Knowledge is power. Despite this fact, the United States education systems continue to perpetuate gaps cemented in segregation, failure to invest adequate funding and the denial of complete human capacity of minority American citizens. History is particularly important for nation building and collective memory. Ethnic studies should not be an alternative to education. It is a vital supplement for a complete analysis of events in history, politics and American society.
Arizona legislation HB 2281 outlawed Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District in 2010. The legislation attempted to eradicate courses that allegedly sought to “overthrow the American government” and “promote resentment towards a race or class of people”. HB 2281 was later found “partially” unconstitutional, 2-1 by judges of the 9th Circuit Court of appeals in July of 2015. The verdict declares that HB 2281 was in fact enacted “at-least in part” by discrimination. We must remember that laws existed in the United States that kept slaves from learning how to read and write. This is what James Baldwin defines as white supremacy. In essence what happened in the Tucson Unified School district was a tangible manifestation of history repeating itself. The attack on ethnic studies in Tucson, Arizona was an attempt by the state to maintain control of and disenfranchise Mexican-American public school students.
But what is Ethnic studies and why is it a threat? Ethnic studies is the humanization of third world people through literature. Brown and black authors like Juan Gonzalez and James Baldwin provide an alternative narrative of colonial history and it’s legacy. These authors not only exhibit a denied history but create a space for people who are not “white” to identify themselves in literature and a larger societal context. When spaces like these are created in communities and classrooms the danger lies in dialogue. Books, like tools, are used to produce and rectify. Once minds have been fed and there is room for questions, we can to start challenging the morality of institutions.
There is a critical intersectionality between education and class. Voices in literature raises consciousness and encourages civic engagement. Xicano Activist Ernesto T. Mireles has been an avid advocate of ethnic studies throughout the sequence of events in Tucson. In his dissertation Insurgent Aztlan: Xicano Resistance Writing submitted to the University of Michigan’s department of American studies, he argues that cultural, linguistic and economic autonomy can be facilitated by scholarly discussion and could potentially lead to succession or “reorder of the colonial system”. By making these connections across ethnicities, national borders, and classes we come to the reality that we are all affected by colonialism. He emphasizes that words like “colonialism”and “decolonization” are not “tools for rationalizing the experiences of Third World people in the United States”. According to Mireles these terms are political positions that become very real when we start to compare “structural similarities and common historical origins”.
The truth is that there is undeniable, unadulterated power in ethnic studies. The threat and controversy over it is embedded in the fear of decolonization and the constant need to “maintain racial and cultural order”.
Historically, indigenous and African people have been denied a national existence. The denial of cultural legitimacy has led to a loss of native and African languages, art, faiths and history. In the words of Chinua Achebe, “literature is about people. It is a work of people about themselves. People who are attempting to create themselves a new”. True democracy is a numbers game after all. Besides the proven fact that culture appropriate education yields college matriculation, ethnic studies is undeniably about political power. Focus on individualism – personified in HB 2281 for the extermination of courses that “advocate ethnic solidarity” – disrupts any growth of collective identity or sense of nation that is not anglo-American. The Xicano identity like Pan-Africanism are not political ties to nation states for those are European creations. These lenses claim a land and are intrinsically philosophical paradigms based on ancestry.
Our prescriptions are not law. It is not illegal to become educated whether it manifests itself in the way you dress or the way we vote. Although many conservatives are okay with second class education for minority students we must push for a complete educational experience. In California efforts by Assemblyman Luis Alejo has led to the proposal of a bill pushing for ethnic studies electives in grades seven through twelve. The University of Florida developed their African American Studies major in 2013. Now in 2015 Mexican American Studies programs will return to Tucson.
The delegitimization of grievances like the police brutality on black citizens, murders of nameless immigrants and educational disenfranchisement are not isolated nor is it new. In Achebe’s words it is our job as citizens of the 21st century to restore “mankind to his original condition”. How we do this is not by arming ourselves with hate and arms but love and understanding. Ethnic studies teaches its pupils to understand themselves first. In the western world we are all products of a supremacist system. While classic Anglo-American pedagogy portrays minorities as uncivilized, uneducated criminals, ethnic studies generates strategic individuals and decision conscious communities.
BY LDAPFAMILIA