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<font size=2>January 18, 2012 <br>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/18/neo-racism-in-the-southwest/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/18/neo-racism-in-the-southwest/<br>
<br>
</a></font><h1><b>Neo-Racism in the Southwest</b></h1><font size=2>by
JORGE MARISCAL<br><br>
The surge of neo-racism in Arizona, especially racism directed at people
of Mexican descent, has received sporadic media coverage over the past
year. But for the most part news about the economy and presidential
politics has pushed off the front page Arizona’s attack against its
working class of color and their children. In other words, the slow
motion creation of a new Jim Crow regime for Mexican Americans in Arizona
is not “trending.”<br><br>
But what is taking place in southern Arizona deserves our attention as
the most fanatical episode in the war against public education.
Specifically, the question being posed is whether or not young people
from working class communities and communities of color ought to be
educated and if they are what are they entitled to learn?<br><br>
Last month, the U.S. Supreme court agreed to hear Arizona’s appeal of a
9th Circuit decision that declared the draconian anti-immigrant SB 1070
in violation of federal law and therefore unconstitutional. In the
meantime, those who promoted 1070 steadily go about their business
dismantling the highly successful Mexican American Studies program in the
Tucson school district.<br><br>
At first glance, the ban against “ethnic studies” would seem to be a
prohibition against an entire academic discipline. In reality, it
is a narrowly targeted attack on Mexican American or Chicano
studies. As former University of Arizona dean Sal Baldenegro
reports, the ban leaves other “ethnic studies” programs in
place.<br><br>
Accompanying the elimination of Mexican American studies is a list of
prohibited books. Shakespeare’s <i>The Tempest</i> leaps off the
list as the most recognizable title. Thoreau’s <i>Civil
Disobedience</i> and well-known histories by Howard Zinn, Ron Takaki, and
Rudy Acuña join the castoffs. According to the list, one-act plays
by the Teatro campesino, short stories by Sandra Cisneros, essays by
James Baldwin, and a speech by Cesar Chavez will be added to the bonfire
(or at least sentenced to perpetual confinement in a local book
depository).<br><br>
The list of banned books invokes more ironies than I am able to unpack
here. That a collection of short stories (Cisneros’s <i>Woman
Hollering Creek</i>) whose main characters are young Latina women
negotiating gender and ethnic roles should be on a list of banned
readings seems silly. Silly unless one realizes that what frightens
the right-wing Arizona politicians has less to do with the content of the
books and more to do with the way they might be juxtaposed and
interpreted by teachers who seek to empower their students.<br><br>
Joining Shakespeare on the banned list is former UC Berkeley professor
Ron Takaki. In his history of the United States, <i>A Different
Mirror</i>, Takaki takes the image of Caliban from <i>The Tempest</i> and
uses it to explain how Native Americans, African slaves, and almost every
single immigrant group that has come to these shoresIrish, Jewish,
Italian, Chinese, Mexican, and so onhave been cast as the monstrous and
dark outsider and fed through the grinder of white supremacy and economic
exploitation. Perhaps the Arizona Inquisitors (as Rudy Acuña calls
them) are smarter than we thought.<br><br>
But there is one more stunning paradox. Although these books are
banned for courses taught under the umbrella of Mexican American studies,
many of the same books are allowed in other classes at schools such as
Tucson’s University High where students are placed on a college track and
exposed to a variety of uncensored curricular materials.<br><br>
Could it be that the attack on Mexican American Studies in Arizona is
less about “ethnic studies” and more about denying the right to education
to the coming Latino majority (and to the Black community that the
neoliberal consensus considers equally disposable)?<br><br>
Across the Arizona border in California, we are witnessing a related
transformation that is different in its details, subtler, and less openly
racist. There are no Sugiyamas, Hornes, or Huppenthals, the
henchmen of the Arizona Tribunal. But throughout the University of
California and Cal State systems invisible technocrats are slowly
destroying the public university and converting it into a corporate
bastion where students from California are displaced by foreign students
(who pay more), where students are “taught” in classes of 900 people, and
where faculty are forced to become “entrepreneurs”–a fancy word for
academic panhandlers.<br><br>
At UC San Diego (UCSD), campus leaders recently published their three top
priority areas for the future–all of them had to do with creating
products for the market. The word “education” was not mentioned
once. Academic areas that emphasize history and critical thinking
are either shrinking or becoming a parody of themselves. The push
for on-line education is strong–no need to interact with real
students. We simply sell them virtual courses and have underpaid
graduate students grade the work. Administrators brag that UCSD is no
longer a California university; it’s an international universitythis in
a state that will be majority Latino by the year 2040.<br><br>
As costs go up (more than a 300% increase at the UC system over the last
decade), working class and youth of color will slowly be denied
access. The few that make it in will have to take on serious debt
to finish. The future? – Education for the already privileged and
for a few tokens. Education as preparation for the job
market. Education as the site of corporate-driven research.
Education to train elites from around the world. No more critique
of the status quo. Minimal engagement with local populations. A ban on
critical pedagogy in the classroom. No interest in teaching
strategies that empower youth, especially those who do not already arrive
with an abundance of social and economic capital.<br><br>
Back in Arizona, Yolanda Sotelo, now in her thirtieth year of teaching in
Tucson schools, was informed last week that monitors would visit her
classroom to make sure banned books were not being used. Teachers
who assigned reading from prohibited titles would be reprimanded.
Monitors would also evaluate all posters in the classroom. In other
words, no critical thinking, no critical history, and no critical
pedagogy for the new Calibans who must take their designated places in
the market economy and forget their past.<br><br>
<b><i>JORGE MARISCAL</b> has taught at both public and private
universities for thirty years. His latest book is “Brown-Eyed Children of
the Sun: Lessons From the Chicano Movement ” (University of New Mexico
Press). His website is
<a href="http://jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/" eudora="autourl">
http://jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/<br><br>
<br><br>
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