Ethnic Studies Week, October 1-7

Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)

Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies and, Along With it, Reason and Justice Randall Amster | Tuesday 28 December 2010


While much condemnation has rightly been expressed toward Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, a less-reported and potentially more sinister measure is set to take effect on January 1, 2011. This new law, which was passed by the conservative state legislature at the behest of then-School Superintendent (and now Attorney General-elect) Tom Horne, is designated HB 2281 and is colloquially referred to as a measure to ban ethnic studies programs in the state. As with SB 1070, the implications of this law are problematic, wide-ranging and decidedly hate filled.

Whereas SB 1070 focused primarily on the ostensible control of bodies, HB 2281 is predominantly about controlling minds. In this sense, it is the software counterpart of Arizona's race-based politicking, paired with the hardware embodied in SB 1070's "show us your papers" logic of "attrition through enforcement," which has already resulted in tens of thousands of people leaving the state. With HB 2281, the intention is not so much to expel or harass as it is to inculcate a deep-seated, second-class status by denying people the right to explore their own histories and cultures. It is, in effect, about the eradication of ethnic identity among young people in the state's already-floundering school system, which now ranks near the bottom in the nation.

There's a word for what Arizona is attempting to do here: ethnocide. It is similar to genocide in its scope, but it reflects the notion that it is an ethnic and/or cultural identity under assault more so than physical bodies themselves. By imposing a curriculum that forbids the exploration of divergent cultures while propping up the dominant one, there's another process at work here, what we might call ethnonormativity. This takes the teachings of one culture - the colonizer's - and makes it the standard version of history while literally banning other accounts, turning the master narrative into the "normal" one, and further denigrating marginalized perspectives. America's racialized past abounds with such examples of oppressed people being denied their languages, histories and cultures, including through enforced indoctrination in school systems.

As if to add insult to injury, HB 2281 barely makes a pretense to hide any of this in its language and intended scope. A close reading of the law lays bare some of the more stark and sinister aspects of its potential application in a state where Hispanic students fill nearly half the seats in the public schools (the domain to which HB 2281 will apply). In particular, there are three primary aspects of the law that merit further investigation as contributing factors to the ongoing erasure of ethnic identities and the further marginalization of people of color in Arizona.

First, there is the perverse Declaration of Policy preamble, in which the legislature expresses its intention that pupils "should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals," and likewise, "not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." The irony here is palpable, since SB 1070 precisely singles out "races or classes of people" in its coded language, requiring police to demand legal papers from anyone who is deemed "reasonably suspicious" of being undocumented - which, in the Southwest, obviously correlates with skin color and ethnic origin. Moreover, HB 2281 itself was aimed specifically at abolishing the Raza studies program in Tucson (as well as all ethnic studies programs statewide), which translates literally to "race" as noted in the working definition adopted by the program at San Francisco State University:

"The term Raza literally means race or colloquially, the people. The term figuratively has reference to the Spanish conquest of the indigenous Indians of Mexico and the resulting mestizaje or the mixed racial and ethnic identity of indigenous, European and African heritage unique to the Americas. In practical usage, the term Raza refers to mestizos or mixed peoples; we have the blood of the conquered and conqueror, indigenous, (i.e., Aztec, Mayan, Olmec, Yaqui, Zapotec and numerous other Native Americans), European, African and Asian. The term Raza was popularized by Mexican educator, Jose Vasconcellos who wrote about La Raza Cosmica to inclusively refer to a new 'race' of people born out of the neo-Columbian New World."

In this sense, we come to perceive the aim of banning ethnic studies as an attempt to single out the histories and cultures of certain people based expressly on race and class. While the Arizona legislature states its intention to prevent resentment and hatred of others, the new law fosters precisely that and, in denying people their histories, further encourages self-hatred as well. Indeed, people kept from knowing where they come from have a difficult time knowing where they are going, creating a self-fulfilling downward spiral that is common where people are categorized and labeled as "other" and/or "lesser" vis-à-vis the dominant norm. As such, we see that HB 2281 actually violates its own provisions by promoting that which it claims to eliminate.

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The second critical aspect concerns the law's main prohibitions against any education programs that (1) "promote the overthrow of the United States government," (2) "promote resentment toward a race or class of people," (3) "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group" and (4) "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." The problems here are manifest, starting with the reflexively implicit link to terrorism contained in the first provision - as if to say that ethnic solidarity is somehow akin to attempting to overthrow the government. The third provision is even more problematic in its potential implications, since a plausible argument can be made that the entire mainstream public education curriculum is precisely designed for pupils of a particular ethnic group - namely the dominant, white, Eurocentric group that defines its history and worldview as the "nor mal" or "standard" ones against which subaltern perspectives are to be judged as deviant and, under HB 2281, banned.

The fourth provision does double duty in prioritizing individualism over group-centric processes, reflecting another deeply-rooted cultural bias and projecting it back as the norm. The libertarian and individualistic foundations of Western culture are viewed as iconic in Arizona, and it is no coincidence that the more communitarian impulses of Raza peoples are denigrated as politically dangerous and pedagogically bereft. Again, the worldview of the oppressor is normalized in its rugged individualism and attempts to break down any movement toward solidarity and unified action among people of the disfavored class. This also expresses contemptuous judgment toward solidarity-based movements grown in the Western world, including the rise of union organizing, anti-globalization and antiwar activism and the mobilizations of people against totalitarianism in the Eastern bloc nations. What the Arizona legislature completely fails to grasp is that individual identity arises out of cultural consciousness - in other words, that it is ethnic solidarity in itself that provides people with the grounding necessary to know who they are as individuals.

Finally, HB 2281 contains an exemption for teaching students about episodes such as the Holocaust; genocides; and "the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race, or class." In essence, combined with the provisions noted above, this means that students of a particular group can be taught about their history of subjugation, but not about their spirit of solidarity; they can focus on their decimation, but not their emancipation. This sinister portion of the bill strives to reinforce pain at the expense of pride, encouraging young people to internalize the oppression delivered by the dominant culture and make it part of their self-consciousness as "other" in a world whose norms are built on the inherent superiority of the master class. Thus, the law seeks not only to prevent the teaching of histories and values that might empower marginalized people, but further endorses the transmission of destructive ep isodes and ideologies that can only serve to increase the group's collective disempowerment.

In all of these ways, HB 2281 is a potent example of legislative bigotry and open persecution of people based on factors such as race and class. As with SB 1070, HB 2281 is also self-violating in that it promotes precisely what it claims to prohibit, namely, ethnic chauvinism and "resentment toward a race or class of people." Both of these laws - as well as similar ones in the offing being considered by the Arizona legislature - are entirely counterproductive and manifestly unjust. Confronting similar patterns of legislated intolerance and the widespread attempt to reduce a category of people to second-class status based primarily on ethnic origin, Martin Luther King Jr. famously wrote in his landmark essay "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," following the teachings of St. Augustine, that "an unjust law is no law at all." King further reminds us, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," calling upon us to recognize the interlinked nature of destinies and, indeed, the inherent solidarity of our struggles, and further counsels that in this effort "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

Carrying the logic further, King articulates a framework for resistance that applies as much in Arizona today as it did in the South during the Jim Crow era:

"Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an 'I it' relationship for an 'I thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.... An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey, but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal.... A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that ... had no part in enacting or devising the law.... We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fi ghters did in Hungary was 'illegal.'"

By denying marginalized peoples their own stories and understandings, HB 2281 likewise denies the "conquerors" the capacity to come to terms with the full implications of history, thus, literally enabling the perpetuation of a state of "denial" that inhibits the development of necessary processes of atonement, accountability and reconciliation. As with laws associated with segregationist and tyrannical regimes throughout history, HB 2281 and SB 1070 are inherently unjust and, hence, are "no laws at all." They must be disobeyed, not out of spite or hatred, but more so to uplift the oppressors and the oppressed alike, as Paulo Freire has suggested. In this sense, solidarity transcends its narrow bounds and the struggle itself is our finest education.

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The Ethnic Cleansing of American Ethnic Studies By Larry Yu
Posted in Features, Volume 37 No. 17 Larry Yu works with the Portland-based organization Thymos, as well as the Asian American Movement E-Zine blog. He is a second-generation Chinese American who grew up in the midwest and now resides in Oregon.  

“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past” — George Orwell

The state of Arizona is known for many notable attractions: the majestic Grand Canyon, the scenic desert landscapes, luxurious vacation resorts, and more recently, thinly concealed examples of educational whitewashing.

Arizona, after all, is home not only to SB 1070, a law that will effectively authorize the racist profiling of certain classes of people (read: Latinos and to an extent Asians) under the guise of addressing undocumented immigration, but also other legislation such as HB 2281, a law that will effectively ban ethnic studies programs in that state.

In a similar move, the Arizona Department of Education is also imposing a policy of removing teachers who speak with “heavily accented” or “ungrammatical English” from classes for beginning English students.

Like SB 1070 and the immigration issue, Arizona’s educational policies seem to reflect disturbing wider trends that America is embracing. For instance in May 2010, the Texas State Board of Education approved an altered social studies and history curriculum that some have said involves the rewriting of US history.

These changes include dropping explicit mention of the slave trade in favor of using the descriptive euphemism “the Atlantic triangular trade”; focusing on the positive contributions of pro-slavery Confederate leaders; adding a more benevolent spin on the McCarthyism era; and even promoting country/western music over rap/hip hop.

The impact of these changes reverberates beyond Texas itself, given the state’s massive size and share in the educational market. Texas’ textbook purchases thus influence what publishers print, and many other states even utilize textbooks written for the Texas curriculum.

What’s going on here, and what is at stake in these issues?

Though often couched behind disingenuous rhetoric, Arizona’s attack on ethnic studies in particular represents a broader attempt to silence educational programs that question mainstream perspectives on history, race, politics, or Americanism itself.

The formal language of HB 2281 states that: A School District or Charter School in this state shall not include in its program of instruction any courses or classes that include any of the following:

• Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

• Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

While seemingly innocuous in word, HB 2281 in practice is targeted against ethnic studies classes from the secondary school to college levels throughout Arizona, and particularly against the Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Chicano studies program. Not surprisingly, one leading supporter of this legislation is the same Arizona state senator who authored SB 1070, Russell Pearce. And another champion of HB 2281 is Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, who has a long-held animus against the Tucson program.

Indeed, on the Arizona Department of Education website, Horne specifically and repeatedly criticizes TUSD’s Chicano studies program for transgressions like teaching students “the belief that there is a war against Latino culture perpetrated by the white, racist, capitalist system”; that “the United States was and still is a fundamentally racist country in nature, whose interests are contrary to those of Mexican-American kids”; and “there is a concerted effort on the part of a white power structure to suppress them and relegate them to a second-class existence.”

In short, Horne’s opposition to ethnic studies in general and Chicano studies in particular is largely based upon the fact that these programs raise issues of American oppression, racism, and exploitation.

Indeed, this is the underlying and unspoken reason why most adversaries of ethnic studies are hostile to the discipline.

Ethnic studies, it should be remembered, was a product of the political activism of the 1960s and 1970s in which minority students began to question the Eurocentric basis of American education in terms of its essential institutional mission, content, and organization.

As such, students launched protests at schools like UC-Berkeley and San Francisco State University to advocate for the creation of ethnic studies programs that reflected the experiences and interests of minority students and their communities, which had been either neglected or repressed by academia.

Ethnic studies thus represents a challenge to mainstream academic disciplines and is often inspired by student activism in a manner that is perceived as threatening by the American establishment.

Moreover, the struggle over ethnic studies reflects the larger “culture war” that has been raging since the 1960s era. This war is fundamentally a conflict between mainstream and minority worldviews and frequently involves questions of race, ethnicity, and power in the USA.

Who has the power to decide academic curricula and classroom content?

Who determines standards of scholarship, teaching, and student achievement?

Who receives funding and institutional support, and who does not?

Whose version of history is taught in schools?

In short, who has the power, and whose interests does this power serve?

These questions will become even more pertinent as the demographic composition of America changes. According to some projections, white people will no longer be the majority in the US by 2042.

For many, this demographic decline conjures fears about the end of white hegemony in institutions ranging from politics to culture to education.

At one level, the attack on ethnic studies in Arizona, the culture war, and the rising tide of American nativism against immigrants can thus be understood as symptoms of a broader political backlash against the multiculturalization of the US itself.

Speaking in Tongues: Bilingual Education and Immigrant Communities by: Yana Kunichoff, t r u t h o u t | Report

"America has evolved for the better. She will pretty much meet you on your terms. In fact, I think she has finally come to the conclusion that Blacks, Mexicans, Indians, etc. are here to stay. And the only way to perceive them is to accept them and their existence as valid. Acceptance, that's really the key word. America is accepting all the people, as one people, the way it was meant to be. Today, at least, you can afford to be yourself."

- Maria, a Hispanic social worker, quoted in Rachel F. Moran's 1987 California Law Review article

"We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as American, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."

- Theodore Roosevelt

These two vastly differing quotes show the divisive nature of bilingual education in our society - is it the natural representation of the functional and celebrated diversity of America, or is it an insidious wedge guaranteed only to sow rancor?

The recent swipes at education by Arizona's legislature - including a planto remove all ethnic studies programs by 2011 - came on the heels of its restrictive immigration bill, SB1070, and many advocate say this is no coincidence.

Dr. Roberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona and regular columnist on immigrant rights issues, says that Arizona's stance against immigrants "is not a new phenomenon," but that many people do not realize it had its roots in education policies.

"What's new is that it's simply combined with other things," Rodriguez said of the anti-immigrant sentiment. Spanish "was usually language non grata, now it's the language and the skin color and the person."

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As the most recent numbers from the Institute for Language and Education Policy show, the experience of bilingual students is not to be ignored. In the 2004-05 school year, about 5.12 million students were emergent bilinguals, which meant they were learning their second language. This was about 10.5 percent of the total pre-school to 12th grade population, an increase of over 110 percent in the last fifteen years. Enrollments of emergent bilinguals are increasing seven times more rapidly than general enrollments.

However, this growth is not tied entirely to recent immigration. The majority of emergent bilinguals at both primary and secondary levels of education are born in the United States: the figures for the former are 77 percent, and 56 percent for the latter. Of these, the majority, between 75 and 80 percent, speak Spanish as their native language.

A Very Brief History of Bilingual Education in America

The history of bilingual education has always been tied up with national feeling towards immigrants - in Chicago, during the 19th century, school was originally taught in German. Though there were some failed attempts to require all public schools in Illinois to teach English, such as the short-lived Edwards Law of 1889, the reaction from immigrant families kept English education at bay. It was only after the U.S. entry into World War 1 and the strong anti-German sentiment that removed bilingual education from Illinois schools, according to the Chicago Encyclopedia.

The next big fight over bilingual education was for what would eventually become the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, the first piece of United States federal legislation regarding minority language speakers. Its purpose was to provide school districts with federal funds to establish educational programs for students with limited English speaking ability.

It consolidated gains that were fought for by schools and the Chicano movement in the Southwest and West during the riotous 1960s to gain educational equality, and was clarified by an additional civil rights case, Lau V. Nichols, in 1974. This case was brought by Chinese American students in San Francisco who claimed that, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they were entitled to special help because if their difficulty with the English language. They won the suit and helped set the precedent for bilingual funding and allowances, and legitimized the idea that students learning English had specific educational rights.

However, the picture today is somewhat different. No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era education reform, replaced the act in 2002.

Disparities in immigrant populations, funding and political approaches to bilingual education ensure that bilingual children across the country experience similar disparities in the "welcome" of their educational environment.

A recent American Federation of Teachers report found that 60 percent of emergent bilinguals are educated in English-only programs, and of these students 12 percent receive no additional support at all in learning English, which in many cases may be a violation of federal law.

In addition to the federal money received, only 33 states provide extra funding for language programs, twenty-four do not require additional funding be spent on emergent bilinguals in specific and ten states spend $0 on emergent bilingual education.

These numbers also mask huge disparities in distribution. Only five states - California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois - were the home of 68 percent of all emergent bilinguals, the 2000 Census found. Meanwhile, the rate of growth seen between 1990 and 2000 in Nevada, Nebraska, South Dakota, Georgia, Arkansas and Oregon was more than 200 percent.

Anti-Immigrant Legislation

In 1992, in the Arizona border town of Nogales, a number of plaintiffs brought a lawsuit, Flores v. Arizona against the school district, accusing it of not allotting enough money or qualified staff to emergent bilingual programs. A series of rulings has ordered the state legislatures to increase state funding for language education, but the Republican-controlled state House and Arizona Department of Education (ADE) have consistently fought the measure.

As a response to a recent ruling, ADE and the legislature have said they will allocate $400 million more in funding - which equates to $250 per student, according to Jeff Bale, a professor of language and language education in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University and former public educator - if schools implement Structured English immersion. This new model separates emergent bilinguals from their peers and immerses them in English-only instruction.

A court challenge to this succeeded in declaring the funding for the model insufficient, but ADE appealed to the Supreme Court who head the case in June 2009 but then returned it to the lower courts, which according to Bale effectively means "leaving the central issues in legal limbo."

Arizona is not the only state whose legislature advocated against comprehensive bilingual education - California's 1998 Prop. 227 required all public school instruction to be in English - but it has taken its fight to a new degree.

Arizona's HB 2281 has banned the school district from offering any courses that are designed for students primarily of a certain race, as well as courses that "promote the overthrow of the US government ... or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals" - at the risk of losing up to ten percent of their funding. The state has also told schools state-wide that teachers with "heavy" or "ungrammatical" accents are no longer allowed to teach English classes.

For the average first- or second-generation immigrant child in Arizona, Rodriguez, said, "What they are receiving is very hostile messages."

"I'm not so much of a bilingual education proponent just for the sake of it," Rodriguez said. "Any program can be good given the right climate - absent racism and hostility. As a method I think most of us know that bilingual education and dual immersion are the best, but if you have hate all around you it doesn't matter - you are still going to get bombarded. A conducive environment is important over any method."

The View from the Ground

A report by the Urban Institute in 2005 found that 70 percent of emergent bilinguals nationwide are concentrated in only 10 percent of schools, the majority of which are in urban and poor areas. Therefore, according to Jeff Bale, this "super-segregation" means that schools with an emergent bilingual population of 25 percent or more have 77 percent of students of color, of which more than half are Latino. More than three-quarters of these students received free or reduced-price school lunches, a federal measure of poverty and highlighting the fact that an estimated 75 percent of emergent bilinguals are poor.

In schools where more than 25 percent of the students are emergency bilinguals, only 52 percent of teachers are fully certified, compared to 76 percent in other schools, the Urban Institute Report noted. Of the 43 percent of teachers with emergent bilinguals in their classroom (1.2 million teachers), only 11 percent were fully certified in bilingual education, 18 percent in English as a second language and 15 percent fluent in another language. On average, Bale noted, in the past five years the teachers had received an average of four hours of in-service training in working with emergent bilinguals.

There are many varying models of bilingual education. The predominant model in the U.S. is transitional bilingual education. This theory is based on the idea that children acquire fluency in a second language most easily by acquiring fluency in their native language, and most often targets students between Kindergarten and third grade. At first, the home language is used 90 percent of the time and English 10 percent of the time, until by 3rd grade the ratios have been reversed.

Bale said, "This approach to English language learning has as its goal English language acquisition, not developing the home language. In practice, these models are meant only for language minority students. As such, they are predicated on a deficit model, that is, that non-English proficiency is a problem to remediate through temporary bilingual education."

Less common are maintenance or development models, which are based on maintaining proficiency in the student's home language which also developing literacy and proficiency in the second language. This model is known as dual language, and schools using this approach also integrate English-only speaking students to learn with emergent bilinguals.

However, the benefits for students of both these approaches come up against the bulwark of standardized testing, which is administered only in English. Under the 2001 reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), all high-stakes testing must be done in English.

While NCLB increased overall federal support for bilingual education by $500 million, the testing requirement resulted in a shift to English-only approaches aimed at test scores.

NCLB's use of testing measures as a way to allocate Title 1, or additional, funding only exacerbates the likelihood that schools with emergent bilinguals will continue to have teacher with less training. Competitive grants under President Barack Obama's Race to the Top program may further increase this inequality.

When the testing measure was first introduced in Chicago in 2008, Arne Duncan, then CEO of Chicago Public Schools and now U.S. Secretary of Education, said, "We'll have some zeros. It's heart-breaking."

Eric Gutstein, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Education and former mathematics teacher, said, "If your home language is not the language that the test is in, it is inevitable that you will be slower, so the data is clear that students whose home language is not English do not score as well on the test. There is plenty of evidence that the tests are used to keep people out of all kinds of things."

The disparities faced by English-language learners in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) can be seen in the overall performance of the district, said Diane Zendejas, chief officer of the Office of Language and Cultural Education.

In 2007, about 45 percent of the 4,500 students who transitioned out of bilingual education in CPS met the three-year benchmark, compared to 70 percent in the rest of the state. An investigation by the education newsmagazine Catalyst also found that, in 2006, 71 percent of students who transitioned out of bilingual programs two years earlier still failed to meet reading standards and 60 percent failed to meet math standards. Statewide, the rates for reading and math standards failure of transitioned students are 53 percent and 35 percent, respectively.

What Bilingual Education Brings to the Table

Gutstein said the treatment of English-language learners - "The idea that we know that people come to a new country and they don't speak the language and they are punched in a setting where they cannot continue to learn" - is an example of language discrimination.

"The main thing is that research on bilingual education is pretty clear - to be competent in a second language takes years in the school system," Gutstein continued. "People's home languages are not a problem, they are a resource to draw on."

Dr. Danette Maldonado, principal of the Wharton K-8 Dual Language Academy in Houston, Texas, said that much of the reason she thought educators blocked more liberal bilingual policies was because of their misunderstanding of literacy attainment versus speech attainment. At a young age, Maldonado said, children "are not really learning, they are actually acquiring," which means that it is a chance for them to become fluent in two languages.

Because "Texas is getting brown [in people] and grayer" economically, "it's an imperative that we prepare these children to be brilliant," regardless of their status or linguistic background, Maldonado said. Her school is about 50/50 native Spanish speakers and students who are native English speakers, or have other languages as their home language.

Bale, who was a public educator before becoming a professor, also asserted that most linguistic research agrees on the benefits of bilingual education. He also noted the unexplored benefits of being in a bilingual environment: "It is important to underscore that no recent research comparing English-only versus bilingual models has found English-only approaches to be more effective at teaching English. In fact, most program model comparisons have shown bilingual models to be more effective for acquisition of English. Moreover, no accepted body of research recognizes the validity of teaching language by reducing the language to specific aspects of grammar, which is the model in Arizona discussed in the previous section."

He also noted a particular contradiction in the way language is taught, one he found particularly stark when he worked as a public school teacher in Arizona. At this school, Bale taught students who had recently moved from Mexico while in an adjacent building, English-speaking students were learning Spanish as a second language, but because there was no infrastructure set up the students were not able to share their insights and experiences with each other.

"Of course, there are long-standing elite programs in bilingual education as well. Such programs are often set up in private schools, or as magnet programs within public systems, and target English monolinguals as their main audience. These programs speak to the schizophrenic nature of language education in the United States," Bale said. "Foreign language" education, i.e. English monolinguals learning additional languages at school whether through bilingual models or not, has existed for over 100 years as a gatekeeping project to get into university. Students who enter school, however, already fluent in a non-English language, are construed as a problem, at times even an outright threat. The balance of the twelve years of schooling functions to rob students of their language and replace it with academic English."

The prevailing rhetoric often assumes that immigrants push for bilingual education because they are not interested in learning English. For Margarita, a secretary at the Wharton Dual Language Academy in Houston and Mexican immigrant, this is not the case at all.

Margarita waived bilingual education for her three America-born children, opting instead to help her children learn and master their Spanish at home.

Through the interpretation of Maldonado, Margarita, who has been in the United States 27 years, said that while she did not choose the bilingual path for her family, she nevertheless thought it was essential that families have the choice of bilingual education.

According to Maldonado, about 10 percent of bilingual families opt out of bilingual education in Texas.

To ensure that the choice exists, Bale says it is essential for two groups who do not traditionally work together to join forces. The immigrant rights movement and the education movement must join forces, he said.

In the classroom, "The most important thing teachers can do is make direct connections between what they teach and how they teach and make a movement, connected to outside struggle. See that the interplay between attacks on language rights in school and broader attacks on immigrant rights is noted."

"The education of emergent bilingual students remains misunderstood in large part because so little attention is paid to how past movement against racism and for immigrant rights have improved the education of all children, but especially of emergent bilingual students," Bale said. "While effective classroom practices and sympathetic policies matter, they wilt in the face of segregation, racism and attacks on immigrant rights."


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Published on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org Todos Somos (We Are All) Raza Studies by Roberto Rodriguez

The lines have been drawn. Or rather, the date has been set and the countdown has begun. If Arizona State Schools Superintendent Tom Horne has his way, after Dec 31, 2010, Tucson Unified School District’s highly successful Mexican American Studies K-12 department will cease to exist.

Despite Gov. Jan Brewer having signed HB 2281, the anti-Ethnic Studies measure – in May of this year – supporters have good reason to feel confident that on Jan 1, Raza Studies will be alive and well.

The measure bans schools from teaching hate, anti-Americanism and the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Horne, 2281’s “intellectual author,” claims that Raza Studies advocates these things, and promotes “ethnic solidarity” and results in racial segregation in schools.

The Draconian measure and Orwellian effort does not call for the outright elimination of Raza/Ethnic Studies. Instead, it calls for the withdrawing of 10% of district funds every month that a program is found to be out of compliance. For TUSD, that would amount to  $3 million per month, a sum it can ill-afford to lose.

The day after 2281 was signed and after Horne threatened to show up to TUSD headquarters to do a victory lap – hundreds upon hundreds of K-16 students and community activists laid siege to both TUSD headquarters and then later the state building, resulting in 15 arrests. During this siege, TUSD’s Board of Governors issued a May 14 statement from the acting superintendent. In its entirety, it reads:

“TUSD proudly supports our Ethnic Studies classes. We have no plans to eliminate or reduce course offerings. We believe these courses are relevant, engaging, meet state standards and are in full compliance with the law. Additionally, they are part our unitary status plan. We stand firmly behind our Ethnic Studies Department, staff members and students.”

The statements are a clear indication that if the program is ruled out of compliance, it will be the anti-thesis of local control and the epitome of foreign [state] intervention. His goal – as he has repeatedly stated – is to rule Raza Studies out of compliance and to eliminate it by the end of the year.

As a result, a historic lawsuit against Tom Horne is forthcoming. The consensus amongst Tucson’s Mexican American community is that come Jan. 3, Raza Studies will be fully operational – continuing to educate and inspire minds and continuing its successful mission of preparing its students to attend colleges and universities nationwide. This program is virtually an anti-dropout program (more than a 90% graduation rate) and more than that, it is now virtually a college student factory (upwards of 70%). But Horne doesn’t care about that. Instead, his primary concern is ensuring that only Greco-Roman knowledge – the purported basis for Western Civilization – is taught in Arizona schools.

Raza Studies grounds students in Critical Thinking, and in  Indigenous Pedagogies – on maiz-based or Maya-Nahua knowledge(s) that is thousands-of-years old and that originates on this very continent. Despite this, Horne and his legislative allies claim that Raza Studies is un-American. In court, Horne will have his hands full in defining these terms. Can things that originate in Greece and Rome be considered American, while knowledge that originates on the American continent be considered  un-American and not part of Western Civilization.

The measure makes a clumsy attempt to isolate Raza Studies; it allows for the teaching of the Holocaust and purportedly exempts both American Indian Studies classes [required by federal law] and African American Studies classes [that are open to everyone). These are false exemptions because all Ethnic Studies classes are open to everyone and there are no American Indian Ethnic Studies classes required by federal law.  Despite this, the measure appears to be a clear discriminatory effort to eliminate Raza Studies.

In the realm of definitions – will maiz-based knowledge also be ruled as not Indigenous or “American Indian”?

The forthcoming lawsuit will be historic in nature. Think Monkey Scopes Trial or Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. What happens here in Arizona will set a legal precedent of not simply what can be taught in public schools – but also whether states have the right to restrict, censor, dictate, intimidate and overrule what  districts and educators can teach in local schools.

HB 2281 is the epitome of [cultural] mind control or forced assimilation. Ultimately, the struggle – as depicted in the in the forthcoming Precious Knowledge documentary (http://vimeo.com/15062646 ) -- is about the inherent right – also enshrined in treaties and international laws – of children to learn about their own histories and cultures. At TUSD, it is about the right of all children to learn about these histories and cultures and thus the forthcoming lawsuit (Saveethnicstudies.org). 

Notes:
A national mobilization in support of TUSD’s Raza Studies is currently underway and the primary focus of National Ethnic Studies Week. For more information, go to: http://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/

A National conference on hate, censorship & Forbidden Curriculums will take place at The University of Arizona Dec 2-4. For info: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/ or: rodrigu7@email.arizona.edu or

 

Roberto Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona and a member of the Mexican American Studies Community Advisory Board, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com

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University of Minnesota, African American Studies Professor

Rose Brewer

 

The right wing educational attack in Arizona expressed in the May 11 passage of HB 2281 banning the teaching of Ethnic Studies in all levels of education, k-12 through Higher Education, and new social standards by the Texas State Board of Education,  confront directly  the historic struggles of people of color.  These are attacks on our ability  to tell our stories, to speak our truths, and to transform the curriculum  regarding the history of the United States.  These transformations in US education came from hard fought struggles.  From the 1968 Third World Strike at San Francisco State College  resulting in the establishment of a Third World College, to the  1969 Morrill Hall Take Over by Black students at Minnesota and the struggles for  American Indian and  Chicano Studies on that campus, these fields emerged out of struggle.

Indeed, the Third World Strike at San Francisco State College might be called the borning struggle of  contemporary Ethnic Studies in the academy.  “On strike! Shut it down!” resonated on the campus from November 1968 to March 1969.  This five month strike,  according to Helene Whitson, archivist of the San Francisco State College Strike Collection,  was “longer than any other academic student strike in American higher education history.” http://www.library.sfsu.edu/about/collections/strike/essay.html

It led to the creation of  Third World College, which spawned hundreds of other Black, Chicano, Native and Asian Studies programs in the late 1960s.

The current period demands that the struggle continues since present political realities have everything to do with whether African American, Chicano/a, Native American and Asian Studies will survive. Let us not forget either thatthe buying and selling of Black bodies, African men, women and children, the seizing of Native, Latino/a and Asian lands and labor  have been  constants in the crafting  of the United States as a nation.  HB 2281 reconnects to this history of exploitation with its passage by attempting to erase the history of people of color in the US.  Not surprisingly  it  has emerged  during a period of intensified racism, xenophobia and anti-immigrant hostilities and practices.  While attention has been rightfully focused on the draconian anti-immigration policies in Arizona, this attack on Ethnic Studies is another key feature in our struggle for educational and social justice in the US and globally.

 

In short, these are chilling times for peoples of color.  The Ethnic studies programs, departments, centers in this country cannot / must not rest easily.  The Ethnic  Studies project has been named in conservative public discourse as the site of political divisiveness.  Our status  is fragile within the white academy that dominates higher education  and K-12 ,  as institutional decisions  too often embrace this logic.   While those of us in Ethnic Studies  have chastised and railed against conservatives, in fact, we face a neo-liberal reality where liberal and conservative sensibilities merge. The attacks on the  conceptual playing fields  of  Ethnic Studies  are  matched by the politics of retreat and efforts to dismantle the fields altogether.  

 

The perennial question for Ethnic Studies programs is why are we here?  How must we connect to our students and wider constituencies? The Ethnic Studies paradigm is rooted in critique of Eurocentrism.  The key actors who founded Ethnic Studies were young men and women of color who refused to accept their educational erasure.  The Ethnic Studies task today remains the decolonization of knowledge,  educating and  creating  the institutional basis for  sustaining  these fields.   Most importantly, our task is refusing to be brought into the circle of domination that keeps injustice alive.  No doubt, the attack on Ethnic Studies is one expression of an especially difficult set of inequalities in the US:  the dismantling of  living wages,  intensified poverty,  the destruction of welfare state supports which reach the poorest women and children in this country, and the mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands Black and Brown men and women.  This is happening in the context of  global economic exploitation.  These retreats from social justice are part and parcel of the same logic that led to HB 2281.  Our struggle continues. 

We blogged earlier about Arizona's new law which is designed to suppress ethnic studies. Will Arizona be successful in this effort to eliminate ideas? It seems unlikely. Richard Delgado has recently observed that "ideas are not easy to kill" and that "education is an inherently destabilizing force that cannot readily be contained." (Liberal McCarthyism and the Origins of Critical Race Theory, 94 Iowa law Review 1505, 1544 (2009)). Arizona is finding this out. Instead of suppressing the ideas that ethnic studies generates, Arizona's new law has created greater interest in such studies and the number of students who are enrolled in such programs has almost doubled this year in Tucson, Arizona. (Mary Ann Zehr, Education Week, Tucson Students Aren't Deterred By Ethnic Studies Controversy, http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/22/04ethnic_ep.h30.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/22/04ethnic_ep.h30.html&levelId=1000). This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

Education Week 9/23/10

By Mary Ann Zehr Tucson, Ariz. In the midst of an attempt by Arizona’s legislature and top education official to shut down ethnic-studies courses in the Tucson Unified School District, students here at Tucson High Magnet School are flocking to the courses this school year.

At least one class in two of the courses taught from a Mexican-American perspective at this school have more than 45 students, although the union contract calls for no more than 35 students in a class. School district officials say enrollment in Mexican-American studies in Tucson Unified’s 14 high schools has nearly doubled since last school year, from 781 to 1,400 students.

“Ethnic studies allow me to read and view and analyze different forms of literature and learning from another perspective,” said Krysta Diaz, 17, one of 386 students taking an ethnic-studies course at the school this year. The courses attract primarily students like Ms. Diaz, who are of Mexican-American heritage, but also draw in the occasional African-American, Anglo, or immigrant from a country other than Mexico.

Ethnic-Studies Courses Provide Different World View Tucson High School students contest charges that ethnic-studies courses teach minority students that they are victims.

Some students say the controversy over ethnic studies caused them to want to check out the courses for themselves. But others say they signed up to learn more about social justice generally or Mexican-American culture and history specifically.

The political storm engulfing the debate over ethnic studies in Arizona’s high schools seems to be gaining a momentum like that of other recent high-profile debates in the Grand Canyon State, such as the one over its plans for enforcing federal immigration laws.

Fostering Hostility? Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and Deputy Superintendent Margaret Dugan contend the courses teach anti-American ideas and encourage Mexican-Americans to think of themselves as victims. In public letters, Mr. Horne has quoted a former teacher from Tucson Unified as saying the courses foster hostility among Mexican-American students toward U.S. society.

The state schools chief helped convince the Arizona legislature to approve a law, signed in April by Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, that aims to ban the kind of ethnic studies public schools are offering. Scheduled to take effect Dec. 31, the law bars all public schools across the state from providing courses designed for a particular ethnic group, that advocate ethnic solidarity, or that promote resentment toward a race or group of people. But public attention has focused on the 60,000-student Tucson district, known to have the only districtwide ethnic-studies program in the state, where a showdown is currently shaping up between state and district school officials.

Last month, Mr. Horne sent a letter to John Carroll, Tucson’s interim school superintendent, saying that if the district continues to teach ethnic studies after the law becomes effective, the Arizona education department will withhold 10 percent of the school district’s funds. Mr. Horne, who is the Republican nominee for state attorney general, won’t be in his education post then. But John Huppenthal, who landed the Republican nomination to replace him, has run a radio ad saying he aims to shut down the ethnic-studies courses, according to local news media.

A cut in funds “would sting,” said Abel Morado, the principal at Tucson High. But he said he believes the Tucson Unified school board will stand up for continuing to offer ethnic studies. The courses are valuable, he said, because “a student’s identification with the curriculum is non-negotiable.”

The expansion of ethnic studies in the Tucson school district is also a key component of a post-unitary status plan that stemmed from a federal desegregation case. The plan was adopted by the district’s school board in July 2009 and approved by a federal judge in December.

At the 2,900-student Tucson High Magnet School, where the ethnic-studies courses have been taught since 1998, students can earn regular English, American history, or American government credits for the courses. Teachers use regular textbooks as a point of reference, said Martin Sean Arce, the district’s director of Mexican-American studies, but also use sources such as Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, by Rodulfo Acuna, that teach perspectives that may not get much play in a traditional K-12 classroom. In a paper he co-wrote last year for an academic journal, Mr. Arce contends that the courses draw on “culture as a resource” and help students develop their own academic voice.

Broad Appeal While critics have targeted the ethnic-studies courses with a Mexican-American emphasis, Tucson High Magnet also offers a Native-American literature and an African-American literature course under the same umbrella. Of the 386 students taking ethnic-studies classes at the high school, 332 are taking Mexican-American studies while 54 are taking either African-American or Native American studies. About 70 percent of the school’s students are Latinos, mostly Mexican-Americans; 20 percent are Anglos, and the rest are African-American, Asian-American, or Native American.

In his public letters, Mr. Horne quotes criticism of ethnic studies at Tucson Unified by John A. Ward, a Mexican-American and a former U.S. history teacher for the district, that a columnist for The Arizona Republic cited in 2008. Mr. Ward taught a class in American history from a Mexican-American perspective at Tucson High during the 2002-03 school year. He is now a school district auditor for the state auditor general.

Best friends Roman Figueroa, 17, right, and Nasrat Malekzai, 18, leave the Tucson Islamic Center. Mr. Figueroa persuaded his friend to take a Latino literature class. —David Sanders for Education Week Mr. Ward said in an interview this month that he shared the teaching of the class primarily with Mr. Arce though two other Mexican-American men also sometimes taught it. He said the other teachers aimed “to create this very, very strong ethnic identity among the kids that created a sense of separatism, that America was a country run by the white establishment, that they were outsiders to it and always would be, and that they had to come together as a unified group and fight the system.”

By contrast, said Mr. Ward, “if I had an ideological perspective, it was that while we fall short, the overall trajectory of this country has always been to make people [of all colors] freer. It’s still a work in progress, ... but we’re moving in the right direction.”

He said he fought to introduce works by conservatives to students to balance out their other assignments. He wanted to assign What’s So Great About America, by Dinesh D’Souza, and writings by former U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork.

Mr. Arce said this month that he told Mr. Ward that such writings weren’t appropriate for the course. By both men’s accounts, Mr. Ward was removed from the course and reassigned to other teaching duties.

A central issue in the debate is how much academic freedom is afforded a school district over its curriculum.

Ten teachers in Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American studies department, plus Mr. Arce, intend to file a constitutional challenge to the state law banning ethnic studies in mid- to late October, according to Richard M. Martinez, a Tucson-based lawyer who is representing them. He said the lawsuit will be filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson.

Mr. Martinez said the challenge will argue that the state law violates the First and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution because it targets one school district, Tucson Unified, and one group of people, Mexican-Americans.

Administrators and teachers in the district acknowledged that the ethnic studies courses are not the traditional high school fare. But they said they are about teaching “empowerment,” not victimization.

Curtis Acosta, who teaches juniors and seniors Social Justice and Latino Literature at Tucson High Magnet, said courses such as his offered by the Mexican-American studies department provide “a classroom that is more authentic to the students’ lived experiences.”

On a recent school day, Mr. Acosta gave seniors homework to write a bibliography of eight books, songs, movies, “or other types of artistic expression that has either influenced your life or illustrates who you are as a person.” They were also instructed to write 80 to 150 words about “the reason the words resonate with you.”

The assignment came with a pep talk for students to be bold in demonstrating their academic ability. “People get into who we are, what we are,” Mr. Acosta said. “Maybe we’re not who they think we are.”

The students also worked in groups to reflect on an article about the origin and contribution of hip-hop music to the United States.

Real-Life Lesson Meanwhile, for the American Government/Ethnic Studies course, teacher Maria Federico Brummer has designed a unit on the ethnic studies controversy. For a recent class, she assigned for homework a news article about the dispute, two opposing editorials in the debate, and one of Mr. Horne’s public letters criticizing ethnic studies. She didn’t express a point of view on the issue.

Students say that critics’ claims that they’re taught to be victims in the class couldn’t be further from the truth.

The difference between ethnic studies and regular high school courses, said Roman Figueroa, 17, is “we are more socially critical of a lot of things around us. We explore the other side of the story.”

In a recent discussion in Mr. Acosta’s class, Mr. Figueroa said a more diverse group of students should be recruited to ethnic studies. He took a step toward that goal himself by persuading his best friend, Nasrat Malekzai, 18, to enroll in Latino literature. Mr. Malekzai is an immigrant from Russia and a member of Afghanistan’s Pashtun minority.

For his part, Mr. Malekzai said, he chose to enroll in Latino literature rather than regular senior English because he wanted to learn more about Mexican-American culture. After all, he said, he’s “surrounded” by Mexican-Americans at school. “The class has opened my eyes,” he said.

Vol. 30, Issue 04, Pages 1,16-17

by Jamilah King 
COLORLINES
Wednesday, September 22 2010, 3:22 PM EST Tags: Arizona, ethic studies, Tom Horne

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Ethnic Studies Is Broadening, Arizona Be Damned Turns out that Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies courses in public schools may be having the opposite effect than lawmakers anticipated—the field appears to be gaining, rather than losing appeal among students.

Last spring, the state’s school superintendent Tom Horne proposed the ban, alleging that the classes were, in effect, prejudiced against white people. At best, Horne argued, they promoted “ethnic chauvinism.” And at their worst, they encouraged students to overthrow the U.S. government. Riding a wave of white populist sentiment after signing SB 1070 into law, Gov. Jan Brewer then legalized the ban. Districts that refuse to comply risk losing 10 percent of their state funding, and already some of the state’s ethnic studies teachers are toying with the idea of a constitutional challenge before the law goes into effect on December 31.

Students don’t seem too bothered. In fact, Mary Ann Zehr writes in Education Week that in Tucson, which has the only district-wide ethnic studies program in the state, enrollment in Mexican-American studies has doubled. Zehr profiles Tucson High Magnet School:

At least one class in two of the courses taught from a Mexican-American perspective at this school have more than 45 students, although the union contract calls for no more than 35 students in a class. School district officials say enrollment in Mexican-American studies in Tucson Unified’s 14 high schools has nearly doubled since last school year, from 781 to 1,400 students.

“Ethnic studies allow me to read and view and analyze different forms of literature and learning from another perspective,” said Krysta Diaz, 17, one of 386 students taking an ethnic-studies course at the school this year. The courses attract primarily students like Ms. Diaz, who are of Mexican-American heritage, but also draw in the occasional African-American, Anglo, or immigrant from a country other than Mexico.

It’s not a new point, but certainly a promising one, especially at the beginning of a school year that’s already muddled in national controversy. Shortly after the law, officially known as HB 2881, was passed, Daisy Hernandez reported for ColorLines that the courses were broadening:

Interviews with several professors in the field suggest that ethnic studies is (surprise, surprise) bearing the markings of race relations today: a widespread acceptance that black and brown experiences are important coupled with the complaint that we don’t need to focus on race and the rise of people of color to prominent positions juxtaposed with the ongoing need to organize and make demands on school systems.

Professor Jeff Duncan-Andrade, who teaches Raza Studies in the country’s only College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State, argued a similar point. Afraid of what goes on in ethnic studies classrooms? Visit one, Andrade says. Critics might be surprised at how confident, affirmed students of color can actually contribute to the national discourse,  not erase it.

In any case, Horne’s intentions are pretty obvious. He’s a man on a political mission with a long history of bullying the state’s Latino students. Currently, he’s running for state attorney general and trying desperately to appeal to Arizona’s aging baby boomers who can already feel their racial majority slipping. During one fit, Horne mandated that kids prove their permanent U.S. address before getting on school buses on the first day of classes.

College of Ethnic Studies Statement re. Arizona Bill HB 2281 The College of Ethnic Studies provides a safe environment and resources for students and faculty to study people of color and indigenous peoples’ histories, experiences and cultural productions. We teach critical thinking and critical social justice-focused community engagement. Our primary aim is to actively implement a vision of social justice that exists on the basis of race and ethnicity. We as a college, reject Arizona HB 2281 bill, and all that it stands for. This bill grossly misrepresents Ethnic Studies, our history, goals, and pedagogical methods. The passage of HB 2281 is a symptom of larger national anxieties about a demographic shifts and a rejection of what “America looks like.” Since its founding in 1968-69, Ethnic Studies classes have been open to everyone: we teach all people to respect and value our histories and our diverse struggles, and thus to become informed citizens well-equipped to function in a diverse and globalized society. HB 2281, crafted and passed by people who have never taken an ethnic studies course, erroneously defines Ethnic Studies as a discipline which 1. PROMOTES THE OVERTHROW OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT; 2. PROMOTES RESENTMENT TOWARD A RACE OR CLASS OF PEOPLE; 3. IS DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR PUPILS OF A PARTICULAR ETHNIC GROUP; and 4. ADVOCATES ETHNIC SOLIDARITY INSTEAD OF THE TREATMENT OF PUPILS AS INDIVIDUALS. We believe that the ignorance demonstrated by this bill shows how relevant Ethnic Studies is today, in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. In an era when history books are being re-written to further erase those aspects of national history in which our country failed to live up to its ideals, Ethnic Studies matters more than ever.

July 4, 2010

Who Gets to Define Ethnic Studies? Arizona's new law represents a one-sided view Gwenda Kaczor for



By Kenneth P. Monteiro

I recently read a piece of legislative hubris from Arizona that purports to ban ethnic studies in public schools. More disturbing than outlawing instruction in the histories, philosophies, literatures, and accomplishments of nonwhite peoples is the alarming effect the Arizona legislation has had on the news media—which has the social power to define reality for others and compel them to believe it.

The legislation I am referring to is HB 2281. Now law, it prohibits four kinds of courses: those that promote the overthrow of the United States government, those that promote resentment toward a race or class of people, those designated primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, and those that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals. Nowhere does the legislation mention ethnic studies.

But ethnic studies is, indeed, anchored in the histories, traditions, literatures, and philosophies of American people of color and their diaspora. The field also supports social justice and equality for all. Thus the law indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the history, development, and role of ethnic studies. It is not, and has never been, about pitting "us against them."

Moreover, nowhere does the Arizona legislation exclude w