The bill that Brewer signed today “prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.”

The Tuscon School district offers a Mexican-American studies program, in addition to courses in Native-American and African-American studies. The  focus is on ethnic history, literature, and information about the influences of these particular groups. However, law makers who promoted the bill believe that these courses teach students that they are oppressed by whites.

I’m a product of public schools that did not have ethnic studies, but I remember as a young high school student that I was always eager to read books by Hispanic authors such as Rudolfo Anaya, Ana Castillo, or even the great Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and was ready to immerse myself in the studies about my culture. I sought it out on my own, and fortunately, my parents encouraged it. But many students don’t have those resources or parents who encourage discovery and learning about their culture in addition to exploring other ethnic groups and traditions.

Regardless of what one thinks about ethnic studies and whether it is a valuable discipline or not, completely shutting these courses down may do more harm than good. I was able to speak with Cindy Mosqueda, a Ph.D. student in higher education and blogger at Loteria Chicana. Mosqueda was a Chicano studies student at UCLA as an undergraduate, and she indicated that in her experience ethnic studies was not about teaching ethnic superiority nor was it a continual lesson in being oppressed.

Mosqueda expressed, “In fact in fact, we were encouraged to take classes outside the department, and I got to know students of other ethnicities better that way.”

While I have never formally immersed myself in ethnic studies from an academic perspective, I can appreciate the teaching of different ethnic traditions and the notion that there should be multiple points of view taught in the public schools. We have never been a ‘one curriculum fits all nation’, and completely shutting down these ethnic studies courses might turn off students who are marginal students — the ones who might benefit from learning about their history and reading the works of authors from their ethnic group. The generic public school curriculum is boring enough as it is. The history books already censor and omit so much that shutting down ethnic studies is a small minded solution for Arizona’s public school children. With the signing of this bill, Governor Jan Brewer ratcheted up the level of scrutiny her state will face from all who care about diversity and equitable policy.

But I was particularly struck by this passage on p. 42:

“Not only are Latinos thriving in this country, but we’ve actually become avant-garde–we’re “where it’s at!” Everyone else wants to be like us. How else could salsa have become the new ketchup? Why else would folks in Kentucky celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

Not only is everyone eating our food, they’re learning our parents’ language, they’re listening to our music, they’re dancing our dances. Take a trip to Adams Morgan, a trendy Washington, D.C. neighborhood, and you can get ten-dollar salsa lessons from an excellent instructor–who happens to be Persian! The new salseros are people who don’t have so much as a Latin twig in their family trees.

Gone are the days when Hispanic actors like Ramon Estevez (now known as Martin Sheen) changed their names to fit into the American mainstream. Americans are eagerly watching and reading about famous Hispanics, whether it’s J-Lo in the NY Post’s Page Six, the accomplished A-Rod in the sports section, the powerful Carlos Gutierrez in the business section, or Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on page one.”

I don’t think that everyone wants to be like “us,” especially those of us who are incarcerated at higher rates than whites, experience dropping out of high school at alarming rates, and are tail spinning into foreclosure because we have been sold higher interest loans, specifically for “us.”

I become more discouraged by Ms. Sanchez’s insinuations that we are so hip because we have music and dances that the mainstream is finally taking note of. So what? All cultures have their own food, dances, and music. These cultural characteristics could easily not be in favor with whomever finds them fashionable tomorrow or next year. Eating our foods, dancing our dances, and listening to our music cannot be equated with “wanting to be like us” or living our struggles.

And then, this whole bit about “gone are the days when actors changed their names.” That may be the case on a certain level, but we still aren’t represented very well in Hollywood within the acting and film production ranks. And then there’s this ingrained notion among many in the entertainment elite that we Latinos must be downtrodden or live in barrios. We can’t possibly be portrayed in characters other than those showing us as exotic spitfires, cholos, or maids. Just read the referenced blog post by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, and you will sense the frustration that our creative community is feeling because our stories don’t quite fit into the “American mainstream” or the stereotype that studio executives think will sell for the masses.

And don’t get me started on J.Lo. This book was published in 2007. I don’t think that J.Lo has dominated tabloid news for the past couple of years.

Alberto Gonzales on the front page?! Yeah, he really made me proud last year. Accusations of perjury and being GWB’s lapdog endear former attorney general Alberto Gonzales to me and the rest of the American public. The Department of Justice has been left in shambles thanks to this guy.

So there you have it, the nearest book! I’ll be writing more about Los Republicanos in the future. I think that we all needed a break from presidential politics for a day or two.

In regards to chapter 5, Reluctant allies in the classroom, I noticed that you don’t touch on higher education. I think that in the higher education realm blacks have achieved more than Latinos have and do an even better job of nurturing their own leadership in the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Latinos don’t have their own institutions of higher learning, except for National Hispanic University and Boricua College. We do have Hispanic Serving Institutions, which is a designation based on the percentage of Latino enrollment, but many of these colleges have only recently become “HSIs”. In the past few years, more Latinos have been enrolling in the HCBUs, as it referenced in this article:
http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_4781.shtml

What role if any do you perceive the black colleges having in exploring our issues, leadership strategies and skills to build more successful coalitions that can transcend from the academy into “the real world?”

I’m not optimistic at least in the short run that Black Colleges will do much in the area of black and Latino relations, not to mention examining leadership and strategies for coalition building.

1. Their focus is almost exclusively on funding, attracting more black and white students, and maintaining a standard teaching curriculum.

2. They are not innovative, cutting edge centers of social and political issues analysis and exploration.

3. Black and Latino relations are still too new, evolving, and controversial.

In terms of coalition building, I think that the Latino leadership can learn from the blacks again. The NAACP is already fighting for the rights of Hispanic citizens in West Virginia regarding racial profiling as local law enforcement teams up with ICE. http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=66668Do you see any efforts on behalf of the NAACP or the Urban League to team up with NCLR and its network to expand their advocacy efforts?

No, West Virginia and a handful of other places are still the rare exception. In time,  that may change. But these organizations are still for the most part rooted in the old civil rights (black and white) advocacy and activist mode. How fast that changes, will also depend on the willingness of Latino leaders and organizations to reach out to the traditional civil rights groups on issues from failing public schools to voter empowerment. I haven’t seen that happen to any appreciable extent.