrawn after I participated in a protest there the weekend before my interview. I woke up.

The saying, “Be Careful What You Wish for 'cause It Might Come True," could have not have been more prophetic.

I did much of the research for my dissertation in Tucson. The pueblo’s charm was seductive and eclipsed its flaws: Whites and Mexicans rode separate bus lines and housing patterns created two Tucsons. Yet, change was possible and white and brown progressives coalesced on many issues.

In the late 1960s there were not many Mexicans at the U of A. Most professors there seemed to believe that Arizona history began in 1853 when US minister James Gadsden told Mexico, sell us southern Arizona for $10 million or we'll take it.

Western history was Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral. A well-known U of A history professor taught his classes with six shooters holstered at his side, wore cowboy boots and had a swagger to his walk and talk.

Intellectual Incest

By  Rodolfo F. Acuña

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.

Censorship in Tucson. Rodolfo F. Acuña.

Giving Hypocrisy a Bad Name

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

                                               

For the past six years or so I have heard constant threats from Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne (Canada) and Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal (Indiana) that they were going to ban, destroy and wipe out Mexican American Studies, as well as Occupied America. Now after disregarding a $177,000 report that refutes their charges that the program and the book are racist and un-American, the nativists carry out their threats.  They destroy MAS and snatch the books from on looking students. Their stupidity exposed them, so they now say it wasn’t so.

The problem is that witnesses saw Tucson Unified School District Superintendent John Pedicone’s (Illinois) swaggering thugs “remove” the books from MAS classes as students looked on.

Their cowardly behavior reached new lows when blogger Jeff Biggers wrote that the books had been “banned.” They protested that they were not “banned” but only “removed.”

Let me see if I understand: If the books would have been put on a prohibited list of readings they would have been banned, or better still censored. But, because they were already there and ripped from the sight of students, they were removed.

Tucson eliminates Mexican American History

Arizona School District Wipes Latino American History Off the Map

- Common Dreams staff

A catastrophe in slow motion has played out in Arizona schools over the last several years as anti-immigrant sentiment crept into state legislation guiding how and what kind of Mexican American and indigenous history could be taught in classrooms across the southwestern border state.  What may have seemed absurd until recently is now a reality as boxes of banned books will now be gathered up and locked away.

UPDATED on 1/18/12: Jeff Biggers updates his previous reporting after the Tuscon Unified School District responded to various reports of books being banned in Arizona schools:

In a clarification of last Friday’s announcement of a list of Mexican American Studies books to “be cleared from all classrooms” in order to comply with a state ban on ethnic studies, the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) declared Tuesday that it ”has not banned any books as has been widely and incorrectly reported.”

But, Biggers continues, opponents were not satisfied with TUSD's explanation:

The TUSD statement “lacks accuracy and represents a thinly veiled attempt to cover up with distortions what is happening,” said Richard Martinez, the lead attorney on behalf of teachers and students challenging the ban in federal court.  “Pandora’s box has been opened and the ugly face of the bigoted right wing has been exposed for what it is: an attempt to keep Latinos, poor, dumb and abused.”

Whether the removal of the books from all classrooms should be considered an outright ban or a possibly temporary prohibition brought little comfort to supporters of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program, who sponsored an emotional community forum last Saturday with students and teachers who had witnessed the forced removal of the books from their classrooms.

Acuña- Arizona and the Struggle Before Us

In this installment of our multi-part series on the struggle to defend ethnic studies in Arizona, ethnic studies pioneer Dr. Rodolfo Acuña, author of Occupied America, talks to CultureStrike’s Michelle Chen about what the ongoing debate over Tucson’s Mexican-American Studies program says about deeper currents of America’s history and political culture.

 Michelle Chen: You made public statements last year warning that the crackdown on ethnic studies in Tucson was a harbinger of things to come (see this previous interview with Jeff Biggers). Since then, we’ve seen the legal and political war on ethnic studies intensify, culminating in the “book ban,” along with a slew of other anti-immigrant policies from the state legislature. In your view, have those earlier fears been borne out in the last few months?

Rodolfo Acuña: Yes, they unfortunately were borne out. What many don’t understand is that Arizona is a much more fertile test ground from the right than places like Wisconsin or Ohio where there is a long tradition and trade union movement. The press in Arizona is much more reactionary and money via the Koch Brothers and other special interests gets much more for the buck. Consequently ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), the Tea Party, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, et al can control the legal system. It does not help that the White House is spineless and does not enforce the Constitution. It will get worse because there are no brakes. Mexicans don’t count for much–even among the Left.

The Purge of Mexican Americans in Tucson schools

by Salomón Baldenegro 
Estimadas/os: First, let’s get the media-driven nonsense out of the way: “Ethnic Studies” was not dismantled in the Tucson UnifiedSchool District. Mexican American Studies was dismantled. It is the Mexican American community whose legitimacy in this country is being challenged. It is the history and contributions of the Mexican American community that are being de-valued by the concerted attack on our community by the Mexican haters and their enablers. All the other “ethnic studies” curricula in TUSD are intact and functioning—and “legal.”

The other bit of nonsense we need to get out of the way is the fiction—purveyed most recently in the Arizona Daily Star’s editorial of Sunday, January 15—that TUSD did what it had to do, that it really had no choice but to dismantle Mexican American Studies.

The indisputable fact of the matter is that TUSD had a choice: to go along with the Mexican haters Horne and Huppenthal or appeal Huppenthal’s decision, which would have put a hold on the threatened financial penalties on TUSD until the issue was resolved in court. TUSD made the conscious and deliberate choice to support Huppenthal.

Now to the matter of TUSD’s Mexican Purge:

The Purging of the Mexicans has begun in earnest in TUSD, one day after the pusillanimous TUSD school board, led by its chief Mexican hater Mark Stegeman, voted 4-1 to join hands withTom Horne and John Huppenthal and dismantle the Mexican American Studies curriculum.

Students forced to witness the Purge

The very next day after its nefarious vote, while classes were in session, TUSD conducted a purge of any and all books and teaching materials having to do with Mexican Americans and/or that deal with topics that are banned (e.g., civil rights) from MAS classrooms. Award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers reports that,

“According to district spokeperson Cara Rene, the books ‘will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage.’ ”

(The link below takes you to Biggers’ article in Salon.)

TUSD teachers and students who witnessed the purging of the books corroborate what Biggers reports. (Below is a link to a Three Sonorans article that contains relevant video about this.)