"White" Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies 1440832552, 9781440832550

Table of contents :
Volume 1: K–12 Education
Contents
Introduction: The Making of a Movement: Ethnic Studies in a K-12 Context • Tracy Lachica Buenavista
Part I: Historical and Theoretical Considerations
1. Hecho en Berkeley: A Brief History of the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Program at Berkeley High School • Pablo Gonzalez
2. Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies: Toward a Decolonizing and Liberatory Education for Xicana/o Youth • Martín Sean Arce
3. Healing Identity: The Organic Rx, Resistance, and Regeneration in the Classroom • R. Tolteka Cuauhtin
4. Education in Nepantla: A Chicana Feminist Approach to Engaging Latina/o Elementary Youth in Ethnic Studies • Socorro Morales, Sylvia Mendoza Aviña, and Dolores Delgado Berna
Part II: Ethnic Studies Pedagogy in Practice
5. The Youth Will Speak: Youth Participatory Action Research as a Vehicle to Connect an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy to Communities • Mark Bautista, Antonio Nieves Martinez, and Dani O’Brien
6. Rise Above: Filipina/o American Studies and Punk Rock Pedagogy • Noah Romero
7. “You Can Ban Chicano Books, But They Still Pop Up!” Activism, Public Discourse, and Decolonial Curriculums in Los Angeles • Elias Serna
8. Struggle in the Mud: Stockton, Ethnic Studies, and Community Engagement: An Autoethnography • Motecuzoma Sanchez
Part III: Critical Practitioner Preparations
9. The Power of Ethnic Studies: Developing Culturally and Community Responsive Leaders • Arlene Daus-Magbual and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales
10. Brown Washing Hermeneutics: Historically Responsive Pedagogy in Ethnic Studies • Roderick Daus-Magbual
11. Common Struggle: High School Ethnic Studies Approaches to Building Solidarity between Black and Brown Youth • Jerica Coffey and Ron Espiritu
12. Resistance and Resilience in Tucson: The Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) as Form of Resistance and Liberation • Anita Fernández
13. The Story of Our Day: Moving Our Imaginations to the Immense Revolutionary Potential in America • Luis J. Rodriguez
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
Volume 2: Higher Education
Contents
Introduction: “Picking Up the Torch in Higher Education”: Ethnic Studies Culture Wars in the Twenty-first Century • Anthony J. Ratcliff and Denise M. Sandoval
Part I: Ethnic Studies Intellectual Traditions: Political and Theoretical Shifts in Academia
1. Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands: An Ongoing Struggle for Equality and Human Rights • Antonia Darder
2. “But It’s a Dry Hate”: Illegal Americans, Other Americans, and the Citizenship Regime • T. Mark Montoya
3. Insurrectional Knowledge: Antiprison Africana Pedagogy, Ethnic Studies, and the Undoing of the Carceral State • Christopher M. Tinson
4. Issues in the Ethnic Studies Culture Wars: A Veteran’s Insights • Rodolfo F. Acuña
Part II: Counter-Narratives: Teaching Ethnic Studies at White Institutions
5. The Battle to Decolonize Knowledge: Theories, Experiences, and Perspectives Teaching Ethnic Studies in Arizona • Xamuel Bañales and Mary Roaf
6. On Building Latino Studies in the White, Liberal Arts, Corporatized University: An Autoethnography • Oriel María Siu
7. Why Ethnic Studies Matters: A Personal Narrative from a Community College Educator • Monica G. Killen
8. We Are Not “the Help”: A Composite Autoethnography of Service and Struggle in Ethnic Studies • womyn of color collective
9. Where Are All of the Latina/os?: Teaching Latina/o Studies in the Midwest • Luis H. Moreno
10. Presumed Biased: The Challenge and Rewards of Teaching “Post-Racial” Students to See Racism • Barbara Harris Combs
Part III: Sharing Our Stories: Ethnic Studies Research and Community Engagement
11. Militant Humility: The Essential Role of Community Engagement in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy • Glenn Omatsu
12. Exploring the Intersections between Scholarship and Activism: Our Journey from Community Concerns to Scholarly Work • Yarma Velázquez-Vargas, Marta López-Garza, and Mary Pardo
13. ¡La Lucha Continua!: Why Community History[-ies] Matters—Ethnic Studies Research, Art Activism, and the Struggle for Space and Place in the Northeast San Fernando Valley • Denise M. Sandoval
Part IV: Humanistic Visions/Transformative Change: Student Activism and Classroom Pedagogy
14. What We Dream, What We Want, What We Do: CSUN Asian American Studies Students Building Bridges and Forging Movements for a Twenty-first-century Asian American Studies • Clement Lai, Lawrence Lan, Alina Nguyen, with contributions from Ilaisaane Fonua, Louise Fonua, Kevin Guzman, Samantha Jones, Presley Kann, Gregory Pancho, Carolina Quintanilla, and Emilyn Vallega
15. ¡Sí Se Pudo!: Student Activism in the Chicana/o Studies Movement at UCLA, 1990–1993 • José M. Aguilar-Hernández
16. Teaching Ethnic Studies through SWAPA from California to New York: The Classroom as Healing Space • Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.
17. On Ethnic Studies, Trauma, and Trigger Warnings • Araceli Esparza
Index
About the Editors and Contributors

Citation preview

“White” Washing American Education

“White” Washing American Education The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies Volume 1: K–12 Education Denise M. Sandoval, Anthony J. Ratcliff, Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and James R. Marín, Editors

Copyright © 2016 by Denise M. Sandoval, Anthony J. Ratcliff, Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and James R. Marín All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sandoval, Denise M, editor. Title: “White” washing American education : the new culture wars in ethnic studies   / Denise M. Sandoval, Anthony J. Ratcliff, Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and   James R. Marín, editors. Description: Santa Barbara, California : Praeger, 2016- | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016005000 | ISBN 9781440832550 (hardback)   | ISBN 9781440845765 (volume 1) | ISBN 9781440845772 (volume 2)   | ISBN 9781440832567 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: United States—Ethnic relations—Study and teaching (Higher)   | Education—United States. Classification: LCC E184.A1 W3975 2016 | DDC 378.00973–dc23 LC record   available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005000 ISBN: 978-1-4408-3255-0 (set) ISBN: 978-1-4408-4576-5 (Vol. 1) ISBN: 978-1-4408-4577-2 (Vol. 2) EISBN: 978-1-4408-3256-7 20 19 18 1 16  1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available as an eBook. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 www.abc-clio.com This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Volume 1: K–12 Education Introduction: The Making of a Movement: Ethnic Studies in a K-12 Context Tracy Lachica Buenavista

vii

PART I HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS  1. Hecho en Berkeley: A Brief History of the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Program at Berkeley High School Pablo Gonzalez

3

  2. Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies: Toward a Decolonizing and Liberatory Education for Xicana/o Youth Martín Sean Arce

11

  3. Healing Identity: The Organic Rx, Resistance, and Regeneration in the Classroom R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

43

  4. Education in Nepantla: A Chicana Feminist Approach to Engaging Latina/o Elementary Youth in Ethnic Studies Socorro Morales, Sylvia Mendoza Aviña, and Dolores Delgado Bernal

67

PART II ETHNIC STUDIES PEDAGOGY IN PRACTICE   5. The Youth Will Speak: Youth Participatory Action Research as a Vehicle to Connect an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy to Communities Mark Bautista, Antonio Nieves Martinez, and Dani O’Brien

97

viContents

  6. Rise Above: Filipina/o American Studies and Punk Rock Pedagogy Noah Romero   7. “You Can Ban Chicano Books, But They Still Pop Up!” Activism, Public Discourse, and Decolonial Curriculums in Los Angeles Elias Serna   8. Struggle in the Mud: Stockton, Ethnic Studies, and Community Engagement: An Autoethnography Motecuzoma Sanchez

117

133

157

PART III CRITICAL PRACTITIONER PREPARATIONS   9. The Power of Ethnic Studies: Developing Culturally and Community Responsive Leaders Arlene Daus-Magbual and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales

181

10. Brown Washing Hermeneutics: Historically Responsive Pedagogy in Ethnic Studies Roderick Daus-Magbual

199

11. Common Struggle: High School Ethnic Studies Approaches to Building Solidarity between Black and Brown Youth Jerica Coffey and Ron Espiritu

223

12. Resistance and Resilience in Tucson: The Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) as Form of Resistance and Liberation Anita Fernández 13. The Story of Our Day: Moving Our Imaginations to the Immense Revolutionary Potential in America Luis J. Rodriguez

239

257

Index 265 About the Editors and Contributors

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Introduction The Making of a Movement: Ethnic Studies in a K–12 Context Tracy Lachica Buenavista

Until 2010, never before had Ethnic Studies been formally criminalized. As a seminal year in the history of Ethnic Studies, 2010 marked one of the most prominent battles in the new culture war in American public education. Arizona Republican governor Jan Brewer signed into law Arizona House Bill (AZ HB) 2281 (Romero 2010). AZ HB 2281 was an attack on Ethnic Studies in Arizona public schools and, in particular, facilitated the dismantling of the Mexican American/Raza Studies Department (MARSD) in the Tucson Unified School District. Originally established to address educational disparities faced by a large Chicano/Latino student demographic in Tucson, MARSD represented to educators, students, and families a viable academic program that improved student-learning outcomes, nurtured critical educators, and enhanced community engagement for more than a decade (Cammarota & Romero 2014). While not the first time Ethnic Studies has been challenged as a valid form of study, AZ HB 2281 was unprecedented in that it legally threatened the rights for educators and students to implement and engage in curriculum that centered the experiences of People of Color1 in the United States. The crisis in Arizona represented the persistent devaluing of Ethnic Studies, which began with its inception as an academic discipline in the 1960s (Hu-DeHart 2004); but such is the condition that has simultaneously nurtured a critical movement of scholars, practitioners, students, and community members to defend the teaching and learning of Ethnic Studies. In this volume of White Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in

viiiIntroduction

Ethnic Studies we examine the contemporary struggle to establish Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools across the United States. Drawing from the educators and students in the trenches, we hope to document the battle for Ethnic Studies as a means to prevent future attacks on our right to a relevant education.

THE MISDEFINING OF ETHNIC STUDIES AZ HB 2281 was a major blow to Ethnic Studies because it legally invalidated decades of work to bring culturally relevant and community-responsive education to students, many of whom had been marginalized by traditional schooling. At its core, AZ HB 2281 was problematically grounded on an audacious assumption that American public education is objective. In reality, “standard” or “mainstream” curriculum is routinely characterized by a bias toward white perspectives and experiences—a phenomenon that education scholar Christine E. Sleeter (2011) calls “Euro-American Studies.” The normalization of a whitewashed education provides ideological and material advantages to white students at the expense of students of color, namely an education that systematically espouses a narrative of white dominance and the invisibility and/or inferiority of racially minoritized communities. In this white supremacist context, we must examine the complexity of the attacks on K–12 Ethnic Studies. As efforts to grow Ethnic Studies gain momentum, educational efforts that attempt to challenge normative curriculum are often deemed threatening and met with reluctance, hostility, and opposition. Reluctance includes the passive actions that perpetuate the validity of whitewashed curriculum as necessary, often occurring in implicit ways. For example, reluctance might involve educators and parents directing students to enroll in non–Ethnic Studies elective courses for reasons that imply the pragmatic lessons of other courses and, in turn, the futility of race-centered curriculum. Whereas such reluctance is mainly characterized by indirect and/or unintentional messages and behaviors that underestimate the potential of Ethnic Studies, hostility is more explicit. Hostility is manifested in attitudes that promote negative perceptions of, and do not support the establishment or sustainability of, Ethnic Studies. In a K–12 context, hostility can manifest during instances in which administrators or teachers in other subject areas outwardly dismiss the relevance of such curriculum in course schedule creation and implementation. Reluctance and hostility have often plagued the state of Ethnic Studies in public education and are represented by the dearth of Ethnic Studies programs and departments in school districts nationwide despite its almost fifty-year history in higher education. Unprecedented, however, was the criminalization of Ethnic Studies in Arizona vis-à-vis HB 2281. The state-sanctioned attack on Ethnic

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Studies demonstrates outright opposition, or any direct and institutionalized effort to challenge, invalidate, and dismantle Ethnic Studies in its diverse forms in K–12 education. Such opposition is vehemently racist, grounded in white supremacy, and has material consequences for Ethnic Studies educators, students, and the communities in which they are located. For example, AZ HB 2281 directly resulted in the reduction of courses that focused on Mexican American Studies, the dismantling of MARSD, and also the elimination of employment for many Ethnic Studies teachers, all of whom were teachers of color in Tucson. A multilayered analysis of the reluctance, hostility, and opposition embodied by AZ HB 2281 is necessary as it represents how the public understands— or more accurately, misdefines—Ethnic Studies. For those who have never enrolled in, taught, or even observed an Ethnic Studies classroom, AZ HB 2281 legally defined for them what comprises Ethnic Studies. The authors of the bill stated that Ethnic Studies is any entity that teaches students to “resent or hate other races or classes of people” (State of Arizona House Bill 2281 2010).2 Specifically, it laid uninformed claims that Ethnic Studies encompass courses 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. 4. Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals. In narrowly defining Ethnic Studies in this way, AZ HB 2281 simultaneously reveals what standardized curriculum should be: education that blindly promotes a nationalistic agenda, universalism, color-blindness, and individualism. Aligned with the politics of whiteness, standardized or whitewashed curriculum is not explicitly laid out, but rather is defined relative to the “other.” Ethnic Studies constitutes the “othered” curriculum, and in the case of Arizona, is inappropriately defined by non–Ethnic Studies practitioners. Thus, as Ethnic Studies scholars, teachers, and students, in this volume we attempt to more accurately depict the ideologies, curricular content, and pedagogical practices that together create Ethnic Studies.

WHAT IS ETHNIC STUDIES? Ethnic Studies is often defined as a field that centers on the study of race, uses interdisciplinary perspectives and methods, and attempts to interrogate and dismantle systems of power—as such, Ethnic Studies is inherently a political project (Hu-DeHart 2004). While Ethnic Studies varies in form across

xIntroduction

the United States, for the purposes of this volume, it can include but is not limited to African American/Black Studies; American Indian/Indigenous Studies; Asian American Studies; Chicana/o, Mexican American, and/or Latina/o American Studies; Critical Mixed Race Studies; Muslim American Studies; Pacific Islander Studies; and Comparative Ethnic or Race and Resistance Studies. However, scholars have identified key characteristics that often guide the formation and implementation of Ethnic Studies programs and services. These characteristics include questioning white supremacist notions of ideological objectivity and neutrality in processes of knowledge construction, the promotion of anti-essentialism in regard to the analysis and representation of racialized communities, the development and practice of a community-grounded praxis in the teaching of Ethnic Studies, and the concurrent goals of individual empowerment for the purposes of collective selfdetermination and social transformation (Fong 2008). Ethnic Studies is also described to have an “ARC”: the explicit intention to increase “Access” to a high-quality and “Relevant” education for students of color, and to bridge institutions of higher education with the “Communities” in which they are located (Tintiangco-Cubales et al. 2015). Most research on Ethnic Studies tends to focus on curriculum, pedagogy, and its institutionalization in higher education. Thus, in this introduction I review recent scholarship focused on Ethnic Studies outside of postsecondary contexts, which have been imperative in laying a foundation for K–12 Ethnic Studies and combatting false assumptions of the field. In a comprehensive National Education Association report that examined previous research on the impact of Ethnic Studies on pre-K to college students, education scholar Christine E. Sleeter (2011) found that Ethnic Studies led to positive outcomes for both students of color and white students. Sleeter began her review by naming mainstream education as “EuroAmerican Studies.” She supported her claim by analyzing research that demonstrated how standardized curricular content often centered white subjects and obscured and/or superficially included the experiences of racially minoritized communities. She also identified the intentionality of Ethnic Studies to expose the institutional racism and systemic violence imposed on People of Color—topics repeatedly excluded and misrepresented in mainstream curriculum and textbooks. Her discussion helped to highlight the significance of her main finding, which focused on the ability of Ethnic Studies curricula to enhance the academic engagement, achievement, and social empowerment of students who participated in Ethnic Studies projects. The potential for Ethnic Studies as a mechanism to improve studentlearning outcomes was further demonstrated in scholarship that specifically addressed the controversy over Ethnic Studies in Arizona. Education scholars Nolan Cabrera, Jeffrey Milem, and Ronald Marx (2012) conducted a

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quantitative analysis of Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) student data to determine the effect of participation in Mexican American Studies (MAS), the program at the center of AZ HB 2281. In particular they explored whether or not there was a relationship between MAS participation and student test scores, high school graduation, and college-going behaviors. They examined district data of four graduating cohorts from 2008–11 and compared the data of students who had completed at least one MAS class to those students who had not participated but were in the same graduating cohort. Their findings revealed that students who completed a MAS course were more likely to pass Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) tests and graduate from high school than their counterparts who had not taken Ethnic Studies courses. However, due to data limitations, they were unable to empirically determine if there was a relationship between MAS course completion and the college-going intentions of students. In a follow-up publication, the authors and an additional colleague refined their methods and more assertively concluded, “Taking MAS classes is consistently, significantly, and positively related to increased student academic achievement, and this relationship grows stronger the more classes students take” (Cabrera et al. 2014, 1107). Although Cabrera and his colleagues quantitatively examined the impact of Ethnic Studies, other scholars have frequently taken a more qualitative approach. For example, education literacy scholar Cati V. de los Ríos (2013) conducted a longitudinal critical teacher inquiry that explored the impact of a Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies course in Pomona, California, on the academic and identity development of thirty-five Chicana/o and Latina/o high school students, the majority of whom were classified as English Language Learners. Aligned with a Chicana/o Borderlands framework, de los Ríos asserts her subjectivity as a Chicana feminist to recognize and provide an analysis of how students negotiate their multiple identities within Ethnic Studies spaces. While her nine-month ethnographic study enabled her to deeply engage with the students who participated in the course, de los Ríos was then able to center their narratives as she keenly described how the students benefited from Ethnic Studies curriculum. She found that the Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies course provided a space for students to develop more nuanced cultural identities, personal and educational trajectories, and stronger commitments to the multiple communities of which they were members. Throughout, de los Ríos used interview excerpts to highlight students’ acute level of critical thinking, which often manifested in the ability of students to understand their local experiences within larger social, historical, economic, and political contexts. Due to the attacks on Ethnic Studies, outcomes-based research is increasingly commonplace, but some scholars have also begun to explore how Ethnic Studies shapes student experiences. De los Ríos and her colleagues Jorge

xiiIntroduction

López and Ernest Morrell (2015) focused on the role of pedagogy in Ethnic Studies spaces. Through an investigation of two high school courses and one afterschool program they conceptualized a “critical pedagogy of race,” an approach to teaching and learning that centered race-conscious inquiry and student agency to examine the complex world in which students traversed. In the first two case studies, the authors described two examples of high school Ethnic Studies courses in southern California that were interdisciplinary, used classroom texts written by scholars of color, and incorporated community-based projects. The third case study was on a university–high school partnership in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that relied on youth participatory action research (YPAR) as a tool to guide students in a critical examination of racial disparities in LAUSD schools. In each example, the authors described in-depth how they scaffolded scholarship by diverse authors with experiential learning within their local communities to develop students’ literacies around academics and political engagement. Thus, the authors make an important link between what is taught in Ethnic Studies courses and how educators guide learning processes for students both inside and outside of the classroom. While enhancing students’ literacies and engagement have always been primary goals in Ethnic Studies, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and her colleagues (2015) identified the dire need to better prepare educators to learn and teach Ethnic Studies. After reviewing the institutional barriers that often prevent the recruitment and hiring of teachers with extensive undergraduate experience in Ethnic Studies, Tintiangco-Cubales et al. highlighted research that focused on the experiences and practices of Ethnic Studies teachers to conceptualize an “Ethnic Studies pedagogy.” Specifically, they outlined key factors central to teachers enacting an effective Ethnic Studies pedagogy: (1) a strong foundation in Ethnic Studies as a field of study dedicated to the decolonization of racially oppressed communities; (2) a culturally responsive and academically affirming approach to working with students from different backgrounds and with diverse needs; (3) community-responsive practices that honor student experiences within curriculum development and implementation, and facilitate the development of relationships with students, families, and community members beyond the classroom; and (4) an ability to be empathetic and reflective of one’s multiple subjectivities, particularly one’s racial identity, which was often a more distinct asset for race-conscious teachers of color who worked with students of color. The identification of key factors that shape a critical Ethnic Studies pedagogy is paramount in the sustainability of the field in K–12 schools and spaces. Anecdotally, Ethnic Studies often evoke visceral reactions to anyone who has participated in its various programs and projects. Yet, under a neoliberal education agenda, there’s increasing pressure to legitimize Ethnic Studies

Introductionxiii

through empirical research that emphasizes the academic outcomes of students who have participated in race-centered programs and projects. Indeed, over the last decade and even prior to AZ HB 2281, scholars have explored Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools.3 In the wake of the institutional attack on Ethnic Studies in Arizona, the need to study the impact and relevance of Ethnic Studies for students in elementary to secondary education has grown and become imperative in order to implement and sustain the field in K–12 education. However, we cannot forget the centrality of Ethnic Studies’ community-responsive agenda. That is, while the contemporary research on Ethnic Studies in K–12 settings asserts its positive learning impact, Ethnic Studies at its core is a political project and practitioners must remain vigilant to ground their lessons in the subversive history of the field. Self-determination, or the ability for people to rely on their experiences to inform the processes by which their community operates and looks like, is what defines Ethnic Studies as a field for the people and by the people. Student-learning outcomes must be (re)conceptualized beyond individual academic performance and we must better consider the ability of students to apply Ethnic Studies lessons to addressing the material conditions of their communities and toward larger structural change and social transformation.

THE CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENT The current grassroots efforts to institutionalize Ethnic Studies in K–12 public education should be considered part of a longer history of culturally relevant education movements, including the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) that established Ethnic Studies in American higher education (Umemoto 1989). Further, although not traditionally referred to as Ethnic Studies, the Freedom Schools in Mississippi and other parts of the South, which emerged during the civil rights era, were predecessors (Omatsu 2003). At the core of Freedom Schools was an antiracist, popular education program that encouraged students to become familiar with the structural barriers that led to the systematic exclusion of Blacks and other People of Color in the United States. Freedom Schools relied on experiential learning and equipped students with opportunities to participate in community-based projects and political actions focused on desegregation, as well as redistribution of and equal access to public resources and services. Similarly, Ethnic Studies theoretically asserts an antiracist and decolonizing agenda, relies on culturally relevant texts and educational practices, and emphasizes a communitygrounded praxis that addresses the needs of local communities. Today there exists a myriad of programs that embody the principles of Ethnic Studies. Shortly after the Freedom Schools and aligned with the TWLF and Black Power movements of the late 1960s, Berkeley High School was one of the first public schools to house a Black Studies department (Noguera

xivIntroduction

1994). As early as 1968, Berkeley High School students were able to take courses that ranged from Black history and literature to Swahili. Approximately thirty miles south of Berkeley is James Logan High School in Union City, California. James Logan High School is the only public high school to have a comprehensive Ethnic Studies department in the United States.4 Although the department has existed for more than a decade, courses have been offered in various areas including African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, Filipino American Studies, and Multicultural Studies for years prior to departmentalization. Additionally, many K–12 schools in California provide Ethnic Studies courses to students in a range of cities including but not limited to Azusa, Glendora, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Pomona, Richmond, San Francisco, San Leandro, San Jose, and Santa Ana. To note, in addition to being credentialed teachers, many of the educators responsible for creating and facilitating these courses were trained in Ethnic Studies at the collegiate level and/or were community organizers. Other notable Ethnic Studies programs and projects that serve K–12 students include charter schools such as Haˉ lau Kuˉ Maˉ na Hawaiian culture-based school in Honolulu and Roses in Concrete Community School in Oakland; community-based organizational projects such as the Black Panther Mentoring Project in Los Angeles, KINETIC in Chicago, and the Pico Youth and Family Center in Santa Monica, California; grassroots projects like the Kuya Ate Mentorship Program in San Diego, and People’s Education Movement’s Freedom School and the Watts Youth Collective programs in Los Angeles; and university-sponsored collaborations such as the 65th Street Corridor Community Collaborative Project of California State University, Sacramento, the Adelante Partnership out of the University of Utah, Pinoy Teach at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, the Welga!: Filipino American Labor Archive project at University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Diversity and Ethnic Experience Saturday class out of California State University, Long Beach. Included in this volume are chapters that focus on two of the most successful Ethnic Studies programs to be established in K–12 schools: MARSD in Tucson and Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) in San Francisco. We include several chapters that focus on these two particular programs because their practices and impact on students have been documented, they critically inform the current K–12 Ethnic Studies movement, and they have nurtured many of the practitioners responsible for creating and/or growing the projects previously mentioned. Despite the passage of AZ HB 2281, Ethnic Studies has since won key victories throughout the United States. Specifically, while Ethnic Studies projects have existed for decades, current institutionalization efforts are one strategy to grow and sustain such projects. In the same year that AZ HB 2281 was signed into law, San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD)

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passed a resolution to institutionalize Ethnic Studies in San Francisco schools (Tintiangco-Cubales et al. 2015). Ethnic Studies courses had already been selectively offered in various SFUSD schools (e.g., PEP), but the resolution included the creation of a committee of teachers who would develop Ethnic Studies curriculum at the district level. In December 2014, SFUSD unanimously passed another resolution that requires high school students to take an Ethnic Studies class to graduate (Tucker 2014). Although SFUSD had a longer history of Ethnic Studies implementation in K–12 schools, it was not the first California school district to require Ethnic Studies. In July 2014, El Rancho Unified School District (ERUSD) in southern California was the first district in the state to approve an Ethnic Studies graduation requirement. Shortly after, in November 2014, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) also made Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement after already offering Ethnic Studies as elective courses in some schools, much like SFUSD (Ceasar 2014). In 2015, two more California school districts made Ethnic Studies a high school graduation requirement, including Montebello (February) (Cupchoy & Ochoa 2015) and Sacramento (June) (Kalb 2015). Again, teachers, students, and other organizers in their respective geographical areas have been leading advocates in these institutionalization efforts and have used the establishment of Ethnic Studies in some districts to facilitate other districts to follow. While California is leading in large-scale efforts to institutionalize Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools, there have also been important victories in other states. In 2007, Kailua High School in O’ahu, Hawai‘i was the first instance in which an Ethnic Studies course was established as a requirement for graduation.5 Hawai‘i is also home to Native Hawaiian language schools and Haˉ lau Kuˉ Maˉ na, a charter school that centers Native Hawaiian epistemologies and cultural practices to explicitly challenge curriculum that promotes settler colonialism (Goodyear-Ka’opua 2013). Further, in 2014, the Texas State Board of Education voted to create instructional materials for Ethnic Studies elective courses (Planas 2014). However, this was a compromise for community organizers, who were pushing for the creation of a statewide Mexican American Studies curriculum. Regardless, some schools began to develop Ethnic Studies courses and in 2015, Mission High school in Mission, Texas, offered a Mexican American Studies course, one of the first in the state (Phippen 2015). More recently, Minneapolis Public Schools acknowledged efforts to offer Ethnic Studies as a high school elective (Matos 2014). In all of these instances, the impetus for Ethnic Studies mobilization were the needs to provide a more reflective and relevant education to the increasingly diverse student population within these geographies, and to better prepare all students for a more global citizenry. The contemporary K–12 Ethnic Studies movement is the result of grassroots organizing by critical educators who consider Ethnic Studies an important mechanism to empower students and communities. In July 2015, the

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Education for Liberation Network hosted the fifth Free Minds, Free People (FMFP) conference in Oakland, California.6 FMFP is a biannual gathering of educators, students, and activists who engage in workshops, symposia, and teacher professional development focused on the different ways that educators and students can use education as a tool toward social and political liberation. Included in the FMFP 2015 conference program was the Ethnic Studies Assembly, a space in which to strengthen strategies toward the development and teaching of K–12 Ethnic Studies nationally. Many of the assembly organizers and participants were educators and students who have been directly involved in the struggle for, and implementation and teaching of, Ethnic Studies within their local settings. At the Ethnic Studies Assembly, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and the director of the Pin@y Educational Partnerships, presented a working definition of Ethnic Studies as it is operationalized in K–12 education: We are advocating for pre-K–12 Ethnic Studies in public schools that is grounded in critical consciousness, critical thinking, and that is authentic and responsive to local communities. This type of educational experience should also assist youth toward developing a positive cultural and academic identity, prepare youth for college and beyond, as well as empower youth toward taking action and becoming agents of social transformation in their communities. Central to this conceptualization of Ethnic Studies is the ability to foster in teachers and students academic, social, and political literacies essential in individual and community-based empowerment. While projects that seek to forward an Ethnic Studies agenda must consider its relationship to similar projects, we also take the position that Ethnic Studies is necessarily a political project, and must be designed in alignment with local community needs and in response to the global conditions shaping the historical and contemporary composition of the community in which projects are located. In doing so, educators and community members who aim to establish, sustain, or grow Ethnic Studies will feel confident knowing that Ethnic Studies will necessarily look and feel different among and within various geographies.

TOWARD A K–12 ETHNIC STUDIES In this volume we include the perspectives of Ethnic Studies scholars, practitioners, and students who collectively offer readers in-depth accounts of Ethnic Studies projects in K–12 schools and spaces. The contributors share historical background of key programs and projects, resistance strategies they

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have employed to protect Ethnic Studies in their local communities, and hope toward building and sustaining a K–12 Ethnic Studies movement. The chapters can be characterized under three major themes: Ethnic Studies history and ideological foundations, pedagogical practices in classrooms and communities, and critical practitioner preparation. To reiterate, these chapters in no way offer formulaic, one-size-fits-all strategies to implement Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools because this would counter our assertion that Ethnic Studies should be developed in specific context of the local communities in which such projects are located. Rather, our goal is to expose readers to some of these programs and share the narratives of Ethnic Studies practitioners so that we can continue to grow the potential for Ethnic Studies to transform public education.

Historical and Theoretical Considerations The high profile case of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program reinvigorated the K–12 Ethnic Studies movement. In particular, the dismantling of the program led Ethnic Studies students and scholars to document other K–12 Ethnic Studies efforts. Within these examples scholars also countered simplistic notions of Ethnic Studies as simply multicultural education: Ethnic Studies is theoretically complex and draws on multiple epistemologies to inform the ways in which educators and students read the world. Ethnic Studies is grounded in honoring the local knowledge of the communities students are from; often educators challenge students to use their experiences to frame and contextualize the problems they seek to address, while at the same time recognizing their own positionalities within the classroom. In the first part of the book, we present research that offers readers insight into the diverse history and theoretical traditions that have shaped Ethnic Studies proj­ ects in K–12 classrooms. In “Hecho en Berkeley,” Pablo Gonzalez reflects on his personal experiences with the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies program at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California, during the 1990s. Gonzalez provides a historical account of the program’s formative years and argues that in 1993, the program was the first in the United States to provide comprehensive course offerings in Chicana/o Studies. Gonzalez describes the primary role high school students played in advocating for Ethnic Studies. In doing so, students of color actively countered deficit notions of themselves and demonstrated the need to consider their perspectives in educational transformation. We include this historical account to encourage readers to explore Ethnic Studies projects in their respective communities and to highlight the longer history Ethnic Studies has had in K–12 schools. Such context also helps us to understand the educational disparities Ethnic Studies curricula seek to address.

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Martín Sean Arce continues to address the role of Ethnic Studies in Raza communities in his chapter, “Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies.” He begins by describing the contentious relationship between traditional schooling and Xicana/o youth and communities. Arce then outlines in detail the Mexican indigenous epistemology of Nahui Ollin, the central theoretical framework that shaped the pedagogy and curriculum of the highly successful MARSD in Tucson. In doing so, Arce describes how Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies are “living and fluid knowledge systems” and exemplifies how such perspectives can guide teachers and students to better interrogate the ways that vestiges of colonialism continue to shape the material realities for dispossessed people. Further, he reflects upon how Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies can facilitate teachers and students to lovingly engage with each other and their local communities through collective learning. Arce’s work provides important insight regarding the theoretical complexity of the Mexican American Studies program specifically, and Ethnic Studies overall, which is not well represented in public discourse. While Arce explains the Indigenous Epistemologies that informed the social justice work of MARSD, in the chapter “Healing Identity,” R. Tolteka Cuauhtin compels Ethnic Studies practitioners to more critically explore the ways we think about and apply “culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy.” In particular, he critiques the ways in which antiracist education practices often obscure indigeneity, and the vestiges of colonization and genocide that continue to shape the experiences of students of color with indigenous ancestral legacies. Using his experience as a high school teacher in Tataviam, Yangna (or the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles), he walks readers through excerpts of an autoethnographic assignment students completed during a ninth grade social justice geography course. Through a discussion of student work, he illustrates the need to “revitalize, rehumanize, regenerate, and reclaim indigenous consciousness” within the classroom, or what he terms the “organic Rx.” Cuauhtin reminds us that as educators, we must constantly revisit the ideologies that inform and shape our work to ensure our practice is reflective of our students’ rich but complicated histories. Despite being theoretically rigorous, Ethnic Studies should not dissuade us from using difficult frameworks to shape our teaching of and learning with younger students. Socorro Morales, Sylvia Mendoza Aviña, and Dolores Delgado Bernal show us how to do this by providing an account of an Ethnic Studies project with Latina/o elementary school students in Salt Lake City, Utah. In “Education in Nepantla,” they recount how they took a Chicana feminist approach to teach bilingual fifth and sixth graders in an extracurricular Ethnic Studies elementary-level course. The authors offer what they call “rasquache pedagogy,” which in form takes into consideration and centers the youthfulness of students, and necessarily allows elementary school

Introductionxix

youth to express their “physical and emotional energy” during the learning process. By constructing the classroom as a space in which students and teachers are encouraged to freely reflect on who they are, the authors found students possessed a critical ability to articulate how they saw and understood the world in which they lived—a process that offered opportunities for personal and collective healing. Their work underscores the delicate balance Ethnic Studies practitioners continually negotiate in the operationalizing of critical theories that inform our work, challenging students beyond what is commonly expected of them, and simultaneously honoring where students are in their educational trajectory.

Ethnic Studies Pedagogy in Practice Bombarded by an overemphasis on standardized testing and the imposition of common core curriculum, the creativity of K–12 teachers in American public education is increasingly becoming constrained, as is their ability to implement content, classroom exercises, and assignments reflective of students’ complex lives. Ethnic Studies pedagogy is one strategy to center marginalized student experiences, a phenomenon seldom found in traditional classrooms. Paramount to Ethnic Studies pedagogy are the various practices that deeply and critically engage students with their family histories and local communities. In part II of the book, we feature innovative classroom and community praxis that embody the principles of Ethnic Studies. Taken together, these strategies emphasize a need to conduct structural analysis of power; develop students’ academic literacies; foster relationship building between educators, students, families, and other community members; and promote processes of humanization that traditional schooling often deemphasize. Expanding on education scholarship, Mark Bautista, Antonio Nieves Martinez, and Dani O’Brien lay out the benefits of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a classroom tool to develop students’ literacies around research and political organizing. Through a case study of the Council of Youth Research (CYR), a youth research program in Los Angeles, California, they detail how students conducted collaborative community-based research and developed recommendations regarding how local schools could better serve students of color in Los Angeles Unified School District. Whereas YPAR projects traditionally encompass student-centered learning and a critical analysis of power in schooling, the authors argue that YPAR guided by an Ethnic Studies framework enables students to pointedly examine racial disparities and propose mechanisms to resist multiple forms of oppression. Specifically, an Ethnic Studies YPAR process involves working with students to understand structural oppression, using an asset-based approach to counter deficit perspectives of students and communities of color, and composing

xxIntroduction

action-oriented recommendations that promote the transformation (versus reform) of schools. Bautista, Martinez, and O’Brien highlight the utility of Ethnic Studies’ interdisciplinary character in the designing of effective pedagogical practices. Critical Ethnic Studies pedagogy often incorporates the cultural practices in which communities of color participate. In “Rise Above,” Noah Romero makes the connection between the teaching of Filipina/o American Studies and punk counterculture. Despite the assumption that punk rock is a white space, Romero discusses the long history of People of Color using punk rock as a mechanism to understand and critique systemic racism, white supremacy, and capitalism. He does so to explain punk rock’s function in teaching Filipina/o American experiences and to contextualize what he deems “punk rock pedagogy.” In turn, such an approach used within a Filipino American Studies space entails establishing a foundation of Filipina/o American history and issues, studying punk as a form of protest practiced within the Filipina/o diaspora, and involving students in an experiential engagement with punk. Through the conceptualization of punk rock pedagogy, Romero provides an example of how educators can use subversive cultural practices already familiar to students in the teaching of Ethnic Studies content. Ethnic Studies pedagogy is necessarily fluid in that it must respond to the diverse and constantly changing needs of marginalized communities. Concurrent with the attack on Mexican American Studies in Arizona was the banning of Ethnic Studies books in Tucson, particularly works written by authors of color and works that feature characters of color. One response to the ban was the construction of pop-up books as a classroom tool for students to discuss censorship and the production of original texts. In ‘“You Can Ban Chicano Books, But They’ll Still Pop Up!”’ Elias Serna shares his experience using pop-up books as a creative way for students to study and produce cultural texts focused on community movements. While Serna introduces readers to an innovative teaching tool that can be incorporated into classrooms, more important, he reminds us that students are central to the defining, teaching, and learning of Ethnic Studies. Our praxis must reflect the belief that students are not just consumers of knowledge but also producers. Whereas the majority of chapters in this section highlighted the ways in which Ethnic Studies pedagogy can shape learning in formal classrooms, Motecuzoma Sanchez makes the case for its use in larger community spaces. In “Struggle in the Mud” Sanchez delineates how lessons learned from Ethnic Studies informed the community mobilization to reopen the Fair Oaks Public Library in a primarily Mexican neighborhood in east Stockton, California. He contextualizes the contemporary disparities suffered by People of Color in Stockton through a historical discussion of the institutional racism that

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characterized city policies and social practices, including local politics. Sanchez then presents a detailed account of his involvement with grassroots organization Scholastic Educational Movement in Language Literacy and Scholarship (SEMILLAS), and the strategic plan they developed to mobilize a multiracial coalition of community members around the library. In addition to building a multiracial support base, the combination of community-based rallies with demographic and policy research to inform their campaign exemplified what Sanchez described as Ethnic Studies pedagogy in action. Through Sanchez’s discussion of Ethnic Studies pedagogy in action outside of a formal educational context, readers become familiar with the long-term impact of Ethnic Studies’ community-responsive purpose.

Critical Practitioner Preparation The movement to implement Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools faces a major structural barrier, namely the ability to recruit, adequately train, and retain critical educators (Tintiangco-Cubales et al. 2015). Currently, there is no institutional support or formal process to credential teachers in Ethnic Studies. There are also few pathways that inform students to major in Ethnic Studies and encourage Ethnic Studies undergraduates to pursue teaching, and even less resources that prepare them to pass the myriad of standardized exams necessary to enter and complete teacher credential programs. This is not to say that there are not qualified teacher candidates to teach Ethnic Studies; many credentialed teachers majored or minored in Ethnic Studies as undergraduates and/or are longtime community organizers whose activism is informed by Ethnic Studies scholarship and practices. However, in recognition of the dearth in institutional support to pipeline Ethnic Studies students into teaching careers and to retain critical teachers already in the classroom, part III of the book features the ways in which educators have taken critical professional development into their own hands and have applied an Ethnic Studies pedagogy in the teaching and learning of Ethnic Studies. Traditional educational leadership models tend to promote hierarchies in school organization, as well as overly focus on the management of schools and classrooms. In “The Power of Ethnic Studies” Arlene Daus-Magbual and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales critique such models and outline a Critical Leadership Praxis (CLP), an educational leadership pedagogy that emphasizes the development of culturally and community-responsive leaders in education and beyond. Their model is based on the experiences of critical education leaders who have gone through Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), an Ethnic Studies program that trains undergraduates and graduate students to teach Filipino American Studies to elementary school, middle school, high school, and community college students throughout San Francisco and

xxiiIntroduction

neighboring areas. Starting as a program meant to address the access and retention issues faced by Filipino American students, PEP has pipelined an impressive number of participants to pursue advanced degrees; similarly, PEP has fostered among participants strong academic and self-confidence, acute political literacies, and long-term goals to serve the community through serviceoriented professions such as teaching. The CLP developed though PEP encourages Ethnic Studies practitioners to not only think about how their programming can shape student trajectories, but also their own professional development. Due to PEP’s more than fifteen-year record of direct educational outcomes, we also highlight the program’s ability to prepare educators to construct a strong educational philosophy that historicizes their work and is rooted in social justice. In Roderick Daus-Magbual’s chapter, “Brown Washing Hermeneutics,” he uses the narratives of former PEP teachers to demonstrate how their participation enabled them to reflect on their personal histories and ultimately shaped a responsibility to dedicate their lives to educational transformation. He offers to readers what he calls a Historically Responsive Pedagogy (HRP), which utilizes the learning and construction of historical narratives to contextualize the contemporary lives of students and teachers. The impact of students and teachers engaging in an HRP is the facilitation of participants developing a strong sense to “act” against historical patterns that have marginalized their communities and toward self- and community empowerment. Daus-Magbual’s findings are important in showing how teaching Ethnic Studies can be an important mechanism in shaping critical practitioner preparation and retention. The work of PEP has been mediated by a longer history and partnerships with community organizations and San Francisco State University, which houses the only College of Ethnic Studies in the nation. However, a grassroots approach is sometimes more realistic in spaces that lack such a network or institutional support. Such is the context that shaped the work described by Jerica Coffey and Ron Espiritu in their chapter, “Common Struggle.” Informed by more than a decade of teaching experience with Black and Brown communities, Coffey and Espiritu describe in-depth the process of developing Teacher Inquiry Groups (TIG), or professional learning spaces for K–12 educators in which they collectively work together to design curriculum and develop teacher pedagogy using an Ethnic Studies framework. TIGs provided opportunities for teachers from various schools and across disciplines to engage in contemporary educational research, and share and co-construct critical race curriculum. As such, TIGs served as a counterspace for participants, most of whom are teachers of color who often lack such an outlet within their respective schools. Central in their work is the assertion that educators who work with primarily students of color should necessarily develop a critical race

Introductionxxiii

literacy, especially in context of the colorblind educational policies and practices that shape K–12 schooling. Evident in this part concerning critical practitioner preparation is the immense amount of time, work, and energy that Ethnic Studies educators dedicate to their students and their craft. Such commitment is exemplified in Anita Fernández’s chapter, “Resistance and Resilience in Tucson.” Fernandez introduces readers to the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO), a collective comprised of former teachers of the Mexican American Studies program and other allies. XITO emerged not only for critical teacher training, but also to prepare practitioners to defend the teaching and learning of Ethnic Studies in education. XITO embodies the principles of Ethnic Studies, namely the goal to develop among educators critical consciousness, and culturally and community-responsive pedagogies both within and outside of formal classrooms. XITO also relies on the activist tradition of Ethnic Studies in that their work has extended beyond curricular development and teaching strategies, and toward creating an Ethnic Studies movement. Taking the lessons learned from the criminalization of Mexican American Studies in Arizona, XITO has become a space to share student and teacher narratives with practitioners across the United States as a tool to develop strategies against current and future attacks on Ethnic Studies. We end part III and the volume with an essay by Los Angeles Poet Laureate, Luis Rodriguez. While this volume has largely contained the work of Education and Ethnic Studies practitioners who have shared research that reveals the relevance and impact of our field, Rodriguez reminds us that the future of Ethnic Studies cannot forget the significance of cultural workers. He makes the argument that artists, writers, and community activists play a vital role in the construction of Ethnic Studies. Indeed, cultural workers often provide the stories used within classrooms and/or inspire the imagination of teachers and students. However, beyond the critical preparation of teachers and students, and the construction of popular texts that articulate the suffering, resilience, and self-determination of marginalized communities that we study, Ethnic Studies must always center the humanization of our communities, a lesson often lost in an increasingly neoliberal education.

CONCLUSION On October 9, 2015, K–12 Ethnic Studies advocates experienced a major blow when California governor Jerry Brown vetoed Assembly Bill (AB) 101. CA AB 101 mandated the establishment of an advisory board to develop a “model curriculum” of Ethnic Studies for grades 7 to 12 in the state of Cali­ fornia.7 California would have been the first state to institutionalize Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools at a statewide level. Although CA AB 101 received

xxivIntroduction

bipartisan support, Governor Brown stated that the bill was “essentially a redundant process”: “The Instructional Quality Commission is in the midst of revising the History–Social Science Framework, which includes guidance on ethnic studies courses. Creating yet another advisory board specific to ethnic studies would be duplicative and undermine our current curriculum process.”8 Governor Brown’s justification for the veto does not take into account that AB 101 had been previously amended to streamline the process for developing Ethnic Studies curriculum and to implement Ethnic Studies at preschool and elementary levels, and beyond Social Studies. Further, the veto and his statement affirmed the lack of understanding of the nuanced content and pedagogy specific to Ethnic Studies, and the need to rely on Ethnic Studies scholars and practitioners to guide its development in K–12 education. The struggle for K–12 Ethnic Studies is indicative of the culture wars in public education. As the population of K–12 students becomes more ethnically and racially diverse, so should our teaching force, curriculum, and pedagogies. Education should facilitate the ability of teachers and students to apply lessons learned in the classroom to examine, understand, and transform their material realities. Instead, public education is becoming privatized and teacher effectiveness and student learning are measured by bureaucratic outcomes-based assessments that do not reflect the values and experiences of marginalized communities. The contemporary K–12 Ethnic Studies movement seeks to alter the direction of schooling from uncritical socialization processes toward education for liberation. Throughout the volume, contributors outline multiple factors to consider in the struggle to implement Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools and spaces. Among the factors are the long history of discrimination against students and teachers of color, the ways that standardized curriculum has both obscured and validated the white supremacist violence inflicted on communities of color in education and society, and the overall dehumanization perpetuated by traditional schooling practices. More important, however, the authors highlight the factors they believe are essential to the growth and sustainability of K–12 Ethnic Studies: the continued theorization of the field, the development and incorporation of culturally relevant and community-responsive pedagogies, and the critical preparation of practitioners. However, there are many challenges ahead on the road to a widespread K–12 Ethnic Studies. In particular, the lack of institutional support to train Ethnic Studies practitioners is a reality we have to strategize against. The barrier to critical practitioner preparation is threefold. First, we must strengthen the recruitment and retention of students into undergraduate and graduate programs in Ethnic Studies so that they gain a strong content and methodological foundation in the field. Second, we have to create smoother pathways

Introductionxxv

for Ethnic Studies students to pursue careers in teaching, including the development of credentialing processes that honor their knowledge base. Last, we have to establish a large network of support and institutional mechanisms to retain Ethnic Studies practitioners who teach in K–12 schools. In several cases, teachers have been ostracized and dismissed for incorporating Ethnic Studies content and pedagogy into traditional classrooms.9 Thus, essential to the K–12 Ethnic Studies movement is growing a wide base of support to organize on behalf of the educators who dedicate an insurmountable amount of time to their students and craft. Captured not only by the recent scholarship that reports the long-term impact of Ethnic Studies on students, but also evident in the passion and work of the volume’s contributors, is the message that the critical Ethnic Studies practitioner remains an active student of the field. Indeed, the contributors to this volume collectively have decades of experience as both students and teachers of Ethnic Studies. Together, they assert how Ethnic Studies in K–12 schools would challenge education that is ahistorical and does not consider or value the experiential knowledge of students in the classroom and the communities they represent. They document how practitioners must engage in ideological battles against notions of schools as neutral learning spaces, which readers can consider a theoretical starting point in their own development of a critical Ethnic Studies pedagogy. While we have seen a surge in phenomena such as “multicultural education,” “participatory action research,” or “service-learning” curriculum, we must remind educators that Ethnic Studies classrooms have always prioritized the centering of those precisely in the margins, reciprocal knowledge construction processes, and learning through community engagement. Thus, as we move forward we have to incorporate in the K–12 Ethnic Studies agenda not a desire to expand and institutionalize Ethnic Studies, but the need to fight against the commodification of Ethnic Studies in education.

NOTES 1. Throughout the volumes, we capitalize “People of Color” to acknowledge a collective, yet fluid, identity formation of the racially minoritized involved and/or impacted by cultural and political movements against white supremacy. However, aligned with our standpoint that Ethnic Studies is varied in form and contextual, the term “people of color” is used when chapter authors choose such naming. 2. Available at http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/491eg/2r/bills/.hb2281s.pdf. 3. For other scholars whose work has examined Ethnic Studies at the K–12 level, please see Acosta (2007, 36–42); Halagao (2010, 495–512); Jocson (2008, 241–53); Morrell et al. (2013); and Tintiangco-Cubales (2009). 4. See James Logan Ethnic Studies Department website at https://sites.google.com /site/jlethnicstudies/.

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5. See “Ethnic Studies at Kailua High School,” 2012, http://p4chawaii.org/wp -content/uploads/brochure_ETST_120409_JSM_final.pdf. 6. For more information on Free Minds Free People and the Education for Liberation Network, see http://fmfp.org. 7. California Assembly Bill 101, Pupil Instruction: Ethnic Studies, 2015, http:// leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB101. 8. Governor Brown’s full veto statement is available at https://www.gov.ca.gov /docs/AB_101_Veto_Message.pdf. 9. In the past decade there have been high profile cases in which teachers incorporating Ethnic Studies curriculum and pedagogy have been dismissed from their positions, despite rampant student and community-based support. In 2008, high school English teacher Karen Salazar was dismissed from her position at Jordan High School in Los Angeles Unified School District. She was accused of “brainwashing students” and that her Ethnic Studies–based curriculum was “too Afro-centric.” See Howard Blume, “School Rallies Round Dismissed Teacher,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2008. In 2015, elementary school teacher Marilyn Zuniga was terminated from her position at Forest Street Elementary School in New Jersey after an activity in which students wrote letters to political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. See Bill Wichert, “District Fights Teacher’s Lawsuit over Firing for Kids’ Letters to Cop Killer,” NJ.com, August 20, 2015.

REFERENCES Acosta, Curtis. 2007. “Developing Critical Consciousness: Resistance Literature in a Chicano Literature Class.” The English Journal 97(2): 36–42. Cabrera, Nolan L., Jeffrey F. Milem, Ozan Jaquette, and Ronald W. Marx. 2014. “Missing the (Student Achievement) Forest for All the (Political) Trees: Empiricism and the Mexican American Studies Controversy in Tucson.” American Educational Research Journal 51(6): 1084–118. Cabrera, Nolan L., Jeffrey F. Milem, and Ronald W. Marx. 2012. An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within Tucson Unified School District. Tucson, AZ: Report to Special Master Dr. Willis D. Hawley on the Tucson Unified School District Desegregation Case. Cammarota, Julio, and Augustine F. Romero. 2014. Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Ceasar, Stephen. 2014. “El Rancho Schools Don’t Wait on State, Adopt Ethnic Studies Curriculum.” Los Angeles Times, July 7. Ceasar, Stephen. 2014. “L.A. Unified to Require Ethnic Studies for High School Graduation.” Los Angeles Times, December 8. Cupchoy, Lani, and Enrique C. Ochoa. 2015. “Montebello Unified and the March of Ethnic Studies: Guest Commentary.” San Gabriel Valley Tribune, March 2. de los Ríos, Cati V. 2013. “A Curriculum of the Borderlands: High School Chicana/ o-Latina/o Studies as Sitios y Lengua.” Urban Review 45(1): 58–73, doi 10.1007 /s11256-012-0224-3. de los Ríos, Cati V., Jorge López, and Ernest Morrell. 2015. “Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Race: Ethnic Studies and Literacies of Power in High School Classroom.” Race and Social Problems 7(1): 84–96.

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Fong, Timothy. 2008. Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press. Goodyear-Ka’opua, Noelani. 2013. The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Halagao, Patricia E. 2004. “Liberating Filipino Americans through Decolonizing Curriculum.” Race Ethnicity and Education 13(4): 495–512. Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. 2004. “Ethnic Studies in U.S. Higher Education: History, Development, and Goals.” In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks, 869–81. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Jocson, Korina M. 2008. “Kuwento as Multicultural Pedagogy in High School Ethnic Studies.” Pedagogies: An International Journal 3(4): 241–53. Kalb, Loretta. 2015. “Ethnic Studies Gaining Traction in Sacramento-Area Public Schools.” The Sacramento Bee, June 13. Matos, Alejandra. 2014. “Language Requirement Doesn’t Make the Cut for Minneapolis Schools.” Star Tribune, December 7. Morrell, Ernest, Rudy Duenas, Veronica Garcia, and Jorge López. 2013. Critical Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Noguera, Pedro A. 1994. “Ties That Bind, Forces That Divide: Berkeley High and the Challenge of Integration.” University of San Francisco Law Review 29: 719–40. Omatsu, Glenn. 2003. “Freedom Schooling: Reconceptualizing Asian American Studies for Our Communities.” Amerasia 29(2): 9–34. Phippen, J. Weston. 2015. “How One Law Banning Ethnic Studies Led to Its Rise.” The Atlantic, July 19. Planas, Roque. 2014. “Why Mexican-American Studies Is ‘Going to Spread Like Wildfire’ in Texas.” Huffington Post, April 11. Romero, Augustine F. 2010. “At War with the State in Order to Save the Lives of Our Children: The Battle to Save Ethnic Studies in Arizona.” The Black Scholar 40: 4, 7–15. Sleeter, Christine E. 2011. The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review. Washington, DC: National Education Association. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson. 2009. Pin@y Educational Partnerships: A Filipina/o Amer­­­ ican Studies Sourcebook, Volume 2: Filipina/o American Identities, Activism, and Service. Santa Clara, CA: Phoenix. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson, et al. 2015. “Toward an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Implications for K–12 Schools from the Research.” Urban Review 47: 104–125, doi 10.1007/s11256–014–0280-y. Tucker, Jill. 2014. “Ethnic Studies Courses Coming to All S.F. Schools.” SF Gate, December 9. Umemoto, Karen. 1989. “ ‘On Strike!’ San Francisco State College Strike, 1968–69: The Role of Asian American Students.” Amerasia 15(1): 3–4.

Part I

Historical and Theoretical Considerations

1

Hecho en Berkeley: A Brief History of the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Program at Berkeley High School Pablo Gonzalez

Taking Chicano Literature at Berkeley High really changed my life. I don’t remember one time learning about our gente in our classes. It was like we were forgotten, absent. So it gave us hella pride to be in a classroom hearing about our experiences. —Diana, founding student member of the Berkeley High School Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Program c. 1994 What do we want? Chicano Studies! When do we want it? Now! —Chicana/o youth protest chant during September 1993 Bay Area walkouts The introduction of California Assembly Bill 1750 by assembly member Luis A. Alejo, a bill that would make it a requirement for California high schools to offer electives and curriculum in Ethnic Studies, comes in the wake of a much broader national struggle for Ethnic Studies throughout the K–12 system. In particular, the battles over Raza Studies in Tucson, Arizona, and Mexican American Studies in Texas resonate with many educators looking to bridge the achievement gap through the inclusion of Ethnic Studies in California. School districts in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento have considered or passed Ethnic Studies curriculum requirements for their K–12 schools. These school districts reflect the changing racial/ethnic demographics of the state. At stake is the inclusion of histories and experiences from a majority student of color population and the struggle to narrow the achievement gap. While teachers, administrators, students, politicians, and communities

4

“White” Washing American Education

debate the merits of Ethnic Studies as a requirement for a rapidly changing non-white demographic in California, it is important to trace prior histories of Ethnic Studies in the public schools in order to learn valuable lessons and strategies for future implementation. This chapter focuses our attention on one such history, the creation of the first public high school Chicana/o Studies program in the country. Emerging from the need to address the Latino achievement gap and confront the lack of representation of Chicana/o and Latina/o culture in the curriculum, the Chicana/o Studies program at Berkeley High School, in Berkeley, California, became the first program in the country to offer multiple courses in Chicana/o Studies. This chapter describes the early history of the Chicana/o Studies program, from its founding in 1993 to 1998. It will incorporate my own personal experiences with the program as one of the founding student-activists and later as a teacher of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Berkeley High School. Through this brief but important snapshot of the Chicana/o Studies program at Berkeley High, I hope to offer a series of reflections and recommendations that can help future student-activists and teachers who are organizing to bring Ethnic Studies to their schools. Berkeley High School has a rich history of Ethnic Studies. Its African American Studies department, a first of its kind, was founded in 1968 during the height of the Black Power movement. It has offered courses in Black history, literature, politics, Swahili, and Afro-Haitian dancing and drumming for more than forty-five years. Furthermore, in 1993, Berkeley High became one of the first high schools to make Ethnic Studies a requirement for incoming ninth graders. Yet even with a longstanding history of Ethnic Studies, achievement levels between racial/ethnic groups show that African Americans and Latinos have historically performed lower than white students.1 Latinos, who made up between 8–10% of a student population of roughly between 2,800 and 3,500 students throughout the 1990s, underachieved at higher rates than their overall student population.2 These disparities led to high dropout rates and low graduation numbers. For years, community leaders and high school staff worked on reversing the widening achievement gap but with little success. During the early 1990s, a protocol to hire more Latina/o staff and faculty at Berkeley High School jumpstarted the first discussions to initiate a ninth grade Chicana/o and Latina/o orientation class with the goal of intervening as soon as Latina/o students entered Berkeley High School. The hire of Regina Segura, the only Latina teacher at Berkeley High School at the time, to teach the Chicana/o and Latina/o orientation class and the “Spanish for native speakers” course reinvigorated a Chicana/o and Latina/o student body who felt there was a lack of representation of Latinos in the high school and at the curriculum level. Regina Segura was a native of the San Francisco Bay Area who could relate to the students’ experiences and needs. She regularly met

Hecho en Berkeley5

with Chicana/o and Latina/o students to discuss strategies to make their grievances heard by school faculty and administrators. One of the most effective methods was a series of meetings between Latina/o students and the different academic departments at Berkeley High School. The targeted departments included English, history, Spanish, and the sciences. Chicana/o and Latina/o students who attended these meetings expressed how the curriculum did not include their voices, their histories, or their cultures. Students voiced concern about how tracking into lower-level courses or English as a second language courses because of their Spanish surname and their racial/ethnic identity meant a pathway to “being pushed out” of school. They also shared testimonies of feeling marginalized and criminalized by teachers who thought of them as either incapable of succeeding or as troublesome gang members. Responses varied from sympathetic faculty who wanted to diversify the curriculum but did not know where to begin, to faculty who questioned the validity and place of Latino culture and history within the school curriculum. A white female history teacher during the meetings stated, “I have taken a course in Latin American History in college. I can teach you Chicano history.” English teachers, on the other hand, argued, “There just isn’t that many Latino writers to teach.” Students expected many of these responses since they had felt marginalized in classes since their ninth grade year. The meetings with different departments challenged the long-held view that Chicana/o, Mexican, and Latina/o students were docile and uninterested in their education. Although the meetings with administrators and faculty were mostly with students, the few Latino faculty and staff at Berkeley High School, especially the student counseling staff headed by Mercedes Sanders, played an integral role in building the infrastructure for the future Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies program. Behind the scenes, they worked on the recruitment and retention of future Latino teachers and with securing college prep credit from the California university system for what would eventually be the first courses in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Berkeley High School. Momentum grew from the student meetings with Berkeley High faculty, leading to the scheduling of the first three courses in Chicana/o Studies for the fall of 1993. The ninth grade orientation, “Spanish for Native Speakers,” and the “Introduction to Chicana/o Literature” classes inaugurated the 1993–94 school year alongside newly hired Latino teachers, Jorge Melgoza and Mario Huerta. Regina Segura, who had taught the Chicana/o and Latina/o ninth grade orientation class, replaced Mercedes Sanders as the only Latina student counselor. As a high school senior, I enrolled in the college prep Chicana/o literature course taught by Jorge Melgoza. The inaugural course had an enrollment of thirty-five students many of whom were part of the original student-activists who helped start the course. During the first two

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weeks of class, students became aware that textbooks for the course had not yet arrived. This led many students, including myself, to organize a walkout in response to the lack of resources for the classes and the recent racial profiling of Latino youth due to their presumed gang affiliation. Chicana/o and Latina/o students at Berkeley High School found allies in two places. The first was with Latino parents and the Latino community of Berkeley. Up until the fall of 1993, parents had a minimal role in the formation of the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies program. Students invited their parents to a series of evening meetings to explain and discuss the conditions faced in the school and the purpose of the walkouts. Berkeley High School principal, Jim Henderson, and other school administrators were invited too, and attended the meetings. Overwhelmingly, parents supported the student demands and call for a walkout. Many parents expressed that they had not historically engaged in school issues due to the language barrier and the lack of support for Latino working-class parents who worked long hours and could not attend evening meetings. As a result, students threaded these issues faced by parents into their overall demands. Students also found allies with other Bay Area high school students who were organizing a much larger coordinated walkout of more than a thousand middle school and high school students. Evening and weekend meetings facilitated by longtime Chicano labor organizer Gabriel Hernandez in Oakland, San Jose, and Berkeley between student organizers across different high school campuses solidified the coordination of a daylong walkout in mid-September. Thousands of students, parents, and community members marched toward UC Berkeley demanding Ethnic Studies in the high schools, an end to racial profiling, and equal access to education.3 The walkouts had a profound effect on the Chicana/o and Latina/o student body at Berkeley High School. The Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies classes became spaces to discuss and debate issues of educational equity, youth criminalization, growing anti-immigrant hysteria, and political activism. Students regularly used the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies classrooms during lunch and after school to organize cultural events and political actions. Student organizations like, La Raza Unida and MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlan), were formed to bridge student activism with community issues and needs.4 The culmination of the school year ended with the orga­ nizing of a Chicana/o and Latina/o graduation where graduating seniors cele­ brated their achievements throughout the year.5 By fall of 1994, I left to start my first year at the University of California, Davis as a Chicana/o Studies major. The knowledge and experiences gained from my participation in the first classes in the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies program at Berkeley High helped tremendously with my introductory courses in Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis. I received high scores on exams,

Hecho en Berkeley7

which proved valuable for my confidence in other classes. My political activism during my senior year at Berkeley High also helped me become active in the mass organizing against the anti-immigrant bill Proposition 187 in California. After transferring from UC Davis to UC Berkeley in 1996, I returned to Berkeley High School as a student teacher. The Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies program was now in the hands of Julia Gonzalez-Luna, a former studentactivist at Stanford University. She hired me to teach the Chicana/o and Latina/o literature course, while she taught the Chicana/o history and ninth grade orientation courses. The department also hired four additional UC Berkeley students as teachers’ aides. As the Chicana/o and Latina/o literature teacher, I emphasized writing skills designed for critical thinking, personal storytelling, and identity formation. I also emphasized oral histories and poetry to engage with political and cultural issues affecting Latinas/os in the United States. My courses were hemispheric in scope while attempting to also localize and highlight the experiences of growing up Chicana/o and Latina/o in the Bay Area. For instance, my participation in the growing Zapatista transnational solidarity movement ushered the possibility of introducing the poetics of Zapatista Indigenous communiques as critical reading materials for students to discuss. Finding resonance in the struggle for autonomy, by Indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico, students engaged Zapatista writings throughout the semester. Under Julia Gonzalez Luna as chair, the program grew in prominence. Courses such as “Chicana/o Leadership,” open to all grade levels, developed student leadership throughout the school and community through studentled projects like a Chicana/o and Latina/o student newspaper. Other courses such as “Chicana/o Drama” and “Baile Folklorico” complemented the core curriculum initiated in 1993 with the “Chicana/o and Latina/o Literature” and “Chicana/o History” courses. The program also reached out to national organizations like the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). Teachers and students of the program also attended and presented at several NACCS national conferences. In 1997, the program facilitated a roundtable at the NACCS conference in Sacramento, California, from which several key initiatives emerged. The most important of these was the proposal for a K–12 caucus that would function as a support base for future Chicana/o Studies teachers at the K–12 level. I left the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies program in 1998, but continued to follow their success until I started my graduate training in 2000. Courses in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Berkeley High School continued up until late 2000s. Berkeley High School has experimented since then with various models, including the current “small learning communities” model, which focuses on nontraditional pedagogical methods and a concentration on “skill

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mastery” to narrow the achievement gap between white, Asian, Black, and Latino students at Berkeley High.6 Chicana/o and Latina/o student achievement has made some progress since then but for educators at Berkeley High School, the numbers are deceiving. Jorge Melgoza, now a vice principal at Berkeley High School, continues to see Chicanas/os and Latinas/os achieve at lower rates than their peers. In response, as recent as the spring of 2014, there is a growing momentum of Latina/o community and school leaders interested in bringing back the project of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies to Berkeley High School. Early discussions by these community and school leaders have ushered a series of concerns and recommendations that I find necessary for future Ethnic Studies programs at the K–12 level to consider. These recommendations stem from my years working on developing Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies and Ethnic Studies at the community, high school, and university levels. They include, in no particular order: 1. Forging a foundation of student, parent, and community support: What made the Chicana/o and Latina/o program at Berkeley High School successful for years was the student support for the courses and the history of student activism both within and outside of the school. Community support emerged from an increased interest by students in the courses. The courses counted for college credit and they were a place where students could learn about their culture and identity. Parents and community members also became more involved with student concerns and the growth of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies when students opened spaces for parents to share their experiences within the educational system. Future Ethnic Studies programs should consider making parent and community involvement an established cornerstone toward future growth. 2. Community dialogue on Ethnic Studies: Furthermore, having a community dialogue on the benefits of Ethnic Studies–based curriculum and courses is essential in this current political climate. The springboard for the Chicana/o Studies program at Berkeley High was the student walkout in the fall of 1993. From the walkout, numerous conversations on the need for Chicana/o Studies and Ethnic Studies emerged. With a postracial U.S. discourse dominating the debate for and against Ethnic Studies, a continuous intersectional dialogue is necessary to discuss the ways in which race, class, gender, and sexuality shape our understanding of society. 3. Building an open dialogue with traditional departments: A K–12 Ethnic Studies approach should consider extending the invitation to dialogue with faculty in “traditional” departments over the curriculum and treatment of students of color. In the case of Berkeley High School, students

Hecho en Berkeley9

who initially met with faculty in 1992–93 exposed years of neglect and unfair treatment of Chicana/o and Latina/o students. An invitation to dialogue, whether accepted or not, develops a necessary platform for future Ethnic Studies programs, one that proactively advocate for students across the school. 4. Building networks and working relationships with university-based Ethnic Studies programs: While students from local universities have always been a source of mentorship for students of color, a concerted effort at building networks with national organizations, like the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, the National Association for Chicana/o Studies, and Ethnic Studies departments at regional and local universities, can lead to innovative curriculum development and necessary support. Although UC Berkeley students and faculty did not play a significant role in the creation of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Berkeley High, they did offer important political and cultural support through organized events like Raza Day on the UC Berkeley campus. 5. Ethnic Studies as a social relation: Make the process of building Ethnic Studies curriculum and courses as an everyday learning and teaching moment. By thinking of Ethnic Studies as a social relation, it centers Ethnic Studies approaches as an integral part of the growth and development of students. My experiences with the creation of the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Berkeley High School, from 1993 to 1998, prepared me for the rigors of university teaching in profound ways. It instilled a politics centered on furthering nontraditional knowledge production. It helped establish my academic success before I reached the university. In turn, it helped me feel success at the individual and collective level, in an otherwise isolating environment. With momentum in California for Ethnic Studies throughout the K–12 system, a diversity of approaches will be necessary to deal with the different issues and concerns faced by students in each school district throughout the state. The project of Ethnic Studies in this case becomes an opportunity to reshape the very nature of public education in the United States.

NOTES 1. Noguera & Wing (2006) refute the argument that achievement within groups is due solely to class. In their groundbreaking study on the achievement gap and racial inequality at Berkeley High School, they point out that historically even workingclass whites performed higher than their Black and Latino counterparts. 2. Until the last decade, African Americans made up the majority of the student population at a steady 32%, while white students were a close second at 30%. Latinos

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made up the third-largest population at 8 to 10% of the student population. Over the last ten years, the Latino population has grown to 16% according to the 2013–14 Berkeley High School website. African American students, on the other hand, have dropped to 22% of the overall student population. 3. Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez writes about these walkouts and the student orga­ nizing that led to them in her book, De Colores Means All of US (1999). Additionally, Victor Rios (2005), a Berkeley High School alum, also mentions these walkouts as a formative political moment for many Chicana/o and Latina/o youth in the Bay Area. 4. Leading much of this growth in student activism was the role of Chicanas and Latinas who led student meetings, organized schoolwide cultural assemblies, and acted as an important conduit between student concerns and parent involvement. 5. The Chicana/o and Latina/o graduation ceremony continues to be a longstanding tradition at Berkeley High School with much of the fundraising and orga­ nizing led by students. 6. In a March 11, 2009, opinion piece written by Rachel Swan in the Eastbay Express, she argues that the small school experiment has actually widened the achievement gap between different racial/ethnic groups. Although the idea of a series of schools within a school attempts to create parity between students, she points to the segregated classrooms the small schools have resulted in, where nonwhite students are mostly enrolled in the small schools while white and Asian students opt for the traditional school format. While some of her claims hold merit, she does not take into account the role white parents have in lobbying for their children to be placed in traditional large school formats where honors and advanced placement courses are traditionally available to white students.

REFERENCES Maran, Meredith. 2001. Class Dismissed: A Year in the Life of an American High School, a Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin Press. Martinez, Elizabeth. 1999. De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century. Boston: South End Press. Noguera, Pedro, and Jean Yonemura Wing. 2006. Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in Our Schools. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Rios, Victor. 2005. “ ‘From Knucklehead to Revolutionary’: Urban Youth Culture and Transformation.” Journal of Urban Youth Culture 3(1). Swan, Rachel. 2011. “Separate and Unequal at Berkeley’s Small Schools.” Eastbay Express, March 11.

2

Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies: Toward a Decolonizing and Liberatory Education for Xicana/o Youth Martín Sean Arce

“Son said, you have to go out and, and find different strong things that . . . that give you honor. To get rid of all the negative that people have to bring life back to each and every one of us.”1 This quote, made by a Native elder steeped in Indigenous knowledge, is a recommendation for the ways in which to respond to the negative effects of colonization and dehumanization of Indigenous youth, specifically the pervasiveness of internalized oppression, historical trauma, horizontal violence, domestic violence, patriarchy, homophobia, and drug and alcohol abuse that continues to adversely and disparately impact Indigenous and other colonized communities of color. Relative to Xicana/o youth, within the greater context of the colonization of the Xicana/o community,2 public schools traditionally and currently do not provide safe and healthy spaces for their development; culturally responsive curricula and/or pedagogy; or programmatic offerings where youth can cultivate a sense of honor and dignity for themselves, their families, and/or their communities. This denial of Xicana/o youth of empowering, decolonizing, and liberatory methodologies in schools is copiously demonstrated in the literature on K–12 Chicana/o education as well as in our collective experiences in working with Chicana/o youth as educators and researchers within Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American/Raza Studies Department (MARSD). What we know from the educational literature and through our collective educational research-based experiences is that public schools have traditionally and continue to serve as institutions where the culture, language, history, and identity is stripped from Xicana/o youth (Moreno and Garcia Berumen, 1999; Valencia 2011; Valenzuela 1999), where Xicana/o youth are criminalized, and where schools themselves serve as sites where inequality is reproduced.

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Thus, based on these understandings of Xicanas/os and their relation to public schools and through the highlighting and critical analysis of Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies as living and fluid knowledge systems,3 I believe that when put into critical praxis these strategies can effectively counter the colonizing and dehumanizing structures, policies, processes, and practices in schools that have and continue to adversely impact Xicana/o youth. Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies served as the pedagogical and curricular framework from which TUSD’s MARSD operated, resulting in the positive and fluid development of identities and the unprecedented academic success in closing the pervasive achievement gap for and with Xicana/o youth in public schools. The Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies embraced and practiced as a form of living knowledge, in addition to the students and teachers of the MARSD, became the specific target of attack by the State of Arizona’s Department of Education, the Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Arizona Attorney General, the Arizona State Legislature, and the Governing Board and Superintendent of TUSD for being “vehemently anti-Western,” “collectivist,” “anti-American,” “ritualized,” and a “cult,” and that it served as “a focal point of the Aztec consciousness element for the ‘Aztec movement’ ” taking place in MARSD (Horne, 2007; Landeros, 2011). These attacks on Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies eventually led to Arizona outlawing K–12 “Ethnic Studies” in the State of Arizona (Arizona State Legislature, 2010, specifically the MARSD, with TUSD complying with the state and eliminating this effective and liberatory education project on January 12, 2012, despite the fact that the MARSD in TUSD was a stipulation under the existing federal court desegregation order. These attacks on Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies and K–12 Chicana/o Studies from the state and local school district is testimony that the colonial project for Xicanas/os, and other Indigenous people and communities of color, is not a remnant of the past, but that colonization remains a very real dehumanizing and oppressive force. This chapter is divided into five sections. The second section, “Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies,” offers an analysis and positional review of existing bodies of literature that address Mexicana/o–Xicana/o Indigenous forms of knowledges, which informed the former K–12 MARSD, and that provide epistemological and pedagogical possibilities for K–12 Chicana/o Studies decolonizing and liberatory education projects. “Attributes of the Temachtiani: Nahua Principles of Education as Decolonizing Teacher Pedagogy for Xicana/o Youth,” the third section of this chapter, serves as a pedagogical framework for teachers to effectively engage Xicana/o and other marginalized youth in K–12 Chicana/o Studies and beyond, through the centering of Indigenous Epistemologies, and that specifically draw from humanizing and liberatory Nahua principles of education (León-Portilla 1980).4 The fourth

Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies13

section, “Toward a Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemological Praxis: Tucson’s K–12 Mexican American/Raza Studies Department,” focuses on the foundational and liberatory pedagogical tool of the Nahui Ollin, which was implemented by the MARSD to develop strong cultural and fluid identities that guided students to the unprecedented closing of the academic achievement gap for and with Xicana/o youth (Cabrera, Marx, and Milem 2012; O’Leary, Romero, Cabrera, and Rascón 2012; Sleeter 2011). The theoretical, philosophical, and practical framing of MARSD’s operationalization of the Nahui Ollin functions as an empirically based decolonizing and liberatory educational model from which K–12 Chicana/o Studies and Ethnic Studies projects can be placed into a pedagogical praxis.

XICANA/O INDIGENOUS EPISTEMOLOGIES Here I develop a positional review and analysis of existing bodies of literature that provide insight into Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies. I focus principally on works by Chicano scholar Marc Pizarro (1998), Mexican historian and anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1996), and Chicana educator and Nahua philosopher Martha Ramírez Oropeza (2002). Critical to note are that the epistemological frameworks by these scholars informed the work of Tucson’s former K–12 Mexican American/Raza Studies program—which has since been outlawed by the State of Arizona and eliminated by TUSD despite its unprecedented success in closing the pervasive and persistent academic achievement gap for Xicana/o youth. Equally important to examine are how these Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies provide possibilities for effectively engaging and empowering K–12 Xicana/o youth, as well as other traditionally marginalized youth of color, through a decolonizing, rehumanizing, and liberatory education. Pizarro contends that schools act as social and economic reproduction sites where the hegemony of schooling shapes students into efficient workers and consumers, ultimately strengthening and benefiting multinational corporations within the neoliberal capitalist system. The consumerization of students in public schools has forced students to either buy into this model of education (e.g., rote memorization; standardization; and culturally, socially, and historically irrelevant pedagogy and curricula), despite its dehumanizing and despiritualizing nature, and become consumers of this knowledge as a means for eventual financial success, or to resist consuming this knowledge, risking school failure and becoming one among the masses of the uneducated, thus solidifying their position as an unmarketable lifetime low-wage earner. Pizarro contends that this type of educational system perpetuates subordinate and dominant groups within contemporary society’s cultural, political, and economic power relationship dynamic, with Xicana/o and other youth of color too often forced into subordinate positions. Critical scholar and

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educator Antonia Darder (1991) provides insight into the maintenance of these dominant and subordinate relations within public schools, examines the relation between culture and power and how it adversely impacts students of color, and offers a challenge to counter and disrupt them: It is impossible to impact significantly the underachievement of bicultural students without addressing the issue of power in society and its role in the cultural subordination of people of color, in spite of proclaimed democratic ideals. It is this link between culture and power that must be challenged in any effort to develop a theory of critical bicultural education toward the emancipatory interests of bicultural students in the United States. (21) Analogous to Darder’s challenge to the existing relationship between culture and power, where youth of color are forced into a position of subordination, Pizarro’s work is critical for it explores and provides possibilities on how educators working for and with Xicana/o youth can challenge dominant power and ideology with relation to culture by implementing a decolonizing and rehumanizing curriculum by using a Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemological framework. In this instance, a decolonizing and rehumanizing curriculum challenges a curriculum whose aim is to make efficient workers and consumers of students. Ramírez Oropeza (2002) sheds light on the fact that Xicana/o– Mexicana/o communities do not have the economic resources or access to media resources as do the “globalizers” (34) to counter globalization and mass consumerization; nonetheless, Ramírez Oropeza provides an alternative by offering Indigenous knowledge as an approach to effectively counter globalization, stating “we resort to our greatest natural resource: the wisdom of our ancestors and the vision of unity and harmony inspiring their descendants” (34). Citing surviving waves of repeated colonization—by Spain, the United States, and now the “globalizer”—Ramírez Oropeza contends Xicanas/os– Mexicanas/os have been able to maintain their tradiciones, identity, and dignity through the maintenance of Indigenous Epistemologies. In keeping with one of the original objectives of Chicana/o Studies, the development of a strong cultural identity for and with Xicana/o youth within a public education system that has operated to assimilate and “subtract the culture” (Valenzuela 1999) from them, K–12 Chicana/o Studies programs can benefit greatly by implementing Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies that operate to empower Xicana/o students through the development of strong ethnic, cultural, and academic identities. Integral to this decolonizing and rehumanizing curriculum is the implementation of what Pizarro (1998) designates “Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo,” describing this process as:

Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies15

Some segments of the Chicana/o student population, therefore, have increasingly realized over the past few years the need for spiritualization of the community. I am referring to the pursuit of greater spirituality: the creation of strong bonds within communities based on shared notions of the sanctity of life (and of greater forces behind this life) as part of the process of seeking empowerment for humanity and, in the case of Chicanas/os, revolutionary change for the oppressed. (61) In his work with Xicana/o youth at both the high school and at the college/ university levels, Pizarro has observed and taken critical note that this education as consumption model has proven not only ineffective and disempowering, but that it has been a model of dehumanization wherein the lack, and in most cases the total absence, of cultural, social, and historical responsiveness is seen within the curriculum. Within this educational model, the absence of opportunities for Xicana/o students to physically connect and work for and with their community has led to the “despiritualization,” the discouragement, and in many instances, the killing of the spirit of learning itself. The lack of connectedness to community is disempowering for many Xicana/o students, who “have a distinct epistemological upbringing that calls this separation into question and actually demands a more revolutionary/humanistic approach to life itself” (Pizarro 1998, 61–62). Consequently, this dehumanization and despiritualization of Xicana/o youth within educational institutions necessitates Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo as an approach to meet the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of Xicana/o youth. Essential to an effective implementation is the requirement that teachers listen intently to la palabra (“the word”) of Xicana/o youth engaging in what Pizarro refers to as a “dialogical pedagogy” regarding their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs—in essence, their whole person. Examination of qualitative analysis of the Chicana/o students that Pizarro had worked with over the years, has identified an emerging theme where students communicated their need for community connection, specifically a spiritual connection and development through Indigenismo—as a result of their exposure to Xicana/o community Indigenous practices—as a means to cope with and navigate the pervasiveness of materialism and dehumanization found within popular culture and within educational institutions, which in many cases are aimed specifically at and impact Xicana/o youth. The implementation of Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo as pedagogical and epistemological instruments of decolonization, revolutionary possibility, and liberation for Xicana/o youth within schools is a radical shift from traditional Western educational models, because these freedom-seeking methodologies are viewed as far-reaching, extremist, and threatening to the

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hegemony of the public education system that domesticates, perpetuates inequality, and in due course, operates to make consumers of all youth. Equally, these instruments and methodologies are considered radical and threatening because the notion of “spirituality,” specifically when used in education, is viewed as a violation of the Western rules of a supposed “objectivity.” Nevertheless, Western educational models have never been effective in engaging, empowering, or meeting the holistic needs of youth of color, much less serving as decolonizing or liberating methodologies. On the contrary, Western education models in the United States have effectively served as tools of deculturalization, colonization, dehumanization, and oppression for Black, Chicana/o, Native American, and Asian American youth. While the recognition, implementation, and development of Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo as legitimate epistemological and methodological resources for Xicana/o youth is viewed as a breach of “objectivity,” I contend that the Western notion of objectivity within the social sciences and education disciplines is itself a biased conceptualization. Noted Chicano anthropologist Octavio I. Romano-V argues that “objectivity” is the West’s cherished philosophical tradition that is contingent upon the separation of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual human aspects of being. “As generally defined in Western thought, the concept of objectivity is impossible without a corresponding belief in man’s ability to separate his mind not only from his body, but also from all of his ecological surroundings, whether or not these ecological surroundings are human or physical” (Romano 1970, 4–5). Relative to this analysis of Western objectivity, it is critical to highlight Chicana cultural, feminist, and queer theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) intellectual contributions to this subject, “In trying to become ‘objective,’ Western culture made ‘objects’ of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing ‘touch’ with them. This dichotomy is the root of all violence” (69). Anzaldúa provides much-needed perspective to the psychological violence that is placed upon Xicana/o youth in schools as a result of its maintenance of Western objectivity and its educational models that restrict addressing the holistic needs of their subjects, essentially translating to and perpetuating the dehumanization and objectification of Xicana/o youth. Xicana/o youth have been dehumanized and despiritualized in particular ways—as evident in the consumerization and absence of cultural responsiveness within schools—thus, there is a critical need for the implementation of Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies as an approach that leads to rehumanization and decolonization through addressing the holistic needs of Xicana/o students. K–12 Chicana/o Studies has the opportunity to position itself to implement such an epistemic framework and therefore to transform the curriculum and pedagogy for the empowerment of Xicana/o youth, even in light of the fact that these knowledges, according to the academy, are not seen as legitimate by

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educational institutions. “Since Chicana/o studies was founded in opposition to traditional conceptions of schooling and knowledge, it already exists in a contestatory realm” (Pizarro 1998, 69). The historical and contemporary realities of Xicana/o youth in schools—wherein marginalization, dehumanization, despiritualization, and school failure have been normalized and where traditional Eurocentric models have consistently failed Xicana/o students—should serve as testimony for Chicana/o Studies to maintain its oppositional stance in relation to traditional Western forms of knowledge. Eurocentric knowledge, which has in great part worked toward maintaining the subjugation, oppression, and colonization of the Xicana/o community should also serve as a consciousness-raising catalyst for the community’s demand for our K–12 public schools to implement comprehensive Chicana/o Studies using approaches that embrace Indigenous Epistemologies. These epistemologies work toward a holistic and liberatory education for Xicana/o youth in order for them to become the facilitators in improving the economic, political, health, and social conditions of the Xicana/o community. In stressing the critical importance of education as liberation through Indigenous Epistemologies, Pizarro (1998) articulates the necessity of Xicana/o youth’s spiritual development, asserting “re-spiritualization may be the most revolutionary force at our disposal as we, both within and outside Chicana/o studies, seek to transform the spiritually dead, consumerized schoolhouse” (74). There exists a multitude of Indigenous knowledge that can be used to effectively counter the dehumanization and colonization of Xicana/o youth; further examination of specific decolonizing and humanizing practices illuminates ways in which a K–12 Chicana/o Studies pedagogy and curriculum can integrate this Indigenous knowledge. In México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, Bonfil Batalla (1996) provides a decolonial analysis on the reclamation of the Indigenous Mexican civilization within the context of consecutive waves of colonization of Mexico and the resultant “de-Indianization” of its people, which is described as “a historical process through which populations that originally possessed a particular and distinctive identity, based upon their own culture, are forced to renounce that identity, with all the consequent changes in their social organization and culture. De-Indianization is not the result of biological mixture, but that of the ethnocide that ultimately blocks the historical continuity of a people as a culturally differentiated group” (43). For Xicana/o youth in K–12 schools, de-Indianization is a process that they are constantly subjected to, as evidenced by the denial of teaching of their Indigenous heritage, knowledge systems, and culture in schools (a space where Xicanas/os are also forced, through assimilationist processes, to renounce their identity). Nonetheless, the reclamation of Mexican indigeneity found in Bonfil Batalla’s work has had a transformative influence on the works of scholars in the field of Chicana/o Studies, specifically through

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the privileging of Mexican Indigenous knowledge systems. As a result of this influence, the field of Chicana/o Studies is currently experiencing more of an inclusion of Indigenous Epistemologies, and many would argue a paradigm shift, from which to view, study, and research the Xicana/o experience. The imposition of the Spanish culture and religion forced on the native Mexican people was the colonial model upon which cultural and spiritual genocide took place. The native Mexicans resisted this cultural and spiritual genocide in part by appropriating the imposing images, beliefs, and symbols of the colonizers, through a transformation of the discourses, imagery, and symbolism in order to meet their own needs as well as for the survival and preservation of their Indigenous traditions. Equivalent to this imposition, the historical and contemporary structures, policies, and practices of public schools are continuous with this colonial model; Xicana/o (and other youth of color) often resist the processes of the colonial apparatus of schooling, much like their ancestors resisted colonization, as a means to preserve their dignity, albeit in a myriad of ways. The examination of how Xicana/o students resist these dehumanizing schooling processes are brought to light by Daniel Solórzano and Dolores Delgado Bernal (2002) in their article “Examining Transformational Resistance Through a Critical Race and Latcrit Theory Framework: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context,” where reactionary behavior, self-defeating resistance, conformist resistance, and transformational resistance are identified and analyzed. Solórzano and Delgado Bernal describe the forms of behavior and resistance as follows: reactionary behavior, while a form of oppositional behavior, is where students have neither a critique of the oppressive environment of their school nor a hunger for social justice and often exhibit behaviors of acting out; self-defeating resistance is where students may have a sense and assessment of oppression in their schools, but they do not have an interest in social justice and therefore exhibit negative behaviors (i.e., not doing school work or dropping out of school); conformist resistance is where students display oppositional behavior through working toward a form of social justice (i.e., better educational opportunities for themselves and their families through “hard work”), but are not critical of the oppressive structures and systems of their schools, often citing familial, community, and cultural deficiencies for the lack of educational equity; and last, transformational resistance, where students have a critique of the oppressive conditions of their schools and a yearning for social justice. I maintain that transformational resistance is situated within the larger frame of Mexican Indigenous resistance. While both transformational resis­ tance and Indigenous resistance critically examine oppressive social conditions and work toward the notion of social justice, Indigenous resistance, as a specific and legitimate Indigenous knowledge form that Xicanas/os–Mexicanas/os

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have used for the last five hundred years, transcends the notion of transformational resistance in and of itself, in that it works to preserve the dignity and very humanity of an entire people. Moreover, transformational resistance operationalized within an education context through a Xicana/o Indigenous epistemological lens will serve not only to alter the oppressive structures, policies, and practices of schools, but it will also allow for the sustainability and revitalization of Indigenous Xicana/o youth identities, functioning as a reminder that the issue of identity is paramount to the overall struggle against the greater colonial project that Xicanas/os are subjected to. Continuous with the notion of resistance as a form of Indigenous knowledge, Bonfil Batalla (1996) alludes to appropriation, stating, “Diverse Indian societies have taken the signs, symbols, and practices of the imposed religion and made them their own by reorganizing and reinterpreting them within the core of their own religious beliefs” (136). Along these same lines of reasoning, Broyles-González (2002) asserts that, “in the give and take of struggle, Mexicanas and Chicanas have learned to fashion faith and religion in our own image: the image of our gender, our ‘race’/ethnicity, our class affiliations, and the particulars of the local habitat and regional history” (118). Mexicanas and Xicanas have created faith and spirituality in their own image through the resistance to the colonial apparatus that imposed the Virgin Mary upon the native Mexican people. The Indigenous Mexican woman recreated or transformed the Virgin Mary in her own image by using the various pre-Columbian feminine principles manifested in the creative energies of Tonantzin, Coatlique, and Coatlashaupe, all manifestations of la madre tierra or “mother earth,” as well as that of Coyolxauqui, which represents the moon. These pre-Columbian feminine principles and epistemological bodies demonstrate the importance of acknowledging the feminine energy as a requirement of life itself within Mesoamerican Indigenous cosmology and scientific understandings of the universe. Despite this colonial subjugation, this appropriation by the Indigenous Mexican woman has allowed for the successful protection and preservation of Indigenous culture and spiritual beliefs. Broyles-González’s reference to the traditional appropriation that the Indigenous Mexican woman has made, through Xicana Indigenous ways of knowing, provides a pedagogical frame that situates young Xicanas as central subjects in making their own history, rather than having the Xicanas remain as passive objects whose history was determined and whose contemporary reality and future will be influenced by someone outside of themselves. There is power when implementing such Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies into K–12 curriculum and pedagogy, where Xicanas and Xicanos can engage these Indigenous Epistemologies to resist patriarchy and practice self-determination in a school system where Xicanas are viewed as less academically capable and are consistently acted upon through oppressive gendered, racialized, and class practices.

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The sustainability of this resistance through Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies is illustrated in Ramírez Oropeza’s highlighting of the ancient Mexica calendar system, Tonalmachiotl, more commonly known as the Aztec calendar, identifying it as an epistemological tool that facilitates processes of resistance, decolonization, and rehumanization for Xicana/o-Mexicana/o people. In the case of public schools where Xicana/o youth are forced to operate in a space where the colonizing and dehumanizing effects of institutional racism have stripped them of their identities, culture, languages, and history, the scientific, philosophical, and spiritual principles within the Tonalmachiotl provides for a viable pedagogical foundation that Ramírez Oropeza (2002) calls a “map for strategic action” from which students can enact resistance, decolonization, and rehumanization for themselves as well as their community. Within the Aztec calendar, Ramírez Oropeza (2002) expressed that the “five Ages or Suns depict a distinct period in the development of the world itself, providing us with a model by which to encounter, evaluate, resist, adapt to and ultimately influence the forces of dehumanization that penetrate our communities” (33). The first Sun, the Jaguar Sun, physically represents the element of earth and has the philosophical and intellectual representation of the “smoking mirror”—Tezkatlipoka, or that which calls for critical introspection. In order to fully grasp the multidimensional conceptualizations within the Aztec calendar, a holistic engagement through using the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ways of knowing is required. In providing greater understanding of this first Sun of the Tonalmachiotl, Ramírez Oropeza (2002) expands upon Tezkatlipoka, explaining: From this we learn that in order to encounter the Other it is necessary to know our own heart: before we can meet the Other face-to-face, it is necessary that we grasp the continuity of our collective identity. By confronting the ancestral memory within the Smoking Mirror, we do not allow our identity to be defined by the Other. Remembering who we are in our totality, however, requires that we educate ourselves about the essential experience that makes us one. (35) Engaging in Tezkatlipoka as epistemology and as a pedagogical tool allows for Xicana/o youth to critically examine themselves, their familias, and their communities, which constitute revolutionary acts, for to fully know oneself through self-analysis and within the colonial context of schooling that discourages Xicana/o youth from doing so is a liberatory process. Further alluding to the importance of critical self-reflection as fundamental to Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies, Bonfil Batalla’s (1996) proposal to reflect on the distinction between the “México profundo” and the “imaginary Mexico” provides critical insight into the identity confusion of Xicana/o

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youth. “I propose to reflect on the matter of civilization, in hopes that it will permit us to overcome the schizophrenia caused by the lack of understanding between the México profundo and the imaginary Mexico.” Through this critical reflection, the distinguishing between the “México profundo”—one that takes into consideration the effects of five centuries of colonization, unequal relations of power between Indigenous and “de-Indianized” Mexicans, and the acknowledgment of Indigenismo as one of the Mexican people’s most vital assets—and the “imaginary Mexico”—which is ahistorical in ignoring the effects of colonization, the unequal relations of power between Indigenous and “de-Indianized” Mexicans, and which views the Indian as uncivilized or simply as a dead relic of the past—allows for a collective reconciliation with the past and the struggle that leads toward the rehumanization of all peoples to be realized. Along these same lines of analysis, Xicana/o youth too often suffer from a cultural schizophrenia, wherein schools, the media, and society restricts and discourages Xicana/o youth from embracing their “Mexican-ness” and/or “Indian-ness” through racially repressive imagery, policies, and practices. As a result of these racially repressive practices, Xicana/o youth, and Xicanas/os in general, internalize these forms of oppression and buy into the belief that they are inferior because of their “Mexicanness” and “Indian-ness,” consequently adopting this worldview based upon a self-hatred. Chicana/o Studies activist-scholar and historian Rodolfo Acuña (1996) writes of this internalized oppression, stating, “Mexicans themselves internalize the ‘Anything But Mexican’ mindset. An internalized racism, popularly called a ‘colonized mentality’ by Chicano Movement activists during the 1960s, splinters Latino and even Mexican unity. It is more than a cliché that many Mexicans and Latinos want to be white, or at least consider fairer skin to be better. . . . The acceptance and internalization of the dominant society’s racism by Mexicans and Latinos is irrational and produces a false consciousness” (8). Through Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies, such as the critical self-reflection as forwarded by Ramírez Oropeza and Bonfil Batalla, Xicana/o youth can develop to counter this internalized oppression and come to terms with, embrace, and assert their identities, which have been submerged through colonizing processes. Throughout her explanation of each one of the five Ages or Suns of the Tonalmachiotl, Ramírez Oropeza redefines and re-appropriates the commonly held notion of “the Other,” as popularized (although building upon the earlier work of social scientists) by postcolonialist and critical theorist Edward Said, who, within his formative work Orientalism, used the term to describe the West’s patronizing, objectifying, and fetishizing of the colonized subjects of the East, who were and continue to be viewed as “objects.” Numerous critical theorists, postcolonial theorists, and Ethnic Studies scholars have borrowed from Said, adopting and applying the concept of “the

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Other” within their own analyses to describe the colonizers’ and oppressors’ perspective on the subjects whom they colonize, oppress, and subjugate. By inverting this conceptualization of “the Other,” where it is common that Indigenous Mexicanas/os–Xicanas/os have been constructed as “the Other” through processes of colonization and dehumanization, Ramírez Oropeza practices self-determination through the engagement in Mexican Indigenous knowledges inherent in the Aztec calendar, first, by not allowing the Mexicana/o–Xicana/o people to be defined as “the Other,” essentially not allowing for their objectification; second, by placing the term “the Other” onto those who colonize and dehumanize; and third, by not allowing this newly designated “Other” (the colonizer and systems and structures of oppression) to influence or determine the actions and beliefs of Mexicanas/os–Xicanas/os. Bonfil Batalla (1996) exemplifies this paradigm shift toward the embracing of an Indigenous worldview and of not allowing to be identified as “the Other,” or allowing the newly constructed “Other”—the colonizer/oppressor—to determine the actions and beliefs for the Indigenous Mexican by asserting, “The question should be posed in these terms: we should see the West from Mexico, instead of continuing to see Mexico from the West” (166). The implications of this re-articulation of the concept of “the Other” for K–12 Chicana/o Studies and Xicana/o youth, in particular through these Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies, as demonstrated in Ramírez Oropeza’s analysis of the Tonalmachiotl, are numerous and promising. It is critical to acknowledge that within K–12 public schools, Xicanas/os are viewed, discursively constructed, and acted upon as “the Other,” as evident in the “Otherizing” practices that are forced upon Xicanas/os. These practices include their disparate discipline rates, their disparate “push-out” rates, their criminalization, the increased amount of surveillance of them in schools, their placement as English learners in segregated spaces that receive inequitable educational opportunities, the low expectations placed upon them, their underrepresentation in advanced placement and/or honors classes, their low college-going rates, and their persistent, pervasive, and disproportionate low academic achievement relative to white students. In reference to these “Otherizing” negative experiences that Xicana/o youth are forced to face in public schools on a daily basis, urban educator and scholar Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade (2005) provides much-needed insight regarding Xicana/o youth designated as “the Other,” stressing “Urban youth [particularly Blacks and Chicanos] are always inscribed by stigmatizing images of gangs and the so-called inner city that produces this social pathology. . . . [T]hey are branded by the official discourse of the media, legal system, social welfare, and public policy institutions as dangerous ‘Others,’ the menace from the margins” (587–88). It is this marginalization, criminalization, demonization, and racialized gendered practices where “Otherizing” has been socially constructed to be used as a tool to oppress

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Xicana/o youth in schools. Consequently, the engagement of Xicana/o youth, and their teachers as facilitators, in Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies can effectively resist this “Otherizing” practice. It is through the critical examination of self—Tezkatlipoka—that results in the development of a strong sense of love for self, family, culture, and community, as well as the embracing of a collective historical memory, that the processes of transforming schools to make them more responsive to the needs of the Xicana/o community can be realized.

ATTRIBUTES OF THE TEMACHTIANI: NAHUA PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION AS DECOLONIZING TEACHER PEDAGOGY FOR XICANA/O YOUTH Fundamental to the role of the teacher, what the Nahua peoples call temachtiani, is that they possess in ixtli in yollotl—“a face, a heart”—a concept that Chávez Leyva (2003) describes as “central to Meso-American education and philosophy; to develop a strong face and heart was to acquire intellect, morality, and a sense of community responsibility” (101). Distinguished from traditional and contemporary Western educational models, which are based on individualism and a supposed objectivity, in ixtli in yollotl encompasses a holistic approach to education, explicitly wherein the acquisition of intellect and dissemination of knowledge, the development of morality and ethics, and the embracing of the notion of obligation and responsibility to community are foundational. Native American historian, anthropologist, and political activist Jack D. Forbes (2008) espouses the importance of personal and ethical development for the purpose of community empowerment for Xicana/o and other Native youth, which parallels the Nahua concept of in ixtli in yollotl, by attesting: “Education of the kind we know in the modern world usually has little to do with ethics or with bringing forth the individual potential of the learner. On the contrary, it is largely technical in nature (whether in natural science, social science, or whatever) and seldom (in and of itself) serves to alter the class and ethnic ‘interests’ of the graduates” (12). Education in the Western world continues to preserve and maintain the position of the powerful, who within the context of the United States have largely been male, white, and heterosexual, hence the negation of the study of subjects and issues of ethics, class, and ethnic development within educational institutions, for to allow these analyses and developments to take place in public institutions, particularly for marginalized communities of color, would function as a threat to white male hegemony. In Toltecáyotl: Aspectos de la cultura náhuatl, Mexican anthropologist and historian Miguel León-Portilla, through extensive research and interpretation of numerous codices, identified five essential attributes of the teacher—teixcuitiani,

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teixtlamachtiani, tetezcahuiani, netlacaneco, and tlayolpachitivia—which were specifically called for and highly respected among the Nahuas. I assert the position that the concept of in ixtli in yollotl and its attendant five attributes of a temachtiani, adhering to the Nahua tradition as described by León-Portilla, are directly applicable and highly effective within the contemporary context for urban teachers working with Xicana/o youth. I base this assertion on the empowering and transformative experiences of youth who matriculated through Tucson’s K–12 Mexican American/Raza Studies program, whose pedagogical foundation was based in Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies, which in turn led to the development of strong yet fluid identities, as well as the closing of the pervasive and persistent academic achievement gap for Xicana/o youth. The first Nahua attribute of the teacher, teixcuitiani—“causing others to take a face”—can serve as an empowering, liberatory, responsive, “sustainable,” and “revitalizing” pedagogical tool that teachers can use to meet the academic, cultural, social, and emotional needs of Xicana/o youth. Consistently viewed and treated as faceless and nameless in public schools, which often results in apathy, a lack of engagement, and sometimes a nihilistic attitude and approach toward schooling, Xicana/o youth are placed on a trajectory to go through the motions of the K–12 pipeline, in a seemingly factorylike process in which close to one-half of Xicana/o youth are pushed out of school. It is rare when Xicana/o youth are acknowledged for their academic and human potential. The community cultural wealth that these youth possess, those cultural forms that Chicana critical race theorist and scholar Tara Yosso (2005) identifies as “aspirational, familial, social, navigational, resistant, and linguistic” are ignored and seldom used in schools to empower Xicana/o youth (77). Fundamentally, schools operate to keep Xicana/o youth relegated to the margins, viewing and acting upon them as pathology, as “the Other,” and essentially to be viewed as objects that somehow need to be fixed. Traditionally, public schools have forcefully placed faces upon Xicana/o youth that can be described as foreign, deviant, criminal, lazy, linguistically deficient, culturally deficient, and intellectually inferior, which all have served to keep Xicanas/os in subordinate and powerless social, political, and economic positions. Within the K–12 educational pipeline, Xicanas/os (as well as other marginalized youth of color) either remain faceless and nameless, or have dehumanizing pathologies that are externally placed upon them to function as faces—which are in fact less than human—and ultimately serve as potential sources of cheap and exploitable labor. Urban education scholars and practitioners Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell assert the notion of urban schools as sites of social reproduction, where inequality is reproduced, adversely and disproportionately impacting Black and Brown youth, thus perpetuating their anonymity. “On the one hand, urban schools are producing failure at alarming rates; at the same time, they are doing this

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inside a system that essentially predetermines their failure. This is where the urban school reform rhetoric has missed the mark. It is presumed that urban schools are broken. Urban schools are not broken; they are doing exactly what they are designed to do” (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell 2008, 1). Consequently, the urgent need for teachers to counter the namelessness and facelessness that operate as barriers for Xicana/o youth can be realized through teachers acting as teixcuitiani, an engagement in what Chicana educator and Nahua practitioner Silvia T. Villanueva (2013) terms “Chicano-Indigenous Pedagogical Praxis.” In reaction to Xicana/o youths’ marginalization through public school discursive practices and policies of regulating them as foreign (i.e., through exclusionary language programs and racial academic tracking) and un-American (Orozco 2012, 48) and constantly told “to go back where they came from” (Rodriguez 2014, xx), all of which renders them nameless and faceless. Essential to Chicano-Indigenous pedagogical praxis is the recognition and embracing of the Xicana’s/Xicano’s connection to the land of this continent, that which reifies their existence and humanity as Indigenous. An example of this Chicano-Indigenous pedagogical praxis of teixcuitiani is observed and can be framed within the work of Xicana scholar and educator Margarita Berta-Ávila (2003), wherein she situates Xicanas/os as Indigenous people and analyzes dominant white society’s resistance to this premise. Xicanas/Xicanos are indigenous to the land on which they live. The land is the connection to their identity and their understanding of life. This connection is a threat to the growth of capitalism in the United States, thus making it necessary to impose on Xicanas/Xicanos a dehumanizing cultural hegemony. When Xicanas/Xicanos enter the schooling system, they come with a sense of displacement. Xicanas/Xicanos are not sure how to view themselves or how to view their role in the world. (120) As culturally responsive, sustaining, and revitalizing educators enacting teixcuitiani, working to counter the colonial apparatus of schooling that tells Xicana/o youth that they are foreigners, much clarity can be sought and realized through acts of critical analysis and implementing a sense of history that illustrates Xicanas/os as an Indigenous people, thus providing these youth with a face of belonging, rooted in the historical and contemporary Indigenous realities of this continent. The “causing of the others to take a face” requires more than acts coming from the teacher; teachers act as facilitators in creating this new face for and with youth by developing voices within their students, thus a new face of Xicana/o youth organically (not externally imposed) emerges. Berta-Ávila (2003) speaks to this emergence, “ ‘Voice’ becomes the political action that

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challenges the domination that wants to keep Xicanas/Xicanos nameless and voiceless. Voice becomes the means to rupture the silence to transform the reality” (119). It is through the development and assertion of voice, an honoring of five-hundred-plus years of Indigenous resistance to colonization, where Xicanas/os can move from “object” to “subject,” from “foreign” to “Indigenous,” and from “nameless and faceless” to become fully human and with a “face”—ixtli. Through “causing others to take a face” in the Nahua tradition, the teacher can empower Xicana/o youth by embracing their fluid identities (i.e., gender, urban, cultural, sexual, and spiritual) and their forms of cultural wealth by being responsive through the direct teaching of their histories, culture, and lived social realities. Additionally, and in direct opposition to the pervasive naming and assigning of faces to Xicana/o youth in pathological terms, teachers employing the attribute of teixcuitiani can empower and instill “a strong face,” in Xicana/o youth through the daily pedagogical practices of high expectations, building students’ sense of self, affirming their humanity within the totality of their fluid identities, and by being constant reminders to students through both actions and words that they are fully capable of achievement. While implementing this attribute of teixcuitiani may seem trivial or overly simplistic to those outside of the Xicana/o experience, within the context where the actions and discursive practices of racializing, dehumanizing, and marginalizing brown bodies and minds in schools takes place, this instilling of a “strong face” in Xicana/o youth is significant in that it is a determining factor, as are all matters of education, in the quality of life that these youth will eventually experience. In short, these often are matters of life and death for Xicana/o youth. The second Nahua attribute of a teacher, Teixtlamachtiani, which signifies “one who gives knowledge to the faces of others” (León-Portilla 1991, 194) is a concept that teachers working with Xicana/o youth can operationalize as an empowering, liberatory, responsive, sustainable, and revitalizing pedagogical practice. This giving “of knowledge to the faces of others,” in the Indigenous Nahua sense and tradition, and particularly in an urban schooling context in which the majority of Xicana/o youth are currently situated, is diametrically opposed to the Western notion of “banking education,” which Brazilian critical pedagogue Paulo Freire (1970) warned about, stating, “The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed” (54). Rather, for Xicana/o youth who have historically and are currently and disproportionately subjected to this pernicious “banking education” model that views Xicana/o youth as empty receptacles waiting to be filled with essential white Eurocentric knowledge, the concept of Teixtlamachtiani allows the teacher to be facilitator and

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co-constructor of knowledge, establishing classroom conditions that are conducive and optimal to nurture the creativity of students. Through providing the -ixtli, meaning both face and eyes, within this banking education context that predetermines what knowledge systems are legitimate and fit within the existing Western epistemological frame, it allows for students the face and eyes to create an alternative lens, one different from the white Eurocentric lens, from which to begin to critically view the world and develop a critical consciousness, where new knowledges and traditionally subsumed knowledges (i.e., Mexican Indigenous knowledges) will begin to emerge. Borrowing from scholars Teresa L. McCarty and Tiffany S. Lee, I identify the emergence of these new knowledges and once-subsumed Mexican Indigenous knowledges as a result of the teacher enacting Teixtlamachtiani, as a “Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy” (CSRP) for these newfound faces and eyes within this conceptual framework that afford the Xicana/o to critically examine their own contemporary and sociohistorical contexts of schooling. “First, as an expression of Indigenous education sovereignty, CSRP attends directly to the asymmetrical power relations and the goal of transforming legacies of colonization. . . . Second, CSRP recognizes the need to reclaim and revitalize what has been disrupted and displaced by colonization” (McCarty & Lee 2014, 103). Through the establishing of an educational ecology where students can critically examine asymmetrical power relations, the Teixtlamachtiani provides “knowledge to the face of others,” which can operate as a platform for Xicanas/os to contest colonization. Moreover, with this new knowledge, the teacher in collaboration with Xicana/o students can begin to unpack, identify, revitalize, and engage in the Mexican Indigenous subsumed knowledges that have been concealed through processes of colonization. Tetezcahuiani, the third Nahua attribute of a temachtiani, connotes “one who places a mirror in front of others” and is a liberatory pedagogical tool that teachers can implement with Xicana/o youth, affording critical self-reflection. The teacher engagement with the concept of Tetezcahuiani, allowing and encouraging continuous self-reflection, is one way that Xicana/o students can come to an understanding of who they are in this world. This reflection, which is an integral process of developing critical consciousness, allows students to reconcile with and embrace their individual and collective past as well as create alternative and more humanizing possibilities for their future. Equally, the teacher as Tetezcahuiani engages students in personal, familial, and community reflections of historical memory, processes that in “white-stream” schools are either forbidden or severely limited in scope. Through these reflections students can develop self-discipline, self-respect, self-motivation, and self-determination. The placing of a mirror in front of youth encourages students to examine themselves through their own eyes and cultural perspective and not the eyes of dominant

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white society, which Xicana/o youth are consistently forced to do. Pan-Africanist and activist-scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois (1965), providing illuminating insight into self-perception, spoke to the importance of Blacks examining themselves through self-reflection through their own lens: “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (45). As a colonized Indigenous people who continue to suffer dehumanization, the process Du Bois alludes to is equally important for Xicanas/os to adopt. Thus, the critical component of Tetezcahuiani is that students can gaze to the self and one’s personal and collective history and culture, rather than adopting the gaze of colonizer. This act of looking at one’s self in the mirror through one’s own lens is an act of self-determination that works toward personal, familial, and community liberation. “One who has a humanizing love for the people,” Netlacaneco, constitutes the fourth Nahua attribute of a temachtiani. In a school system and in a society that consistently dehumanizes Xicana/o youth, teachers have the responsibility and obligation to constantly humanize their students. In order to engage in processes of humanization for and with Xicana/o youth, teachers must first facilitate the necessary methods with students to assist them in identifying those structures, policies, and practices that dehumanize them and their community. This process of identifying dehumanization can take place through what Freire called “problematization” wherein through a shared dialectic process students can begin to “problem pose” their social realities. In facilitating Xicana/o youth through these problematization processes, as illustrated in the educational literature on this subject, common themes of dehumanization consistently emerge, including poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, police and law enforcement harassment/brutality at schools and in the community, lack of equal educational opportunities, lack of respect with school officials, and a lack of trust with school officials. Chicana scholars and educators María E. Fránquiz and María del Carmen Salazar (2004) offer one framework for a humanizing pedagogy as an effective means to counter the widespread dehumanization of Xicana/o youth in schools through the research-based identification of four key elements that specifically include “respeto (respect), confianza (mutual trust), consejos (verbal teachings), and buen ejemplos (exemplary models). Findings suggest that teachers who practice a humanizing pedagogy are instrumental in fostering healthy educational orientations among Chicana/o adolescents, which in turn results in their academic resiliency against all odds” (36). Exercising the attributes of Netlacaneco, the teacher can consistently work toward humanizing Xicana/o youth. “Pero lo más importante es respeto” (but what is most important is respect). For students, respect encompasses a code. It is a personal and collective code that

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demands resistance and stamina when the dignity of Chicanos/Mexicanos is threatened. Respeto, a key element within this humanizing pedagogical framework, can be realized through the teacher acting as Netlacaneco, respecting students in their totality, which includes, but is not limited to, their linguistic, cultural, sexual, spoken, and creative beings. Once this respeto is established, with the teacher initiating this process, students will reciprocate to educators and peers. This is the juncture where the work toward the humanizing and “transformation of school structures, educator role definitions and student identities” based on the notion of respeto can take place. The building of mutual trust between teacher and students, confianza, within a school system that forces a pathology upon Xicana/o youth, requires the teacher to open up their yollotl (hearts) to students. Fránquiz and del Carmen Salazar (2004) describe this humanizing practice of confianza, of opening their hearts to students. “They reported that confianza develops when interactions in the classroom made them feel comfortable, valued, trustworthy and where time was taken from academic tasks to build trust and caring for each other” (49–50). While this opening up of the teacher may present a certain risk or vulnerability for the teacher, once this trust is established through the demonstration of teacher entrusting in students, the actual work of humanization through the development of mutual trust can move forward. Consejos (verbal teachings) are steeped in Mexican Indigenous knowledge, known as the Huehuehtlahtolli, “literally the ‘old word’ of the ancient Americas” (Chávez Leyva 2003, 100). León-Portilla believes that through these teachings, consejos, or Huehuehtlahtolli, discipline and self-knowledge can be attained. Teachers can implement consejos with and for Xicana/o youth, demonstrating the humanizing love of the Netlacaneco. As described through a Nahua mother’s consejo to her daughter in a Nahua codex, LeónPortilla (1991) illuminates the importance of consejos as a teaching tool for the ancient Mexican people, translating, “Hijita mía, tortolita, niñita, pon y guarda este discurso en el interior de tu corazón. No se te olvida, que sea tu tea, tu luz, todo el tiempo que vivas aquí sobre la tierra (47).” Additionally, Fránquiz and del Carmen Salazar emphasize the powerful influence that consejos have as a humanizing pedagogical approach for Xicana/o youth, reinforcing the centrality that these forms of teaching are situated within Mexican Indigenous ways of knowing. They assert, that “in the model for Chicano/Mexicano students’ academic success, consejos are considered a special genre of verbal teaching that typically sounds like a spontaneous homily and is delivered with the intent to influence behaviors and attitudes” (2004, 49). Teachers working toward developing the attribute of Netlacaneco have the unique opportunity to access the Mexican Indigenous knowledge of Huehuehtlahtolli or consejos, an action that affirms the indigeneity of these youth. Simultaneously, in accessing and putting into practice Huehuehtlahtolli

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or consejos, teachers actively facilitate the acquisition of self-discipline and self-knowledge for their students, all of which signify a humanizing pedagogy for and with Xicana/o youth. The fourth humanizing pedagogical approach that Fránquiz and del Carmen Salazar identified that is conceptually linked to the attribute of Netlacaneco is “buen ejemplo.” Researchers found that students attributed their academic resiliency or success in high school to “the presence of a more expert caring person in their life, someone who acted as a buen ejemplo (relentless role model)” (2004, 50). Enacting the attribute of Netlacaneco requires teachers of Xicana/o youth to consistently work toward being a relentless role model. Whether teachers realize it or not, Xicana/o youth are keen observers of their teachers; Xicana/o youth are either positively impacted or negatively impacted by their teachers, depending upon the teacher’s daily actions, discursive practices, and effort put forth in authentically engaging and working toward humanizing and empowering their students. One approach that teachers can use to serve as buen ejemplo for their students is to see the sacredness within themselves and how it is directly reflected in others; if they do not, the teacher is unable to come to the full recognition of themselves as a whole human being and is therefore unable to reach their full human potential. If the teachers do not see the sacredness in themselves, they cannot see the sacredness in their students; consequently they cannot be present to serve as buen ejemplo. To see the sacredness in others as a direct reflection of the sacredness of one’s self was practiced daily in Tucson’s K–12 Mexican American Studies program with the daily recitation in many classes of the poem In Lak’Ech (“tú eres mi otro yo” or “you are my other me”) (Valdez 1992, 10)—a collective oration based in Mayan philosophy written by Chicano playwright Luis Valdez, and further developed by Tucson temachtiani Curtis Acosta. In Lak’Ech is a poem that serves as a reminder to all in the classroom that when one does harm to another they are doing harm to themselves, and when one practices acts of kindness and good for others, they are practicing acts of kindness and good for themselves. Accordingly, the teacher’s embodiment of In Lak’Ech serves as buen ejemplo and Netlacaneco, a relentless role model who has a humanizing love for their students. The fifth and final attribute of a temachtiani, in accordance with the Nahua, is Tlayolpachitivia, which signifies “one in relation with things, whom makes the heart strong” (León-Portilla 1991, 195). An indicator of a temachtiani as “one in relation with things” is a teacher who has a critical consciousness about the world, including a critical awareness of their physical, ecological, and social surroundings. From this position, the teacher can foster the development in making the student’s “heart strong.” According to the

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Nahua, the heart represents the consciousness of the human being, thus, in making the heart strong, the temachtiani is in fact developing and strengthening consciousness in students. I draw from the work of scholar-activist Curtis Acosta, whose work was based upon Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies, to illustrate Tlayolpachitivia, the “strengthening of the heart,” or strengthening and development of the consciousness, among students in a high school Chicana/o literature class. It is critical to emphasize that this development of a critical consciousness through the examination of Chicano literature was centered on the students’ sociohistorical experiences: “Students continue to develop critical consciousness through analyzing literature representative of their heritage and history. Students come to see that school no longer exists outside of their experiences, and an academic identity emerges” (Acosta 2007, 46). This heightened consciousness developed for and within students not only afforded them a critical understanding of their world, but it also raised the consciousness of the students to view themselves as academic beings, fully capable of engaging and succeeding in a school system that has traditionally dehumanized and marginalized them. Consequently, the strengthening of the heart, the development of a critical consciousness, and the embodiment of Tlayolpachitivia was clearly evident in Acosta’s Chicano literature classes; moreover, these engagements and processes can serve as a transformative model for K–12 Chicana/o Studies teachers to empower their students through decolonizing Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies.

TOWARD A XICANA/O INDIGENOUS EPISTEMOLOGICAL PRAXIS: TUCSON’S K–12 MEXICAN AMERICAN/RAZA STUDIES DEPARTMENT The distinguishing element of TUSD MARSD from other K–12 public education programs is that its liberatory and decolonizing pedagogical foundation is based upon Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies. Specifically, the privileging and operationalization of the Mexican Indigenous epistemology of the Nahui Ollin—the central space representing “four movements” within the Aztec calendar along with its physical, spatial, scientific, and philosophical meanings—which serve as the main curricular and pedagogical framework of MARSD. Within the Nahui Ollin are the four principles of Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totec. In this section, an analysis of the these four principles will demonstrate how this framework found in the Nahui Ollin informed the innovative and liberatory MARSD, contributing to the development of strong cultural identities and the closing of the pervasive achievement gap for Xicana/o youth, which in effect created a Xicana/o Indigenous epistemological praxis.

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Tezcatlipoca Tupac Enrique Acosta, Xicano nation elder, community/Indigenous/ human rights activist, and practitioner of the Nahua tradition, describes Tezcatlipoca as “a reflection, a moment of reconciliation of the past with possibilities of the future—not a vision of light but an awareness of the shadow that is the smoke of light’s passing. It is the ‘Smoking Mirror’ into which the individual, the family, the clan, the barrio, the tribe and the nation must gaze into to acquire the sense of history that calls for liberation” (Acosta 2006). The process of gazing into the “Smoking Mirror”— Tezcatlipoca—as alluded to earlier in Ramírez Oropeza’s analysis, is a process to regain the historical memory at the individual and community collective levels, which leads to individual and community liberation. This critical reflection of self not only affords Xicana/o youth to reconcile and embrace their personal, familial, and community histories, but it acts as the very foundation upon which Xicanas/os can be creators of their own futures. In my sixteen years of being privileged to serve Xicana/o youth employing the Indigenous epistemology of Tezcatlipoca, along with my colleagues in the former MARSD, we witnessed hundreds of students who experienced this decolonizing and liberatory process, whereby they expressed that coming to know themselves through this Indigenous knowledge allowed them to embrace their identities and fostered their academic success. Equally important, many students communicated that this process of coming to know and love themselves through Tezcatlipoca had in fact saved their lives. My development as a Chicana within these last couple of years has really been life changing for me. Before I enrolled in these classes, I really didn’t have a strong identity. I mean . . . I knew that I was Mexican, but, it was always talked about in a negative way at school. Teachers were always trippin’ on how I wore my makeup, how I talked, how I sometimes spoke Spanish, and how I dressed. One crazy teacher who got frustrated with us Brown girls in the class told us that “Latina girls were gonna get pregnant anyways” or something stupid like that. That’s really sad because a lot of us Chicanas are told that so much that we begin to believe it. We believe that we are not beautiful, that we are not smart .  .  . that we will not go to college. Now, because of practicing Tezcatlipoca in our Chicano Studies classes and with my family and my community, I am a proud Xicana. I know that we have a beautiful and strong history. I always speak up when I hear teachers or students hating on Chicanos and I now know why inequalities at school happen. (Arce 2010, 17)

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This young Xicana who matriculated through the MARSD demonstrated an understanding of the concept of Tezcatlipoca as evidenced through the individual as well as collectivist orientation when she said she was a “proud Xicana” and emphasizing that she has “a beautiful and strong history.” Equally, this student’s knowledge of self and community through Tezcatlipoca was used as a platform from which to engage in discursive practices of resistance to the dehumanization of Xicanas/os, which worked toward creating more humanizing, in the words of Tupac Enrique Acosta, “possibilities of the future.”

Quetzalcoatl “From the memory of our identity, the knowledge of our collective history we draw the perspective that draws us to the contemporary reality. From this orientation we achieve stability, a direction found in time-tested precepts that allows our awareness and knowledge of the surrounding environment to develop. This awareness and knowledge merge to form the ‘consciencia’ of a mature human being” (Acosta 2007). Tupac Acosta’s analysis of Quetzalcoatl provided the MARSD the understanding that the merging of our critical selfreflections and the regaining of our collective memory with the obtaining of an awareness of knowledge (both a historical and contemporary understanding of our lived realities, which are consistently subsumed in public schools) would develop a consciencia within our students. Analogous to the Freirean principle of “conscientization,” students engaging in the Xicana/o Indigenous epistemology of Quetzalcoatl are critically analyzing the social realities that are steeped in their collective historical memory, identifying barriers that impede their progress in becoming fully human, and from this state of critical consciousness, they have the possibility to envision, or in the words of Chicana scholar Emma Pérez, to imagine liberatory possibilities of the future through a “decolonial imaginary” (1999) to take action to transform their reality. Former MARSD temachtiani, Curtis Acosta (2006), describes Quetzalcoatl, the second principle within the Nahui Ollin as “precious and beautiful knowledge. Learning about our history follows self-reflection. Gaining perspective on events and experiences that our ancestors endured allows us to become more fully realized human beings” (37). Through learning the history of their ancestors, all that they endured, and the resiliency and strength to not only survive, but in fact thrive within colonial conditions, Xicana/o youth engaging in the Indigenous epistemological practice of Quetzalcoatl affords them the opportunity to see themselves as individuals within the larger Xicana/o–Mexicana/o community, as active subjects and creators of history, countering the master U.S. historical narrative that is taught throughout

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K–12 public schools and that has identified Mexicans in the United States and beyond as mere objects of history without agency. Consequently, this understanding encourages and affords Xicana/o youth to view themselves as creators of history, using their ancestors as a model, from which to practice full agency to act as subjects in obtaining and creating precious and beautiful knowledge. Romero, Arce, and Cammarota (2009) designate this creating and gaining of precious and beautiful knowledge, Quetzalcoatl, as a result of a “barrio pedagogy” that was implemented by the former MAS teachers where classroom conditions were established by the teachers in order that students could develop the intellectual capacity, both organic and institutional, that is centered on the development of intellect and wisdom and that is rooted in community knowledge as well as the certain knowledges that are needed for students to successfully navigate and negotiate the educational institution. It is also crucial that we define these critical intellectual engagements as taking place both in the barrio and in the school. Moreover, the third space that is created in our classrooms is a convergence of the barrio and the institution. This third space challenges the status quo and the stereotypes that exist within our educational institutions. This is a newly created pedagogical space that is driven by the need to challenge the epistemological and ontological understandings of our students. (Romero, Arce & Cammarota 2009, 226–227) The acknowledgment that students, their familias, and their community are both bearers and creators of knowledge is central to the Xicana/o epistemological principle of Quetzalcoatl. While the knowledge systems, culture, and lived experiences of Chicanas/os have been marginalized and stripped from them in public schools, the former MARSD classes embraced this precious knowledge and identified it as a pedagogical tool for the purpose of developing the consciencia or critical consciousness that is necessary for the liberation and self-determination of the Xicana/o community.

Huitzilopochtli “La voluntad. Will. The warrior spirit born with the first breath taken by each newborn infant in the realization that this human life we are blessed with is a struggle requiring physical effort for survival. The exertion of this life-sustaining effort evolves into a discipline, a means of maximizing the energy resources available at the human command which in order to have their full effect must be synchronized with the natural cycles” (Acosta 2006, 7). Tupac Acosta’s perspective of Huitzilopochtli provided critical insight that

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informed the MARSD to understand that self, familial, and community reflections, as well as the obtaining of knowledge and developing of a consciencia, or critical consciousness, was necessary in facilitating processes of decolonization and liberation with and for Xicana/o youth; nonetheless, these processes of reflection (Tezcatlipoca) and obtaining and constructing knowledge (Quetzalcoatl) were inadequate unless they were acted upon through direct individual, familial, and community action. Huitzilopochtli—the will to act—literally translates as “hummingbird to the left.” This is in reference to the heart being on the left side of the body and the hummingbird’s tenacity of work rate to fly and the strength of its will. It is also symbolic of the sun rising in the wintertime. This concept has meaning for the will of a person or people to be positive, progressive, and creative. Huitzilopochtli, as praxis, presents students with the will and courage to enact their positive, progressive, and creative capacities to create change for themselves as well as for their community. In this sense, the social realities that students find themselves situated in can be directly acted upon to improve their overall conditions. The engagement of Huitzilopochtli, the will to act, demonstrates the agency held by Xicana/o youth to critically reflect upon their past and present lives (Tezcatlipoca), while strengthening their resiliency through the obtaining and constructing of knowledge as well as the development of the necessary academic skills, social capital, and confidence (Quetzalcoatl), and to take action as historical beings in constructing their futures (Huitzilopochtli). This process, what Romero, Arce, and Cammarota refer to as the “tri-dimensionalization” (2009, 223), constitutes a decolonizing and humanizing methodology where the practice of self-determination by Xicana/o students signifies their engagement in a Xicana/o Indigenous epistemological praxis.

Xipe Totec The ultimate objective of engaging in the Nahui Ollin as Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies is transformation. This movement of transformation, as represented through Xipe Totec, is consistent with the natural lifecycles, further demonstrating that the Nahui Ollin as a liberatory pedagogical tool is not a static model, rather it is one that is fluid, adaptable, and transformative. “Xipe Totek—transformation. Identified as our source of strength that allows us to transform and renew. We can achieve this transformation only when we have learned to have trust in ourselves” (Acosta 2007, 38). Xipe Totec encapsulates the three principles of Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Huitzilopochtli, for the accumulation of the processes within all three of these principles results in transformation. For Xicana/o youth engaged in the Nahui Ollin, once they come to a reconciliation of their personal, familial, and

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collective history and are liberated from that which was hidden from them (Tezcatlipoca), they are forever transformed; once they become aware of knowledges that had been subsumed through processes of colonization and have moved forward in constructing new knowledges through their developed heightened awareness and critical consciousness (Quetzalcoatl), they are forever transformed; and once they act upon their reflections and newfound knowledges in positive, progressive, and creative ways (Huitzilopochtli), they are forever transformed. It is important to note that these transformations must be embraced and not resisted, the former ways of being and knowing must be shed, and new ways of being and knowing must be embraced, for to resist these transformations is to remain static and not develop, to be left behind, to be unevolving and out of synch with the natural lifecycles.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS As a decolonizing and liberatory education project, the MARSD teachers’ work was to decolonize and liberate the classroom. This was done through challenging the coloniality of power present within the existing policies, processes, and practices of schools. The main tool that was used in this decolonial project was the centering, privileging, and full implementation of Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies. Transformative Chicana/o Studies high school educator and scholar, Cati de los Rios (2013), contends that MARSD was able to do this through the processes of “Equitable curricular innovation [that] includes a reconceptualization of subject matter and the active recovery, (re)imagination, and (re)investment in indigenous paradigms” (60). What distinguished the MARSD as a decolonial education project, and more important, how it can serve as an exemplary for existing and future K–12 Chicana/o Studies–Ethnic Studies programs, was that these liberatory educational processes took place within the context of over five hundred years of colonization, bringing us to the contemporary situation where many Xicana/o, Mexicana/o, and other Indigenous-origin people have internalized this oppression and have developed a postcolonial identity, manifesting itself through internalized oppression in which Xicanas/os view their own culture as inferior to the dominant white culture. In short, these decolonizing, liberatory, humanizing, and empowering educational processes, executed through Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies, took place in the “belly of the beast,” in public schools where traditionally and presently these institutions serve as the main sites of colonization, dehumanization, and “deculturalization” of Xicana/o youth (Spring 1994). It is critical to acknowledge that like most (if not all) decolonial projects, they are met with a powerful resistance. This was the case with the MARSD, where this resistance manifested itself in the State of Arizona’s outlawing and

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the TUSD’s capitulating to the racist law by the elimination of this decolonial project; for it was the “destiny” of the white power structure that could not permit brown bodies, minds, and spirits to “manifest” themselves through self-determination, self-love, self-directed academic achievement, and particularly the self-identification of Xicana/o youth as Indigenous. Immediately following the elimination of MARSD, Roberto “Cintli” Rodriguez (2012) exemplified what lengths the white power structure of schools took to keep Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies from Xicana/o children in Tucson: Teachers and students were confounded, not sure of what could be taught or discussed in their classrooms. Among the situations that arose, one with MAS teacher Norma Gonzalez is informative. While Gonzalez was teaching the meaning of the Aztec Calendar to her students, the principal instructed her to take down the image. The principal cited the TUSD vote, explaining that teaching the calendar was prohibited because it symbolized Mexican culture. (127) In this instance, it was the decolonial imagery within the Aztec calendar that represented a threat to the white hegemony of schools, symbolizing “Mexican culture” and knowledge as forbidden, directly sending the message to Xicana/o youth that their culture, heritage, and very “Mexican-ness” is illegitimate, illegal, and not worthy of study, thus, re-establishing the continuation of the historical and psychological trauma that has historically been placed upon Xicana/o youth. If only for a moment, for fourteen consecutive years (1998–2012), the MARSD was able to facilitate decolonizing processes with and for students in removing themselves from what urban education scholars Django Paris and H. Sami Alim (2014) reference as “the White Gaze or colonizers gaze” though using our own Xicana/o methodologies, lenses, and worldviews, which in this case came in the form of Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies. Moreover and equally important, along the lines of what Tintiangco-Cubales et al. (2014) term “community responsiveness” as a foundational tenet of Ethnic Studies. These epistemologies spilled out into the community and the reciprocation of community cultural practices in the form of Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies consistently replenished our classrooms. It is critical to note that Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies are not static, rather, they evolve and are adaptable to the current dynamic, lived realities, and the fluid culture and identities of Xicana/o youth, thus, they are “sustainable.” For future analyses of transforming where Xicana/o and other marginal­ ­ized youth in urban schools are situated, teachers and researchers of K–12 Chicana/o Studies–Ethnic Studies and beyond can draw upon the conceptual framework of Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies as offered herein to engage

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in and facilitate the processes of decolonization, liberation, and humanization for and with these youth. Additionally, critical questions for further consideration of decolonizing and liberatory methodologies should be addressed, such as, What are the educational strategies and structures that can engage students in healthy constructions of Xicana/o and other marginalized youth of color’s possible selves? How can educational structures, policies, practices, and mindsets better support Xicana/o and other marginalized youth of color in the reconstructing of their cultural and academic identities in the social and academic spaces provided in the K–12 pipeline? What are the resources that Xicana/o youth can draw upon in the communities from which they come (as well as in their schools) that are based in Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies to construct healthy cultural and academic identities across the years of K–12? How do teachers, with support from and accountability to students and community, implement Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies into their daily practices within and outside of K–12 Chicana/o Studies programs, while maintaining the integrity of these knowledge systems amid the attacks from schools, political bodies, the white power structure, and from supposed allies (both white and Brown) that are certain to come down on these programs, epistemologies, and practices? While this list of questions is not exhaustive, it serves as a starting point from which teachers and K–12 Chicana/o Studies–Ethnic Studies programs can engage, dialogue, and imagine the revolutionary, decolonizing, and liberatory possibilities. One thing is certain, the forces of colonization and dehumanization are persistent and pervasive; we simply need to look no further than where Xicana/o youth are situated in public schools today, and more specifically, we can look to the tragedy of what transpired with Tucson’s MARSD for substantiation.

NOTES 1. ChaseAndStatusVevo, “YouTube.” Chase & Status—Alive ft. Jacob Banks, December 4, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9pU9FPz-dk. 2. I choose to spell “Xicana/o” with an “X” rather than a “Ch” (“Chicano”) because it privileges and is an affirmation of the Indigenous heritage of Mexican (and other Latin American) origin people. I also chose the “a/o” rather than an “o” (“Chicano”) because it signifies the inherent equality between female and male, deconstructing inequalities found within gender dynamics, as well as drawing upon Mesoamerican epistemologies where the duality and balance of the feminine and masculine are essential to the worldview of Mesoamerica, being in synch with the natural lifecycles (see these positions in Berta-Ávila’s “The Process of Conscientization” and in Chávez Leyva’s “In Ixtli In Yollotl”). Also, “Xicana/o” much like “Chicano” stresses a politicized person who works toward fighting all forms of oppression (i.e., racism, sexism, classism, homophobia) and the struggle for social justice for all people.

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3. Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies is the study of Mexican Indigenous knowledge, those knowledges subsumed through colonization, those knowledges that are being revitalized (i.e., Danza Azteca, Nahuatl language, Mexica cosmology, Temezcalli— “sweat lodge,” and Xinachtli—“agricultural practices”); and those that are present and have survived and evolved despite colonization, but that are not openly recognized as being Indigenous (i.e., familial practices, linguistic practices, cultural practices, and spiritual practices) among Mexicana/o-Xicana/o people. 4. According to León-Portilla, the Nahua people are the majority group of Indigenous people of Mexico and central America, existing before and after the Spanish colonization of Mexico. Their language of Uto-Aztecan is called Nahuatl. According to León-Portilla, evidence suggests that the Nahua peoples origins reside in the presentday southwestern United States, thus the Xicana/o peoples connection to the land.

REFERENCES Acosta, C. 2007. “Developing Critical Consciousness: Resistance Literature in a Chicano Literature Class.” English Journal 97(2): 36–42. Acosta, T. E. 2006. The Xicano Paradigm. Ehecatl El Viento de Aztlan—The Official Publication of NAHUACALLI—TONATIERRA. Tonatierra Indigenous Xicano Community Organization. Acuña, R. F. 1996. Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Conntemporary Los Angeles. New York: Verso. Anzaldúa, G. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. Arce, M. S. 2010, April 10. “Calpolli Teoxicalli: Language and Cultural Analysis of a Chicana/o Indigenous Youth Community of Practice.” Paper presented at the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Seattle, WA. Arizona State Legislature. 2010. Forty-Ninth Legislature Second Regular Session. Retrieved July 25, 2014, from Bill Status Overview: HB 2281: http://www.azleg.gov //FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/491eg/2r/bills/hb22810.asp&Session _ID=93. Berta-Ávila, M. 2003. “The Process of Conscientization: Xicanas/Xicanos Experiences in Claiming Authentic Voice.” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education 2(2): 117–28. Bonfil Batalla, G. 1996. México Porfundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. Austin: University of Texas Press. Broyles-González, Y. 2002. “Indianizing Catholicism: Chicana/India/Mexicana Indigenous Spiritual Practices in Our Own Image.” In Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, edited by N. E. Cantú and O. Nájera-Ramírez, 117–32. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Cabrera, N. L., R. W. Marx, and J. F. Milem. 2012, June 20. An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within Tucson Unified School District. Report Submitted to Willis D. Hawley: Special Master for the Tucson Unified School District Desegregation Case. Tucson: University of Arizona: College of Education.

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Chávez Leyva, Y. 2003. “In Ixtli In Yóllotl/a Face and a Heart: Listening to the Ancestors.” Studies in American Indian Literature 15(3/4): 96–127. Darder, A. 1991. Culture and Power in the Classroom: A Critcal Foundation for Bicultural Education. Wesport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. de los Rios, C. V. 2013. “A Curriculum of the Borderlands: High School Chicana/oLatina/o Studies as Sitios y Lengua.” Urban Review 45(1): 58–73. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1965. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Avon Books. Duncan-Andrade, J. M. 2005. “An Examination of the Sociopolitical History of Chicanos and Its Relationship to School Performance.” Urban Education 20(6): 576–605. Duncan-Andrade, J. M., and E. Morrell. 2008. The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools. New York: Peter Lang. Forbes, J. D. 2011. Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism. New York: Seven Stories Press. Fránquiz, M., and M. del Carmen Salazar. 2004. “The Transformative Potential of a Humanizing Pedagogy: Addressing the Diverse Needs of Chicano/Mexicano Students.” The High School Journal 87(4): 36–53. Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Horne, T. 2007. Arizona Department of Education. Retrieved November 7, 2009, from Open Letter to the Citizens of Tucson: http://nau.edu/uploadedFiles/Academic /CAL/Philosophy/Forms/An%200pen%20Letter%20to%20Citizens%200f%20 Tucson.pdf. Landeros, A. 2011, August 19. Tucson Unified School District No. 1, Administrative Hearing for the Appeal of Arizona House Bill 2281—Administrative Law Judge Honorable Lewis Kowal. State of Arizona: Office of Administrative Hearings. León-Portilla, M. 1980. Toltecáyotl: Aspectos de la Cultura Náhuatl. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica. León-Portilla, M. 1991. Huehuehtlahtolli. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. McCarty, T. L., and T. S. Lee. 2014. “Critical Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy and Indigenous Education Sovereignty.” Harvard Education Review 84(1): 101–24. Moreno, J. F., and F. Garcia Berumen. 1999. “Introduction.” In The Quest for Equality: 150 Years of Chicano/Chicana Education, edited by J. F. Moreno, ix–xix. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. O’Leary, A. O., A. J. Romero, N. J. Cabrera, and M. Rascón. 2012. “Assault on Ethnic Studies.” In Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media, and Provincial Politics, edited by O. Santa Ana and C. González de Bustamante, 97– 120. Landham, MD: Rownan & Littlefield Publishers. Orozco, R. A. 2012. “Racism and Power: Arizona Politicians’ Use of the Discourse of Anti-Americanism Against Mexican American Studies.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 43–48. Paris, D., and H. S. Alim. 2014. “What Are We Seeking to Sustain Through Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy? A Loving Critique Forward.” Harvard Educational Review 84(1): 85–100. Pizarro, M. 1998. “Contesting Dehumanization: Chicana/o Spiritualization, Revolutionary Possibility, and the Curriculum.” Aztlan 23(1): 55–76.

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Ramírez Oropeza, M. 2002. “Huehuepohualli: Counting the Ancestors’ Heartbeat.” In Community, Culture and Globaization, edited by D. Adams andA. Goldbard, 33–49. New York: The Rockefeller Foundation. Rodriguez, R. C. 2012. “Tucson’s Mexican American Studies Conflict Spurs Interest in Indigenous Studies and Knowledge.” Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 9(2): 127–29. Rodriguez, R. C. 2014. Our Sacred Maíz is Our Mother: Indigeneity and Belonging in the Americas. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Romano-V., O. I. 1970. “Social Science, Objectivity, and the Chicanos.” El Grito 4(1), 4–17. Romero, A., S. Arce, and J. Cammarota. 2009. “A Barrio Pedagogy: Identity, Intellectualism, Activism, and Academic Achievement through the Evolution of Critically Compassionate Intellectualism.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 12(2): 217–33. Said, E. W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Sleeter, C. 2011. “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review.” National Education Association. Solórzano, D. G., and D. Delgado Bernal. 2001. “Examining Transformational Resis­ tance through a Critical Race and LatCrit Theory Framework: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context.” Urban Education 36(3): 308–42. Spring, J. 1994. Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill. Valdez, L. 1992. Zoot Suit & Other Plays. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press. Valencia, R. R. 2011. “The Plight of Chicano Students: An Overview of Schooling Conditions and Outcomes.” In Chicano School Failure and Success: Past, Present, and Future, 3rd ed., edited by R. R. Valencia, 28–66. New York: Routledge. Valenzuela, A. 1999. Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Albany: State University of New York Press. Villanueva, S. T. 2013. “Teaching as a Healing Craft: Decolonizing the Classroom and Creating Spaces of Hopeful Resistance through Chicano-Indigenous Pedagogical Praxis.” Urban Review 45(1): 23–40. Yosso, T. J. 2005. “Whose Culture has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 8(1): 69–91.

3

Healing Identity: The Organic Rx, Resistance, and Regeneration in the Classroom R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. —UN’s definition of genocide, part 5, United Nations General Assembly’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) My Social Justice Geography class is a catalyst. My geography class is a catalyst because my teacher [Tolteka] is showing us new things that are not really new, they are just hidden. He is showing us how to see the world from different perspectives that are really interesting but more importantly he is showing us how we should teach our children. . . . There are people that fight over the race of Hispanic/Latino when that’s not a real race.1 There are people that don’t know where they come from but yet they are still fighting for a name. . . . Before we fight or want to stand up for anything we need to know what we are standing up for. We need to know las raices of where we come from. We need to show people the way other people think and let them explain before we judge or before we say it is wrong. Change the world one person at a time, and before you know it what you teach to one person will be taught to twenty and so on and so on until the world is changed and until the world becomes more united. —Josefina, ninth grade student Nikan Tlakah Tiawi!2 The introductory quotes begin to reveal the intersection of genocide and education, within what I term the curriculum of (neo)coloniality,3 a vortex of deindigenizing psychological violence (Fanon 1963) that was

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imposed upon this continent through the history and processes of colonization beginning over five hundred years ago. The focus of this chapter is countering superficial culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy (CRP), as well as geohistorical (geographical and historical) amnesia, through the revitalization and rehumanization of ancestrally rooted indigenous identity consciousness in the classroom. I refer to this pedagogical act as regeneration and reclamation, a critical part of the organic Rx, as it counters the concretization of identity loss (an integral part of cultural genocide).3 This chapter includes a brief introduction to the organic CxRxPx theory as a grounding/evolution of CRP and a demonstration of its application in praxis with students in a transformational and regenerating (Ethnic Studies) social justice geography high school course. Revealing the marginalized indigenous side of this cultural and epistemological war has been an emphasis of mine as an educator (see Oakes et al. 2012), offering students the culturally and historically relevant and responsive education I was denied as a youth. Our work as educators does not exist in a historical vacuum; as a cause of social justice, a grounded CRP is about antiracist educators and schools and explicitly considers indigeneity and the effects of colonization and genocide on students of color’s ancestral legacies, as we do our best to resolve this injustice.4 Since urban teacher preparation and social justice education programs rarely explicitly do this, neither do most educators today. Given this reality and my experiences teaching in the second largest school district in the United States, I have reflected on (a) my professional practice in relation to various communities of educators and students; (b) the superficiality, amnesia, and submersion5 of geohistorical consciousness that seems hegemonic6 and harmful both in education and in larger society; and (c) the literature of CRP, which I agree with Paris (2012) and others has been stale and is in dire need of a change and increase in critical praxis. Students who get only a superficial version of CRP, or none at all, are missing out on what Josefina calls “different perspectives that are really interesting.” More important, there is a disservice being done to these students as holistic human beings who deserve to understand how a geohistorical context situates their own identities. We cannot afford this disservice, especially in the context of the education debt (see Gloria Ladson-Billings 2006),7 resulting in the so-called achievement gap that plagues the public education system in the United States, particularly in communities of color. As a practitioner, I cannot stand to see CRP practiced uncritically and geohistorically superficially, but I value the fact that many educators already practice a form of CRP; thus, rather than abandoning parts of the term, culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, I would prefer to reground it, in hopes of positively affecting a greater number of students. The lessons of Ethnic Studies (Tucson [2010] to

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the 1960s original Ethnic Studies movements), and the culturally sustaining and revitalizing theorizing work of McCarty and Lee (2014) based on Paris (2012), Brayboy et al. (2012), Gay (2000), and Ladson-Billings (1995) is a major part of the change that is needed. Inspired by and inclusive of these theorists and others back to the times of Cuauhtemoc’s call of 1521 (see Rodriguez 2010), to confront this critical situation and student-centered race against time in educational theory and practice (see McCarty & Lee 2014, citing Benally & Viri 2005; Sims 2005), I propose the next step in a grounding/revitalizing of culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. Here, CRP is clarified, expanded upon, and grounded as the organic CxRxPx: Cx = Culturally, Critical, Compassionate, Creative, Conscious, Competent; Rx = Regenerating, Remembering, Revealing, Revitalizing, Restoring, Realizing, Roots; Rehumanizing, Reclaiming, Reciprocal, Relevant, Responsive, Relationships; Px = Pluriliterate, Pluridiscursive, People, Planet, Praxis, Pedagogies.8 This purposeful breakdown does not mean CRP should always be referred to as CxRxPx, it simply means that there is a regrounding of CRP, and that the superficial form should not be tolerated by social justice educators, since it is a disservice to students and is complicit in the further concretization of cultural genocide within the classroom. The regrounding is life, with critical geohistorical memory for the future. I have been working on a more comprehensive piece expounding on the educational and societal theory/pedagogy of the CxRxPx and it is forthcoming. In this chapter, however, I briefly elaborate on the organic Rx as a part of it (there is not sufficient space for an indepth treatment of the Cx and Px here), and then proceed to demonstrate how I put it into rehumanizing praxis with urban students in Tataviam, Yangna (San Fernando, Los Angeles).9 I demonstrate in this chapter how a resistance to the concretization of cultural genocide, and a regeneration of indigenous consciousness and identity, may transpire in the classroom based on five sections of a ninth grade social justice geography course, using student work as primary sources. I do this through the presentation and analysis of a sampling of several passages excerpted from assignments that were a part of students’ T3SA projects (Transformative 3rd Space Autoethnographies) throughout the 2013–14 school year. All of the students sampled, except for one, are categorized by LAUSD under the labels of “Latino/Hispanic.” However, these identifying terms are considered geohistorically superficial here and not accepted as sufficient to describe the geographic ancestry/racial identity of this student population. In a highly segregated section of Los Angeles County, which is more than 90% “Latino/Hispanic,”10 these writing samples are both from males and

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females, of continental Native American, European, and mixed genetic geographic ancestry (“Mestizo”), and two students with Asian ancestry. Students’ names were changed to pseudonyms to protect their identities, and their passages minimally edited for readability (if at all). Samples are from students whose entire families today have been detribalized and students who are not aware of their indigenous roots when entering our class, as well as students who still have tribal connections south of the U.S.–Mexican border. For instance, students in the course revealed consciousness of traditional indigenous languages of Mexico within their families, including PaiPai, Kachikel and Yucatec Maya, Mixtec, and Purepecha. In this chapter, the pedagogical and curricular processes of neocolonial resistance and indigenous regeneration are shown through student reflections based on the U.S. Census and family interviews as part of their T3SA proj­ ects, and to culminate the project, a student speech at the Ethnic Studies Now Youth Summit in Los Angeles in February 2015, expressing the transformative nature of the social justice geography course and why it needs to be available to more students. Based on student evidence, this chapter presents the regenerating/healing power of a grounded CRP, transforming the geohistorical submersion/amnesia students often arrive to my classroom with. A grounded CRP develops consciousness through pedagogical responsiveness to four spatial-temporal (geohistorical) scales, which I note as criterions of consideration for the organic Rx in relation to students of color: (1) indigeneity, (2) colonization/genocide, (3) hegemony/neocoloniality, and (4) social justice/decoloniality/CxRxPx.11

A BRIEF THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF THE ORGANIC Rx This chapter enacts CRP (foundationally, Ladson Billings 1995; Gay 2000), here in its revolutionized, grounded form, with the organic Rx I have been developing in theory and praxis, based on Bonfil Batalla (1996), Cintli (2014), McCarty and Lee (2014), Paris (2012), Brayboy (2012), and Cuauhtemoc (1521), among many other freedom fighters/thinkers active for over five hundred years. Also presented here is my adaptation of Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth (CCW) theory. My use of it is based on the indig­ enizing work of the previously noted scholars; in my praxis I feel the need to make the geohistorically rooted ancestral capital explicit within CCW, as the rooted scale of familial capital, especially for students of color. Students’ ancestral capital interconnects to other elements of their community cultural wealth (e.g., their resistant, linguistic, navigational, aspirational capitals) as well. This part of their community cultural wealth is composed of students’ ancestral memory/ancestral identity/ancestral knowledge (acknowledging the effects of colonization, but also necessarily considerate of precolonial roots).12

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When practicing CCW development with students, the critical, organic Rx cannot be authentically co-constructed without its bonding to students’ ancestral capital. However, their praxis together, synergistically create third spaces (e.g., Gutierrez et al. [1999] in the educational literature, based on Bhabha [1994]). Within the second-space classroom and curriculum, being student centered and responsive to students’ first-space community/home/ancestral funds of knowledge (based on Moll [1992]; Vygotsky [1978]), is what makes the Rx organic. The third space is the hybridity of the first and second spaces, considering the first-space student as a human being in the synergy, and with dignity, rather than simply allowing the totalizing neocolonial second space to solely define the content and curriculum of the course. Through third spaces, curriculum becomes more accessible for marginalized students to achieve academic success, in the process helping to eradicate the education debt (Ladson-Billings 2006), framed as “the achievement gap” in mainstream/ whitestream discourse. The CxRxPx emphasizes justice for students of color as traditional Ethnic Studies calls for; the critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings based on Freire [1970]) originally called for in CRP; the self-determination and indigenous reconceptualization of critical pedagogy Sandy Grande called for;13 and the addition of the decolonial for urban students as Duncan-Andrade and Morrell (2008) called for in their proposal of a Pan-Ethnic Studies. This grounding of CRP is highly considerate of Paris’s frustration with a superficial form of CRP and his desire to make it sustaining (for students as everyday dynamic human beings). It is also inspired by McCarty and Lee’s (2014) elaboration that for delinguicized14 Indigenous students it must also be revitalizing to their ancestral knowledge, language, and indigeneity, and in accord with Gallagher-Geurtsen (2012) who noted, “an ahistorical approach to multicultural education is no longer tenable,” echoing the calls of others asserting, “educators must consider that the history of colonial ideology has been passed down so that we carry damaging notions in our bones” (155). I have also felt these frustrations for years and am thankful for the call of revision, but advocate that we must not abandon the original terming of CRP since it is already in widespread educational practice across the country; instead we must reground it as CxRxPx, and restore/reveal roots and healing for students of color. Finally, influential in my work in this chapter are the decolonial indigenous epistemologies expounded on in the chapter by Martín Sean Arce (this volume). Arce is an original teacher and former director of Tucson’s now outlawed Mexican American (Indigenous) Studies program. Their success is a testament to the healing power of the organic regeneration and reclamation of indigenous roots, countering the concretization of cultural genocide in the

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process. At points in the praxis section and in the organic Rx, I integrate or allude to connections of In Lak Ech, Panche Be (and Hunab Ku),15 Nahui Ollin, Transformative Indigenous Resistance, and five attributes of the Temachtiani, including the ecological emphasis found in Indigenous epistemology throughout the continent, considerate of future generations who are to inhabit Tonantzin.16 There is not sufficient space here to further elaborate on the work that influenced my theorizing, or on my developments of the theory of a grounded/ revitalized CRP. However, it is important to consider the four criterion scales use in the next section. I suggest students must relate to these four scales of consciousness in praxis (in whichever way teachers critically frame the four), for it to have its decolonial/empowering effects of liberation. The four main criterions I reflect upon and theorize and put into praxis for educators and students of color to consider in relation to the course content and ourselves/ themselves are: [precolonial] indigeneity; colonization/genocide; hegemony/ (neo)coloniality; and decoloniality/social justice/CxRxPx.

BRINGING THE THEORY INTO PRAXIS: SOCIAL JUSTICE GEOGRAPHY (SJG) Social Justice Humanitas Academy (SJHA), on the Cesar Chavez Learning Academies campus, is a small high school of approximately five hundred students, in the Northeast San Fernando Valley Tataviam (NESFVT) on the border of San Fernando and Pacoima in the Los Angeles Unified School District, with more than 99% “minority” students,17 more than 94% Xican@/ “Latino”/“Hispanic” students, 87% eligible for free lunch, and 80% who speak English as a second language. Teachers at our school do our best to defy statistical predictions for our student demographics. SJHA has achieved a 94% graduation rate, which is the highest in the East San Fernando Valley Tataviam, 91% first-time CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) pass rate, and among the highest student and staff attendance rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Also, we have achieved a more than 80% college-going rate, 73% of our students graduate California State University eligible when the district average is 17%, 85 to 90% families are represented at most Student-led Conferences (parent nights), only two students have been suspended, and none have been expelled in four years of existence due to our restorative justice program.18 All this success in a community where the dominant society expects these students and schools to fail,19 and where our teachers refuse to give in to low expectations. We are here to transform education for and with our students. Our ninth grade social justice geography (SJG) course in 2013–14 served our entire entering class with five different course sections, totaling about 140

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students (some transiency did occur throughout the year). This course, per everything but title on record (geography), was an explicit Ethnic Studies course, an educational project in transforming and decolonizing the classroom, an experience with CRP during students’ first year of high school— grade wide. Taking three years of development, it is a concrete example of a ninth grade multiple section course that may complete both the A-G Social Science Elective Requirement, and when and if formalized, the district’s forthcoming Ethnic Studies requirement,20 as a year-long program. Now, considering our demographic imperative as a district (over 73% of LAUSD is “Latino/Hispanic”21), and the demographic imperative of our school and my classroom (more than 94% “Latino/Hispanic” [mostly Brown, detribalized Indigenous Abya Yalan (Native American)22 ancestry], primarily Xican@/Chapin/Guanac@/Catrach@,23 “Mestizo” [with a range of Indigenous Abya Yalan and European genetic ancestry]), my focus is on applying the theories of the organic Rx/CRP and ancestral capital with the student demographics I teach. Since it has become clear in our classes that this population is largely confused about how to identify their race/geographic ancestry on the U.S. Census, the form itself is a great pedagogical tool to help liberate students’ minds and identities in the classroom. When approached critically, it responsively and relevantly helps students further understand their own geohistorical context as holistic, rooted human beings, as is evidenced in the following section.

THE ORGANIC Rx IN PRAxis FOR ROOTED AND TRANSFORMATIVE RACIAL/ETHNIC IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT AMONG BROWN STUDENTS This demonstration of praxis is based on the 2010 U.S. Census form, as well as adapted lessons from Bill Bigelow’s Rethinking Columbus (1998), students’ T3SA (Transformative 3rd Space Autoethnographies), which are keys to the third space of sorts,24 and other lessons related to our four criterions of the deep organic Rx inquiry. All of the dimensions of CxRxPx, as grounded in LadsonBillings’s original three criterions,25 Gay’s six dimensions,26 Django’s revision,27 and McCarty and Lee’s three part rubric, which includes Brayboy’s four R’s,28 and other theoretical influences, are not demonstrated here. My focus here is on evidencing: (a) relevance and responsiveness to who students are as geohistorically situated human beings, (b) their development toward critical consciousness, and the (c) sustaining/validating, (d) empowering, (e) liberating, and (f) revitalizing/regenerating (Rx) effects of the pedagogy when they reclaim their ancestral roots. Through student reflections integrated as primary sources, this section first shows the confusion of students, and subsequently, shows what happens when their critical consciousness is activated and their

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ancestral identity/ancestral capital begins to be revealed/rehumanized, bonding with the organic Rx of CRP in praxis. As part of the T3SA assignment, I use the 2010 U.S. Census form as a mirror, specifically questions 8 (on “Latino/Hispanic” origin) and 9 (on “Race”) as keys to the third space; this is an opportunity where students must identify their ancestral roots/ancestral capital if they are to complete the form. As a social justice educator I am interested in the answer to these critical questions: In the moment of census form completion, do the effects of cultural genocide and geohistorical amnesia need healing for students, or are students already aware of their ancestral roots and how to identify them on this form? Sadly, I have found the former to mostly be the case with Brown students. In my experience, question 8 is fairly easy for all races of “Hispanics/ Latinos” to answer and most students respond to it without issue. This is because they most often do have the funds of knowledge of which country/nation state their family is from. For instance, more than 90% of our student population has direct roots in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. However, for question 9, they are far more confused. Maria, a student whose family still has traditional Purepecha29 celebrations, had this to say about connecting her first-space home experience to our class mirrors: “Completing the Census made me feel confused and stupid. I didn’t know how to respond .  .  . That’s the main reason my mom never answers that question when they send us the Census.” Juan, another Mexican student, confirms this, and elaborates on his experience: As I was completing the U.S. Census form, it felt weird and it was kind of difficult because you needed to think of what you are going to put. For example, #9, you had to pick an answer from White, Black, or American Indian. None of the answers included Hispanic or Latino so I didn’t know what to put. I knew I wasn’t White because I wasn’t born here and wasn’t white colored, but I knew I wasn’t Black either . . . What I put for #8 was the second option that says “yes, Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano.” I put that answer because I was born in Mexico so I’m Mexican. For #9, I put Black, African American, or Negro as my answer. This question you needed to think about, since Latino or Hispanic weren’t included as an answer. I honestly didn’t know what to put and I didn’t know if to pick White or Black. I knew for sure that I wasn’t American Indian or Alaska Indian. Since my skin was closer to Black than White by a little bit, I decided to put Black as my answer. To the U.S. Census department, the term American Indian may refer to people with Indigenous ancestral roots throughout North, Central, and South

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America.30 Here is a Brown migrant student from Cuautla, Morelos, Mexico, near the birthplace of the Nahuatl-speaking Emiliano Zapata, initially expressing “I knew for sure I wasn’t American Indian.” This is a submersion in the curriculum of coloniality that leaves one questioning one’s Brown self upon reaching this point of the census, and many just mark either White, Black, or Other, because their consciousness feels that far removed from the term and concept of American Indian (Indigeneity), and that is the unfortunate success of cultural genocide. I have seen it happen with hundreds of high school students, adults as well, and much press in the past couple of years has divergently addressed this phenomenon of confusion.31 However, I present an Indigenous-based thesis of this confusion that is more geohistorically rooted and acknowledging of hegemony than others in the mainstream/whitestream; it is caused by a spatial temporal superficiality and submersion in the societal and educational curriculum of (neo)coloniality. It is the socialization in our society, from education to government to media to even our own families, that impacts how we view our racial and geohistorically situated identities. Brown Latinos/Hispanics often do not know what to mark. Due to our inactivation of ancestral capital, and lack of conscious encounters with the organic Rx, we have not only been conditioned to not know what to mark, but also to not know how to think geohistorically deeper about our own ethnicity/race, not only as individual students, but as entire families and communities of colonized peoples who are detached from a conceptual connection to the land our ancestors have inhabited for millennia. This lack of consciousness is not a deficit we inherently have, it was deliberately and directly caused by colonial processes. Indeed, the home/ancestral capital is deep and robust for students; however, it is often implicit, hidden, buried in superficial consciousness and identity loss; the organic Rx helps to explicitly reveal/regenerate it. Along with other practitioners, such as Acosta (2007), who note this lack of cultural knowledge when students arrive in our classes, it is also proven here by students’ home interviews about the ancestral people(s) of their region of origin, which I use as part of our T3SA (Transformative 3rd Space Autoethnography) project. Questions, noted bilingually, included, “who are the indigenous/ original people of where our family is from?” For some students, this first space–based work sparks home and ancestral funds of knowledge, for others, it magnifies the confusion, such as during Juan’s family interview: I asked my mom to answer the questions with me but she didn’t know anything. She couldn’t even answer one. I thought she just wasn’t paying attention, but I saw her focusing and she really didn’t know any of the questions. Question by question, the answer from her was “I don’t know.” It was frustrating, but I just kept on asking her the questions

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until I finished all of them. I thought she would know more but it turns out she didn’t. At least I asked her the questions, and she answered them honestly. I do commend the honesty, and am not surprised by the tragedy; many students have expressed similar experiences. In the following excerpt, Nelli further contextualizes the minds of many Brown “Latino/Hispanic” students and the depleted connection to ancestral funds of knowledge within his own family: I see that I knew very little of my culture and my heritage. . . . My family has helped me learn as much as they could about my family’s Indigenous roots, but their knowledge about our roots has weakened over each passing generation. . . . I now know who my ancestors were, but I didn’t even think about them until Social Justice Geography came into my life. The transformative potential of the SJG course begins to reveal itself through Nelli’s third-space work. Another student, Libertad, connects her ancestral capital to her linguistic capital (also a part of CCW): “I know the Spanish and English languages very well, but this is not the language my ancestors knew. So why do I know them? Why? Because ever since Christopher Columbus came to Abya Yala things changed and so did our people, even though they didn’t agree to that.” They both are expressing the imposed identity loss through language and history, and my argument is that this submersion is the core reason why “Brown Latinos/Hispanics” often do not have the navigational and social capital/code of power of how to complete the census form (Delpit 1995; Yosso 2005). This imposed Indigenous identity loss is a reason why we often uncritically accept superficial colonial conceptions of race/ethnicity, and often do not know who we are as geohistorically rooted human beings. Ines, a student who would become outspoken about the value of Ethnic Studies, brings additional context, digging deeper into the hege­ monic submersion of consciousness (bear with her terminology, I will explain it momentarily): Why is it that many students don’t know where they come from or who their ancestors were? Who would you blame it on? Them or the New World Hegemon Empire? The New World Hegemon Empire has colonized so many countries but from that colonization, many lives and minds were lost. Yes minds! Ask a group of students who their ancestors are and I guarantee you that no word will come out from their mouth. It’s amazing how the colonization that happened many many years ago

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still affects the world today! It’s pretty sad how most don’t remember who their ancestors are; the people who made them who they are but it’s not their faults. It’s the fault of those colonizers who forced them to forget. Ines expresses the injustices of the education debt and the robbing of identity, its connection to genocide, colonization of the mind, the notion of victim blaming, and then placing the responsibility where she feels it belongs using academic terminology of “the New World Hegemon Empire,” which connects both to the Eurocentric concept of a “new world” and “undiscovered” land, as well as our course considerations of empire, and hegemony, while interdisciplinarily connecting to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which students were reading in English class at the time. Recognizing identity loss among her peers and developing a passion for its remembrance, resurgence, and regeneration demonstrates the organic Rx bonding to the genetic and experiential memory within her. It is the work of social justice educators to heal, restore, and regenerate this ancestral memory and identity with students of color. Revealing the ancestral capital within students’ community cultural wealth is not only empowering for students, it is a part of the United States’ paying off the centuries-old education debt, which still exists today in schools. The Eurocentric “education” system, continentally, committed grievous dehumanizing acts and has never been brought to justice for its transgressions. Ethnic Studies and a grounded CRP are at least acknowledgments of this, a form of restorative justice within and for the actual “system of education.” Ines elaborates on the lack of organic Rx in her previous educational experience, her whitewashing within the education debt/“achievement gap,” and comments on learning to love the Indigenous features she sees in her mirror, restoring dignity in her identity as a rooted human being: I remember in elementary [school] when all I was taught was the “European way.” I’m not going to lie, I myself thought I came from Europeans and it’s amazing how for so many years I thought I was one of them. Of course, I knew my parents were Mexicans but I didn’t know far beyond that. I didn’t know there were indigenous groups until the 9th grade! All my K–8th education was wasted because they were teaching me things that had absolutely nothing to do with me. What do you expect from a girl who all her life has been taught to think the European way? Of course she’s going to have the same perspective, “Oh, we discovered America. Thanks to Christopher Columbus we’re here.” No! Not thanks to Columbus, thanks to the Indigenous, to my people. Now I understand why the color of my skin was darker than the Europeans and I absolutely love it.

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The regeneration, revitalization, and rehumanization of Indigenous consciousness and ancestral capital is evident, the curriculum of coloniality had deliberately erased this knowledge from both her family’s explicit first-space consciousness and from her educational second space for the entirety of Ines schooling experience. Now the organic Rx, along with her academic and cultural understanding of the geohistorical roots of her skin color, empowers her in the transformative third space. She ends that particular expression by sharing, “Let’s get one thing clear, I don’t hate the Europeans, love to them, but I’m not going to let myself be a victim anymore.” I appreciate her expressing an internalization of self-determination, as well as the in lak ech we strive to live in, not holding hate in our hearts, but love; even as critical thinkers on our panche be journeys, being better human beings every day is part of the goal. Reflecting dimensions of a temachtiani (Arce, this volume), with my teaching I attempt to “give knowledge to the face of others,” as well as help them “develop their own faces,” “with strong hearts,” a (re)humanizing process. This course and pedagogy offers students academic and Indigenous-based knowledge and mirrors to reflect through their own reawakening eyes. Through the census form, the questions/prompts, the four criterion scales, and the interactive lessons, the transformations begin. How do they see themselves in the mirrors, how do they not, how might they transform as they develop their faces and hearts (in ixtli in yollotl), as temachtianis themselves? “I will count myself on the 2020 census as Xikan@ or Mexica (Detribalized) for #9 because I have some of my ancestral heritage of the indigenous Aztecs.” This is Nelli’s census response reclaiming indigeneity, in the context of his earlier testimonio/tlahtolli that his family was not very geohistorically culturally aware and “doing the best he can with dignity and what he has to work with,” which is one of the guiding principles/consejos of the T3SA project. There are two important parts to how he identifies here, first a connection to Mexica, which signifies Indigenous ancestry, second, the acknowledgment that he is not an enrolled tribal member and does not live a traditional Mexica/Nahua life, which is why he noted the term “Detribalized” next to it. Different Brown students noted other tribes, some with more recent explicit tribal/linguistic connections than others, as will be elaborated on momentarily. Nelli also offered a third important part to his reflection; he expressed another option of how he may identify on the census, with the term Xican@. I embrace this term myself and teach it to students with detribalized Indigenous roots as an option because as Xican@s, an identity we open up not just to Mexican Americans, but to all who have ancestry upon this continent and connection to community, is this term itself, Xikan@. The term has an indigenous base in Me-Xikano, its multimillennial maize culture, and its connection (as Chicana/o) to the civil rights movement of the 1960s before the

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terms Latino and Hispanic began to largely replace it in mainstream usage, and because of its affirmation of using an endonym (from us) rather than an exonym (from an outside group/colonizer) to define us. . . . We advocate its usage for those beyond just Mexican Americans, who want to begin taking steps to reclaim our Indigenous identity and consciousness. Spelling it with an X represents Ollin/Movement in American Indian Nahua philosophy, as well as being reflective of the DNA double helix, Quetzalcoatl Kukulcan. We also symbolically connect the X in Xican@ to Malcolm X, and his reasoning for using the X as the unknown, recognizing that his ancestors had their original names taken from them. Similarly, as Brown people who have seen 523 years of colonialism, we may not know what specific tribes our ancestors were from, but we know that their American Indian Indigenous roots are within us; therefore we claim this part of our identity with the X in [email protected] And thus, actualizing a goal of the organic Rx in terms of students’ “official” identities, upon revisiting their census and after learning more home and school knowledge, with a majority of recently migrated, first-, second-, or thirdgeneration Brown Mexican Americans in our course, many students do choose to mark the American Indian box for race as Nelli did, and identify tribally as Xican@s on their revisited census. Some, but not all, Brown Salvadorian, Guatemalan, and Honduran (American [Indians]) also write in Xican@ as their “principal or enrolled tribe.”33 The organic Rx/CRP/panche be revealed that in our classes we had several students with European/Hispanic surnames, but who had family members who still speak Indigenous Abya Yalan continental languages, or who recently passed on to the spirit world (sometimes as in the case of the PaiPai student’s grandmother, taking the ancestral intrafamily language with her as the last speaker of the family). We found that there were student families who within the last three generations spoke/speak languages including PaiPai, Purepecha, Mixteco, and Yucatec Maya. Also, this knowledge revealed that we had another student with family who still speaks Kachikel Maya, a clue given by her Mayan surname. A superficially CRP classroom, without the grounding of the CxRxPx, would likely not make these revelations of the third space for Brown students. This depth is sustaining, validating, empowering, and revitalizing for students; the organic Rx cannot be prescribed, it is medicine co-constructed with the students’ geohistorical first-space funds of knowledge, bonding to who they are as human beings, with roots. From multimillennial roots in the southernmost region of Mexico today, Yucatan, to ancestral roots in the northernmost region, Baja California, students talked about their Indigenous grandparents and having gratitude for knowing their origins. This is how the highly relevant and responsive studentcentered curriculum and pedagogy can be sustaining and revitalizing for students, rehumanizing as it honors/restores recognition of their ancestral roots

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within the classroom; the organic Rx. Julia, of Mixtec roots in Oaxaca, shares that it is about more than just her skin color, while also acknowledging her Indigenous ancestry, as well as the cultural hegemony, historical amnesia, and separation of identity that has affected her, and this is a student whose family still speaks an Indigenous language in her first space. As all students did, she writes to an Indigenous ancestor from –1 YGC/1491 CE (wherever on our planet that may be for that student),34 and expresses the following: According to the 2020 U.S. Census, I am going to take my indigeneity into consideration. For the first question, I would mark “yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Xican@.” I consider myself that because I’ve come to learn that there’s more to it than just the color of our skin. My race is American Indian, because I continue some of my ancestral traditions but I have been White washed in some sense. In the box I would write in Mixtec. I used to believe that I would never be considered native because I never thought of my indigenous roots. I have changed now. I am decolonizing my mind and my lifestyle. I have actually learned about the rest of the family. These native students are fortunate to have explicit indigeneity in their recent ancestral memory and life experience. Therefore, knowing how to identify when they choose to reclaim those roots is a more straightforward process than it is for those who have lost explicit/metaconscious Indigenous linguistic connections generations ago in their whitewashing and conditioning. When a Brown migrant student with Indigenous features from southern Mexico comments, “I knew I could not be American Indian,” and a Mixtec girl whose family still speaks an Indigenous language comments, “I used to believe I would never be considered native because I never thought of my indigenous roots,” we can see there is a serious issue of identity for Brown students, one that was designed by the education debt and the ontological curriculum of coloniality, and one that is in dire need of a resolution. The organic Rx serves to decolonize identity in the hegemonic curriculum of coloniality; la cultura cura (the culture cures), Indigenous brilliance lives (Navarro 2015). As the census allows multiple responses for biracial and multiracial individuals, some “Mestizo” students do choose to represent both their white European genetic ancestry, and their Brown American Indian, Mesoamerican (Nikan Tlakah/Abya Yalan) genetic ancestry; it is up to them, their panche be search, and the evidence they have to work with. Some Brown students, such as Juan, the student who marked “Black” at first, then resorted to claiming preference for the more hegemonic label Hispanic/Latino say, “It doesn’t matter what race our ancestors were in the past;

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at this point Hispanic/Latino is all you hear and talk about,” and I allow students to debate that point in the classroom. Eventually, through his own path of critical thinking in his revisiting of the census, Juan revises his choice: “Since Hispanic or Latino is not a race, I consider myself American Indian now. I learned that there are different cultures throughout the world and that there were hundreds of civilizations back then before I existed. Some of these civilizations were Toltec, Mexica, and Olmecs.” This Brown student has deep Indigenous roots in Morelos, Mexico, indigeneity that he had never previously considered; his geohistorical understanding and transformation of consciousness grew due to the effects of the SJG course. More than 94% of “Latino/Hispanic” students compose our school’s population, and I strive to make every student feel at home in our classroom, with authentic care (see Valenzuela 1999), highly related to the fourth dimension of the temachtiani/teacher (humanizing; compassionate). Some of our students, using their third-space panche be, and the guiding principle for this deeper racial/ethnic identity search, conclude that their –1 YGC/1491 CE ancestors were primarily white Europeans, and thus they express reflections such as this one by Isabel: To the best of my knowledge my ancestors have originated from Spain, or somewhere else on the European continent. I believe I’m originated from Spain.  .  .  . For example, my grandma’s last name is Castellanos which is in fact Spaniard and a lot of people in my family are white, have colored eyes,35 and blonde, or light hair. Also, a lot of the so-called Mexican last names aren’t Mexican, in fact they are Spaniard. Actual “Mexican” last names were taken away when Spain colonized them. This “Latino/Hispanic” student racially/ancestrally identifies as white on the census, confidently, doing the best she can with what she had to work with, while still being critical about the colonial origins of many “Mexican” surnames, and the loss of original names to colonization. My purpose is to help students develop critical consciousness and think deeper about where their ancestors are from (the continental scale, being the bare minimum), something most “Latino/Hispanic” students of all races, especially Brown, do not usually do before they get to my class because of the geohistorical submersion. In her autoethnographic studies and reflections, Ixchell, who has family from El Salvador and Ecuador, identified another branch of geographic ancestry that the panche be revealed in her family. This branch was thousands of miles away in East Asia, going geohistorically back four generations: “I also know my grandpa is part Chinese, so I am part Chinese. My great grandpa was Chinese.” Ricky, another student with Asian ancestry noted after just his first ten weeks,

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This class has helped me a lot because of the overwhelming work. But that’s not the only thing that this class has taught me. It taught me who I really am and what I really am. I actually know more about my ancestors’ home where I originated from. There were many secrets of the Philippines I never knew, like how the name of my people (Filipino/a) was named after King Philip after he took over the country. With high expectations, and yes, large amounts of rigor and deep critical work, the four criterion scales connect to students of color with ancestries throughout our planet that encountered European colonialism, as this young Pinoy36 student evidenced, learning context of how colonial toponymy named his ancestral home after a Spanish monarch. It is up to each student to decide for themselves how they identify, based on their third-space autoethnographical panche be search for ancestral memory/ancestral capital. Often and unfortunately, many students cannot identify the different continents by any name when they first step into our classroom, which should not be a surprise based on reports by National Geographic and in the media.37 However, by the time students leave our social justice geography course, through the organic Rx and grounded CRP, they will be able to do this in at least three different discourses/languages for several continents, and know many other geographical places in intercultural discourses. Perhaps most important, they will no longer be geohistorically submerged in ancestral identity loss, but instead will know how geography and history/herstory are relevant, responsive, and revitalizing to them as human beings.

CONCLUSION: STUDENT TLAHTOLLI/TESTIMONIO AT ETHNIC STUDIES NOW YOUTH SUMMIT 38 As the CRP bonds to the ancestral capital in the community cultural wealth of the students and their (a) ancestral indigeneity as part of their identity, while responding to the effects of (b) colonization/genocide and (c) hegemony/ neocoloniality today, it demonstrates the (d) decoloniality/social justice power of the organic CxRxPx in praxis. Grounding it as a cause of racial and educational justice, this chapter has acknowledged that we, as social justice, critical, studentcentered, antiracist educators (inside and outside of Ethnic Studies courses), need to regenerate CRP, with the organic Rx, rather than abandon parts of the terminology completely, for the sake of grounding practitioners who already perceive themselves to engage in CRP and CCW. This will positively affect more students, at a faster rate. Connecting to the organic Rx as educators is doing what is right to help eradicate the education debt/“achievement gap” for our students. If deliberate action is not taken toward this, the heg­emonic, submerging, and neocolonial side of the culture wars triumphs.

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Students who do not have access to Ethnic Studies, or at the least, to the organic Rx and deep CRP within non–Ethnic Studies courses, are suffering an injustice. They are missing out on an opportunity to connect to the history that was erased or “whitewashed” within traditional educational curriculums. This case study focused on Brown “Latino/Hispanic”/Xican@ students. However, as was evidenced by the Pinoy student, Ricky Lapu, toward the end of the praxis section, this highly relevant and responsive form of pedagogy, which is deeply geographically and historically conscious, can be applied to all students of color, and even white students, who can also learn more about their ancestral Indigenous European roots (beyond the hegemonic GrecoRoman-Germanic cultures). Black students are well served by the organic Rx in realizing that their roots/histories do not begin with the middle passage and slavery, a realization that has been a focus of Afrocentric curricula for decades. Considering the globalized context in which we exist, and the geohistorical origins of it, acknowledging students’ relationships to indigeneity, colonization/genocide, hegemony/neocoloniality, and decoloniality/social justice is part of the healing and deeper understanding of our journeys today as human beings; the students in the praxis section demonstrated this. As a fundamental human right, all students deserve the opportunity to understand this relevance and responsiveness in relation to themselves, their communities, and our world. Social science teachers (e.g., history/geography), language arts teachers (who often have more freedom over content), and, of course, teacher educators are positioned to focus on this organic medicine of identity; however, all social justice educators across disciplines may consider it in our repertoires of liberatory professional praxis. Though it serves as resistance to the curriculum of coloniality, ironically, the depth of the organic Rx, the synthesizing of sources, the backing up with evidence, also relate well to Common Core standards.39 The organic Rx can serve all students of color; it is healing and it is an element of societal and educational restorative justice. To conclude, I will share Ines’ speech at the Ethnic Studies Now Youth Summit at Santee High School in Los Angeles, which she presented on February 15, 2015, a year after taking our social justice geography course. In the speech, what Arce (this volume) calls the Indigenous transformative resis­ tance is visible, as is evidence of the student delinking from the curriculum of coloniality (Mignolo 2007), and thus living a relationship to the fourth scale in that moment—(mental) decoloniality/social justice. The organic Rx in our course, the ancestral capital that was revealed, was transformational and liberating for students. We have the tools and knowledge to counter the concretization of the final element of cultural genocide in our classrooms and to encourage others to do the same, especially social justice educators. My message to educators of Brown “Latino/Hispanic” students is to please not be

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complacent and complicit with accepting these terms as “racial” identifiers, your students deserve better and geohistorically deeper; they deserve the organic Rx, or at the least awareness of it within themselves (naivety and geohistorical amnesia is the alternative). We must not be complicit with the concretization of cultural genocide and identity loss in our classrooms; if students’ ancestral legacies were “transferred” out of their original groups, as social justice educators we can help them realize and regenerate these Indigenous roots that colonization attempted to destroy. The roots live. After doing our SJHA version of the In Lak Ech unity clap with the audience at the Ethnic Studies Now Youth Summit, a resilient and brilliant tenth grade student stepped up in front of all present, with the courage to share: My name is Ines. . . . Ethnic Studies is truly life-changing. Last year, I had the opportunity to learn the other side of the story, the one that doesn’t belong to the European ethnicity. The only thing I have to say about that class was that it truly shaped me to who I am today. Who would have guessed that a class that I was only taking for high school credits would still continue to impact my life one year later? That’s exactly what my freshman Geography class continues to do to me today and trust me, I know that it was just a Geography class but my teacher, Mr. Tolteka, always found a way to make us think outside the box, to really question our whole K–8 education because throughout those years, the only thing that I have learned in History classes was the European perspective of things—but what about my people? What about those natives who were slaughtered and tortured upon the arrival of Christopher Columbus and I know no one likes to speak about it but unfortunately it’s the sad truth! I will be honest with you, before high school, I had no idea about the massacre that began in 1492 and although no one likes to call it a genocide, let’s be real, that’s what it was. I also believed I only came from European descent. That my ancestors were all Europeans because the textbooks never spoke about the Indigenous, the ones who were here before the Europeans, my people, and the fact that I couldn’t name from the top of my head my ancestral tribe or my ancestral roots is evidence that colonization has really made its way through the minds of the people. You don’t know how frustrating it is to walk around or to be asked where your family is from, and all you can do is name the state that your grandparents are from. I know I wasn’t the only one. You can approach others asking them the same question and the only answer you will receive is silence. If there’s anyone who has to break that silence, it’s me! It’s time to show these kids their true history, their roots because I was fortunate enough

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to attend a school and have a teacher who truly believed that students should know both sides and base their opinion from it, but there’s others who still look like me at the beginning of freshman year, clueless to reality. History can’t be changed but it can be prevented (from repeating) and if we can do anything to prevent it, best believe I’ll put my all. Ethnic Studies for all!

NOTES 1. “Race” is taught as a colonial social construction, directly related to phentoype and Indigenous geographic ancestry. 2. Nikan Tlakah Tiawi! means Natives onward! in the Nahuatl language. 3. My use of the term is akin to the educational component of Quijano’s (2000) coloniality of power. 4. People of Color here is used to refer to all nonwhite people (or those with ancestral roots outside of Europe). It must be noted that some Native Americans assertively do not identify as People of Color, in order to prioritize their Indigenous identity upon their ancestral homeland, and not as (forced or voluntary) settlers, which other People of Color may still be. 5. Submersion, “their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression” (Freire, 1970). 6. Hegemony, “the masses wear their chains willingly” (Gramsci, in Martin, 1991). 7. The “debt” consists of four parts, the [geo]historical, sociopolitical, economic, moral debts the United States owes students of color. Brackets mine. 8. There are additional terms and concepts that are part of CxRxPx, but are not included here. 9. Tataviam, Indigenous tribe renamed Fernandeño after the San Fernando Mission they were enslaved to build, a structure still located near our school. As a reclaiming toponymy, I honor the Tataviam in the decolonial name of the city. Similarly, Yangna is Los Angeles in the language of the Tongva, who were renamed the Gabrielinos after the San Gabriel Mission. Also, see “Yangna Losca” on the album, Reflexiones En Yangna Califaztlan (2008), and the landmarks where the Plazita Olvera is located today. 10. 2010 U.S. Census data. 11. See Mignolo (2007), while being in accord with Tuck and Yang’s (2012) call, that “decolonization is not a metaphor,” and ultimately is defined by Indigenous sovereignty. 12. Synonymous with “Kilnamikiliztli Masehualli,” or Indigenous memory, in the Nahuatl language (Cintli 2014). 13. See Grande’s Red Pedagogy (2004), or Serrano Najera’s (2012) CCP for a brief summary of this call. 14. When one’s Indigenous language is eliminated within oneself, with intergenerational repercussions. 15. Panche Be is the Mayan concept that means “to seek the root of the truth (or to find the truth in the root[s]).” Hunab Ku, in Mayan, is the “only giver of movement

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and measurement” (Cintli 2014). All other noted Indigenous concepts are explicated in the chapter by Arce (this volume). 16. Signifies our Respected Mother; Earth, in the Nahuatl language. 17. U.S. News and World Report, 2015. 18. Statistics are based on data from Coalition of Community Schools (2015), and Teacher Powered Schools (2015). 19. In 2010, the California Department of Education’s data was based on a list of persistently lowest performing schools, which included two of our neighboring high schools and five in our SFVT. One of these schools, Sylmar High is where SJHA began as a small learning community, before becoming a pilot school on the CCLA campus in 2011. 20. See Ethnicstudiesnow.com for updates. 21. National Council on Teacher Quality (2013). 22. See Garcia & Lucero (2014). Abya Yala is a term to connote American Indians from throughout the entire continent (North and South), in the Indigenous Kuna language, proposed by Aymara Takir Mamani at a Continental Indigenous Gathering in 1992, as a form of resistance to the Eurocentric terming of the Americas (named after Latin/Italian colonizer Amerigo Vespucci). 23. Xican@ often translates simply and somewhat superficially as Mexican American, the @ is inclusive of both males, females, and other genders; as an identifying term it is further explained later in this section. Chapin signifies students of Guatemalan descent, Guanac@s are students of El Salvadorian descent, Catrach@s are of Honduran descent. 24. I developed these in an unpublished graduate school report, theorizing that keys to the first space are pedagogical tools/assignments/lessons where students access home/ancestral funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth; keys to the second space are what students use to access state and national content standards, codes of power, and the dominant discourse of “education”; when blended, they create keys to the third space. Note that in original Bhabian theory there is no fixity for the location of each space, the hybridity is the “location of culture”; however, following the lead of Gutierrez et al. (1999) and Moje et al. (2004), this particular first- and secondspace positionality as a framework for educational analysis works well and is student centered, which is key to the organic Rx. 25. These are academic success, cultural competency, and critical consciousness. 26. These are validating/sustaining, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipating/liberating. 27. “To sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (Django 2012). 28. (1) “Indigenous education sovereignty .  .  . attends directly to asymmetrical power relations and transforming legacies of colonization,” (2) “the need to reclaim and revitalize what has been disrupted by colonization,” and (3) “the need for community based accountability,” which includes Brayboy et al.’s four R’s: respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and caring relationships (McCarty and Lee 2014, 103). 29. Indigenous tribe primarily from Michoacan, Mexico. 30. See U.S. Census Working Group report (2013).

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31. E.g., Nate Cohen, “More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/upshot/more-hispanics-declaring -themselves-white.html, accessed October 12, 2014, which contradicts New York Times (2012); Latino Rebels (2015). Also, the U.S. Census itself acknowledges the confusion (e.g., Working Groups [2013]). 32. Adapted from my explication of the term on Latino Rebels (2015). 33. See U.S. Census questionnaire (2010). The U.S. Census Bureau is currently working on clarifying the wording on the form for the count in 2020, to make it more accessible to people with Indigenous roots throughout the continent (see Working Groups report, 2014). 34. In the macronarrative of the social justice geography course I developed with students, the YGC calendar signifies Year of Great Columbus, or Year of Genocide’s Commencement, depending on one’s perspective. 35. In Mexican American discourse, “colored eyes” often means nonbrown eyes (e.g., blue, green, or hazel eyes). 36. Pinoy = (male) Filipino, Pinay = (female) Filipina, in Indigenous Tagalog discourse. 37. See “Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests,” National Geographic, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geog raphy_2.html, accessed March 11, 2015. See also, for example, “Study: Geography Greek to Young Americans.” CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION /05/02/geog.test/, accessed July 1, 2015; Vi-an Nguyen, “Jay Leno Says Good Night: Watch 7 of His Funniest Moments on The Tonight Show,” Parade.com, http://parade .com/63296/viannguyen/jay-lenos-last-tonight-show-confirmed-watch-7-funniest -moments/, accessed July 26, 2015. 38. Tlahtolli is the Nahuatl term for “words” and, here, is also used to connote the concept of testimonies/testimonios. 39. This is ironic because as Sleeter (2004), and Sleeter and Stillman (2005) note, standardizing Eurocentric imperialism and standardizing what counts and does not count as knowledge within our multicultural society has been the dominant practice of high-stakes testing leading up to and since the inception of the No Child Left Behind era. Nonetheless, students generally performing better on standardized tests after taking Ethnic Studies courses should not be surprising; data has evidenced this (Sleeter 2011).

REFERENCES Acosta, Curtis. 2007. “Developing Critical Consciousness: Resistance Literature in a Chicano Literature Class.” English Journal 97(2): 36–42. Arce, Sean. 2016. “Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies: Towards a Decolonizing and Liberatory Education for Xicana/o Youth.” In New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies: “White” Washing American Education, edited by Tracy Lachica Buenavista, James Marín, Anthony Ratcliff, and Denise Sandoval (this volume). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

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Bigelow, Bill. 1998. Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, 2nd ed. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Benally, A., and D. Viri. 2005. “Diné Bizaad (Navajo Language) at a Crossroads: Extinction or Renewal? Bilingual Research Journal 29(1): 85–108. Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo. 1996. México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. Austin: University of Texas Press. Brayboy, B. M. J., H. R. Gough, B. Leonard, R. F. Roehl II, and J. A. Solyom. 2012. “Reclaiming Scholarship: Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies.” In Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Design, edited by S. D. Lapan, M. Quartaroli, and F. J. Reimer, 423–50. San Francisco: John Wiley. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/pl/tier2.asp, accessed August 29, 2015. California Department of Education. “Common Core State Standards.” http://www .cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/finalelaccssstandards.pdf, accessed August 8, 2015. Coalition for Community Schools. 2015. “2015 Award for Excellence Winner.” http://www.communityschools.org/assets/1/AssetManager/Humanitas2015Awar dee.pdf, accessed August 8, 2015. Decker, Jeffrey. 2011. “Hispanics Identifying Themselves as Indians.” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/nyregion/more-hispanics-in-us-calling -themselves-indian.html?_r=0, accessed October 12, 2014. Delpit, Lisa D. 1995. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New Press. Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M. R, and Ernest Morrell. 2008. The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools. New York: Peter Lang. Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Femia, Joseph. 2002. “The Gramsci Phenomenon: Some Reflections.” In Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosphers, edited by James Martin, 116–32. London: Routledge. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gallagher-Geurtsen, Tricia. 2012. (Un)knowing Diversity: Researching Narratives of Neocolonial Classrooms through Youth’s Testimonios. New York: Peter Lang. Garcia, Maria Elena, and Jose Antonio Lucero. 2015. “Resurgence and Resistance in Abya Yala.” In The World of Indigenous North America, edited by Robert Warrior, 429–45. New York: Routledge. Gay, Geneva. 2000. Culturally Responsive Teaching Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Grande, Sandy. 2004. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gutiérrez, Kris D., Patricia Baquedano-López, and Carlos Tejeda. 1999. “Rethinking Diversity: Hybridity and Hybrid Language Practices in the Third Space.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 6(4): 286–303. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995a. “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” Theory into Practice 34(3): 159–65. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995. “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” American Educational Research Journal 32(3): 465–91.

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Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 2006. “From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools.” Educational Researcher 35(7): 3–12. Los Angeles Unified School District. “About the Los Angeles Unified School District.” http://achieve.lausd.net/about, accessed July 31, 2015. McCarty, Teresa L., and Tiffany S. Lee. 2014. “Critical Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy and Indigenous Education Sovereignty.” Harvard Education Review 84(1): 101–24. Mignolo, Walter. 2007. “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, The Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality.” Cultural Studies 21: 449–514. Moje, Elizabeth Birr, Kathryn Mcintosh Ciechanowski, Katherine Kramer, Lindsay Ellis, Rosario Carrillo, and Tehani Collazo. 2004. “Working toward Third Space in Content Area Literacy: An Examination of Everyday Funds of Knowledge and Discourse.” Reading Research Quarterly 39(1): 38–70. Moll, Luis C., Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma Gonzalez. 1992. “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms.” Theory into Practice 31: 132–41. National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations. 2014. 2020 Census, Race and Hispanic Origin Research Working Group. National Council on Teacher Quality. “Los Angeles Unified School District, California. http://www.nctq.org/districtPolicy/contractDatabase/district.do?id=3, accessed August 1, 2015. Navarro, Jenell. 2015. “WORD: Hip-Hop, Language, and Indigeneity in the Americas.” Critical Sociology. Oakes, Jeannie, Martin Lipton, Jamy Stillman, and Lauren Anderson. 2012. Teaching to Change the World. Boulder: Paradigm Press. Paris, Django. 2012. “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: A Needed Change in Stance, Terminology, and Practice.” Educational Researcher 41(3): 93–97. Quijano, Aníbal. 2000. “Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America.” International Sociology 15(2): 215–32. Rodriguez, Roberto Cintli. 2014. Our Sacred Maíz Is Our Mother: Indigeneity and Belonging in the Americas. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Rodriguez, Roberto Cintli. 2010. “Cuauhtémoc, Dolores Huerta, and Raza Studies Timeline.” http://drcintli.blogspot.com/2010/11/cuauhtemoc-dolores-huerta-and -raza.html, accessed August 12, 2015. Romero, Augustine, Sean Arce, and Julio Cammarota. 2009. “A Barrio Pedagogy: Identity, Intellectualism, Activism, and Academic Achievement through the Evolution of Critically Compassionate Intellectualism.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 12(2): 217–33. Serrano Nájera, José Luis. 2014. “Chicana/o Movement Pedagogical Legacies: Indigenous Consciousness, Critical Pedagogy, and Constructing Paths to Decolonization.” Regeneración Tlacuilolli: UCLA Raza Studies Journal 1(1): 27–67. Sims, Christine. 2005. “Tribal Languages and the Challenges of Revitalization.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 36(1): 104–6. Sleeter, Christine. 2004. “Standardizing Imperialism.” Rethinking Schools 19(1): 26–29. Sleeter, Christine. 2011. The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review. Washington, DC: National Education Association.

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Sleeter, Christine, and Jamy Stillman. 2005. “Standardizing Knowledge in a Multicultural Society.” Curriculum Inquiry 35(1): 27–46. Teacher Powered Schools. “Case Studies of Teacher Powered Schools.” Teacherpowered.com. http://www.teacherpowered.org/about/case-studies, accessed July 1, 2015. Tolteka. 2008. “Yangna Losca.” Reflexiones en Yangna Califaztlan, Abyayala Ixachilan Music. CD. Tolteka. 2015. “Columbus, Latinos, and the U.S. Census.” http://www.latinorebels .com/2015/10/12/confusion-about-the-u-s-census/, accessed October 12, 2015. Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education, & Society 1(1): 1–40. United Nations General Assembly’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 1948. Valenzuela, Angela. 1999. Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Albany: State University of New York Press. Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Yosso, Tara J. 2005. “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 8(1): 69–91.

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Education in Nepantla: A Chicana Feminist Approach to Engaging Latina/o Elementary Youth in Ethnic Studies Socorro Morales, Sylvia Mendoza Aviña and Dolores Delgado Bernal

Sylvia: Junot, what did you like about the [Ethnic Studies] class? Junot: . . . I liked it because we had fun. We talked about ourselves. Gael: And we could be ourselves. Junot: We could be ourselves, like crazy psychos. Sylvia: How do you have to be [during regular school hours]? Junot: Clean, not so psycho.  .  .  . When we do be ourselves, we just get ourselves in trouble. What does it mean to engage Latina/o elementary-aged youth in ethnic studies?1 What possibilities exist when these students are exposed to a critical, Ethnic Studies curriculum informed by Chicana feminisms? In the above plática, these two boys discuss with Sylvia, one of the co-instructors, how within an extracurricular Ethnic Studies class space, they can “be themselves” in ways that other spaces, especially schools, often restrict or limit.2 In particular, Junot uses the word “clean” to describe his behavior during school hours in comparison to being himself in the Ethnic Studies class. This very brief exchange echoes most of the students’ reflections on the relational aspect of the Ethnic Studies course we co-developed for Latina/o, bilingual fifth and sixth graders during the 2013–14 and 2014–15 academic year.3 The Ethnic Studies class was developed and taught with a Chicana feminist and Chicana/o-centric curriculum in Salt Lake City, Utah. Part of what we argue is that one of the possibilities that exists when students are exposed to an Ethnic Studies class informed by Chicana feminisms is that it will foster a relational space where youth feel they can be themselves and where there is the decolonial potential for collective healing.

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Drawing heavily from the scholarship of Gloria Anzaldúa, we use the concept of the path of conocimiento, specifically nepantla and Coyolxauhqui, in order to understand our collective process of healing within this extracurricular space (Anzaldúa 1987, 2002; Pérez, 1999). We find healing a necessary component to our Ethnic Studies curriculum and praxis given the impact of coloniality on communities and students of color. For this reason, Emma Pérez’s theoretical construct of the decolonial imaginary incorporated into our curriculum and praxis, in conversation with Anzaldúa, facilitates a process of healing and exhibits decolonial potential as it urges students and educators to imagine themselves, schools, education, and society apart from the oppressive constraints and realities of coloniality. We argue that the course we developed serves as an example of (1) how to “do” Ethnic Studies with elementary youth of color, specifically Chicana/o students, and (2) what Chicana/o Studies can look like when infused with Chicana feminisms in the design and approach. We do not propose a step-by-step formula of how to do this type of Chicana/o Studies course; however, we do highlight our process as a means of illuminating the possibilities that exist when we include elementary-aged youth in our conception of Ethnic Studies. Through our experiences teaching Chicana/o Studies with youth, we came to develop a rasquache pedagogy infused with Chicana feminisms that allows for messiness, as well as the piecing together of our teaching strategies with the physical and emotional energy of the students and ourselves. Using rasquache pedagogy also allows us to explicitly center processes of healing, both via the self and collectively, in ways that traditional Chicana/o and Ethnic Studies courses do not always emphasize. Thus, Chicana/o Studies when grounded in a Chicana feminist framework allows for us to examine how we heal through pain, contradiction, and tension. Located in Salt Lake City, Utah, our research site is Connor Elementary, a school containing both an English-only and a Spanish, dual-immersion strand. The student body demographics are predominantly of color (81%), with Latinas/os having the highest proportion of that percentage at 71%.4 Eighty-five percent of the total student population (483) at Connor are considered “low income” by the district.5 Connor Elementary is also the site for the Adelante Partnership, a joint community-university-school effort designed to combat the current, dismal Chicana/o educational pipeline. While serving as research assistants for Adelante, Socorro and Sylvia developed close relationships with students over the past several years and familiarized themselves with studentteacher interactions during the school day. The idea for the extracurricular Chicana/o Studies course emerged from a desire to engage students in more critical, explicit discussions about their social world. We met with students after school for two hours each week, from September 2013 through April 2014. The participants were eleven fifth and sixth graders, who self-identified

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as Latina/o, Chicana/o, or Mexican American. Of the eleven students, six were female and five were male. Students were selected based on our previous relationships with them through the partnership, and whether or not they had personally shared with us aspects of their lives related to immigration, skin color, discrimination, or other “isms.” All of the narratives in this chapter were re-created from field notes and audio recorded data. As a group, we explored topics related to racism, gender, and borders. We found that when given the space and critical discourse to understand the world around them, youth responded in positive ways that spoke to their experiences. More specifically, they expressed feeling that they could be who they were/are in our course in ways that traditional schooling did not allow. Our approach to the design and implementation of this course was guided primarily by a Chicana feminist epistemology (Delgado Bernal 1998). Chicana feminists have long engaged in discussions around ontology and epistemology. Because of this, we framed the class around a single question, “Who am I?” We share our experience and organize this chapter as follows: we begin with the theoretical frames guiding our work, including our pedagogical approach, then we provide a glimpse into our process of rasquache pedagogy and how this opened the door to healing within the classroom space, followed by what processes of healing can look like for elementary Latina/o youth, and finish with the implications for doing Chicana/o Studies with Latina/o youth.

BORDERLANDS IN EDUCATIONAL SPACES We entered this research by foregrounding our positionalities and experiences as Chicanas. Guided by Anzaldúa’s feminist writings about experiences on the margins, we wanted the extracurricular course to infuse and reflect our experiences as borderlanders and, in particular, understanding borderland experiences within education. We purposefully set out to create an educational agenda that would not only disrupt dominant schooling practices, as do many Ethnic Studies–based approaches, but which would also explicitly center relationships and healing as part of our praxis. In thinking about the multiple forms of healing we engage in, we found that the path of conocimiento could help us understand healing as a continual process, both for ourselves and for our students. Anzaldúa’s path of conocimiento is an “overarching theory of consciousness” or self-awareness that draws attention to an individual and collective healing process. She writes about it as a journey or a path on which we gather knowledge and often experience tension and pain that provides us with possibilities for transformation. Anzaldúa (2002) envisions this process of transformation and awareness as stemming primarily from a transformation of self that can then extend to the social world, in pursuit of interconnectivity via

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social justice. As Burciaga (2010) states, “Anzaldúa (2002) believes one travels a path of conocimiento (a journey of self-awareness) in times of self-discovery and change. Anzaldúa explains seven spaces along the path of conocimiento where the journey takes one from an internal quest to one that is in conversation with a larger social world” (2010, 7). Two of those points along the path of conocimiento that are particularly important to our Ethnic Studies work are nepantla and putting Coyolxauhqui together. Nepantla is a Nahuatl word meaning the space between two worlds or the land in the middle. It is a “place where different perspectives come into conflict” (Anzaldúa, 2002, 548). Anzaldúa theorized that nepantla represents those feelings of “in between” for those who find themselves at literal and metaphysical borders. This state of being—nepantla—is a painful and conflicting space borderlanders or nepantleras find themselves in when up against imagined or real borders. It is the space between social constructions of reality and new ways of being and thinking about the world. When we engage in our own paths of conocimiento, we start to see beneath the surface of dominant narratives and paradigms and locate other histories, other ways of being. This state of “in between” can be confusing and overwhelming in that everything we have been socialized to accept as truth and reality is turned on its head, and, as a result, we find ourselves caught between dominant social constructions of the world and new, emerging constructions. In this chapter, nepantla helps us engage with youth as a tool for understanding those moments of “in between” as we attempt to shift our consciousnesses, or conocimientos, collectively toward an education that is anti-oppressive and socially just. The outcome of doing this with youth, we argue, can be healing. In her work on the Coyolxauhqui imperative, Anzaldúa (2005) writes, “The Coyolxauhqui imperative is to heal and achieve integration. . . . Coyolxauhqui is my symbol for the necessary process of dismemberment and fragmentation, of seeing that self or the situations you’re embroiled in differently” (100). Recognizing that life on the borderlands forces us to undergo a process of dismemberment, Anzaldúa argues that healing is a necessary, continual process that we must engage in. In working toward the process of putting ourselves together, we continually engage in our paths of conocimiento, feeling pain, helplessness, transforming, and back again. For youth, there is a constant surveillance as they negotiate the borderlands of school, of who they are, and who they understand themselves to be. Their bodies and energies are constantly policed, and, over the course of their K–12 education, colonial discourses are inscribed onto their bodies. Dominant schooling practices for youth of color devalue their knowledge and their communities, and fail to recognize the multiple forms of involvement from their parents. As individuals who are always made to feel “less than,” youth of color need spaces where they can heal from such schooling practices. Additionally, Latina/o youth

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who are undocumented or have family members who are undocumented experience an additional fear of deportation and family separation. The realities of their material and social world in conjunction with the substandard, deficit schooling they receive, creates a need to heal from the multiple messages that Latina/o youth are given that claim they are not “good enough.”

RASQUACHE PEDAGOGY The theory of conocimiento, taken up by a number of Chicana scholars as a pedagogical possibility, brings attention to a journey of coming to understand systems of oppression and healing from those oppressions (Fránquiz 2010; Gutiérrez 2012; Mendez-Negrete 2006; Sánchez 2009; Tang 2006). Fránquiz (2010) points to how some lessons and class activities—similar to the ones we describe below—can facilitate conocimiento—a “consciousness in which we walk in others’ shoes, love others, empathize and sympathize with others, and listen carefully” (x). This is aligned with the rasquache pedagogy that we propose; but our rasquache pedagogy adds a dimension typically associated with Chicana/o art. Tomas Ybarra-Frausto coined the term rasquachismo to refer to “a uniquely working-class aesthetic of Mexican origin— resourceful, excessive, ironic, and, in its transformation of utilitarian articles into sacred or aesthetic objects, highly metaphoric” (Gaspar de Alba 1998, 11–12). Rasquachismo, then, is using what limited resources one has available as a result of the material conditions in one’s life, to make do, to create, to resist dominant paradigms, and to claim a sense of cultural citizenship. Gaspar de Alba (1998) offers that rasquachismo “is more than an oppositional form; it is a militant praxis of resistance to hegemonic standards in the art world” (12). Similarly, our pedagogical approach with Latina/o elementary youth was a militant praxis of resistance to hegemonic standards of teaching, learning, and schooling. In working with Latina/o working-class youth, we—like our students—used what we had available to us to create a classroom space that was relational, healing, disrupted dominant standards of teaching and learning, and fused together messy, complicated, yet beautiful subjectivities. A rasquache pedagogy allowed us to co-create with our students a classroom experience that was a work of art, and always a work in progress. Key in our rasquache pedagogy is recognizing and embracing the realities of engaging in collaborative work with elementary-aged youth. For us, this meant embracing the complex relationships we developed with these youth and all of the energy, life experiences, material realities, and resulting knowledges they embodied and brought into the classroom. Thus, our rasquache pedagogy is committed to recognizing the full humanity of our students, is aware of our students’ unique subjectivities, and is welcoming of the Spanglish and youth cultures that inform our

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curriculum. It acknowledges the “theories of the flesh” (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1981) our students bring into the classroom and we use those experiences as sites of knowledge production. And, perhaps most important, this pedagogy is fluid, malleable, and creative in ways that use the energy, messiness, and contradictions in the classroom. As there are no templates for Chicana/o or Ethnic Studies with Latina/o elementary-aged youth, our pedagogy evolves and develops moment by moment in the classroom and is shaped by energy, the students’ desires to speak on particular topics, their lived experiences, and our knowledge of their material realities. For us, a rasquache pedagogy through a Chicana feminist lens helps us to recognize ourselves, our praxis, our students, and our classroom space as a work in progress and helps us to embrace and use the messiness we encounter with youth daily. Unlike critical youth studies scholars who use Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to work with older youth on projects that help them become idealized activists, our rasquache pedagogy helps us to understand the many and contradictory narratives young people embody.6 Rasquache pedagogy sees all these subjectivities and tries to work with what is available, is committed to creating something beautiful collectively, and acknowledges that teachers and students are forever a work in progress and that there is no one outcome for any of our students, but that there is always the decolonial potential for healing.

PUTTING THE THEORETICAL INTO PRACTICE: GLIMPSES OF OUR RASQUACHE PEDAGOGY As we set up the projector and prepare our video, we are a little nervous.7 Though in our minds the ideas seem good, we don’t often know what will happen in practice. Sometimes the videos that we show the students really resonate with them, and they talk about it for days. Sometimes the videos completely flop and, at the last minute, we have to come up with an alternative lesson plan. Today, we plan on showing them a four-minute video compilation that we found on YouTube of the Family Guy character, Consuela, who makes occasional appearances on the show as the family maid. Our purpose in showing them this video is to use a familiar show/media source, such as Family Guy, to begin to more critically examine the various stereotypes that are a part of the show, and in fact form the bulk of the show’s punch lines. Our plan is to show the video then follow up with discussion questions such as, “what did you see” and “what type of role does Consuela play in the show?” On this particular day in October, there are only six students total, one of whom is an older sibling (high school age) of one of the fifth graders. The other participants could not make it as a result of their extracurricular activity, soccer, which many of them play. We start the clip. This particular clip highlights Consuela’s “English accent.” Consuela becomes the butt of the joke because of her lack of “English

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proficiency,” which creates miscommunication between her and Peter. At the same time that she can’t understand him, she also manages to be “smart enough” to steal from him and the family. The students instantly recognize Family Guy as many of them shared that they watch it at home. They are excited because they consider it to be a funny show, and they anticipate laughing throughout the clip. Some are even fidgeting in their chair from excitement when they see what we are planning to show them. At the beginning of the clip, most of the students are laughing. In exchanges between Consuela and Peter, it is clear that Consuela’s lack of understanding English is a funny and laughable thing they are picking up on. As co-instructors, the two of us exchange glances as they laugh, but we do not say anything. We allow the clip to play. As the clip progresses, we notice that the students are not laughing as loud as they were at the beginning. The four-minute clip is a constant repetition of the ways that Consuela is portrayed stereotypically. At some point toward the end of the clip, Consuela is seen crossing the border to meet with an estranged man who she seeks to have relations with. This image, combined with her job, accent, and skin tone on the show, forms a clear picture of the way that society generally thinks of Latinas/os and in particular Mexicanas/os. As the clip comes to the end of its four-minute run, the students have become quieter. Their initial excitement and energy had changed to quiet stares and inaudible whispers. When the clip stops, we flick the lights back on and see the students staring at each other, the projector screen, and us. Based on their body language, it seems apparent that the repetitive nature of Consuela’s behavior has communicated something to them about not only her, but perhaps even about themselves. What they at first found to be hilariously funny, turned into something more serious and perhaps even disturbing. As we open up the discussion, Socorro shares that her mother has been working many years in the housekeeping department at a hospital, cleaning beds and rooms. This conversation sparks some students to share their own stories. Two of them share that they also have mothers who clean houses and take care of children. After having opened up the conversation through sharing information that is personal to us, we then ask the students, “what are some of the stereotypes associated with Consuela?” The first student to comment is Emma, who says that Consuela “is dumb.” We follow up with “why do you think that?” This time, not only does Emma respond but other students chime in as well, shouting over one another that Consuela is seen as dumb because she knows limited English, has an accent, attempts to steal things when no one is looking, and does not have common etiquette skills, such as not going into a restroom when someone is using it. We discuss these actions as being a stereotype because they are widely held perceptions that people have about Lati­ nas/os, rather than actual things that Latinas/os do in practice. The two students who shared about their mothers earlier then begin sharing that their mothers have tough jobs because their bosses treat them unfairly. In particular, Emma shares how

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Americans (but really she means white people) treat her mother unfairly because she gets underpaid for the amount and type of work that she performs. They also both share that they have sometimes gone to help their mothers at work and know that their mothers receive less pay than they should compared to other workers who are white. In sharing these aspects about their families, we then move to asking them the question, “why do you think that school is important?” Socorro shares that her mother always told her education was important because her mother did not want her working labor jobs where she [Socorro] would be underpaid, like her mother is. This comment once again sparks discussion among all the students who unanimously had experiences where their parents told them to stay in school. They all knew school and education is an important means to not being treated the way that their parents are being treated in their jobs. They understood that without an education, it would be more difficult for them to be able to defend themselves in the world of work and they would have less access to jobs that are less labor intensive. As these conversational threads end, the students start to take up topics that are tangential to the discussion and we decide to break for recess. Our purpose in sharing this narrative is to give the reader a glimpse into our methodology as pedagogical practice—how we engaged this research proj­­ect, the student participants, and our classroom experience. We reveal some of our insecurities in running the class. Though we worked diligently to create and develop curricular materials, we enter the classroom space with much uncertainty. We understand this to be a part of our process, as we open ourselves up to the messiness of not always knowing what to expect and making impromptu decisions based on the situation. Another part of the process is how we regularly share pieces of our own lives as Chicanas with the students, for example, when Socorro tells the students about her mother’s job. We argue that how we approached the class, our pedagogy, is also connected to our methodology, in that both reflect decisions we made about engaging these youth. This allowed us to be open to naming our pedagogy rasquache because, although we initially had a sense of how we wanted to engage them pedagogically, we began to realize that our intentions did not always work out as planned. We recognized we were piecing together our lives as Chicanas with the students’ own lives as Chicanas/os living in the borderlands and learning to recognize and embrace our contradictions. Part of our approach to this class was to start with broad concepts, such as stereotypes, racism, borderlands/borders, and gender, and then work to create classroom materials, both digital and print, that we suspected students may be familiar with based on our prior relationships with them. We knew that most of the students if not all would have a familiarity with Family Guy. Though we start with a point of familiarity, we also construct discussion questions that we hope will get students to see the familiar more critically and in a different

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light. Part of our pedagogical approach is to have critical thinking embedded throughout. As excerpted from our data, it became clear that day that the students, even if it was in that brief moment, were seeing Family Guy differently. They recognized that the jokes about Consuela were also present in their own lives and in the perceptions people have about them and their families. In facilitating a space where they can share aspects of their lives more openly than in traditional schools, part of our pedagogical approach is validating the knowledge that students bring from home and their communities, similar to the approach of Ethnic Studies courses (Cammarota & Romero 2014; Delgado Bernal 2002; Tintiangco-Cubales et al. 2014). As Chicanas who have experienced many years of dominant schooling practices, part of our goal is to demonstrate to students that their conocimientos of the world are valid forms of “theory in the flesh” (Moraga & Anzaldúa 1981). As such, part of our praxis includes giving students the opportunity, as frequently as possible, to speak and be heard. While we believe this can be one form of validating students, we also find it challenging to negotiate how much each student can talk so that they do not dominate. In the narrative below, Junot is speaking about “us” [Socorro and Sylvia] as teachers, rather than the teachers that they see every day. As Socorro sits and listens to their [students’] comments, she notices how often they fight over the audio recorder. Time and time again, we have to continue to remind them that we all deserve a chance to share our stories and experiences. Regular schooling for them consists of only moments where their voice can be heard. During our afterschool Chicana/o Studies space, where we allow them to vocally share more than traditional schooling, they get so excited and energetic about sharing that they are constantly competing to talk over one another. One example of how they express themselves differently within our class space comes when one student in the group says that she “will be the teacher” and will choose who will talk, to which Junot responds, “you have to talk too, teachers (referring to Socorro and Sylvia) don’t really do the talking, well they talk but they don’t take over.” After Junot’s comment, one student says, “Ms. Smith does all the talking,” to which another student echoes her comment, “yeah she does alllll the talking!” Juxtaposing us as people who they consider “teachers,” they understand and see the difference between how we enact our form of teaching in comparison to their everyday schooling. In Junot’s point of view, we do much less talking than do students, which is not typical of their everyday experience. Part of why we argue for the incorporation of Chicana feminisms into Ethnic Studies models is to create critical educational spaces where we can challenge social constructions such as race and gender. However, this can become difficult in that elementary-aged youth are in the midst of a socialization process through schooling institutions and their own families that teach

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them to be invested in particular social constructions, such as adults are authority figures and adhering to rigid social constructions of gender. Nepantla, the “middle space” between dominant narratives and alternative possibilities, is a way for us to understand our pedagogy as we navigate these social constructions with youth. We embrace and simultaneously struggle with being in a space where gender is both challenged and reified. In the next narrative, we explore this tension with regard to the elementary-aged students and their families. Though parents/guardians received a description of the class, we often wondered what would happen if parents/ guardians one day decided to participate/sit in our class. Would they be okay with us talking about racism, showing certain videos, or talking about gender and gender roles? One topic in particular that we often struggled with was gender and sexuality. Though we often found ourselves wanting to challenge dominant narratives of both gender and sexuality, we always knew that we were crossing a fine line when talking about sexuality (through topics like dating, attractiveness, desire) with youth, particularly when they are younger than eighteen. We are also in a conservative state that has strict policies on how sexuality can be addressed in schools. Below, we highlight an incident where a parent, whom we have a close relationship with and who is part of the school staff, came and joined one of our discussions and participated with the students and us during recess. The students race to the soccer field right as recess begins, leaving Nancy (guest co-instructor), Esperanza (parent and volunteer), and Sylvia behind. The adults take a seat at a bench closest to the soccer field to watch the youth as they play. One student, a sixth grade girl, stops in her tracks and runs to the bench where the adults are seated. She demands, “watch my phone and jacket.” As she pulls her phone out of her back pocket, her face lights up and she says mischievously, “Oh, do you all want to see something?” Nancy and Sylvia glance at each other quickly, nervous about what this student has on her phone. “It depends,” Nancy says. “As long as it’s nothing inappropriate,” Sylvia adds. The student moves her head to the side to move her long dark-brown hair out of her eye and starts to smile. “It isn’t,” she says. She unlocks her phone and begins to flip through her pictures until she finds what she is looking for and shows us a photo of a sixth grade boy, also in our class, kissing a female student. She starts to laugh as Sylvia tells her, “We don’t need to see personal things like that.” She leaves the phone on the bench and runs back to the soccer field to join the game. Esperanza, sitting across from Nancy and Sylvia, asks, “What was it?” Sylvia rolls her eyes and says, “A picture of two students making out.” Nancy laughs. Esperanza’s eyes open wide and she gasps, “Two boys?” she says in disbelief. Nancy and Sylvia pause, unsure of how to respond, until Sylvia answers, “No, a boy and girl.” Esperanza breathes a sigh of relief and says, “Oh! I was going to say!” and starts laughing.

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While we purposefully infused our curriculum and pedagogy with the work of Anzaldúa, who is among the most prolific women of color scholars to theorize about sexuality and queerness at the interstices of race and class, we were always unsure of how much to share in regard to gender norms and sexuality with elementary-aged youth. While we knew Anzaldúa’s theories around this concept could provide healing for youth, we also knew we had to respect the beliefs of the parents/guardians and their desire to facilitate these discussions with their children. However, because of the relationships we developed with the youth through our rasquache pedagogy, the youth felt they could express their sexualities and experiences with “dating” openly, without shame or reprimand for having and acting on their desires. While we consider this pedagogically and relationally a success in terms of creating an environment where youth recognize they are viewed holistically (and, as we argue, are themselves) we also identify these moments as existing within a state of nepantla. Despite extensive planning, we often were unsure of what result our curricular choices would have. The narrative below illustrates one such example with the use of a music video. Through our relationship with the students, we knew that many of them had very personal experiences with immigration. Our hope was that students would use the video as a catalyst to spur a discussion about their own experiences and knowledge about the border, what it means to cross the border, and what it means to live in the United States without papers. However, when we saw the music video for the first time, we cried because of how emotional we felt after watching it. In thinking about our own emotional response, we wondered, how would students react? Would sharing this video spur “too much emotion” and, if so, how would we [and the students] handle it? In our prior conversations with students during their regular class time, we knew that a majority of them had direct experience with immigration.8 Some of them were undocumented themselves, while others had undocumented family members who had been deported. Some of these family members came back and some did not. One video in particular that we felt could open up a wide range of discussion that had been recently released (at the time) was called “Ice-El Hielo” by a group named La Santa Cecilia. In this video, the group depicts the multiple facets to issues of immigration, including family members who are deported even though they are the ones working in various service positions, as well as the contradictory position of Lati­­ nas/os who work for ICE or border patrol agencies, deporting people who look like them. It is a sad video and the song itself has a slow, melodic rhythm that matches the content of the video. After much deliberation, we decided to show the video during a classroom discussion on physical borders, most notably as they relate to immigration. As Socorro walks to the computer to press Play, the room is buzzing with noise, including laughter and even “sssshs” from one student to another. In instructing

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them to quiet down so that everyone can hear, they in turn begin quieting each other and in doing so, end up talking over one another even louder. Socorro instructs them to quiet down one last time before they start, and most of them do so. The video starts with a Wal-Mart advertisement to which most of them laugh and make a comment. One student says, “always low prices” while others laugh. Once the thirtysecond ad is over, students start quieting down and eventually all you hear is the music from the video itself. The video starts playing and immediately the students appear captivated. The room falls into silence and their eyes are intent on the projector screen. About a minute and a half into the song, the singer sings “Marta llegó de niña y sueña con estudiar. Pero se le hace difícil sin los papeles,”9 to which one student named Sandra immediately utters “true.” As the song continues to play everyone is silent except for Sandra, who is typically boisterous and energetic. She is whispering to her friend about her brother being born in Colorado and about her family. Though the song hadn’t ended, she was already having a response to its content and connecting it to her own family experiences. In the video’s closing moments, two of the main characters who work at a restaurant are involved in an ICE raid where they are deported. When the video is over, students immediately begin mumbling in low voices, “that’s sad,” while Sandra in a much louder voice says, “that’s sad, that’s gonna happen to my daddy.” In noticing that the students are talking loudly and wanting to share, Socorro decides to split them into two groups, one for fifth and one for sixth graders. Each group receives this prompting question, “what did you see in the video and what did you think about what you saw?” Socorro works first with the fifth graders, who are seated on a long, rectangular table in the center of the room. Once Socorro sits down with the fifth grade group, they immediately have a lot to say. Each of them is fighting and competing over one another to get a chance to talk. Most of our class discussions are audio recorded (with student and parent permission) and in this particular instance Socorro tells them that whoever wants to talk gets to hold the audio recorder to use as a microphone and to signal that it is their turn to talk. Junot, who has an especially loud voice begins saying, “It’s just being rude to people that are Mexicans.” His close friend Gael, who is also sitting next to him, follows up on Junot’s comment with “the video was about Mexican people and their papers, and they didn’t have their papers so they had to. . . . they deported them.” In response to both of their comments as well as to the group, Socorro asks, “Is it only Mexicans who don’t have their papers?” The students shout excitedly over one another saying, “no,” while one student says, “it can be Chinese people.” Junot, again inserting his voice, adds, “exactly! Like Ms. Smith (their current teacher) got papers because she married Greg and he’s American (coded language for white) from Pennsylvania.” The video aided in prompting students to think about their own experiences with immigration, both personally and through knowing what their families have been through. For example, Junot, who is biracial, talks about how his dad had to cross

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the border twice. Many of them join in sharing narratives of their families crossing the desert and the dangers of doing so. For example, Selena shares, “my uncle came from the border, they caught him, he had to jump a fence, they caught him again and made him pay a lot of money, and more money, and more money, and more money, and more money.” Selena understood that crossing the border was not only dangerous, but also costly and that not everyone had the means to do it. When Selena finishes her comment about her uncle, another student, Isabelle, asks if she can say something and waits with her hand open so she can hold the audio recorder to talk. Isabelle shares this narrative, “when my mom crossed the border with my little brother, well not my little brother my older brother that was little at that time, my dad threw my brother over the fence, and he landed in a bush and my mom climbed the fence and she landed on my brother, which broke her leg, and then he jumped on my mom with her broken leg. And then they went to Nebraska. And then she didn’t even get a cast, she had a broken leg. And then they got their papers though.” Though many students had a lot to share about their experience with immigration, the majority of them were quiet during the video, and many of them shared feeling sad after it was over. Using the content of the video, we were able to tap into the students’ knowledge about the border, as well as how the border for them connects to a particular racialized experience of being brown youth. Part of what the video allowed us to do was to use immigration as one way of examining the concept of the border and how it connects directly to their lives. While the video provided one way for us to talk about immigration and borders with students, it also presented itself as a healing moment, namely through the relational space that allowed for feeling pain and sadness. In the next section, we write about those tense and emotional moments in class where we felt various types of energies, but often did not know how to respond to them. As they happened in the moment, it was often difficult for us to identify them as potential spaces of healing. It was only through later reflection when we replayed what happened in our minds and with each other that we are able to make sense of the various emotions that students expressed. Thus far, we have provided the reader a glimpse into our pedagogical process, both how we actually facilitated critical discussions with youth as well as how our pedagogy impacted our curricular choices. Our intention in sharing aspects of our rasquache pedagogy was to demonstrate our process of understanding our work with youth. We recognized as educators who have to meet students where they are, that our process of engaging them had to be fluid and easily malleable so that we could adjust our pedagogy as necessary. Though arguably all educators need to be able to do this, not all pedagogical approaches welcome tension, uncertainty, or contradiction. Even some Ethnic Studies–based educational approaches, particularly ones that are not grounded

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in feminist methodologies, tend to follow a more set script of what is to be “accomplished” that day or that week (Tuck 2008; Tuck & Yang 2011). In engaging in this type of pedagogical practice we were able to “open doors” or discussions that we oftentimes felt unprepared for. When educators open themselves up to the messy possibilities of working with youth, including their vulnerabilities and fears, they can help create a space for healing through openly sharing pain, sadness, and trauma. Because of our prior relationships with students and because our pedagogical approach facilitated an ability to be vulnerable, we found that students shared often and made themselves vulnerable not only to us but to each other. Thus we argue that we were only able to reach moments of healing with these youth because of our pedagogical approach and our relationship with them. Below, we share what we interpret to be moments of healing based on our experiences with them and reflections on our pedagogical practice.

HEALING THROUGH OUR RASQUACHE PEDAGOGY: PATH OF CONOCIMIENTO AND NEPANTLA WITH LATINA/O YOUTH Healing became an important aspect of our classroom space. Through sharing our experiences and experiencing pain, we collectively found ourselves in vulnerable positions. We each found ourselves sharing, at different points, painful memories that made us cry or feel emotional, such as times when we were discriminated against, bullied, or felt angry about things like lack of access to healthcare that had severely impacted our families. In this section, we detail some of the experiences that students shared that made them vulnerable. We argue that through their (and our) vulnerability and in this space we created, we found moments of healing. We make sense of these healing moments drawing from Anzaldúa’s path of conocimiento because it allows us to understand healing as a messy, constant process, which can shift between various emotional states of mind, including feeling empowered or feeling helpless. We focus on nepantla as one tool from the path of conocimiento that helps us understand our contradictions as a means of embracing them and seeing them as transformational rather than debilitating. We also draw from the concept of Coyolxauhqui from the path of conocimiento to better understand how through our rasquache pedagogy we are working with students in a process of piecing our lives together to heal from oppressive material realities and hurtful colonial discourses. Using these two concepts we recognize that these youth are in constant states of negotiation and that their processes of healing take on different forms. Students shared many painful reflections and instances of discrimination based on immigration and family separation. When we showed them the

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video from La Santa Cecilia, not only were students fighting one another to share their stories of immigration, but they also relived their trauma through the retelling of their stories. At the same time that it was painful, we argue that this sharing represented healing because they were allowed to openly express that pain, without being shamed. The short narrative below details how students faced their own pain and fears in our Chicana/o Studies space. After sitting with the fifth graders for about eight minutes, Socorro walks over to the sixth grade group. As she approaches them, she notices that they are quieter than the fifth graders who are talking excitedly and loudly over one another. Only one student (Sandra) is talking while some of the students are staring at her and the rest are looking down at the floor. Socorro pulls up a chair next to them and begins to listen to Sandra’s story. Sandra is talking about her experiences with her dad, who is undocumented. She says that her dad has two identities because he goes by a different name at work and in other places where he is required to give his name. As she talks, it is clear that there is a lot of emotion present in her voice, as she fiddles her fingers together and moves her feet against the floor rapidly. As Sandra continues to talk about what it would mean for her dad to get “sent away,” her voice chokes and she begins to cry. Through her tears she continues to share that her dad has already been sent away and that she was really sad when that happened. She says that she wouldn’t know what to do if she couldn’t be around her dad anymore. Her eyes glance quickly around at the group then move down to the table, tears still falling steadily down her face. Chela, a student who is sitting next to Sandra who is also her close friend, starts to shed some tears as Sandra talks. She puts her arm around Sandra, who continues talking and sharing. It is almost as if the pain, tears, and her voice merge into one and even though Sandra is crying steadily she keeps talking, as if she is “letting it all out.” Socorro can hear Lázaro, a student who is sitting next to her and who is also undocumented, sniffling. The fifth graders had either chimed in to the sixth grade group, or perhaps could sense the energy in the room, but it was at this point that Socorro heard them say, “Ssshhh, Sandra’s crying. Go put the microphone over there.” When the fifth graders realized what was happening, they suddenly quieted down. Their excitement and laughter drops down to complete silence. As Sandra finishes up her feelings about her dad being deported, she stops talking, while two of her female friends now have their arms around her. Socorro sits across from Sandra, feeling hurt and pained, and not quite knowing how to respond. She feels a tear coming down her eye, but for some reason, she tries to hold it back. Maybe it’s because she feels like she needs to appear strong in front of them? Lázaro, noticing the silence in the room, begins to share that his cousin went to jail before being sent back to Mexico. Sandra, who is still crying but not as much, looks up at him as he tells his story. Lázaro shares the pain of having family members be sent back and of him also not being able to go back and visit his own family.

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Socorro lets Lázaro talk for another few minutes. Sandra still had some tears down her cheeks, but they were not nearly as much now as before. As Lázaro finishes his story, the room grows silent again. Socorro glances at the clock on the wall and notices that it is almost time for recess. As she sits with the group, she feels confused about what to do next. In that moment, she felt guilty about seeing their tears, as if she had caused them that pain. She also felt like maybe we should not have talked about such a heavy topic. As her head is empty of ideas and emotionally drained, she gets up and walks to where Sandra is sitting and hugs her. She rubs her arm and tells her “I’m sorry,” not quite knowing what else to do. As she stands up, one of the fifth graders says that it’s time for recess. Feeling conflicted about how to proceed, Socorro acknowledges it and says, “Okay, let’s go outside.” In the middle of shuffling chairs from students getting up, Lázaro announces that because he came in late, he didn’t get to see the video that everyone was talking about. He asks if he can see it. As he asks Socorro this, she wonders in her head if watching it would be a good idea. Before she has enough time to think about what to do, all of the other students begin shouting that they want to see it again. Even Sandra, who had the most intense reaction to the video, is shouting for Socorro to play it again. In this moment, she is trying to still process what is happening. But given that everyone is unanimously agreeing that they want to watch it again, she plays the video once more before going to recess. In this narrative, we highlight how processes of healing can occur in this space, even when we, as instructors, do not know when it is going to happen. We came to realize that through the pain the students were experiencing, they were able to heal by sharing these painful experiences. This became clear to us when the students wanted to watch the video again. We understood the students’ desire to watch the video a second time as them being in nepantla, feeling the contradiction of the pain the video brings them while at the same time desiring that pain as a means of validating who they are and their realities. They were able to turn their pain into something new, a transformation, from which they could work toward a process of healing. Rarely in schools are students given the opportunity to engage in this type of healing through pain and contradiction. Not only are students asked to leave the personal at home, but they are also expected to be devoid of emotions that do not fall in line with a “happy childhood.” For many of their teachers, trauma and violence are barely recognizable realities in these youths’ lives. The following narrative is another example of our rasquache pedagogy in which a space for healing was inadvertently created. We share it here to demonstrate the fluidity of our pedagogy when trying to explain theoretical concepts to them that we initially struggled with in graduate school. In this particular example, we quickly realized that we were talking too abstractly and we altered our teaching strategies. We then noted how the students made

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connections to the theory through their own lived experiences. Less concerned with proving they understood concepts, the students often turned the classroom space into an opportunity to reflect, share, and heal from their life experiences. While we set out to discuss Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness using pedagogical tools we gained from graduate school, the students show they come to an understanding of this concept through their embodied knowledges. Ultimately, they deeply connect with and understand what it means to embody a mestiza consciousness. Socorro: We’re going to talk about something today called mestiza consciousness. Female student: Mestiza? Sylvia: Who knows what a mestiza is? Joaquín: I think I might know—it’s like, what they call Mexican women, what people call them. Sylvia: That’s true. Some people call themselves mestizo or mestiza [pauses, thinking about how to continue this discussion]. What do you think Mexicanos are made of culturally? (As soon as Sylvia asks this, she realizes how big of a question it is and how it probably doesn’t make sense to ask this question in this way, and wonders about better ways to get into the history of Spanish colonization of Mexico.) [Silence.] Sylvia: What is our history and our roots? Or what is your history and your roots? (Sylvia thinks to herself, this is still too big and needs to be unpacked way more.) Sylvia: There’s two cultures, sometimes three cultures that are in our blood. Boy: [Blows air out of his mouth making a horse noise.] Socorro: Anybody know? [Silence.] (Students are fidgeting with the computer keyboards and scribbling in their notebooks.) Sylvia: Does anybody have any guesses? Lázaro: What was the question again? Socorro: Like if you’re Mexicana or Mexicano, what are those roots? So a person who is Mexican, what are they? Girl: Uh, just Mexican. Sylvia: Or is there something else in their history? Lázaro: Um . . . Socorro: What is the history of Mexico? Sylvia: Yea, what was Mexico? Was it always Mexico? Student: The United States used to be Mexico. Sylvia: Yes! Socorro: What was it before that? Student: Just Mexican. (Students scribbling in their notebooks and whispering to each other.)

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Socorro: So if you guys don’t know, we’re going to talk about it. But first we are gonna start with stereotypes. Who knows what stereotypes are? Joaquín. (Socorro switches to talking about stereotypes because she realizes that her and Sylvia’s discussion on the history of Mexico isn’t really working out.) Joaquín: It’s like, if you have big glasses they think you’re like a nerd just cuz how you look, they think you’re something else. It’s not really true. It’s what people started thinking like that. Socorro: So people making assumptions about you based on the way you dress or the way you look? Yea, Chela? Chela: How you act? Socorro: What’s a stereotype about how you act? Sylvia: How do girls act? Students: Girly. Socorro: How do boys act? Students (mostly female students): Like they’re strong. Like they’re all cool. They show off. A lot. They’re braggers. They think they’re all that. Sylvia: So those are stereotypes right, because y’all are here, and y’all don’t show off. And you’re guys. So that’s a stereotype about guys. Nancy (guest co-instructor): A stereotype’s not always true right? Do you guys agree or disagree? Students: Agree. Socorro: What other stereotypes? Students: Race. Sylvia: What about stereotypes about young people? Socorro: Age wise. Sylvia: Do you think sometimes people don’t take you seriously because you’re young? Joaquín: Yes. Sylvia: Do people listen to you all the time? Chela: No. Sylvia: Porque (why) no? Joaquín: Because we’re small. Socorro: Does anyone have older siblings? Do your older siblings ever tell you you don’t understand because you’re too young? Students: [Laugh.] Socorro: So what do we have next? (to Sylvia) Sylvia: (to Socorro) Writing activity. (to students) So if y’all open Word we want you to think about stereotypes and how they apply to you. The first question is, “How do you think other people see you?” [Students are whispering to each other and fidgeting and struggling to get started. One shouts, “I can’t see the whole thing!” about the questions on the projector in the library.]

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Socorro: How do you think other people see you? Sylvia: You could even tell a story—like one time somebody did this to me because they thought I was . . . and tell us the story. That will be one page easy. Nancy (guest co-instructor): We’ll think of examples ourselves too. Sylvia: When you finish, come sit in a circle so we can share. [The students finish their writing assignments and form a circle in the middle of the library.] Sylvia: Does anybody want to start? Joaquín? Then Gael. Joaquín: I don’t remember anyone seeing me different. I never thought anything wrong or inappropriate because the person looked different. Except for one time I saw a dwarf and I thought that he had mental problems but he didn’t. He was actually very nice. Sylvia: You saw someone that was a little person and you thought there was something wrong mentally? Joaquín: Hmmm. Sylvia: Good share. Gael? Gael: Once my parents went to a restaurant and the waiter came to the table and asked them what they wanted. But after one hour of waiting for the food they left because the food did not come. I think that the waiter did not want to serve them because they were Mexican. Sylvia: Your family was stereotyped? Thank you for sharing. Next? Junot? Junot: I think people see me as a young person. Also I think people see me as a Mexican American . . . I also think just because I am half Mexican they think I am not smart. Sandra: I think you’re smart, Junot. Sylvia: Thanks for saying that, Sandra. Do you want to go next? Sandra: When I was a little girl, a lot of people made fun of me. Why? Well at first I didn’t know why but then they started to call me spotty. Then the teachers started to talk to me and I was so confused. Until they told me that if I was getting bullied and I found out I was because no one wanted to play with me just because I had spots on my body. Which I never knew why, but I know now that people know me from my inside and don’t judge me from my cover. And because of my best friends that are always there for me, I thank them a lot. Sylvia: Thank you for sharing. Who’s next, Chela? Chela: I think that people see me like a young person who does not have the right to say what is right or what is wrong. People see me like a female. Sometimes they make fun of me that I look like a boy, especially my brother who is so ratchet (stereotype). One time when we were at my brother’s soccer club, there is no Mexicans just gringos, my mom had all her stuff that Mexican

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stuff, and this lady looked at her wrong because she was Mexican. So like I got so mad because like we’re Mexicans and we are proud to be but nobody looks at my mama like that, nuh uh. (Lázaro raises his hand to go next.) Lázaro: Once upon a time it was October 2001 that this young boy named Lázaro lived in a small hood named Mexico. That’s where I met all of my homeboys. I think people stereotype me and my homeboys because they are jealous that we are cool and smooth and they aren’t. Also because we know how to play basketball, soccer, and many different sports that they couldn’t play. I said, “You just need a little bit of practice and you will be like Giovanni dos Santos a.k.a. Lázaro and my helper Messi a.k.a. Christian.” Through our rasquache pedagogy, we could feel our initial conversation around mestiza consciousness faltering and searched for a different entryway the students could better explore and share their experiences. We knew the students had intimate experiences with stereotyping, particularly in relation to their positionalities as predominantly Mexicano/a youth living in a largely white space like Salt Lake City, Utah. As we anticipated, some students shared instances where they or their family members experienced stereotyping through racial discrimination. The writing activity and the open sharing in our classroom space became a way for the youth to understand themselves and their experiences through Anzaldúa’s path of conocimiento. That is, the space allowed for naming and understanding systems of oppression and moving not only to make sense of them, but to heal from the moments of discrimination they carried. The writing assignment was also broad enough so that the students could share instances where they stereotyped a person for how they looked, or in turn experienced stereotyping and bullying because of physical marks on their bodies. Additionally, the stereotype writing activity created a space for students to imagine themselves being perceived in more positive ways, a sort of decolonial imaginary for them to reclaim and rebuild their sense of humanity. Lázaro’s essay was a somewhat fictional account of his life. In his essay, instead of reflecting on hurtful and painful messages of being stereotyped, or even stereotyping someone else, Lázaro decided to imagine something different, something that allowed for his humanity. Lázaro is the only student in the class who is undocumented. He has shared this openly in class discussions. However, on this day and with this particular writing activity, Lázaro did not want or need to reflect on the ways in which he has been stereotyped. As an undocumented student, he is well aware of how he and his family are stereotyped and the very real consequences of being undocumented. He did not want to reflect on this, so instead he participated in the stereotype writing activity by transforming it into a decolonial imaginary—a space where he

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imagined others reading him for how he saw himself—“cool and smooth” (Pérez 1999). Discussing stereotypes allowed the students to reflect on experiences in which they were made to feel marginalized. It allowed them to share, connect, and listen to their peers’ similar experiences; and it even allowed them to imagine how they desired their bodies and selves to be read. Through this activity, the students revealed an understanding that their experiences as Latina/o elementary-aged youth are different from dominant culture youth. Because of their unique experiences as a result of their positionalities as People of Color, these youth developed a view of the world that allowed them to recognize and understand stereotyping, racism, and judging. Our class plática provided a space for these youth to cultivate this worldview. After this writing activity, we shifted to a discussion of borderlands. Sylvia: Remember we started with the word “mestiza” and we were talking about Mexicanos and Mexican history? So part of the thing that all of us study is Ethnic Studies and Chicana/o Studies and so you study about your culture. One of the people that we read is Gloria Anzaldúa. She’s Tejana; she’s from Texas. And she came up with something that she calls the borderlands. So what do you all think that means. What is a borderland? Socorro: Or what is a border? Joaquín: A border is like you’re crossing from one country to another country. Sylvia: Okay that’s one type. Are there others? Student: A wall. Sylvia: Okay. Emiliana, then Lázaro. Emiliana: Um, the little ones, like you know there’s some when you go to Mexico and they ask you if you have anything in your car and they check your car. Sylvia: The checkpoint. Emiliana: Yea, we went to the border and we couldn’t have no food I guess, no carne. Lázaro: There’s a border between the U.S. and Mexico. Sandra: Isn’t there a border in Texas? Sylvia: There’s state borders tambien, like if you leave Utah. Sandra: Arizona, too? Student: Yea. Christian (guest co-instructor): There’s Canada. Emiliana: The borders are scary. Sylvia: Why? Emiliana: Well there’s a big line and um a lot of people are asking you for money. Socorro: How do you know when you’re near a border, like Jackson—how do you know when you’re in Jackson?

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Student: The fences. Socorro: So there are different layers in borders. So there’s a border in Jackson— how do you know when you leave a border? Joaquín: There are signs. Emiliana: There are signs that say you’re here. Socorro: So what else? (glances over to Sylvia as if to say, “ ‘how else do we do this?”) Sylvia: (She looks back at Socorro wondering how we are going to explain Anzaldúa’s metaphysical borders to the youth.) So those are physical borders: when you’re driving down the line, and you’re in Utah then boom, you’re in another state. That’s a physical border. Like states and U.S. and Mexico, pero tambien there are borders that exist within. So have you ever made like new friends and you’re kicking it with your new friends and then maybe your old friends come by and like you don’t know what to do? Junot: Oh yea. Sylvia: Or have you ever, what’s another example? (glances at Socorro). Oh like Sandra, you were saying earlier you and your friends call you something, but if someone came over and tried to call you that, you’re like no, that’s crossing the line. So that’s another type of border that you’re not okay with (Sylvia feels like she’s struggling). Sylvia: Can y’all think of other examples of borders? Lázaro? Lázaro: I was watching TV and there was like this kid and they put him across the border in a sillon [seat] so they can’t see him. Sylvia: And what do you think happens to people when they cross—say he crossed into the United States, what do you think happens to him inside? Is he still Mexicano, or does he become something else? Lázaro: (firmly) Still Mexicano. Emiliana: Still Mexicano. Sylvia: So what happens when you cross a border, what happens to you, to yourself? Sandra: You get sad. Sylvia: Why? Emiliana: Because you’re out of where you’re from. Lázaro: Because you’re not gonna see your family. Emiliana: But it can be scary when you’re crossing the border and you have no papers. Nancy (guest co-instructor): So you know how like Sylvia was saying there are physical borders and like borders you can see, right, Sandra? Like here you know that’s one because you’re coming up to it. There’s also borders when you’re not part of the “in group” in society. Like for example when we talk about—maybe you guys have heard this a lot, especially on TV, like being gay and lesbian. So there’s an internal border. We know the border to be like if you’re not part of the

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“in group.” So a lot of the time gays and lesbians are seen as outcasts. So there is something that happens when you are classified as outcast because you’re split. You’re beginning to see split. Does anybody see that? Not just being gay or lesbian. Like for me for example, I was born in Mexico, but now I feel like I’m American, but some people don’t think that I would be American, right? So that’s a split between myself, in being Mexican and American. Socorro: Or you can even think about language . . . Junot: Like friends, when Sylvia was saying like when you have new friends . . . Socorro: It’s not physical, but you feel it though. So my parents were born in Mexico and I was born here. So my parents spoke mostly Spanish and in a way it was like a border because they were cut off from me, and I was like the person that goes between them and the school. Joaquín: My dad said that when he was like a kid his parents didn’t speak En­ glish because he moved here from Mexico and he said like he had to translate for them when he went to the store or the places where he did taxes . . . so he said it was kinda hard . . . he had to take care of his siblings and so it was like kind of a border. He was in between the world and his parents. Nancy: That’s a good example. Sylvia: And tambien age right, because he was young person doing these adult things. Nancy: How many of you translate for your parents? I still do. My mom still doesn’t speak English really well. Well, at all. Sandra: My mom understands it but she doesn’t speak it. Nancy: So that’s a type of border that we’re crossing. We’re more like a bridge right, we’re bridging ourselves in different ways. Sylvia: Anybody else? Sandra: My dad is a bridge too because he’s here not legally. Cuz my dad uses a different name to work and um at his work he’s ______ and well . . . it’s really hard for my dad because he’s a construction worker and he’s almost done ten houses and then he comes back home and I only see him two days a week. In this plática, we set out to discuss Anzaldúa’s theoretical concept of the borderlands and by introducing a discussion based on literal borders we were met by the students who used their embodied knowledge and life experiences to show a deep understanding of borderland experiences. For example, because of her experience crossing the U.S.-Mexico border frequently, Emiliana recognized literal borders as “scary” because of the impoverished conditions border towns are typically situated in. She remembers the border as scary because of the high numbers of poor people forced to ask for money from travelers waiting in line at the checkpoints. Sandra used this opportunity to share and engage in a process of healing regarding her father living in the United States undocumented. She recognizes

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that literal borders impact people and families, limit the types of employment people can have once they do enter the United States, and that these types of employment are typically labor intensive, requiring her father to spend a lot of time away from home and the family. Further, Sandra shares an understanding of the ways in which literal borders have consequences for people in that she recognizes that her father is here “not legally” and as such, could suffer deportation. In this way, Sandra used this plática around borders to develop and build upon her own ability to share and make sense of the world around her experiences as a brown young person, thus entering in her own path of conocimiento. In sharing these moments of healing, we demonstrate the multiple processes that Latina/o youth take when discovering and engaging in their own path of conocimiento. We further argue that within our classroom space we found ourselves collectively trying to put ourselves back together. Drawing from Anzaldúa’s work on a dismembered Coyolxauhqui, we understand that part of putting ourselves back together is first to deconstruct colonial, painful discourses. That is, “before rewriting the disintegrating, often destructive ‘stories’ of self constructed by psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology and religion you must first recognize their faulty pronouncements, scrutinize the fruit they’ve borne, and then ritually disengage from them” (Anzaldúa 2002, 552). The Ethnic Studies class facilitated a space where youth could deconstruct the stereotypes, openly share their own experiences, and be themselves. They did this while simultaneously being introduced to ideas and concepts, such as borderlands that helped them make sense of their experiences and disengage from those destructive stories.

CONCLUSION—IMPLICATIONS FOR ETHNIC STUDIES For youth who spend a majority of their time in school, schooling plays an important role for them. Schooling functions not only as a socialization process, but can also work to make youth feel either included or excluded, within the school itself and in larger society. Our reason for facilitating a Chicana/o Studies course grounded in an Anzaldúan borderlands framework was because we understood that youth need a space where their experiences are validated and where they can heal from the material realities and colonial discourses they are exposed to daily. In our course, we combined critical thinking and sophisticated discourse analysis with material that we felt would reflect aspects of their lives. In so doing, we not only worked toward incorporating rigorous academic material, but we were able to keep healing at the center of our praxis. In keeping in mind the concept of Coyolxauhqui, we saw ourselves working collaboratively with youth to piece together our dismembered lives. Even as adults, we recognize that our healing processes are unfinished works

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in progress. Though much of our praxis was embedded in contradiction, we embraced these tensions and continually searched for new possibilities. Through sharing our narratives in working with our students, we not only hope to demonstrate moments of healing, but also the decolonial potential that can exist when working with elementary-aged youth. Consistently seen as children who cannot process what happens around them, we found throughout our course that fifth and sixth graders were aware of the world around them, and they longed for a place where they could share these multiple narratives and experiences, speak, and be heard. This course presents one of many possibilities that can happen in Ethnic Studies settings with youth, and we hope to continue this work with elementary students to push for new directions in Ethnic Studies.

NOTES 1. For the purposes of this chapter, we use the word “youth” to refer specifically to elementary-aged students. Though we focused specifically on Chicana/o Studies for the class, we use the words “Ethnic Studies” as a means of inserting our work into the larger discussion of what it means to do Ethnic Studies curriculum with K–12 youth, given that some school districts have recently passed legislation that mandates Ethnic Studies in these districts. 2. All student names and the name of the school are pseudonyms. 3. “We” and “our” throughout this chapter refers to all three authors, unless otherwise noted. This course was developed for both academic years, but in this chapter we focus only on the first year. 4. Salt Lake City School District, “District Demographics,” Salt Lake City School District, http://www.slcschools.org/schools/District-Demographics.php#.VB nvmfldWSo. 5. Ibid. 6. Though we acknowledge the importance and usefulness of YPAR research, we also understand that as a framework, YPAR does not often delve deeply into the complicated ways that youth can embody forms of critical consciousness, while simultaneously reifying dominant narratives. 7. Co-instructors, throughout our narratives, except where specified, refer to the first two authors, Socorro Morales and Sylvia Mendoza Aviña. 8. On this particular day, Sylvia was not present, but we had discussed beforehand how we wanted to structure the curriculum. 9. Marta came as a young girl and dreams of going to school, but she finds it difficult to do without papers.

REFERENCES Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

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Anzaldúa, G. 2002. “Now Let Us Shift . . . The Path of Conocimiento . . . Inner Work, Public Acts.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouis Keating, 540–78. London: Routledge. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 2005. “Let Us Be the Healing of the Wound: The Coyolxauhqui Imperative—La Sombra Y El Sueño.” One Wound for Another/Una herida por otra: Testimonios de Latin@s in the US through Cyberspace (11 de septiembre de 2001–11 de marzo de 2002). Mexico, DF: Universidad Autónoma de México. Anzaldúa, Gloria, and AnaLouise Keating. 2002. This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. London: Routledge. Burciaga, Rebeca. 2010. “Aspiring to Profess: Chicana Ph.D. Students’ Academic Aspirations.” In El Mundo Zurdo: An International Conference on the Life and Work of Gloria Anzaldúa. University of Texas at San Antonio. Cammarota, Julio, and Augustine Romero. 2014. Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 1998. “Using a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research.” Harvard Educational Review 68(4): 555–83. Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 2002. “Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and Critical Raced-Gendered Epistemologies: Recognizing Students of Color as Holders and Creators of Knowledge.” Qualitative Inquiry 8(1): 105–26. Delgado Bernal, Dolores, Enrique Alemán, and Judith Flores Carmona. 2008. “Transnational and Transgenerational Latina/o Cultural Citizenship among Kindergarteners, Their Parents, and University Students in Utah.” Social Justice 35(1): 28–49. Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M. R. 2009. “Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete.” Harvard Educational Review 79(2): 181–94. Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey Michael Reyes, and Ernest Morrell. 2008. The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools. Vol. 285: London: Peter Lang. Flores, William, and Rina Benmayor. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Boston: Beacon Press. Fránquiz, María E. 2010. “Traveling on the Biliteracy Highway: Educators Paving the Ways Towards Conocimiento.” In Inside the Latin@ Experience: A Latin@ Studies Reader, edited by Norma E Cantú and María E Fránquiz, 93–110. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. 1998. Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s House: Cultural Politics and the Cara Exhibition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Ginwright, Shawn A. 2009. Black Youth Rising: Activism and Radical Healing in Urban America. New York: Teachers College Press. Gutiérrez, Rochelle. 2012. “Embracing Nepantla: Rethinking Knowledge and Its Use in Mathematics Teaching.” REDIMAT-Journal of Research in Mathematics Education 1(1): 29–56. Keating, AnaLouise. 2006. “From Borderlands and New Mestizas to Nepantlas and Nepantleras: Anzaldúan Theories for Social Change.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-knowledge 4(3): 3. Mendez-Negrete, Josephine. 2006. “Pedagogical Conocimientos: Self and Other in Interaction.” Rio Bravo: Journal of the Borderlands 23(1): 226–51.

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Mendoza, Sylvia Aviña. 2014. “The Adelante Oral History Project as a Site of Decolonial Potential in Transforming School Curriculums.” Regeneración Tlacuilolli: UCLA Raza Studies Journal 1(1). Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press. Pérez, Emma. 1999. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Revilla, Anita Tijerina. 2012. “What Happens in Vegas Does Not Stay in Vegas.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 37(1): 87–115. Salt Lake City School District. “District Demographics,” Salt Lake City School District, http://www.slcschools.org/schools/District-Demographics.php#.VBnvm fldWSo. Sánchez, Patricia. 2009. “Chicana Feminist Strategies in a Participatory Action Research Project with Transnational Latina Youth.” New Directions for Youth Development 123: 83–97. Tang, Shirley. 2006. “Keeping the Path of Conocimiento Real and Grounded.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 4(3): 35. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson, Rita Kohli, Jocyl Sacramento, Nick Henning, Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, and Christine Sleeter. 2014. “Toward an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Implications for K–12 Schools from the Research.” The Urban Review 47(1): 104–25. Tuck, Eve. 2008. “Re-Visioning Action: Participatory Action Research and Indigenous Theories of Change.” The Urban Review 41(1): 47–65. Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2011. “Youth Resistance Revisited: New Theories of Youth Negotiations of Educational Injustices.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 24(5): 521–30. Valencia, Richard, and Daniel Solórzano. 1997. “Contemporary Deficit Thinking.” In The Evolution of Deficit Thinking: Educational Thought and Practice, 160–210. Psychology Press. Yosso, Tara Joy. 2006. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. London: Routledge.

Part II

Ethnic Studies Pedagogy in Practice

5

The Youth Will Speak: Youth Participatory Action Research as a Vehicle to Connect an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy to Communities Mark Bautista, Antonio Nieves Martinez, and Dani O’Brien

Public schools are microcosms of the larger social order, so one need only spend time in almost any urban public school in the United States to bear witness to the unresolved paradoxes of our time: the promise and possibility in schools as well as the pervasive and persistent inequities. Public education as we know it is at a crossroads. Black and Brown communities have endured a legacy of institutional neglect and they will soon become the majority population in certain states across the country. Many young People of Color now attend racially segregated schools and inequities in school funding abound. As Black and Brown youth walk the hallways of public schools in the urban context, much of their experiences are colored by marginalization and inequity. From a very young age many students are forced into an education that lacks cultural relevancy and where they must navigate a system of domination under which white, middle-class values set the standards for success. It can be argued that consciously and subconsciously, students are aware of the ways in which the experience of schooling pushes them from a positive sense of cultural and linguistic identity toward an active denial of self. In the age of standardized testing and the ensuing teach to the test curriculum that has become the status quo in schools, addressing the way in which structural and economic inequities undermine the education of Black and Latino students in urban schools is of the utmost importance. It is common practice in the world of academia to focus on the narratives and experiences of those in society with privilege and power as a way to further establish the political, social, and cultural hegemony of the dominant class in the United States. While research has been used as a tool to maintain

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the status quo, this chapter repositions the use of research as a means to develop criticality and to respond to the needs of the community. This notion of research with and for the community draws from the original intent of Ethnic Studies because it was understood that communities should have a voice in the ways researchers enter into the communities they wish to study. For this reason, we see it as important to draw from the field of youth participatory action research (YPAR) in order to support students with developing rigorous academic skills while at the same time drawing from an Ethnic Studies framework to develop an analysis of the problems, promise, and perseverance found within the communities the students come from. In this chapter, we will examine the ways YPAR can be used to challenge the deficit ways dispossessed communities are portrayed in traditional education research and reform. Research, through the use of YPAR and an Ethnic Studies pedagogy, offer the potential for community members, in this case, young people, to develop a deeper understanding about themselves and their communities while working to address issues of inequities. This chapter, therefore, focuses on the following research questions: 1. Given that YPAR and Ethnic Studies are both learning spaces to develop civic engagement of students and teachers, how does YPAR mirror and even extend our understanding of Ethnic Studies pedagogy and research? 2. Knowing that YPAR research is not inherently critical of oppression and inequitable power dynamics, how does Ethnic Studies scholarship and epistemology ground students’ development of critical consciousness? 3. Last, how do students’ actions and reflections in a youth research program help us better understand and achieve the goals of Ethnic Studies? Since there are few pieces of literature that show the explicit connections and intersections between the fields of Ethnic Studies and YPAR, we take this opportunity to examine the ways that linking these two fields of study affirms and (re)claims the critical and transformative potential of education and research with community. We will draw from our experiences as researcherpractitioners in a youth research program called the Council of Youth Research (CYR). In the following section, we review the literature that grounds our understanding of Ethnic Studies pedagogy and research. We then discuss YPAR and how it is used as a tool to politicize and engage students as active citizens in their schools and communities. It is our intent to show how YPAR has the potential to fulfill the field of Ethnic Studies’ call to liberating education and collective action. Following our literature review, we lay out our research design and then highlight our findings from ethnographic data collected from

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the 2010–11 cohort of CYR students and teachers, identifying how their YPAR process embodies Ethnic Studies pedagogy and research. Last, we end this chapter with a discussion around the benefits of merging YPAR and Ethnic Studies for students, educators, and communities.

ETHNIC STUDIES PEDAGOGY AND RESEARCH This brief overview of Ethnic Studies will discuss some of the history related to its emergence and purpose for education, the ways Ethnic Studies researchers can use research as a useful tool for the community, and some of the key theoretical tenets useful for this study. We end with a call to develop youth researchers from the community because they are the experts in their environments and they hold the key to identifying salient issues and producing relevant solutions. Removed from the struggle for Ethnic Studies, one may think that Ethnic Studies programs have been commonplace in colleges and universities. However, Ethnic Studies is the result of the struggle and work of student organizers in the late 1960s who made up a multiracial coalition called the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) (Ferreira 2003). It was from the model put forth by TWLF organizers that inspired a movement of students across the country to push universities to follow suit. Looking back at the original intent of Ethnic Studies, students fought to ensure that Ethnic Studies work to serve the community through collaborative research that is focused on addressing the needs of the community (Fong 2008; Loo & Mar 1985–1986). With this, there was a push to recognize the false notion of objectivity and neutrality because it was understood that all research is informed by the worldview of the researcher(s). To accomplish the many goals of Ethnic Studies, the field relies on an interdisciplinary approach that works toward social change and social justice for empowerment and liberation of marginalized communities (TintiangcoCubales et al. 2014). The field of Ethnic Studies focuses on restoring the viewpoints, counternarratives, and epistemologies of groups that have historically been left out of dominant cultural narratives. Through an interdisciplinary lens, Ethnic Studies examines the social, cultural, political, and economic expression and experience of ethnic groups in the United States. In particular, Ethnic Studies hopes to highlight the contributions to society made by People of Color and by others who have been denied full participation in traditional institutions. By exposing structural forms of domination and subordination, Ethnic Studies resists the reproduction of essentialist categories of race, class, sexuality, and gender and transcends the simplistic additives that characterize the multicultural curriculum. Bridging formal educational spaces with community

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involvement, organizing, and activism, Ethnic Studies has the potential to connect education to the experiences of minoritized students and from here we can work toward addressing social inequities. In short, we envision that (re)claiming our histories and identities, taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding oppression, forefronting the strength of communities of color, developing a critique of the world, and moving toward action as tenets that underlie the mission of Ethnic Studies pedagogy and research. For this chapter, we draw from the theoretical base of Ethnic Studies and extend the research and community engagement aspect as a way to make sense of the CYR YPAR project. As Ethnic Studies theorists Loo and Mar (1985) discuss, part of an Ethnic Studies project is to ground research in communities because there is a great deal that researchers can learn through the process of working with communities. We lift up the notion of communityengaged research and see its usefulness as an intervention to address the social, political, and/or economic conditions faced by marginalized communities. Moreover, Loo and Mar suggest the importance of developing a new kind of researcher in the academy. We agree with them and believe that there is some of that work being done in the academy today. But we take the call to action from Loo and Mar and see how important it is to develop researchers who are already located in the community; such an approach centers the experiences of the people in the community and can more effectively address their needs.

YOUTH PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH Ethnic Studies scholars Antwi Akom, Julio Cammarota, and Ginwright described YPAR as simultaneously being “a methodology, pedagogy, and theory of action for creating social change and social justice” (2008, 6). YPAR has been a way for youth to collectively investigate and respond to social conditions and structures that impacted their lives, heightening their participation in society (Torre et al. 2008). Growing out of the field of critical youth studies, this type of research positioned young people not as the subjects of research, but rather as partners in the process and in some cases as principal/primary investigators. In a society that looked at young people, especially youth from urban areas, as deviants or perpetrators of their own demise that have no power in changing their realities, YPAR actually positions young people as intellectuals, experts, and social actors within and about their worlds. This type of research methodology situates youth as powerful individuals with something to contribute toward the functioning and development of society. Scholars show that YPAR is an effective tool to examine and address the inequitable conditions happening in students’ education (Cammarota

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& Fine 2008; Morrell 2006; Romero et al. 2008). Additionally, as a research methodology that explores the all-encompassing social realities of young people, the scope of YPAR was not limited to just understanding educational issues, but has also been used as a vehicle to study issues of racism, sexism, and the intersections of social oppression experienced by young people and their communities (Aguilera 2009; Akom et al. 2008; Cahill et al. 2008; Tuck et al. 2008). Participatory action research (PAR) represents a radical shift from traditional notions of research in that it critiques and reappropriates what is investigated and who does the investigating. McIntyre (2000) proposes three principles that guide participatory action research. The first principle is the collective investigation of a problem. This differs from traditional research in that usually the researcher or researchers are separate from the subjects in their projects and the focus is on individual scholarship, even with teams of university scholars. What distinguishes PAR projects from other research methodologies is the emphasis on the collective enterprise in which the subjects, individuals who have been historically excluded from the research process, are now partners in the process. This type of research format lends itself to the second principle, which relies on local knowledge as a means to identify and explore the most pressing needs of the community. Marginalized populations are usually the objects of research, but in PAR they are thought of as subjects and partners in the research process. McIntyre’s third principle of PAR is the push to take individual or collective action to deal with the stated problem. The “action” part of PAR is what situates it apart from other paradigms of inquiry. Rather than just ending research with analysis of data and the implications of those findings, PAR challenges researchers to devise concrete actions/solutions that are directly informed by research findings. YPAR projects have led youth to develop actions in the form of written reports and policy briefs, creation of websites, poetry, memoirs, PowerPoint presentations, books, and slambooks (Cahill, Rios-Moore et al. 2008; Flores-González, Rodríguez & Rodríguez-Muñiz 2006; Morrell 2008; Torre & Fine 2006; Torre et al. 2008; Tuck et al. 2008). All of these various forms of taking action represent researchers’ and participants’ collective agency and resistance toward addressing the stated problems of their YPAR projects. Although the three principles laid out by McIntyre lend themselves to research rooted in social justice, not all YPAR projects are critical of social oppression. That is why bringing the critical lenses and frameworks of Ethnic Studies into YPAR projects is so vital; the partnership allows for strategic actions and solutions that are rooted in the real-life experiences and voices from the communities they are doing research with. Although YPAR projects can be situated to change implorable conditions or policies in education, not

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all are grounded in the critique of social oppression. Therefore, we focus on how the critical and active nature of Ethnic Studies curriculum and research supplements the social justice potential of YPAR. We see YPAR with an Ethnic Studies approach as a powerful tool for young people and their allies to effectively analyze and address the issues young people face in and out of schools. In the following section, we discuss our research design and methods used to capture salient moments of transformation for students in the YPAR program.

METHODS In order to examine the cultural and academic nuances of CYR we used an ethnographic research design. Phil F. Carspecken (1996) considers critical ethnography to be a methodology that allows the researcher and participants to call out systems of power while working to change oppressive conditions toward greater freedom and equity. By examining data collected over the 2010–11 academic school year, we will show how the theoretical and pragmatic approaches of YPAR and Ethnic Studies around learning and community engagement come together through the pedagogy and practice of CYR. CYR is a college access/youth research program and partnership between a university in southern California and five local, urban public high schools. The themes for the 2010–11 CYR research projects all had to do with the multiple dimensions of what constitutes an “adequate” education for California students according to the Williams v. State of California 2004 settlement, which sought to mandate equal access to resources for all public school students in California. Across the five CYR sites, each school took on a different aspect of the policy such as educational leadership, teaching, curriculum, learning resources, and social and ecological ecology to understand how the laws did or did not impact their schools. We focused our analysis on the research and experiences of the CYR students and teacher teams from large comprehensive high schools, specifically Langston Hughes, Panther, and Hooks High Schools. The individual schools’ site teams met at least once a week during afterschool hours and also attended monthly research team meetings. This chapter will explore our analysis of field notes, interviews, blog postings, and video of presentations collected over the school year to show how CYR students fostered and enacted their power as students and engaged citizens in various settings, from the classroom to a community presentation to a professional development for teachers. In accordance to our findings section, YPAR with an Ethnic Studies lens can be situated within the processes of (1) developing critical consciousness, (2) fostering agency, and (3) moving toward collective action.

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DEVELOPING CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS The first theme that emerged from the data is that the confluence of an Ethnic Studies pedagogy and YPAR supported the development of students’ critical consciousness. The following section will examine the ways young people in CYR make the connections between theories of oppression and liberation and their own lived experiences. As Ethnic Studies educators we are always looking for pedagogical tools to have students think about the social conditions they experience. In CYR we started with their lived experiences as the content for learning, making them the experts on the subject matter that we study in the afterschool program. In CYR, YPAR is positioned as a tool to develop critical consciousness through educational research methods and an active political education. Cammarota and Fine (2008) describe the process of conducting YPAR as taking the “red pill” like in the movie The Matrix. Freire (1970) would describe this process as developing critical consciousness or conscientizacao, that is, gaining the ability to see the inequitable power relations and conditions in one’s reality. Similar to the way the main character, Neo, wakes up to the truth after ingesting the red pill, YPAR metaphorically is the red pill that urban youth use to see the social, political, and cultural power struggles and tensions that impact their world and educational experiences. Through extensive data analysis we found this YPAR project worked to support young people to identify a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them through developing their critical consciousness. In order to develop critical consciousness, students read and discussed critical theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire and critical race theorists such as Gloria Ladson-Billings, Tara Yosso, and others, in order to further understand the conditions of their schools and communities. For example, the group from Langston Hughes High School took on the task of understanding the importance of leadership. To better understand the concept of leadership students worked with Gramsci’s notion of organic intellectuals and counter-hegemony. Gramsci’s theories spoke to the young people because of the ways power is articulated to be distributed; both of these concepts encouraged the young people to think deeply about the ways dominant discourse impacts their lives. Just to be clear, students struggled with Gramsci’s work but they also had “aha!” moments about how the terms organic intellectual and counter-hegemony related to their lives. An instance that emerged from our data was expressed as students presented their research at the Labor Center in Los Angeles. One aspect of their “action” was to present their research findings at the end of the year to nearly 200 attendees that consisted of students, families, community members, and officials from the mayor’s office. Toward the end of the group presentation

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from the Langston Hughes team the students listed five demands as their takeaways related to their research. As the slide changed to reveal their last demand, the words “Demand #5” were displayed across the top of the screen and at the bottom of the screen it said, “Everyone has the potential to become a leader, therefore everyone should be taught like one.” To explain this final demand, Paulo, a twelfth grade Latino student, stepped to the front of the room to address the audience, Before we joined this organization we believed that leadership can only be accomplished by those with a title. But now we realize that by stepping up and becoming educated everyone can become a leader; therefore, everyone must be taught like the leader that they are. Being involved in the YPAR project allowed Paulo the opportunity to grapple with what it means to be a leader. As is stated in his presentation, students moved their thinking about the traditional roles of leadership and began to see that there are leaders in the community who offer tremendous insights and students can be included as having the potential to be leaders in their community. Building on Paulo’s ideas, Carlos, a twelfth grade Latino student, stepped out from the line of fellow peers to make a further point about the importance of their demand. He said, Leadership can come from any individual no matter what environment you come from, what color your skin is, or the language you speak. Anybody can be a leader, the people upfront, the people in the back, even the people standing. [Audience members said, “a’right” and “yeeah!”] Leadership is a word defined in our society to be rarely seen but now it is our turn to demand the correct definition and to be taught like the intellectual leaders we all are. In a time when many students of color in urban areas are underserved, Carlos is taking a stand against an educational experience where all students do not get equitable access. Carlos’s new insight about the potential he and his community have to be leaders pushed him to demand an education that honors the cultural wealth in his community. Young people in this context are rarely given the opportunity to see and think about themselves as leaders and, as the words expressed by these young people make clear, when given this opportunity they become empowered to demand an educational setting that develops them to take on leadership roles in their communities. The CYR YPAR projects acted as the vehicle for young people to take the lead in developing their consciousness about the world around them.

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Moreover, students in this study began to grapple with the complex issues in their communities as they worked to articulate the ways they can further be leaders in their communities. This work showed us the importance of starting where young people are at as a foundation to build from. Bringing their lives into the classroom made the content relevant while also articulating the structural conditions to explain the economic disparities in their communities. Disrupting deficit notions that tend to hide themselves behind the blaming of individuals in society is often the narrative young people must navigate. Instead, it was powerful to draw from students’ lives to problematize and give nuance to their reality using the lens of critical social theories. YPAR with an explicit theoretical framework of power has the potential to disrupt and transform oppressive narratives of communities of color to ones that forefront their survivance in spite of oppressive institutions.

FOSTERING AGENCY The second finding that came to the forefront was the ways students in CYR expressed a sense of agency, a process of claiming and leveraging their power in spaces and situations where they have been historically marginalized. By examining the demands put forth by the Panther High School team as they pushed for teachers in their schools to address the inaccessibility to relevant twenty-first-century learning resources, we want to show that research helps students strengthen their confidence in school, in public spaces, and ultimately, in their lives. Since students are the “experts” of their research, they also take up the roles of being teachers who educate others and advocate for their communities’ needs, which Bautista (2012) refers to as a pedagogy of agency. We now go into how one CYR student enacted their pedagogy of agency and taught his teacher how to become a more effective educator. Just like the Langston Hughes student presentations, when the Panther High School students stood up to present their demands at the Labor Center in Los Angeles, an intense energy could be felt in the air. Presenting his part of the demands, Fernando, a twelfth grade Latino student, opted not to speak from the microphone. Instead he spoke with a loud and authoritative voice that could be heard by everyone in the hall. With gusto, he addressed the crowd, “Are there any teachers here today?” Half of the hands in the crowd went up. “Teachers! Knowing that books are not culturally relevant, don’t just teach directly from the book. Relate the stuff to students’ lives and culture. In other words if a student is sleeping, there is a problem.” The audience laughed but Fernando was not amused. He came back at them with, “This is reality people. It’s not funny.” The crowd went silent immediately because they knew he was serious. Without a pause, Fernando continued,

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Also, do you guys notice how students only have basic technological skills? That is unacceptable for this to be happening in the twenty-first century. Teachers, incorporate technology in your curriculum. We want students to at least know basic technological skills, like basic researching and using PowerPoint and Word. Fernando’s demands were straightforward and laid out specific orders for teachers to follow. He did not sugarcoat the reality of the situation at his school. He knew that they did not have culturally relevant textbooks at his school and, therefore, pleaded with teachers to come up with innovative ways to transform something that was initially irrelevant to students’ lives into something to which students could relate. He challenged teachers to go above and beyond their responsibilities of facilitating a state-mandated scripted curriculum. Additionally, Fernando threw in a critique of the all-too-familiar picture of students sleeping in class. The audience laughed because they knew that this phenomenon was evident at every school. Without the critique of inequitable power dynamics in the schooling system, students are commonly blamed for their own behavior. Instead of placing the blame on the students for not being awake in class, Fernando put the responsibility on teachers to make sure that their curriculum and pedagogy facilitated an active learning environment. Although we will never know the true impact that Fernando’s demands had on many of the teachers in the crowd that night, we do know he influenced one important teacher, his teacher at Panther High and in CYR. In an interview, Mr. Derrick attested to how Fernando was taking more ownership of his schooling by holding his teachers accountable to create engaging curriculum. Mr. Derrick was considered by students and fellow teachers to be one of the critical yet down-to-earth educators at Panther High School who was always searching for ways to strengthen his pedagogy. Positioning himself as an ally to the students, Mr. Derrick gave an example of how Fernando held him accountable for scaffolding and implementing the use of technology in their Economics class project. I remember when Fernando kind of checked me one time after [their] presentation. He was like, “Mr. Derrick, when are we going to do something that involves computers?” That was after the presentation. And we were going to use computers in his class, but at the moment I had not formulated it in a sense of what they are going to use computers for and really structured it. You know I kind of just lagged on the scaffolding and Fernando was itching already . . . Fernando was like, “We only have four more weeks.” So, he held me accountable, making sure that we were going to have at least one project that involved computers.

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As a result, Mr. Derrick assigned them a project where they had to profile a so-called third world country and develop a PowerPoint to present to the class. Fernando’s demands at the Labor Center presentation and his conversations with Mr. Derrick impacted the way that Mr. Derrick planned out and executed his Economics curriculum. Advocating for projects that entailed the use of technology, Fernando pushed Mr. Derrick to be introspective of his practice and responsibilities as a teacher. Fernando’s sense of agency pushed him to act upon his critical consciousness in different spaces. At the presentation, he captivated the full attention of the audience. And at his school, he held his teacher, Mr. Derrick, accountable to their research demands of more culturally responsive curricular practices. The above example between Fernando and Mr. Derrick also brings to light how developing critical consciousness and a sense of agency was impacted by the willingness of an educator to create authentic relationships with his students. This example shows us the important role Mr. Derrick played as an adult ally; he was eager to listen to the demands of his students and open to shifting his pedagogical approach to accommodate their needs. Facilitated by the YPAR process, students have the potential to influence what is going on around them and inform changes at their school. We argue that Fernando’s sense of agency to advocate for better conditions is rooted in his critique of oppression and in his confidence to be a voice for his community. Through CYR, students were presented with opportunities to authentically engage in spaces where they could push back on larger dominant discourses and tap into their self-efficacy to demand a more relevant and sophisticated educational experience that would better prepare them for life beyond the classroom.

COLLECTIVE ACTION In this section, we explore the final finding of collective action. Specifically, we examine how the research process for the Hooks High School group fostered students to practice action. As part of the YPAR process, the CYR students strategically planned their actions by listing the stakeholders in their school with political influence to implement change. Being that the Hooks High School students’ YPAR project was focused on curriculum, they planned a collective action to facilitate a professional development for their teachers. Similar to the Langston and Panther High School students, the Hooks High School students listed their demands to teachers: DEMAND #1: Acknowledging students’ culture in your teachings (lectures), this demonstrates respect and care.

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DEMAND #2: Students should be active participants in teaching and learning, instead of the teacher only depositing information. DEMAND #3: Create lessons that include decoding techniques so that you don’t have to water down the curriculum. Keep the work challenging for all types of learners and reading levels. The students gave teachers concrete examples of how to engage students in their school. However, this group of CYR students and teachers wanted to take their list of demands further and turn it into a professional development for ninth grade teachers at their school. Here is an excerpt from their blog that talks about their process of developing and implementing a professional development for their teachers. In February we did a professional development/teacher workshop with 9th grade teachers and made a lesson plan so that they could do an activity by working together. They each had a role because, if not, they might have left the work to one person. Those roles were facilitator, harmonizer, materials manager, reporter and resource. The purpose of this workshop was so that teachers could witness powerful curriculum. We wanted to somehow motivate and show them how essential it is to have a powerful curriculum. The Hooks students’ research actions are a response to the limited opportunities that students like them get to talk about and critique their educational experiences. The only time we ever ask students what they think about teaching is through evaluations at the end of the semester. However, in this instance the student-researchers were proactive in defining and modeling what powerful curriculum looks like and how it is a response to the academic and social needs of students at their school. Talking about demand #2 (students should be active participants in teaching and learning, instead of the teacher only depositing information), they made sure that everyone in their professional development practice was actively engaging in the learning experience. They accomplished this by assigning each teacher a role in their small groups, whether it was “facilitator, harmonizer, materials manager, reporter and resource”; everyone had a part in the process and each shared the responsibilities. In this case, the students became the teachers and the teachers were the students. Through firsthand experience and identifying the issues of oppressive curriculum at their school, the students were prepared to come up with not only critiques of their learning experiences, but alternatives to the methods of which they were critical. It is important to note that the research was coming from the community itself; the students used empirical research to assert a central voice in shaping a teacher’s professional development.

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In describing the professional development facilitation, the students wrote: We created the teacher workshop by putting our research in a jigsaw puzzle model. So we broke down our research into group topics to make a whole. We presented all groups an equal amount of material. Those materials included a resource card for each group member that provided the topic information. Also each group had an activity card that showed the task the group was supposed to do. In their groups they had to work together and make a plan in how they were going to do the activity. After the activity was completed they had to present it to each other. Some teachers didn’t have time to finish the activity, but they still presented. One of the main findings was that students at their school did not want to be lectured to in class. Just like the Panther High School students, the Hooks High School students were advocating for the use of more technology in the classroom and more active-learning opportunities as a departure from lecture-based teaching. Instead of just telling teachers what they needed to do in the classroom to engage students, they modeled it for the teachers. They demonstrated the power of young people to take on the roles of actively responsive researchers, who use what they learn to inform their practice and perspectives on teaching. Additionally, with a deeper analysis of pedagogy, the teaching practices that they were using with the group of teachers mirrored a problem-posing pedagogy. They highlighted the importance of collaborative and active learning in hopes of influencing the pedagogy of the teachers in the professional development session. The students targeted their actions at the pedagogy of their teachers because they knew that if the teachers altered their teaching practices it could heighten the engagement of students at their school. In addition to sharing teaching practices from students’ perspectives, this experience heightened their self-efficacy and confidence in being experts in their education. The Hooks High School students’ blog discussed their success in facilitating a professional development session for their teachers. What stands out about their blog post is how they describe what this process meant to them: Our professional development/teacher workshop was successful. It was successful because we had collaboration in the way we organized it. We believe the combination of collaboration and support makes for a better design in whatever you are doing. Collaboration is togetherness; everyone has a role in creating a part. In designing curriculum this is important because different people have different ideas, and, as our norm says,

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no one is as smart as all. Support is also important because if there is no support, one person will be doing the work. We saw through conducting this workshop that this combination is key to successes in learning and teaching. The young people at Hooks High School knew the importance of collaborating with one another in ways that most traditional school settings do not encourage; this speaks to the collective nature of YPAR work. Education can be a communal effort where all those involved take an active stance in knowledge production and as a way to give voice to students—give students a say in the way their teachers are developed. Hooks High School students went on to say, Hosting a professional development [session] and allowing teachers to view us as knowledgeable beings was rewarding. Personally we don’t just feel like students anymore, but more like colleagues that can provide positive reciprocity to all teachers. We learned that, in a learning environment, both teachers and students need to have the ability to collaborate with each other. Deconstructing the traditional paradigm where students are viewed as merely empty vessels and teachers must fill the void has supported Hooks High School students to develop a critique of their educational experiences and, just as important, pushed them to work toward solutions that were informed by the community. Taking action further developed students’ sense of self and the ways they can be central to knowledge production. Much like what an Ethnic Studies pedagogy calls for, the students were able to shift the ways in which power manifests itself as they moved their voices to the center of what teachers can do in the classroom. Freire (1970) refers to this shift of power dynamics as “teacher-student” where students became the teachers and teachers became the students. For Hooks High School students the teacher professional development session served as the site where they saw the power and agency they possess in generating knowledge actually inform and support their teachers. We argue that solutions to many of the problems that we see in schools and in communities can be solved with the indigenous knowledge and experiences of those most impacted by social injustice. The students ended their blog post by articulating the necessity to include students’ voices in the ways teaching and learning is practiced and theorized: Students should regularly facilitate professional developments/teacher workshops. How can a teacher teach a group of people without their input or point of view? Once one of our group members had a teacher

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who would talk for the whole period and would never listen to the students when they wanted to say something. We feel that every teacher should have a space to let us students share with them what we know and what we think so that teachers would have more ideas in what they are teaching. When students facilitate teacher workshops, teachers have a greater understanding of the student’s point of view. When a teacher has a greater understanding of how to teach, then the students have a higher chance of learning the content. “Nothing not done by us is good for us,” so basically if you’re going to teach us, you have to learn from us. The students had a clear sense that they should be involved in the process to develop a student-centered learning environment. Taking a step back, what the students were asking for was comparable to the ways communities of color have struggled for Ethnic Studies in universities; both seek to have their voices heard and needs met. As mentioned earlier, the original intent of Ethnic Studies was to have university research done alongside communities of color. YPAR in this case has been leveraged to give young people a voice in their education while supporting the development of a deeper understanding of the social-political forces at play in their lives. This research project supported young people by developing the skills to identify problems and then working toward solutions to those problems. Through this process, YPAR supported the Ethnic Studies call to empower communities of color. The young people in this project were empowered to see themselves as agents with the knowledge and skill set to address their immediate needs and then work toward solutions.

YPAR AS A VEHICLE TO CONNECT ETHNIC STUDIES TO COMMUNITIES In the face of overwhelming injustices, which require large-scale social and educational transformation, YPAR projects such as ours can at times feel minuscule. However, the impact of our YPAR project, and projects like ours, suggest that they can play a significant and critical role in the lives of students and their communities. During our time together the students gained a better sense of their self-efficacy and responsibility as citizens in their communities. We argue that the major impact of YPAR on students was their preparation and understanding of their future trajectories and their responsibilities to their respective communities. Through YPAR, CYR students have become great and thoughtful leaders in their school community and in society as a whole. CYR students went

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through a rigorous and complex learning process to develop their sense of agency and positive self-actualization while, at the same time working to build and sustain the well-being of their community. This should be the purpose and future trajectory of Ethnic Studies research; moving collaboratively as students, teachers, and community members to develop empowering work toward social change. Throughout our study, we learned that YPAR emulates and extends what Ethnic Studies research intended to do; more than just collaboration with community members for research, community members conduct research and develop recommendations for local change. In the process of YPAR, students deepened their critical consciousness and became more engaged in their communities. This makes YPAR a timeless tool in that each YPAR project is specifically structured and developed around a certain community in its own specific time and space. In the field of education, this means each class has its own personality and set of academic and personal needs and YPAR is a useful tool to facilitate the process as each project takes on a life of its own. Additionally, when YPAR projects engage in a critique of oppression, it touches upon many of the tenets of Ethnic Studies pedagogy and research such as (re)claiming of our histories and identities. An interdisciplinary approach in CYR worked to develop an understanding of oppression, forefronted the strength of communities of color, and developed a critique of the social institutions while also moving toward actions and solutions. Not all YPAR engage in this type of process. However, in working with minoritized communities, there needs to be an analysis of oppression as a theoretical underpinning to make sense of the problem the project is working to address. As the examples above explored, students engaged in an analysis of oppression and developed a grounded rationale of transforming dominant discourses about their communities while working with teachers to create more humanizing educational spaces. But without a critique of oppression, their collective actions might have ended up being superficial or even perpetuate the same issues their projects intended to address. It is for these reasons we stress the importance of understanding the larger structural forces that impact their lived realities. Last, YPAR is an empowering and liberating learning process when grounded in an Ethnic Studies framework because both students and teachers learn about themselves and their relationships to their environment and the people around them; a sense of agency and self-determination is developed through this learning process. Through this approach we found that students and teachers of CYR collectively engaged in meaningful dialogue, critical thinking, and problem-posing pedagogy that uses the content of research proj­ects as the context for coursework and learning outcomes. At its very core,

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YPAR with an Ethnic Studies framework is a relevant, active-learning experience that challenges traditional educational and research norms. As educators we need to keep being creative in redesigning our pedagogical approach and re-envisioning what skills our students are really leaving our classes with. Whether it is during the school day or in an afterschool program like CYR, the curriculum that we develop needs to be centered on the existential experiences of our students. YPAR is but one instance where critical consciousness, agency, and a move toward action are a result of learning; only with creativity and ingenuity can we continue to develop and engage in transformative spaces like CYR with our students. YPAR, as an empowering and liberating process, leads students not only to resistance but also to self-determination, where they define their academic and life outcomes. For far too long, the public education system in workingclass urban areas has systematically prescribed dismal futures for students who attend their schools. As critical Ethnic Studies educators we must promote spaces like CYR that disrupt the normalization of a dehumanizing education for marginalized students as we work to create spaces that forefront and honor the lives of minoritized communities.

REFERENCES Aguilera, Dorothy E. 2009. Participatory Action Research as Pedagogy for Equity and Social Justice in Education: Intersections of Youth Voice, Reflection, and Action in a Public High School. Unpublished report, Denver. Akom, Antwi A., Julio Cammarota, and Shawn Ginwright. 2008. “Youthtopias: Towards a New Paradigm of Critical Youth Studies.” Youth Media Reporter 2(4): 1–30. Bautista, Mark A. 2012. “Pedagogy of Agency: Examining Participatory Action Research as a Tool for Youth Empowerment and Advocacy.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Cahill, Caitlin, Indra Rios-Moore, and Tiffany Threatts. 2008. “Different Eyes/Open Eyes: Community-Based Participatory Action Research.” In Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion, edited by Julio Cammarota and Michelle Fine, 89–124. New York: Routledge. Cammarota, Julio, and Michelle Fine, eds. 2008. Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. New York: Routledge. Carspecken, Phil Francis. 1996. Critical Ethnography in Educational Research: A Theoretical and Practical Guide. New York: Routledge. Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey, and Ernest Morrell. 2008. The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools. New York: Peter Lang. Ferreira, Jason Michael. 2003. All Power to the People: A Comparative History of Third World Radicalism in San Francisco, 1968–1974. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.

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Flores-Gonzalez, Nilda, Matthew Rodriguez, and Michael Rodriguez-Muniz. 2006. “From Hip-hop to Humanization: Batey Urbano as a Space for Latino Youth Culture and Community Action.” In Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change, edited by Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota, 175–96. New York: Routledge. Fong, Timothy P., ed. 2008. Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Loo, Chalsa, and Don Mar. 1985. “Research and Asian Americans: Social Change or Empty Prize?” Amerasia Journal 12(2): 85–93. McIntyre, Alice. 2000. “Constructing Meaning about Violence, School, and Community: Participatory Action Research with Urban Youth.” The Urban Review 32(2): 123–54. Morrell, Ernest. 2006. “Youth-Initiated Research as a Tool for Advocacy and Change in Urban Schools.” In Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change, edited Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota, 111–28. New York: Routledge. Morrell, Ernest. 2008. Critical Literacy and Urban Youth: Pedagogies of Access, Dissent, and Liberation. New York: Routledge. Orfield, Gary, and Lee Chungmei. “Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality.” Los Angeles: UCLA The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, 2005. Orfield, Gary, Daniel Losen, Johanna Wald, and Christopher Swanson. “Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis.” The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Contributors: Advocates for Children of New York, The Civil Society Institute, 2004. Romero, Augustine, et al. 2008. “The Opportunity If Not the Right to See”: The Social Justice Education Project.” In Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion, edited by Julio Cammarota and Michelle Fine, 89–124. New York: Routledge. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson, et al. 2014. “Toward an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Implications for K–12 Schools from the Research.” The Urban Review 47(1): 104–25. Torre, Maria, and Michelle Fine. 2006. “Researching and Resisting: Democratic Policy Research by and for Youth.” In Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change, edited by Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota, 269–85. New York: Routledge. Torre, Maria Elena, Michelle Fine, Natasha Alexander, Amir Bilal Billups, Yasmine Blanding, Emily Genao, Elinor Marboe, Tahani Salah, and Kendra Urdang. 2008. “Participatory Action Research in the Contact Zone.” In Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion, edited by Julio Cammarota and Michelle Fine, 23–44. New York: Routledge. Tuck, Eve. “Suspending damage: A Letter to Communities.” Harvard Educational Review 79, no. 3 (2009): 409–428. Tuck, Eve, Jovanne Allen, Maria Bacha, Alexis Morales, Sarah Quinter, Jamila Thompson, and Melody Tuck. 2008. “PAR Praxes for Now and Future Change:

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The Collective of Researchers on Educational Disappointment and Desire. In Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion, edited by Julio Cammarota and Michelle Fine, 89–124. New York: Routledge. Yang, Wayne K. 2004. “Discourses of Reform and Agency: The Construction of an Urban School Reform Movement.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. Yosso, Tara J. 2005. “Whose Culture has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth.” Race Ethnicity and Education 8(1): 69–91.

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Rise Above: Filipina/o American Studies and Punk Rock Pedagogy Noah Romero

It is to no degree of uncertainty that the prevalence of educational models based on what Paulo Freire (1970) defined as banking methods (centered on the experiences of white males, derived from the points of view of dominant culture, and disinterested in the engagement of students) leads to educational underachievement, disillusionment, attrition, and self-loathing within persons of color communities (Halagao et al. 2009; Tejeda, Espnoza & Gutierrez 2003). Despite its centrality to the development of racial self-identity in persons of color communities and the understanding of immigrant, underrepresented, and historically oppressed populations, the implementation of Ethnic Studies curricula that address the deficiencies of predominant pedagogical practices faces vehement resistance in the United States, as evidenced by the banning of Ethnic Studies in Arizona (Galvan 2015). In light of the demonstrated importance of Ethnic Studies, I propose a pedagogy that highlights the history of person of color participation in the counterculture of punk rock and broadcasts a refusal to retreat from the threats of systemic racism, white supremacy, and capitalist-reproductive educational models. By studying the lives and works of artists who dared to challenge the operating hegemony of capitalism and white supremacy, punk rock pedagogy (PRP) allows educators to channel the sound and fury of punk in order to encourage students to reclaim their radical agency. In the larger discourse of Ethnic Studies, PRP is not only a useful curricular tool in exploring the different ways person of color artists have expressed themselves, it is a space within which students can develop the capacity for creative and divergent thought that will be needed to enact radical change in the face of perpetual oppression. Though PRP can be used to teach a vast array of immigrant and minority experiences, this essay addresses the application of PRP to Filipina/o American Studies, in response to the need for

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diverse curricula that specifically serve the Filipina/o American community. When applied to Filipina/o American Studies, PRP combines the study of Filipina/o American history with the study of punk rock and its use by Filipina/o American artists in pursuit of transformation, self-expression, and dissent.

THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH The proliferation of the model minority myth, in particular, has made it so that institutions of higher education and their administrations oftentimes operate under the assumption that all students of Asian parentage are part of a uniformly high-achieving pan-Asian monolith (Suzuki 2002). When data regarding the performance of Asian students is disaggregated to account for students’ ethnicities, cultures, and socioeconomic realities, however, the true nature of the educational risk factors many Asian American students face stands in stark contrast to the stereotypes espoused by entrenched model minority narratives (Museus and Truong 2009). When this disaggregation of data occurs, the notion that all Asian students are equipped for educational success and do not require community-responsive support services and curricula simply by virtue of their Asianness is debunked, as students of Vietnamese, Hmong, Cambodian, and Philippine origin, in particular, achieve at considerably lower levels than affluent Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students (Kwon and Au 2010). The pressure to live up to the model minority stereotype, the reinforcement of the myth by the lack of resources available to underserved students or even an acceptable narrative that Asian people can be disadvantaged, and the widespread idea (held by educators, administrators, and students alike) of educational struggle as atypical and even unacceptable in Asian communities can often engender deep feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy. Such deeply held thoughts and emotions ultimately discourage students from seeking assistance from professors and student affairs officers, thus perpetuating the cycle of educational risk (Museus and Truong 2009). The challenges Filipina/o American students face, which combine educational risk factors with a lack of institutional and pedagogical resources to recognize or address these issues, makes the development of curricula and knowledge bases specifically designed for Filipina/o American students all the more necessary.

FILIPINA/O AMERICAN STUDIES In order to address the lack of programs tailored to the educational needs of historically oppressed populations and communities of color, educators, students, and families have spearheaded movements for the institutionalization

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of Ethnic Studies. The objective of Ethnic Studies is to “create an academic curriculum and structure that would serve communities through relevant research and political mobilization” (Lai 2010, 187) Within the context of Ethnic Studies, the specific educational needs of Filipina/o American students are unique because, while they are racialized as Asians, Filipina/o students are still subject to the model minority and perfidious foreigner stereotypes, but also contend with deeply held cultural values and mindsets prescribed by centuries of colonial rule in the Philippines. The historical relationship between the Philippines and the United States sets the context for the socioeconomic, linguistic, and cultural challenges that are inextricable from the immigrant experience to create a uniquely Filipina/o American brand of disenchantment (Buenavista, Jayakumar & Misa-Escalante 2009; Tejeda, Espnoza & Gutie 2003). Since the Filipina/o American community comprises the “second largest Asian American group (2.3 million) and the third largest ethnic group in the United States,” college-level instructors and administrators must address the unique educational needs of Filipina/o American students and create pedagogies and curricula that serve to decolonize their minds and prove relevant to their experiences (Halagao et al. 2009, 1). Organizations that carry out this mission and promote Filipina/o American Studies curriculum, such as Pin@y Education Partnerships (PEP) in the San Francisco Bay Area, are crucial to the continued success of Filipina/o American communities. PEP’s mission of training educators to execute lesson plans based on an understanding of transnational Filipina/o culture and history affords its students the opportunity to access a decolonizing pedagogy that would be otherwise unavailable in a traditional K–12 classroom (TintiangcoCubales, Daus-Magbual & Daus-Magbual 2010). PEP has also developed an innovative teaching pipeline, training educators to integrate a nuanced understanding of Filipina/o American issues and history into their lesson plans and classrooms. Without PEP, and other educational projects such as iJeepney and Pinoy Teach, there would be even fewer opportunities for students to explore their ethnic identities and unpack centuries of prescribed colonial preconceptions. Halagao et al.’s (2009) study on the features of the emerging Filipina/o American pedagogy identified the challenge to superficial multiculturalism, community engagement, and storytelling and performance as key components to the content matter of a Filipina/o American Studies curriculum. Halagao et al. (2009) then identified the goals of this pedagogy as the fostering of the positive transformation of students’ racial identities commensurate with Alvarez’s (2002) conception of “integrative awareness,” the continued training and recruitment of Filipina/o American teachers and scholars, and the eventual normalization and institutionalization of Filipina/o American Studies in both K–12 and higher education.

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PUNK ROCK PEDAGOGY By drawing upon the work of the decolonizing pedagogy described by Tejeda et al. (2003), the Filipina/o American Studies curricula both devised and researched by Tintiangco-Cubales et al. (2010) and Halagao et al. (2009), and Freire’s (1970) concepts of problem-posing education and the capacity of critical pedagogy to liberate the oppressed, I have developed a pedagogical framework that seeks to build upon the work of Filipina/o American Studies scholars by integrating a contextual, conceptual, and historical analysis of punk rock and the artistic communication of anti-imperialist messaging. When understood as a revolutionary reaction to oppressive discourses, mentalities, and circumstances, the study of punk rock is crucial in the context of a Filipina/o American Studies curriculum: Punk rock emerged as a reaction to what was perceived as a system that simply manufactured and mass produced a shallow and insubstantial product that simply reproduced and perpetuated dominant discourse without casting a critical eye upon it. A punk rock pedagogy grounded in the DIY ethos has the potential to emerge in resistance to pre-packaged syllabi and course curriculums that instructors are required to simply follow by rote. (Utley 2012, 5–6) A PRP curriculum will draw from Utley’s (2012) concept of a punk rock pedagogy to examine the intersections of punk rock and Filipina/o American Studies by analyzing the work of Filipina/o and Filipina/o American punk rock musicians and how their art countered the dominant narratives of the Filipina/o American existence while challenging the institutionalized white supremacy present and pervasive in both the United States and the Philippines. The objective of a college-level course in Filipina/o American Studies that utilizes PRP is ultimately to examine the countercultural counternarrative and to build upon this understanding to deconstruct the hegemonic coloniality of the discourses that shape the very fabric of Filipina/o American identity. Such beliefs, and the discourses that consolidate them, include the notion of Catholicism as inextricable from being Filipina/o, the physical and social desirability of fair skin and white features, the insignificance of precolonial cultures and belief systems in the narrative of the development of a panFilipina/o cultural identity, the superiority of Western culture and values to their Filipino counterparts, and the inherent normativity and goodness of heterosexuality and adherence to Christian conceptions of gender and gender roles. To this, colonial discourses continue to manifest themselves in neoliberal development efforts that have robbed Filipina/o and Filipina/o American

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people of their economic freedom and agency (Kang 2002). The coloniality of power, and its centuries-long presence in the Filipina/o psyche, perpetuates the oppression of Filipina/o minds and bodies, even now that the colonizers have physically moved on from the Philippines. The inextricability of colonial mentality to the Filipina/o experience has made it so that even the ancestors of colonial subjects paradoxically cling to colonial-era belief systems for dear life. An understanding of the coloniality of the beliefs understood to be categorical truths that comprise the foundation of Filipina/o identity is crucial to the decolonization process. The study of punk rock in a Filipina/o American Studies context is made even more vital by the genre’s history as a medium for reporting and broadcasting Filipina/o and Filipina/o American counternarratives, which allowed for artists to express discontent with mainstream understandings of Filipina/o culture, history, and identity. The aim of PRP is thus to foster an understanding of how art can employ counterhegemonic messaging in a manner that affects the zeitgeist and produces shifts in the discourse that result in positive social change. PRP will live in the traditions of Ethnic, Asian American, and Filipina/o American Studies while positioning the study of punk rock as a teaching tool for social justice and decolonization, as well as an avenue for educators to foster integrative awareness orientations and empower students to break free from the binds of colonial mentality and internalized oppression.

FIGHT WAR, NOT WARS: THE THREE PILLARS OF PUNK ROCK PEDAGOGY Since its nascent stages in the late 1970s, person of color artists have found their voices in the punk scene. Though the genre is popularly associated with heterosexual, cisgender, middle-class white men, radical feminists, queer activists, and Black and Brown musicians from all over the world have made indelible contributions to the development of punk rock’s discourse, aesthetic, and history. In doing so, they were able to reclaim their agency, advocate for their communities, and establish punk rock as a site of postcolonial protestation. When developing the pillars of PRP for use in Filipina/o American Studies, I found it pertinent to draw upon the historical influence of punk musicians from marginalized groups and to specifically examine Latina/o American and Chicana/o contributions to the subculture, as the legacy of Spanish colonization and the internalization of colonial mentalities among members of these communities bears a striking similarity to the Filipina/o American experience. Habell-Pallan (2005) addresses the significance of Chicana involvement in the early days of punk and how these early pioneers inspired women of color

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and white female artists (such as Exene Cervenka of the seminal seventies-era punk band X) alike to explore their gender and ethnic identities through punk rock music. Chronicling the art and activism of Alice Armendariz Velasquez (more popularly known as Alice Bag) and Tessa Covarrubias of East LA’s The Brat, Habell-Pallan (2005) describes how Chicanas found in punk an outlet for expressing and exploring their complex intersectional identities in a more fulfilling manner than what they experienced in feminist circles dominated by white women and Chicano movements dominated by men. For many Chicana and Latina Americans, punk provided an escape from upbringings fraught with similar traumas experienced by Filipina/o American youth: domestic violence, entrenched colonial mentalities, and the absence of mother tongue instruction in the early stages of schooling (Bag 2011). Habell-Pallan (2005) notes that “for these Chicanas from East L.A., punk subculture was not the end of their identity formation, but it was a path to a new way of being in the world and a way to expose the world to their reality” (232). After Armendariz Velasquez and Covarrubias laid the groundwork for Chicana/o and Latina/o involvement in punk, the advent of hardcore, a louder, more abrasive and both musically and politically extreme version of punk rock, provided even more spaces for Chicana/o and Latina/o artists to reflect upon and transform their realities. The limited but influential oeuvre of one such hardcore band, Los Crudos, is integral to the understanding of Latina/o American punk, as their songs addressed injustices and human rights violations that were nonetheless inextricable to their lived experiences: forced disappearance (“Asesinos”), systemic racism (“We’re That Spic Band”), and the economic exploitation of the global south by industrialized nations (“La Caida de Latinoamerica”). In an interview with Maximumrocknroll, lead singer Martin Sorrendeguy describes his experiences as a Latino American punk musician and the stark realities he encountered as a person of color in America: It has a lot to do with who you are, a lack of sense of identity or pride, and it has to do with racism, inner racism in our own community, the murders from gang violence, it talks about a lot of stuff in one, and it’s basically saying Crudo soy . . . crudo means raw but we also use it for hangover and we’re hungover on the bullshit is basically what we’re saying. (Guskin & Esneider 1993, 243) In summarizing how Los Crudos came to be, Sorrendeguy touches on many of the same issues that face Filipina/o Americans: internalized racism, colonial mentality, violence, and the absence of pride in one’s ethnic identity. In punk rock, Los Crudos found a way to explore, name, and address these issues and in doing so, like Alice Bag and Teresa Covarrubias before them, inspired

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Chicana/o and Latina/o youth to express their collective and individual identities through punk rock. Their participation in punk provided them with a restorative experience that was wholly unavailable to them in the education system and in traditional institutions like the church and mainstream media (Duncombe & Tremblay 2011). Armendariz Velasquez, Covarrubias, and Sorrendeguy all appear in the documentary Beyond the Screams: A U.S. Latino Hardcore Punk Documentary (1999), which chronicles the history of Latina/o and Chicana/o involvement in punk rock. Directed and produced by Sorrendeguy himself, Beyond the Screams is a valuable primer on the shared experiences of racism, othering, and social disillusionment that draw Chicana/o and Latina/o youth to the subculture, all of which are also dominant discourses that inform Filipina/o American lives. Given the parallels between the Chicana/o and Latina/o and Filipina/o American experiences, Beyond the Screams introduces its audience to individuals who serve as living proof of punk’s ability to encourage reflection on social injustice, action based on that reflection, and the development of an integrative awareness orientation toward racial self-esteem. Despite the marked social, racial, and cultural differences between Latina/o American and Filipina/o American identities, the literature detailing the experiences of Latina/o and Chicana/o punk rockers reveals that even seemingly divergent groups share parallel experiences as People of Color in the United States. Artists like Los Crudos, Alice Bag, and the Brat were drawn to punk by shared experiences of institutional racism and marginalization and, in doing so, found a way to reclaim their voices and make themselves heard. This literature on the liberatory potential of punk in marginalized communities, in addition to the narratives of the musicians and their art itself, serves as the framework for the implementation of PRP in Filipina/o American Studies and the importance of PRP in the broader conversation around Ethnic Studies curricula.

THE FIRST PILLAR: A GROUNDING IN FILIPINA/O AMERICAN HISTORY The first pillar of PRP in a Filipina/o American Studies context will be the analysis of Philippine and Filipina/o American history to establish the historical and contextual frameworks within which Filipina/o Americans exist. A comprehensive review and understanding of this historical context will allow students to be cognizant of the societal pressures and prescribed mentalities that quietly shape their identities without taking their needs or interests into account. This historical review will then allow students to investigate the institutional marginalization that Filipina/o Americans experience as a result of the perpetuation of the model minority myth, and how their unique cultural

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heritage is marginalized by the widely accepted notion that their experiences are the same as those of all other Asians, and the internalized oppression and cultural rudderlessness felt by members of the 1.5 generation—those who feel no strong connection to either the culture of their Filipina/o parents or that of the United States. This portion of the curriculum will likely elicit strong reactions from certain students and the instinctive defensiveness students may feel when they are tasked with calling their privilege, positionality, and deeply held beliefs into question is to be expected. The remaining pillars of PRP are designed to guide students through the statuses of racial identity described by Alvarez (2002) with the intent of ultimately fostering integrative awareness, or “a sense of racial self-esteem rooted in a self-affirming definition of oneself as Asian American” (35).

THE SECOND PILLAR: PUNK AS HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The second pillar of PRP is the study of the social justice–oriented themes of punk music as well as the historical and sociopolitical contexts out of which the music was born. This pillar is central to the curriculum because it is what differentiates it from Filipina/o American pedagogies that oftentimes examine the intersectionality of Filipina/o American Studies and hip-hop, but not that of other forms of art and music. Because many students identify with and participate in hip-hop culture, there is a wealth of research on the ways educators use hip-hop music to allow students to interact with the material and to create and communicate their own social messages (deLeon 2004; Halagao et al. 2010). Though this research is of vital importance in terms of connecting lesson plans to the interests of students, a curriculum that solely addresses hip-hop’s connection to Filipina/o American Studies is limiting in its capacity to address the issue that students of color who do not identify with hip-hop culture could feel as though they have no salient connections to dominant culture and, as such, are at a particular disadvantage when attempting to express their ideas and foster their development of an integrative awareness conception of racial identity. The purpose, then, of PRP is to serve as a complement to established Filipina/o American Studies curricula by creating opportunities for students to connect the study and practice of music to a critical examination of history and the demand for universal human rights. The desired result is that students who identify with punk culture are able to make meaningful connections between their musical interests and the decolonizing process and to examine the unique contributions Filipina/o and Filipina/o American people have made to a subculture thought to be dominated by white men. Students who may not particularly relate to punk are still able to benefit from this

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curriculum, as they attain a greater appreciation for and understanding of punk rock as a tool for decolonization and self-expression as well as a knowledge base rooted in the history and practice of activism through art. The curriculum will first provide a brief overview of the history of punk rock, such as the rise of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and the Reagan/ Thatcher–era political unrest out of which they rose to prominence. Subsequent lesson plans will then look at artists who espoused more overt sociopolitical messaging in an exploration of how women, the LGBTQ community, and People of Color used punk to challenge prescribed societal norms and to broadcast the injustices and human rights violations committed against them. Artists examined in this portion may include Crass, an anarcho-feminist band whose lyrics dealt, in explicit fashion, with discrimination and violence against women; the Dicks, whose lyrics drew from the homophobia and police brutality they experienced as openly gay musicians living in Texas; and National Wake, a multiracial band formed in apartheid-era South Africa whose very existence was illegal in the regime under which they lived. Using this understanding of the historical, aesthetic, and philosophical touchstones of the genre (such as simple musical arrangements and lyrics containing clear sociopolitical and revolutionary counternarratives) the curriculum will then pay close attention to the rise of Filipino punk, particularly during the Marcos dictatorship and the corrupt regimes that governed the Philippines in the years after its fall. Bands such as Urban Bandits, WUDS, Third World Chaos, and GI and the Idiots used punk as a form of protest and reporting while living under an oppressive military dictatorship; the course, in turn, will examine how these artists and their activism helped to inform and foment the revolutionary fervor that led to the overthrow of the Marcos regime. The course will then examine how many of these same bands continued their activism through art during the reign of Corazon Aquino, who, to them, did not represent any sort of improvement over Marcos. This is made clear on songs such as “Massacre at Mendiola” by the all-female quartet Abrasive Relations, which recounts the government-sanctioned murder of farm workers enacting a peaceful protest on Manila’s Mendiola bridge. Atrocities such as the Mendiola Massacre are often glossed over or omitted in the heavily colonized and U.S.-influenced Philippine education system, making it so that many Filipina/os themselves are unaware of their collective history. This lack of a critical understanding of history ensures that the cycle of colonial mentality and internalized oppression continues unabated, and the function of punk rock in Philippine society was oftentimes to report on the daily realities of everyday people and to challenge the injustices perpetrated against them by corrupt politicians, crooked police, and the destructive legacy of white supremacy in the Philippines.

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The curriculum will then examine the participation of Filipina/o Americans in punk rock, heavy metal, and indie rock whose works carry on the tradition of the Marcos- and Aquino-era punks by employing music as a counternarrative and as a form of developing consciousness. The course may then pay particular attention to the use of punk rock to protest the corruption and human rights violations carried out by the administrations of former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and former U.S. president George W. Bush. Artists that may be featured include the Filipino American thrash metal band Death Angel, whose work often expressed the same notions of disillusionment experienced by Filipina/o Americans of the 1.5 generation, the Filipino hardcore punk band Eskapo, whose songs such as “Bataan Death March” touch upon the history of colonial brutality not taught in the Philippine education system, and the musical output of celebrated Filipina American author Jessica Hagedorn, whose artistic oeuvre draws upon themes of identity, sexuality, displacement, and the Philippine diaspora, all of which are very much taboo in a culture dominated by Catholic doctrine and dogma.

THE THIRD PILLAR: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT The third pillar of PRP is community engagement, in keeping with the tradition of Ethnic and Asian American Studies and the DIY and communityoriented ethos of punk rock culture itself. If resources allow, a community service project with a local Filipina/o American organization and a reflection on that experience based on the readings and lessons taught in the course will comprise a sizable percentage of students’ grades. Since the course will have a special emphasis on punk rock, students can elect to fulfill the community service portion of their grade by volunteering for a local punk rock record label or music venue and benefit from immersion in the roles that musicians and organizations play in community engagement. Aklasan Records, a San Francisco–based record label and punk rock distribution company run by Rupert Estanislao of the bands Eskapo, Bankrupt District, and Anino Ko, is an example of an organization that could benefit from the presence of engaged volunteers while gifting students with valuable firsthand experience of the Filipina/o American punk scene, its history, and its current and future goals. Aklasan recently organized an all-Filipino punk rock festival called Aklasan Fest and is currently producing a documentary on the current state of Filipina/o American punk rock. Estanislao, through his work and advocacy with both Aklasan Records and organizations such as Bayan USA and the San Francisco Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines is hugely responsible for the sustained and continued growth of the Pinoi! Punk movement, as well as for much of the success of community-oriented Filipina/o American punk bands such as Namatay sa Ingay, Digma, and Moxiebeat.

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Working with and learning from Estanislao and other activists involved in community organizing through punk rock will provide students with an immersive experience that will allow them to contextualize and understand the decolonizing process and the pivotal parts that art, counterculture, and social movements play in it. This type of project, as empowering as it may be, should still require approval and overseeing from the instructor, so as to ensure that the organization the student chooses will be appropriate for the course (e.g., one that does not espouse racist, white-supremacist, or neo-Nazi beliefs) and has a demonstrated commitment to the Filipina/o American community. Students might also decide to put what they learn about punk rock and community organizing into direct action by organizing their own concert to benefit a local Filipina/o organization at semester’s end. Given the nature of the course, this benefit would likely have a punk rock, indie, and heavy metal focus but can, and should, include a variety of artists from different genres and disciplines. With guidance from the instructor, the students will be responsible for planning the benefit, coordinating logistics, conducting community outreach, booking artists, running the event, naming an organization as a beneficiary of funds collected, and, finally, writing a paper connecting their experiences with organizing the concert to the lessons learned in class. Even with these community engagement project recommendations in mind, however, the curriculum should embody the collective and communal nature of problem-posing education and invite students to self-initiate and propose their own ideas for community engagement projects, especially in areas with limited access to punk rock scenes and Filipina/o American communities. In these cases, students and teachers ought to take advantage of digital and social media to develop relationships with groups and individuals engaged in both punk rock and grassroots work to foster a translocal sense of community. This type of project may involve reaching out to punk musicians and activists in the Philippines, collecting and transcribing their oral history narratives, and relating these narratives to the themes of the coursework in a final paper or project.

WE ARE THE ONE: THE FUTURE OF PUNK ROCK PEDAGOGY IN ETHNIC STUDIES Music is not peripheral to revolution; rather, it is a primary medium through which discourses of dissent are transmitted (Vaugeois 2007). It is in the tradition of music as protest that punk rock, with its combination of simplicity, aggression, and melody, continues to be a highly effective conduit for the transmission of revolutionary and transformative messaging (Uehlein 2001). Punk’s potential impact as a teaching tool should not be underestimated nor

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should its history and the historical contexts out of which it arose be glossed over when examining the intersections of education, art, and revolution. When integrated with established Filipina/o American Studies curricula, PRP provides students and teachers with the pedagogical tools needed to channel the visceral fury of punk rock to enrich the decolonizing content of Filipina/o American Studies. In doing so, PRP affords students the opportunity to study how alternative forms of expression can be and have been used to more deeply contextualize the Filipina/o American experience. The lack of equitable educational programs and opportunities continues to be a pervasive problem in the American education system. Education, at both K–12 and collegiate levels, continues to favor banking methods that encourage students to be mere vessels for the retention and regurgitation of information while teachers are meant to act as omnipotent narrators delivering rote communiques. The sustained work of organizations such as Pin@y Educational Partnerships is crucial not only to the proliferation and normalization of Filipina/o American Studies, it is crucial that such programs are made to thrive so that Filipina/o Americans, who constitute the third-largest ethnic group in the United States but are still a historically oppressed and educationally at-risk population, are afforded curricula developed from their own histories and points of view. A potential role of PRP within the framework of Filipina/o American Studies, then, is to further normalize the discipline by introducing and expanding the field of special topics within Filipina/o American Studies. As a special topics section, a course using the pedagogy of punk would no longer be a survey of Asian American or Filipina/o American Studies, as its marked focus on punk rock and subculture movements and their connections to Filipina/o American history and activism would constitute an advanced-level course that would require a foundational understanding of Filipina/o American, Ethnic, or Asian American Studies. The institutionalization of this course, and courses like it, at baccalaureate and postbaccalaureate levels would then serve to solidify a comprehensive Filipina/o American Studies program and its status as a discipline in which a student could pursue a major, minor, or advanced degree. The revolutionary and egalitarian nature of punk has made it so that scores of influential thinkers, community advocates, and human rights activists have made it their medium of choice and, within the context of Filipina/o American Studies, PRP aims to examine punk and how its history and aesthetic intersects with the issues specifically faced by the Filipina/o American community. In examining the work of punk musicians in the Marcos dictatorship and the Aquino reign that followed, PRP will then explore how Filipinos have used punk to liberate their bodies and minds during times of overt (and covert) repression. By studying contemporary artists and in conducting community engagement projects, students and instructors using PRP will also

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be able to both examine and experience how Filipina/o Americans have used punk to address, transcend, and transform the issues and risk factors most pertinent to them, such as those that arise from immigration, socioeconomic marginalization, and colonial mentality. Beyond Filipina/o American Studies, PRP may be readily applied in teaching all manner of decolonizing curricula in the greater contexts of Ethnic Studies and Human Rights Education. An educator can use the work of the Dicks and the Big Boys as a teaching tool for Queer Studies or a Women’s Studies professor can integrate the music of Crass and Bikini Kill to contextualize radical feminist theory. Due to its use by historically oppressed communities, the working class, and activists to give voice to their hopes, dreams, experiences, and frustrations, the study of punk rock should not and must not be overlooked as a tool in the quest for a decolonizing pedagogy in the broader context of Ethnic Studies. Though the pillars of PRP detailed above are tailored to the Filipina/o American experience, PRP can be readily applied to teaching about other ethnic groups and the realities of immigrant and minority groups in general. The work of Habbell-Pallan (2005), Bag (2011), and Los Crudos provides students and educators alike an opportunity to develop a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the Latina/o and Chicana/o experience and that community’s use of music as resistance. The music of Bad Brains, Pure Hell, and even the rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) can be used to explore the intersection of punk rock and Black liberation. A study of the newly emergent Taqwacore scene, which is comprised of Muslim and Arab American punk bands that draw heavily upon humor and irreverence to explore ethnic and religious identities, provides a glimpse into the complex dialectics of Arab and Muslim realities that are nowhere to be found in mainstream media. Though the Filipina/o American experience is marred by the pervasive, persistent, and pernicious presence of internalized oppression, colonial mentality, educational risk factors, and the soul wound, the systemic nature of white supremacy in the United States makes it so that the same can be said about any other ethnic group in the country. When applied to Ethnic Studies, punk rock pedagogy has the capacity to encourage the growth of a divergent knowledge base that will allow students and teachers alike to transcend the oppressive factors placed in their paths toward the development of their own integrative awareness. In other words, to rise above.

REFERENCES Alvarez, Alvin. 2002. “Racial Identity and Asian Americans: Supports and Challenges.” New Directions for Student Services: Working with Asian American College Students 97: 33–43.

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Bag, Alice. 2011. Violence Girl. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House. Beyond the Screams: A U.S. Latino Hardcore Punk Documentary, 1999. YouTube video, 27:49, posted by Zombie Popcorn, January 19, 2010, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=iYph2q44MQU. Directed by Martin Sorrendeguy. Buenavista, Tracy Lachica, Uma M. Jayakumar, and Kimberly Misa-Escalante. 2009. “Contextualizing Asian American Education through Critical Race Theory: An Example of U.S. Pilipino College Student Experiences.” New Directions for Institutional Research 142: 69–81. deLeon, Lakandiwa. 2004. “Filipinotown and the DJ Scene: Cultural Expression and Identity Affirmation in Los Angeles.” In Asian American Youth: Culture, Ethnicity, and Identity, edited by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, 191–206. New York: Routledge. Duncombe, Stephen, and Maxwell Tremblay. 2011. White Riot: Punk Rock and the Pol­itics of Race. London: Verso. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Galvan, Astrid. 2015. “Appeals Court Upholds Parts of Arizona Ethnic Studies Ban.” ABC News, last modified July 7, 2015, http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap peals-court-upholds-parts-arizona-ethnic-studies-ban-32287414. Guskin, Jane, and Esneider. 2011. “Interview with Los Crudos.” In White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race, edited by Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay, 241–49. London: Verso. Habell-Pallan, Michelle. 2005. “¿Soy Punkera, Y Que?: Sexuality, Translocality, and Punk in Los Angeles and Beyond.” In Beyond the Frame: Women of Color and Visual Representation, edited by Angela Y. Davis and Neferti X. M. Tadiar, 219–42. New York: Pargrave Macmillan. Halagao, Patricia, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, and John May Cordova. 2009. “Critical Review of K–12 Filipina/o American Curriculum.” AAPI Nexus 7: 1–23. Kang, David C. 2002. Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lai, Sophia. 2010. “Asian American Studies.” In Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today, edited by Grace J. Yoo and Edith Wen Chu Chen, 186–88. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. Museus, Samuel D., and Kimberly A. Truong. 2009. “Disaggregating Qualitative Data from Asian American College Students in Campus Racial Climate Research and Assessment.” New Directions for Institutional Research 142: 17–26. Suzuki, Bob H. 2002. “Revisiting the Model Minority Stereotype: Implications for Student Affairs Practice and Higher Education.” New Directions for Student Services: Working with Asian American College Students 97: 21–32. Tejeda, Carlos, Manuel Espinoza, and Kris Gutierrez. 2003. “Toward a Decolonizing Pedagogy: Social Justice Reconsidered.” In Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking Ed­ ucation for Social Change, edited by Peter Periceles Trionfas, 10–40. New York: Routledge. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson, Roderick Daus-Magbual, and Arelene Daus-Magbual. “Pin@y Educational Partnerships: A Counter-Pipeline to Create Critical Educators.” AAPI Nexus 8(1): 75–102.

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Uehlein, Joe. 2001. “An Overture into the Future: The Music of Social Justice.” New Labor Forum 9: 25–36. Utley, Michael. 2012. “Bad Rhetoric: Towards a Punk Rock Pedagogy.” Master’s thesis, Clemson University. Vaugeois, Lise. 2007. “Social Justice and Music Education: Claiming the Space of Music Education as a Site of Postcolonial Contestation.” Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 6(4): 163–200.

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“You Can Ban Chicano Books, But They Still Pop Up!”: Activism, Public Discourse, and Decolonial Curriculums in Los Angeles Elias Serna

When Your Education Is Under Attack, What Do You Do? . . . Fight Back! —U.N.I.D.O.S. student group take over of Tucson School Board (April 26, 2011) You Can Ban Chicano Books, But They Still Pop Up! —Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement, Los Angeles (2013) In the ’60s, from the Third World Strike to the school walkouts in East Los Angeles in 1968, education remained the fundamental concern of young Raza. Because education was about the future of a people. And we saw ourselves as such, as a people distinct from mainstream America, requiring culturally specific methods of intellectual inquiry. —Cherrie Moraga, Loving in the War Years (2000, 187) In these activist chants around the ongoing struggle to defend Chicana/o Studies in Arizona, one clearly hears the insistence that Chicano culture, epistemology, and institutions will not be stamped out and that our culture is a historical one of anticolonial struggle. This “cultural war,” and its spread to California and the Southwest, is not simply a phase but the ground on which the whole discipline of Chican/o Studies (and Ethnic Studies) will determine its epistemological future. By looking at education activism in Los Angeles— in particular Raza Studies Now (RSN), Ethnic Studies Now, the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing, and the Xican@ Pop-Up Book

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Movement—we begin to envision what the field can look like, and that it will be a long-term struggle, requiring arts and innovation, with students as central actors. By examining activist and rhetorical strategies to defend and spread Raza Studies, I hope to contribute to the defining of the discipline for present and future purposes, as the field and its scholars envision its contested evolutionary reach into community colleges and K–12 classrooms. Cherrie Moraga’s insights evoke my methodology: this chapter operates with tenets and methodologies primarily grounded in Chicana/o Studies and rhetoric (Moraga 2000).1 The methodology of this chapter uses storytelling, rhetorical analysis, ethnographic observation, and Chicano Studies tenets and practices. More specifically, I aim at chronicling and analyzing the work of groups in Los Angeles like Raza Studies Now, Ethnic Studies Now, and XITO (the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing), and their contribution to an emerging public discourse around building Ethnic Studies programs and graduation requirements in California high schools. With regard to rhetoric, I look not only at rhetorical strategies of activists and their effects (particularly “presence” effects), but I also explain how Chican@ and Ethnic Studies has been a rhetorical dialectic (a challenge or “antithesis” to Eurocentric or colonizing narratives) that has been producing knowledge uniquely since the 1960s. Whereas rhetoric ties itself to epistemology and looks at how knowledge is constructed discursively through language and dialectical activity, my analysis incorporates insights from Chican@ Studies, particularly Dolores Delgado Bernal’s (1998) writing on Chicana feminist epistemology. Delgado Bernal’s work challenges historical and ideological representations of Chicanas, relocates them to central positions, and asks distinctively decolonizing questions. Like her methodology, this chapter aims at a “theoretical sensitivity” that does not shy away from the “cultural intuition” of being a Chican@ or person of color in Eurocentric education spaces. I also draw from Delgado Bernal’s deliberate and “explicit use of group interaction to produce data and insights,” a method that is most evident in observations and analysis of the third annual Raza Studies Now Conference on August 23, 2014. While Delgado Bernal’s work is grounded in Education Studies, I understand her Chicana feminist scholarship as an evolution of Chican@ Studies, particularly the always-present feminist dialectic within Chican@ Studies, and the tenet of connecting scholarship to communities, what was sometimes articulated as “taking the university back to the varrio.”

CHICAN@ STUDIES AND THE DIALECTICS OF DECOLONIZATION I was looking for the Revolutionary Escuelita of the ’70s, where my age-peers had sent their children, kids who managed to get into

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Cal, Stanford, Harvard, UCLA with their culture and sanity intact.  .  .  . I fantasize a calmecac, a 21st-century Xicano cultural school based on indigenist and xicanafeminista filosofia. —Cherrie Moraga, Loving in the War Years (2000, 182–83) We not only closed the achievement gap . . . we inverted it. —Sean Arce, XITO Institute at New Haven Unified School District (2015) The Chicano Movement dreams of alternative schools that Moraga contemplates, similar to the Black Panther School in Oakland in the early 1970s, were made real during movement years. Only a few of these schools, however, survived, for example, the Escuela Tlatelolco created by the Crusade for Justice in Denver. The purpose and effects of such an institution—captured in Teatro Campesino’s “acto” “No Saco Nada de la Escuela” (Valdez 1990)2— was clearly understood by many in my post-movement generation: knowledge of our past and the placing of students and our communities at the center of learning could produce dramatic results that countered the Chicano educational pipeline that has historically failed over half of Latino students (Yosso & Solorzano 2006).3 As founder and former MAS director Sean Arce states, Chicana/o Studies was capable of reversing oppressive conditions, changing lives, and decolonizing minds. My own experience with Chicano Studies begins in high school when my older brother while attending community college brought home the first Chicano books I had ever seen. Elizabeth Martinez’s 460 Years of Chicano History, Roberto “Dr. Cintli” Rodriguez’s Assault with a Deadly Weapon, and Gus Frias’s Barrio Warriors were books that I devoured and that lit a fire inside of me. Later my sisters attended UCLA and brought me into spaces of protest, Chicano Studies classes, and the La Gente newspaper office. By the time I stepped into my first Chicano Studies class at UC Berkeley, I had attended numerous MEChA gatherings and the Chicano/Latino Youth Leadership conference in Sacramento. MEChA, the “Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan,” is a Chicano activist group popular since the late ’60s, most active at colleges nationwide, but also seen at high schools throughout the Southwest. Although Chicano militancy had waned in the 1980s, Chicano Studies and student activism during this time inspired me to be civically engaged. In my college years I was active in MEChA, the publication Chispas, and cofounded the teatro group Chicano Secret Service, which would soon tour nationally and appear on FOX TV pilots and “Pochonovela” on PBS. The Chicano Secret Service used to joke, “MEChA is like a gang, except they do their homework.” MEChA activism was a central force in the protests of the late ’80s and ’90s to push for

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more Ethnic Studies courses at UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and many other campuses. Many of us understood how Chicano Studies raised our consciousness and inspired us academically, and we intended to take it back to our communities. Upon graduation my goals were to teach high school and infuse my curriculum with Ethnic Studies knowledge. Although Tucson’s unique high school–level Mexican American Studies department (MAS) had existed since 1998 and had produced incredible statistics with regard to student engagement, including high graduation and college-going rates (Cabrera et al. 2013; Urrieta & Machado-Casas 2015; see also Cabrera et al. 2014), many did not learn about this department until it was under heavy fire by right-wing Republicans. As teachers, students, and communities protested to defend MAS, public discourse spread nationally through the writing of Abie Morales (“Three Sonorans” blog), Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Rudy Acuña, and later on mainstream media through debates on CNN, Al Madrigal’s excellent satire on The Jon Stewart Daily Show, and the delayed PBS screening of the documentary film Precious Knowledge. Effective grassroots social media also included videos by Three Sonorans, the ABC’s, Panleft, and an alternative documentary called Outlawing Shakespeare. Rhetoric brings to the Chicano Studies table a unique perspective on language; rhetoric pays attention not simply to how language persuades, but to how language is used to communicate, organize, build community, and construct knowledge (epistemology). Often referencing Aristotle’s dictum that rhetoric is the counterpart of the dialectic, rhetoricians traditionally look at how language and arguments construct knowledge, how argumentative rigor contributes to knowing, especially through Hegelian dialectics and other rigorous forms of investigation, such as Marxist dialectical critique. One essential aspect of the dialectic is “to oppose or to challenge.” As Fredric Jameson writes in Valences of the Dialectic, “to identify a phenomenon or a formulation as dialectical is . . . to accuse the interlocutor of the lazy habits of common sense, and to startle us into a distinction between at least two kinds of thinking” (2009, 5). He categorizes three forms of the dialectic: the classical Hegelian dialectical formula for knowledge where a hypothesis challenged by an antithesis reaches a truer synthesis; the recognition of many dialectics (beginning in part with Marx’s work, which flipped Hegel’s dialectic “on its feet” and related it to materialism and the world’s history of class conflict: historical dialectical materialism); and last, the recognition of many phenomena as dialectical, focusing on the dialectic as an activity in everyday life. Rhetorical activity then is central to knowledge construction, politics, and public discourse. Chicano Studies and other Ethnic Studies fields can be understood as a critical dialectic within the university (Soldatenko 2001). Whereas the U.S. university is constructed around rigid and predominantly Western standards of knowledge construction, rhetoric helps us understand

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the politics of knowledge as well as how Chican@ scholars and students can construct and transform spaces around tenets and arguments that will help anchor the field in U.S. universities, and also keep it relevant and useful to the communities it serves as the field approaches its fiftieth anniversary. One Chicano Studies tenet that cannot be overlooked is that students are central to the field: they are not only its audience or inheritors but the conductors of knowledge. Tucson teachers continually point out, as part of the Quetzalcoatl/ Precious Knowledge quadrant in the Xican@ paradigm, that knowledge is not to be found solely in texts, but in the prior knowledge of the students (as “funds of knowledge”). In fact, as previous lessons have clearly demonstrated, the students may very well prove to be the decisive factor in the longevity of the discipline.4 Discussing the institution of Chican@ Studies during the third annual Raza Studies Now conference, Professor Juana Mora (Rio Hondo Community College) stated that being in Chican@ Studies should not focus on institutionalization but that we need to accept the state of constant struggle, emphasizing that Chican@ Studies is a verb; it is a discipline that prioritizes action for social justice. Mora foregrounded activism as a component (and in conflict with dominant and education institutions) of Chican@ Studies, and echoed bell hooks’s dictum that standing at the margins was a place to make one’s stand, a place of knowledge and strength. Positions like these, however, can be misappropriated by conservatives, or when programs get attacked these arguments become explanations or justifications for civic exclusion. As we saw in Tucson, it was not uncommon to hear that we needed to abandon the public school space and start anew, creating small autonomous education spaces (and what will be said when these programs get attacked or dismantled?). While nonpublic and autonomous spaces have their place, the abandoning of public schools and spaces suggests defeat and overlooks the hard work of the teachers who for more than fourteen years constructed a self-determined Raza Studies, the MAS department. While autonomous programs and institutions are needed, how can we walk away from public school spaces where from 75 to 95% of the students are Raza?5 Not grappling with these arguments may cloud realities that need to be at the center of our attention.

A CASE STUDY: INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM IN SANTA MONICA The case study of Santa Monica Ethnic Studies activism reveals the complex education politics around Ethnic Studies. Working inside and outside of the education system, the work of local activists provides insights into approaches, pitfalls, and obstacles in building Raza or Ethnic Studies programs.

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Following one of the central epistemological tenets of Chican@ Studies, that Chican@ Studies must connect the learning institution to the community, Santa Monica educators and community members became more involved in school district politics and eventually developed a community-based summer arts program at a local youth center that operated using the Xican@ paradigm designed by the Tucson teachers. During the early months of 2012, as the official shutdown of Raza Studies classes was occurring in Arizona, racial discord broke out at Santa Monica High school. The major racial incidents included members of the wrestling team putting a noose around a wrestling dummy of “dark complexion,” next came the harassment of an African American wrestler who was tied to a locker while white teammates yelled racial comments. On the street level Black and Brown youth were fighting, and regional varrio warfare on the west side resulted in a youth getting shot near the high school. This turmoil instigated the “revival” of the Intercultural District Advisory Committee (IDAC) to come up with solutions to these racial issues and suggest them to the school board. This context reminded me of rhetoric’s attention to kairos, the “opportune moment,” when things can be mobilized best around specific settings and situations. With a racial crisis in place, the district was eager to hear ideas. Meetings began in the summer of 2012, involving many Black and Brown parents; I was elected the interim president during the first few months. After an evaluation of problems and proposed directions, the IDAC created three working committees focusing on staff development, parent and community work, and curriculum. Several members of AMAE and Raza Studies Now joined the curriculum group to collect data, discuss the role of curriculum, look at Arizona’s program, and develop a proposal to bring to the larger body for approval before presenting it to the school board and superintendent. Our curriculum group, which included Black and Brown parents, as well as the mother of the African American wrestler and two PhD students with areas in Ethnic Studies education, developed an ambitious proposal for an Ethnic Studies department that would house African American, Chicano, Hip-Hop, and Gender and Sexuality Studies courses, as well as ninth and tenth grade Ethnic literature composition courses for lower-level students. UCLA education doctoral candidate Johnny Ramirez and I took cues from our graduate studies and our knowledge and empirical studies of Arizona’s MAS program. Despite growing divisions and district loyalties operating within the IDAC, our proposal was passed and was sent to Superintendent Sandra Lyons and her staff. Requests for a meeting were never answered and the district magically came up with their own version of a solution, an Ethnic Studies course for seniors. District staff reportedly consulted a local university Ethnic Studies department, Anglo-American principals nervously presented an underdeveloped idea to the IDAC, struggled with our questions, ignored

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community input, and moved on. By the fall of 2013 an Ethnic Studies course for seniors was offered. The percentage of Black and Brown males enrolled in the course was fractional. Simultaneously, the English department cancelled its offering of Chicano/Latino literature, which had been offered for thirteen years. It appeared the district staff was more concerned with appearance than substance. Two positive outcomes of the 2013–14 IDAC campaign were that Santa Monica High School (Samohi) introduced the Ethnic Studies class, and that the class was blessed with a gifted and energetic instructor in English, Kitaro Webb. In true Ethnic Studies fashion, the class became connected with the local community and student issues. The community-built Pico Youth and Family Center (PYFC) staff and Raza Studies Now reached out to the class to make announcements, presentations, and in turn were invited to speak at their events, such as the Labor Day Civil Rights Forum organized by the students. Webb and his students gave a praiseworthy presentation (including a graphic demographic study of racial discord in suspension rates and AP enrollment) at a school board meeting in the spring and were featured in several LA Times articles about high school Ethnic Studies classes.6 Another emblematic moment was the relationship that developed between Raza Studies Now efforts (networking, curriculum discussions, and supporting the federal law suit against Tom Horne who authored the anti–Ethnic Studies law) and Webb, who was soon introduced to Arizona educators’ struggle and the XITO institute. XITO—the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing—was established by former MAS instructors and Anita Fernandez at Prescott College and continued the tradition of holding summer conferences to share MAS and Ethnic Studies curriculum and pedagogy. XITO also developed a mobile teacher training institute taking its methodology to places like Napa Valley College, San Francisco, the New Haven Unified School District, and to Los Angeles Mission College for an LA regional conference. Webb attended the XITO Summer conference of 2014 using his own money due to the district’s hesitation to fund his training by Ethnic Studies experts. XITO had also made presentations to Superintendent Lyons and curriculum administrators who declined to hire XITO as consultants. A clear signal was being sent that education administrators did not want to engage seriously— only symbolically—with Ethnic Studies in high schools. On another stage, and in the spirit of self-determination (a major tenet of early Chican@ Studies), several Raza Studies Now members and PYFC staff came together to build the PYFC Summer Arts Program, which would engage youth in summer arts while also teaching a localized version of Ethnic Studies, using the Xican@ Paradigm methodology employed by MAS instructors (Arce, ch. 2, this volume).7 The Xican@ paradigm, one of the most profound concepts developed by MAS teachers over its fourteen years of existence,

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involved an ongoing, interconnected process of the “four energies”: selfreflection, precious knowledge (curriculum and acknowledging the students as funds of knowledge), the will to act (similar to Paulo Freire’s concept of praxis), and transformation. The four-part concept is represented and allegorized in the inner face of the Aztec calendar, the four quadrants typically associated with historical eras, used as representations for these four “energies” of the paradigm. The concept was developed by MEChA students, educators, and Chicano Movement elders in Arizona during the 1990s. Throughout the summer we discussed these processes operating in our workshops, field trips, PowerPoint lectures, speakers, and artistic productions. The third annual Raza Studies Now Conference was scheduled a week after our last PYFC Summer Arts meeting and during the mural painting week with East LA muralist Raul Gonzalez (Mictlan Murals), in which several youth helped Raul paint a large banner for the upcoming Raza Studies Now 3 Conference, re-creating an early work by him, which had become a sort of logo for the RSN group (Serna 2013).8 He later stated that the new “banner-mural” looked better than the original. The image foregrounds a young Chicana girl in profile in the act of writing; behind her the upper half of the Aztec calendar encircles her figure, like a radiant aureole representing ancestral Mesoamerican knowledge. Like the event T-shirt, the image is juxtaposed with the words “Raza Studies Now,” a phrase evoking the evaluation of the present state of Raza Studies while simultaneously and aggressively asserting the need for Raza Studies “now.” Unlike earlier symbols of Chican@ Studies, the central figure is not male, an adult, or in a protest position (Chican@ Studies graphics often include protest marches, indigenous warriors, deities, eagles with dynamite sticks, the patriarchal family, etc.). Deep in study, the figure exudes a different and meditating representation of Chican@ Studies. The young Chicana evokes a more meditative and internally focused representation of the field by capturing the student in the act of studying. Her activity also evokes a longer time line; unlike a protest, her image is focused on the long term (of an academic career, K–16), on intellectual development, and an engagement with ancestral time (the concept of being aware of the seven generations before and after an individual). The image itself was disruptive—with regard to age, gender, action, reflection, direction—of how Chican@ Studies has been traditionally (re)presented. Although organizing the conference exhausted the small RSN and PYFC staff, the artwork on the banner and T-shirts, along with the PYFC space, the presence of the Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement, local youth hip-hop performers (West End Natives, Jennifer Saldana, and Pico Reps), and the diverse audience seemed to energize the conference and transform the space with a youthful vitality.9 Indeed, one of the goals of RSN3 was to bring together an

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audience of concerned individuals and groups, to share experiences and information around how Raza and Ethnic Studies works, and to evoke a feeling of unity and solidarity for the construction of a movement to build Raza and Ethnic Studies programs citywide.

RAZA STUDIES NOW 3 It was a real conjuring up. —Anita Fernández, XITO (2014) The third annual Raza Studies Now conference began with meetings in early summer that visualized the program, suggested speakers, and meditated on the identity of the group. We came to understand our group, in the words of Javier San Roman, as a “clearing house,” a forum to discuss particularities about what Raza and Ethnic Studies in LA schools should look like, and how to organize and push for this to happen, being aware of our limits as a small group. Like past conferences, we relied on the power of group interaction to create a knowledge and support for Raza and Ethnic Studies in high schools. During the first two conferences, we followed the collective authorship legacy of the Plan de Santa Barbara, as well as Delgado Bernal’s methodology of group interaction to produce data and insights, to produce the “Plan de Los Angeles” a manifesto plan of action gathered from the shared knowledge of attendees. We were excited at the symbolism of the conference venue, normally held at Santa Monica Community College, but which was to be moved to the local continuation high school. A month before the conference, however, the school district canceled our venue and PYFC staff stepped in to provide the space and organizational support. School administrators were invited to attend but none showed up. The day of the conference was filled with emblematic experiences and meaningful words that captured the spirit of the current movement in Los Angeles. An hour before the conference a group of PYFC youth and UCLA students met to set up; one youth was involved in a fight in an alley the night before and one of his eyes was visibly red from an injury. According to Miguel Quimichipilli Bravo, who gave the opening blessing, the setup and prior work were the first ceremonial acts. Locals and friends from Napa Valley had arrived early to set up and panelist Ron Espiritu, whose classroom was recently featured in an NPR Latino USA story on Ethnic Studies in high schools, arrived early to install an exhibit of Xican@ pop-up books. We officially began the event with Quimichipilli lighting sage to clean the space, focus energy, and bring everyone together. Seventy to eighty individuals filled the space throughout the day. He imagined a “cloud” above us and asked everyone to contribute some hope or vision for the conference and to

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place it in the cloud, which would be with us throughout the day. PYFC youth Stacey Escobar opened with a speech about how the center saved her from bad decisions, how the Summer Arts Program opened her eyes to her culture, and specifically addressed how social movements, especially the Brown Berets, helped youth to stop gang warfare and to join the movement. She hoped this movement would do the same for her generation. Teresa Gomez from the local AMAE was the first of the Solidarity Statements; she remembered early student efforts to create Chican@ Studies locally, wishing that that curriculum existed when she was in high school. Jose Lara, school board member of El Rancho Unified School District east of East LA, was next. Lara was a key force behind El Rancho being the first district to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement in the state and continues to lead efforts to spread Ethnic Studies in the mammoth LA Unified School District and statewide through a highly effective Ethnic Studies Now Coalition website.10 He illustrated the need for new curriculum by talking about a young African American student he mentored, only fifteen years old, who was alienated from school, involved in a gang, and went by the name “Sombra.” This reminded me of the phrase attributed to Raza and Dreamer students who often “live in the shadows.” After describing him Lara shocked the audience by stating that he was to attend “Sombra’s” funeral later that day. The rebellious and outspoken young man’s death coincided with the conference and Lara expressed a belief that Ethnic Studies could have saved his life, that Ethnic Studies can save lives. Sean Arce, the former director of MAS, a cofounder of XITO, and plaintiff in Acosta et al. vs. John Huppenthal (better known as the Ethnic Studies case) was our keynote speaker. He spoke about his daughter’s role in the federal case: after the courts disqualified the teachers from suing for free speech in the classroom, students like his daughter courageously stepped forward as plaintiffs. His PowerPoint presentation looked critically at Western methodologies and explained the Xican@ paradigm, based on the four energies of the Nauhui Ollin (the Mesoamerican “four directions” concept) (Romero, Arce & Cammarota 2009). The MAS teachers have always used technology and social media in innovative ways, and Arce’s use of video was no exception. A music video “Alive” by Chase and Status visually told the story of a young Native American man navigating through a dangerous path of drugs, crime, and violence that results in his girlfriend’s fatal overdose; the young man is then led to his Native traditions, which lead him to sobriety, ceremony, and a place of healing and redemption. Previously in XITO conferences, I had seen the video used as context, describing the conditions, issues, and problems many young men of color face in urban schools, and the state of being criminalized or “lost in the cracks” of the system. As the video ends and the young man, in spite of his spiritual salvation, is cut down too early by street

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violence, an elder’s voice instructs, “You have to go out and find different, strong things that give you honor, to get rid of all the negative that people have, to bring life back to each and every one of us.” The video resonated with Lara’s story of “Sombra,” as Arce declared, pointing to the image of the Nahui Ollin, “this brings us honor.” Within our decolonial Chicano culture is to be found an epistemology (a way of knowing and producing knowledge). The cultural relevance of the Xican@ paradigm, Chican@ literature, and Chicana/o Studies, Arce seemed to be saying, embodies the required “culturally specific methods of intellectual inquiry” that Moraga talks about. The discussion period after the keynote and the panel brought the audience into the dialogue. Professor Jennie Luna (California State University, Channel Islands) moderated the panel and opened with her own reflections on an education that decolonizes. Luna was a student activist at UC Berkeley during the 1999 protests there and brought activist experience to furthering Chican@ and Ethnic Studies at the K–12 level. Juana Mora, chair of Chicana/o Studies at Rio Hondo Community College gave a personal narrative that illustrated her navigating through higher education and emphasizing the important role of mentors. Ron Espiritu from South LA Animo High School detailed how he integrated Chicano and Black histories (as opposed to presenting them separately) to emphasize points of unity and collaboration among his predominantly Black and Brown students. His PowerPoint was hinged on Franz Fanon’s idea that “colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it” (1963, 36). Espiritu explained how Ethnic Studies helps examine distortions and destructions of People of Color’s history. Sampling slides that explained the Black presence in Mexican history, Espiritu illustrated dynamic ways to bring diverse communities together, showing us connections between the struggles of Yanga and the first Black “maroon” communities in the Americas, mixed-race Independence leader Jose Maria Morelos, and the first Black president of Mexico, Vicente Guerrero. His lecture and the sequence of slides helped the audience visualize the power of his lesson operating in a multiracial classroom. The third panelist was Silvia Toscano Villanueva, a Chicana/o Studies doctoral candidate at UC Santa Barbara, whose writing was featured in the January 2013 special issue of The Urban Review Journal on “Book Banning, Censorship, and Ethnic Studies in Urban Schools.” Her experience teaching Chican@ literature in a local community college English department has not been a safe space, but her struggle to build a decolonizing pedagogy has been profoundly meaningful. For Villanueva, decolonization in Chican@ Studies has a clear path: reconnecting to the Indigenous parts of our identity. She

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described the conflict and burden that young Raza students bring to higher education and the need to make choices that require deep reflection. She foregrounded MAS teacher Norma Gonzalez’s charge to “get out of the book,” insisting on the epistemology and pedagogy of ceremony, and its place in Chican@ Studies. Her words also produced a sense of marvel when she began speaking about dreams. Finding dreams to be instructive and ceremonial she related how elders called for listening to dreams, and how she herself incorporated dreaming into classroom pedagogy. Students journaling their dreams, discussing dream phenomena in texts, and the students’ dialogues and interpretations of dreams became an innovative pedagogical project she called “un baile interior,” the inner dance of dreaming (Villanueva & Coronado n.d.). As she shared passages of transformation in her students and the classroom— at one point taking the class to a community park called “la Culebra” and creating a ceremonial healing space—she spoke of the important intersection of students, community, ceremony, and Chican@ Studies. An important lesson her students and she learned while presenting at a conference in Oakland was that to build healing spaces, “we don’t need to ask permission,” we don’t need credentials, papers, or PhDs. These new forms of practicing Chican@ Studies—the need to decolonize and reconnect with our Indigenous identity in order to heal—she insists is where the field needs to go. During the panel question and answer a community member brought up a painful comment she heard about light-skinned Chicanas, emphasizing how we can be hurtful when we speak. Jennie Luna added to this the need to listen and genuinely hear where words are coming from, in order to build community understanding and unity. I thought this was an important meditation, and these observations can be related to the inner workings of dialectical activity. Building a strong unity in a movement will take listening to one another, which takes work and openness. This reminded me of the words of University of Arizona rhetoric scholar Adela Licona at the Rhetoric Society of America conference in San Antonio in 2014. Talking about pleito, conflict, and group divisions, she stated that disagreement or conflict should not always be seen as destructive or essential. Whereas pleito and conflict are indeed a dialectical activity, often between two forces, these energies could be harnessed in more productive ways than outright feuding. Licona believed that conflict should also be seen as a productive “tension,” as in the tension between two poles of a guitar string, a conflict that can create harmonious music that recognizes diverse experiences, points of view, and narratives.11 Again, in political struggle, policy, or everyday conversation, we can all take cues from this insight. The opening blessing, the presentations, the discussions, the interaction with arts, the intergenerational nature of the audience, the geographic diversity (Napa Valley, Oxnard, Tucson, the Inland Empire, Seattle, El Paso, and

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various sections of LA county were represented) of the RSN3 conference all contributed to a sense of rich dialogue, of genuine listening. As youth performers set up closing performances, numerous individuals continued discussions and exchanged contact information. Conversations and gatherings continued after the conference, some celebrating a productive day of organizing and dialogue.

THE XICAN@ POP-UP BOOK MOVEMENT AND ALLEGORIES OF DECOLONIZATION The Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement (XPUB) began as an artistic-political response to the destruction of the Mexican American Studies department in Tucson, Arizona, and specifically addressed the banning of Chican@ Studies and its literature. Around the time of the destruction of the department, I had won first prize for a book collection contest at UC Riverside, then later in the year won first place in the 2013 National Book Collecting Award sponsored in part by the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.12 My collection of Chicano Movement books was titled “Chican@ Movement Banned Books” and featured several of the books on the banned list. John Avalos and I brainstormed on designing a book display at UC Riverside’s Tomas Rivera Library and he came up with the idea of creating pop-up paper engineering. We started experimenting, making pop-up books, drafting a “manifesto,” and then began making pop-up books with our students. We wanted to disseminate the message that although Arizona state officials had banned Chican@ books, they would still “POP UP!”13 The presence of the Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement at RSN3 took the form of an installation along the windows that displayed over two dozen original works, mostly made by students, and one large book titled 500 Years of Chican@ History in Pop-Up created by the Chicano Secret Service comedy group.14 At the front tables the XPUB Movement provided copies of its “manifesto” and free curriculum packets featuring prompts and materials designed by Ron Espiritu, Johnavalos Rios, and myself. The XPUB movement started as protest art, and in less than a year was able to conjure itself as a pedagogical movement, replete with curriculum and an array of creative samples of student work. The diverse examples of curriculum built around the XPUB display the versatility of the concept as well as how the movement continues to unfold. At California State University Dominguez Hills, I prepared a straightforward essay prompt for my Chican@ literature students in which they were asked to identify a scene from the novels Bless Me Ultima or House on Mango Street and elaborate on a metaphor or allegory that stood out to them. They were to write two paragraphs: a long annotative introduction of the novel and

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a paragraph detailing the scene and interpreting the allegory. At UC Riverside, Johnavalos executed the most ambitious and innovative XPUB curriculum through dance, props, and performance. Students discussed the ban, constructed oversized pop-up books, and executed a dance choreography, which was performed in front of various crowds and large student audiences to mass appeal. The dances were filmed and posted on social media. In the cold plains of Minnesota, Dr. Miguel Chavez had his Saint Cloud State University Chicano Studies students design pop-up books on academic articles. This was another ingenious adaptation of the Xican@ pop-up book as assignment and produced visually stimulating student interpretations of complex ideas and scholarly articles.15 Ron Espiritu, a Chican@/African American Studies teacher at Animo South LA (ASLA), invited Johnavalos and me to his school and together we brought the XPUB curriculum to more than 180 freshmen students.16 After reading about the struggle in Tucson to preserve Ethnic Studies and about the movements in Texas and California to expand Ethnic Studies, students then picked topics that they learned throughout the year to use to create pop-up books. Topics ranged from the East LA Walkouts, the 1963 Birmingham Children’s March, the 1963 March on Washington, labor leader Emma Tenayuca, colonial book burning, the Tucson struggle, and the Soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution. On our first visit we gave a PowerPoint introduction, talked about allegory, and discussed how the current ban on Chican@ literature was a sort of allegory of colonial book burnings by the Spaniards of Aztec books/amoxtlis. We then explained that the XPUB was an allegory for raising one’s voice, or the banned books “rising up.” Johnavalos explained how technique was secondary to content and vision: the scene and style of the pop-up could determine the degree of awe and astonishment it inspired in the viewer. Johnavalos insisted that the pop-up book had the capacity to produce a feeling and open an individual’s mind and transform their thinking. We also described—or conjured!—an audience that was already there, that their books would have an instant audience at this opportune moment (kairos) and could possibly reach wide audiences beyond the classroom and the city. This was an opportunity to which they could assert a confidence, a knowing that we could get the message out and transform people’s thinking. Students worked in pairs to complete the project and wrote an essay to document the history of the movement and to connect it to the XPUB Movement. The projects were displayed to the school community and, like prophecy, became the subject of a segment on NPR’s syndicated program “Latino USA” broadcast to millions nationally.17 During the summer of 2014 the XPUB was also brought to K–12 students participating in the People’s Education Movement’s Freedom School and, together with the ASLA, UC Riverside, and Cal State Dominguez Hills, pop-ups were displayed for two weeks at the Southern California Library.

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The assignments are meant to meditate on (ongoing) colonization, decolonization, and the role of knowledge in history as power. As the XPUB manifesto explains: The Xican@ Pop-Up Book is an allegory about decolonization and against book burning. In the Middle Ages, groups who preserved ancestral knowledge in ancient books—like the Torah, the Koran and the Bible— were called “people of the book.” Xican@s too are people of the book, except that upon encounter, in the process of colonization, Europeans burned our books. Although most of our amoxtlis (ancient codices) were burned, ancestral knowledge survived and was passed down secretly in art and through oral tradition. Today our ancestral knowledge continues to “pop up” through Chican@ Studies, art and literature—even while groups attempt to burn or ban our books. To them we say, “You can burn/ ban our books, but they’ll still POP UP!” By making a connection between our students, Tucson students, knowing history, Chican@/Ethnic Studies, colonial violence, and colonial book burning, the XPUB assignments teach about decolonization but also directly participate in decolonizing the classroom. The XPUB Movement disrupts technological culture broadly through a multimodal approach to literature, and calls attention to the bodily rhetoric of the tactile. Whereas many expect innovation and wonder to be in the domain of digital technology, social media, and communications devices, the XPUB evokes marvel in the paper engineering done with the hands of people engaging with social justice for the oppressed. The allegory of “rising up” (social movements) and specifically the return (“popping back up”) of Chican@ literature and Ethnic Studies with a creative force is a rhetorical vision that the XPUB seeks to make manifest. Like the confidence and determination of Salvadoran revolutionary poetry or Third World Liberation Front art movements, the XPUB movement re-imagines protest and transformation inside the classroom as well as in the imagination of participants and mass audiences.

ONWARD: INVOKING ETHNIC STUDIES “Of course we’re equals” .  .  . (Yet I still held, although I would never voice it, the belief that I, being a university student a man of the sophisticated Western world, was superior to an Indian.) “No, we are not equals. I am a hunter and a warrior, and you are a pimp.”

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I could not believe that don Juan had actually said that. . . . He enunciated his words clearly. They poured out smoothly and deadly. He said that I was pimping for someone else. That I was not fighting my own battles but the battles of some unknown people. . . . And that his world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was infinitely more effective than the blundering idiocy I called “my life.” —s— —Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan (1991, 81) The Castaneda quote, like Silvia Villanueva’s talk, reminds me of reconnecting to Indigenous identity and that education is not a value-free, apolitical profession or project. The lives of our children and young people and their children and their children’s children (for seven generations) will be affected by the work we do today. We educators are often not critical enough about the fact that in our daily work we are fighting “the battles of some unknown people.” In an era when the common core has taken policy priority, our responsibility for Chican@ Studies (as our institution) and for this generation of young people should be at the center of debates on Ethnic Studies in high schools. Historian Rudy Acuna, whose Occupied America was also at the top of the list of banned books, has in past writings insisted that Chican@ Studies is a public trust, a charge and responsibility that scholars, students, and community are responsible for maintaining (Acuña 1992). When asked, during his court battle with the University of California in the ’90s, how students can build Chicano Studies, he responded that students, faculty, and community need to organize, draw a plan, and “fight like hell.” Nothing would come easy: it would require “fast and furious” activity, but organizers couldn’t expect instant success. “It takes a sustained campaign to reach planned objectives.” At the moment of this writing, this is exactly the case. The conversation around Ethnic Studies in high schools has reached a national audience and the work of Raza Studies Now and Ethnic Studies Now has taken flight. While dozens of cities and counties have begun organizing for Ethnic Studies, we stand in the bureaucratic and building period. LAUSD outgoing superintendent Cortines recently disparaged Ethnic Studies, ignoring the empirical data (he didn’t “do his homework”), and used “sticker shock” tactics (placing a discouragingly high price tag on the project) to block momentum. Like Villanueva asserted, we may have to do things without asking permission. Recently Acuna remembered the warning of Ernesto Galarza, who said Chicanos never make the top ten of priorities politicians draw up. If we want to make it to Sacramento’s or LAUSD’s drawing table, we very well may have to disrupt the status quo. We have the numbers. Another solidarity speaker at Raza Studies Now 3 was long-time activist, Cal State University Long Beach professor Armando Vasquez who was

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corresponding with Assemblyman Luis Alejo on his bill to study best practices around Ethnic Studies instruction in high schools. He announced on a sour note, that the Alejo Bill had just been defeated and the politicians would wait until “next year,” and that Sacramento was not the place to look for leadership. At an energized follow-up conference on Ethnic Studies two months later in Long Beach we continued networking and activism. On another front, Jose Lara’s announcement was prophetic, and Ethnic Studies became a graduation requirement in 2015 after large rallies outside the LA Unified School District. Ethnic Studies Now argued that out of 152,507 students, only 691 take an Ethnic Studies class, in a district that is 75% Raza and 90% nonwhite. The LAUSD and San Francisco victories put a strong wind in the sails of the movement (Alvarez 2015).18 These victories set off exciting new organizing efforts for Ethnic Studies in high schools in Sacramento, Azusa, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Monica, El Monte, Napa Valley, San Diego, Ventura County, Santa Barbara, Moorepark, Anaheim, Sacramento, Oakland, Union City, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, Nevada, Chicago, and other school districts. Schools like Santa Monica, El Rancho, San Bernardino, and a few LAUSD schools like LACES have recently introduced new courses. Rhetorical arguments must continue to remind audiences that the dialectical work of Ethnic Studies can improve our world. In a 2015 article on NEA Today, Lara stated, “Keeping students from learning about their own history is structural racism. . . . Ethnic studies is what anti-racist education looks like in the classroom. It is the unforgotten stories of brilliance and resilience of women and men of color that has systematically been kept out of our classrooms.” A rhetorical awareness of the “opportune moment” should also guide organizers. There is no doubt that police brutality and the Black Lives Matters movement has put wind in our sails. The ongoing achievement gap and structural failures to remedy this also justify the movement. In 2019, if we take the historic 1969 conference that drew up El Plan de Santa Barbara as a marker, Chicano Studies will approach its fiftieth anniversary. Simultaneously, in 2019, Latin Americans, Mexicans, and Chican@s, in particular, will be reflecting on their particular colonial experience with the five-hundred-year quincentennial of the world-changing global encounter when the Spaniards invaded the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Chican@ Studies scholars and students must prepare for this historical debate today by working to build, spread, and strengthen the field. We should not be struggling to survive or defending an endangered institution our predecessors built. Via live gatherings and through social media, we should continue having rich and meaningful discussions about our practices, struggles, growth, and the future of the field. By 2019 Chican@ Studies classes should be offered in school districts throughout the Southwest, claiming successes and achievements close to

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those the Tucson teachers boasted before their destruction in 2012. University Chicana/o Studies departments should have strong, meaningful, and renewed relationships with high school and community college programs. University departments should be housing archives and serve as intellectual research centers, not as stale mausoleums of what once was; they should be active learning centers used by students, communities, and educators to make education serve the community. As educators commence building Ethnic Studies classes and pilot programs, and as they become entangled in bureaucratic manipulations by careerist managers of the status quo, perhaps we need to rhetorically organize an agenda or argument around three strong pillars that can have effective results: the Chican@/Ethnic Studies legacy; building curriculum and departments; and the importance of access. First, with empirical evidence of the effectiveness of Ethnic Studies in high schools we should be standing firm around the institution of Chican@ Studies, consolidating diverse perspectives for a needed unity that will bring the field into the twenty-first century in a productive and engaging capacity (especially for the next generations).19 Second, this agenda should emphasize the need to BUILD: curriculum development, teacher hiring, relationships with administration, and programs and departments. Here self-determination must be adhered to, with participation and power principally in the hands of local communities, students, teachers, and organic intellectuals. At these two levels, the role of university departments should be defined, as partnerships between universities, scholars, students, and high schools are nurtured. Third, by foregrounding access we can put wind in the sails of program-building. In order to reach large numbers, organization will require thinking big about Ethnic Studies in high schools. This may prove daunting and risky, but it is a responsibility of those who struggle to decolonize education, for the sake of the futures of the masses and of Black and Brown youth in particular. Without this vision and work, the destiny of our youth will remain in the hands of bureaucratic outsiders who see our youth as statistics, as disposable, and take for granted this group’s secondary status in society’s Eurocentric master plan. Like Malcolm X once said, “only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.” The Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) based in Tucson is part of this “thinking big,” as it continues to spread Raza Studies practices and methodology through their conferences and teacher development training. XITO understands that the next level of activity is in training teachers. In recent years they have collaborated with Ethnic Studies educators in northern California and Los Angeles. In 2014 and 2015 they held institutes nationwide including Napa Valley, Tucson, Union City, and Los Angeles. At the university level, a few departments have made concerted efforts to connect to this movement. Notable discussions between education

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and Chicana/o and Ethnic Studies scholars at CSU Sacramento and CSU Northridge have addressed the need to prepare K–12 Ethnic Studies instructors. Dr. Margarita Berta Avila at CSU Sacramento and activists in Sacramento developed an impressive campaign and also worked to revive and push the Alejo Bill, which seeks to institute Ethnic Studies instruction statewide. Right-wing politicians and their agencies will continue to harass this movement, and many careerist administrators in schools will not be easily moved. Currently, however, they have little influence over the networks of progressive educators, over community work and involvement, and over the daily work of decolonizing the classroom that hundreds of teachers already do. If our goals are not met, the active participation of the masses of high school students stands to be tested. With proven methods and the empirical data in our hands, the ball is in our court. Ethnic Studies educators, advocates and especially students have the political muscle and a critical mass. During the LAUSD Ethnic Studies campaign, tensions rose around the potential erasure of Chicana/o Studies. LAUSD documents paradoxically identified a nonexistent “Hispanic Studies” as part of their objectives, and some argued that the Ethnic Studies movement risked being coopted by bureaucrats. In a district that is approximately 75% Chicano/Latino, and in a state and region that was once Mexico, some argued that Chicana/o Studies needed to take a stronger position on the direction of Ethnic Studies in Los Angeles. The decolonial legacy and historical identity of the Chicano Movement has been largely absent from high school instruction. Much of the Ethnic Studies activism, after all, developed from the attack on Mexican American Studies in Arizona. While concerns exist over the influence Raza numbers may have on the outcome of Ethnic Studies curriculum, there exists as well the too-frequent efforts of non-Latino educators to limit or control the influence of Chicanos/Latinos. For its part, Raza Studies Now has always maintained an equilibrium of having a strong connection to Chicana/o Studies origins while being fully supportive of Ethnic Studies campaigns. Early on victories were important, even if symbolic, but increasingly the content and the nature of outcomes is clearly a priority. Some have begun reclaiming the “Chicana/o,” “Chican@,” or “Xican@” identity and even redefining it for our current historical era. Relinquishing this identity will be divisive, ahistorical, and apolitical. Must we get caught up in strict definitions of Mexicanness? What if decolonization, as a process of unlearning social hierarchies and relearning one’s history, culture, and language became a central aspect of one’s identity? In northern and southern California, the term Xican@ emerged in the 1990s with a more fluid definition, paying particular attention to Indigenous culture and roots, to a panLatin Americanism in the Southwest (especially welcoming of Central

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Americans and activists of different racial, ethnic background), and to an awareness of the struggle of our gay, lesbian, and transsexual sisters and brothers. The spelling of this term also recognizes gender differences, privileges, and issues—an ongoing struggle within all movements for social justice. Collaboration with Women’s Studies and Queer Studies will be on the horizon. Ultimately, as discussed at Raza Studies Now and in the Plan de Los Angeles, Ethnic Studies must be localized; programs must interact and respond to the community the school serves. When the curriculum is relevant to the students, the school will be a bridge to the community. Though these are not easy conversations to have, we need to continue our meetings and dialogues. This collective dialectical activity of self-reflection that emphasizes listening to and hearing the people, the student voice, and acknowledging and accepting that tension does not have to be seen strictly as conflict. Gatherings and conferences, like Raza Studies Now, People’s Education Movement, Association of Raza Educators, and XITO Institutes, are examples of Delgado Bernal’s invitation to harness “explicit use of group interaction to produce data and insights” (1998, 573). These discourse communities in dialogue can create a productive tension, one that unfolds constructively, that produces a harmony in a revolutionary unity that decolonizes, a harmony that accepts differences, creating a world where many worlds fit. While Chicana/o Studies at the high school level was soundly and egregiously wrecked in Arizona by politicians, the seeds of Raza Studies accomplishments were planted in California and other states, where Chican@ literature and the demand for K–12 Ethnic Studies “popped back up.” Like a Xican@ pop-up book, the movement continues to unfold, evolve, and inspire.

NOTES 1. Moraga reflects on the purpose of Chican@ Studies, culturally relevant curriculum, and the necessity for educational spaces that allow for rebellion against social injustices. 2. The early work of teatro campesino, also written about by Jorge Huerta and Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, was earmarked by “actos,” short sketches with political messages aimed at educating and winning audience into the “movimiento.” As a radical performance art, the teatro galvanized audiences, causing hundreds of teatro groups to spring up throughout the Southwest; television and film projects soon followed. “No Saco Nada . . .” was the first acto to address the Chicano education experience directly, exposing discrimination at every level, ending with the college students deciding to start their own school, asking the audience, “who will teach us?” The revolutionary answer was an emphatic “ourselves!” 3. According to education statistics, the authors report, out of 100 Chicano elementary school students, only 46 will graduate from high school, 10 will enroll in a four year college, 8 will graduate, and .2 will earn a doctoral degree.

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4. Students protest to save or grow departments, but also contribute curricular direction, the “what should be studied.” Examples include the foundational period (late 1960s, early 1970s); UC Berkeley’s 1988–89 American Cultures requirement strikes; Stanford protests and UCSB Congreso Student Hunger Strike of the same period; 1990–1993 UCLA activism for a Chican@ Studies Department culminating in the successful 1993 hunger strike and citywide protest; the 1999 UC Berkeley Third World Strike for Ethnic Studies; and the anti-HR 4437 mass high school walkouts of 2006 throughout the Southwest. The student contribution is frequently overlooked by faculty who assume the academic positions the students fought for and created. 5. Demographic percentage of Raza students is similar at big publics schools like Tucson (where MAS formerly operated) and include Sunnyside 95%, Cholla 85%, LAUSD 75%. Students at these schools were at the center of the discussion. 6. The June 2, 2014, LA Times article reported on the Alejo Bill that proposed to study Ethnic Studies best practices in K–12 and featured the Samohi Ethnic Studies class: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ethnic-studies-20140603-story.html. A July 7, 2014, article reported the El Rancho Unified School District school board passing a progressive and precedent Ethnic Studies graduation requirement and displayed a picture of Kitaro Webb in the Samohi Ethnic Studies class as an example of what the class would look like: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me -ethnic-studies-20140708-story.html. 7. Arce’s current scholarship is the most thorough examination of the Xican@ paradigm and the unique, organic process of teaching within MAS. Curtis Acosta’s “Developing Critical Consciousness: Resistance Literature in a Chicano Literature Class” in the November 7, 2007, English Journal provides an early, albeit brief, description of the Xican@ paradigm. Silvia Toscano Villanueva’s “Teaching as a Healing Craft: Decolonizing the Classroom and Creating Spaces of Hopeful Resistance through Chicano-Indigenous Pedagogical Praxis” in the March 2013 Urban Review Journal dedicated to book banning, censorship and Ethnic Studies in urban schools, is the best example of applying the Xican@ paradigm in the southern California composition classroom. 8. This chapter revisits the rhetorical activity of the first and second Raza Studies Now conferences and the drafting of “El Plan de Los Angeles.” 9. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Production of Presence) has called this the “production of presence.” He argues that this “materiality of communication,” which goes beyond “meaning,” should be foregrounded in literary criticism and the humanities, which always privileges the interpretation of meaning in texts. The RSN banner, the morning ceremony, the event T-shirt with the same logo given to panelists and helpers and sold to attendees, the Xican@ Pop-Up book display, PowerPoint presentations, and PYFC art were all part of this “presence effect.” After the conference, Anita Fernández would refer to this as a sort of magical “conjuring” feeling that day. 10. See Ethnicstudiesnow.com. 11. While Marxists and Jameson (Valences of the Dialectic) might say this is (the work of) synthesis operating within the dialectic, I prefer Licona’s words here, trusting her understanding of the intersections of race, gender, class and sexuality, and what conditions in Arizona look like.

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12. “UCR Graduate Student Wins National Book Collecting Competition.” UCR Today. August 23, 2013, http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/17196. 13. Elias Serna, interview by Cruz Medina, “Q&A with Reflections Contributor Elias Serna,” Academia de Cruz Medina, November 13, 2013, http://www.academiade cruz.com/2013/11/q-with-reflections-contributor-elias.html. 14. This oversized “book” was designed for a performance the group did at the XITO Summer 2014 conference titled “The Marvelous Counter-Hegemonic Life of Baby Chuey,” and alludes directly to Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez’ classic 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (1991), a banned book in Arizona. 15. See pop-up of Chicana walk-out participants article by Dolores Delgado Bernal by students of Dr. Miguel Chavez at University of Minnesota Saint Cloud (on XPUB Facebook page). 16. Animo South LA student work featured in this video on the “Xicana/o PopUp Book Movement” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=71530 9476951. Also see here, John Avalos and Serna explain movement: https://www.face book.com/video.php?v=705948875671&set=vb.4000754&type=3&permPage=1. 17. Valerie Hamilton reporting, Latino USA (National Public Radio), 89.3 FM, June 20, 2014. “Lack of Ethnic Studies in California Schools,” http://latinousa.org /2014/06/20/ethnic-studies-majority-latino-high-schools/ 18. This article recognizes Lara’s work, Ethnic Studies Now and recognizes the federal court decision on Arizona’s program as a partial victory, recognizing the probability that Arizona’s law was racially motivated, http://neatoday.org/2015/07/27/how -one-educator-is-taking-ethnic-studies-mainstream/ 19. Emma Perez’ Decolonial Imaginary and recent texts by Soldatenko, Acuna, Blackwell, Mariscal, Vasquez and Gomez-Quinonez, Ferreira, and an edited collection on Chicano Movement historiography by Garcia are important reflections on the field, but the Amicus Brief for the Acosta et al. versus Huppenthal case, created by the National Association of Chicana and Chiano Studies (NACCS), is also an excellent evaluation of the field’s contributions from an academic and global perspective. For a copy of NACCS’ amicus brief: http://www.vincerabagolaw.com/2012/03/08 /ethnic_studies_court_filing/.

REFERENCES Acosta, Curtis. 2007. “Developing Critical Consciousness: Resistance Literature in a Chicano Literature Class.” English Journal 97(2): 36–42. Acuna, Rodolfo F. 1992. “Chicano Studies: A Public Trust.” Chicano Studies: Critical Connection Between Research and Community. National Association for Chicano Studies. Acuna, Rodolfo F. 2011. The Making of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Arce, Sean. 2015. “Xicana/o Indigenous Epistemologies: Towards a Decolonizing and Liberatory Education for Xicana/o Youth.” Arce, Sean, Augustine Romero, and Julio Cammarota. 1990. “A Barrio Pedagogy: Identity, Intellectualism, Activism, and Academic Achievement through the Evolution

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of Critically Compassionate Intellectualism.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 12 (2): 217–33. Baca, Damian. 2008. Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations and the Territories of Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Blackwell, Maylei. 2011. Chicana Power: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press. Cabrera, Nolan L., Jeffrey Milem, Ozan Jaquette, and Ronald W. Marx. 2014. “Missing the (Student Achievement) Forest for All the (Political) Trees: Empiricism and the Mexican American Studies Controversy in Tucson.” American Educational Research Journal 51(6): 1084–118. Ceasar, Stephen. 2014, December 8. “L.A. Unified to Require Ethnic Studies for High School Graduation.” Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/local /education/la-me-ethnic-studies-20141209-story.html. Ceasar, Stephen. 2014, July 7. “El Rancho Schools Don’t Wait on State, Adopt Ethnic Studies Curriculum.” Los Angeles Times, July 7. http://www.latimes.com/local /education/la-me-ethnic-studies-20140708-story.html. Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 1998. “Using a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research.” Harvard Educational Review 68(4): 555–83. Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. 2004. Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gomez-Quinonez, Juan, and Irene Vasquez. 2014. Making Aztlan: Ideology and Culture of the Chicana and Chicano Movement, 1966–1977. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Gonzalez, Norma, and Roberto Cintli Rodriguez. 2012. “ ‘Banning the Aztec Calendar’: Indigenous, Maiz-based Knowledge at the Heart of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies Curriculum and Conflict.” Nakum 3(1). http://indigenouscultures.org /nakumjournal/?p=1244. Jameson, Fredric. 2009. The Valences of the Dialectic. London: Verso. Moraga, Cherrie. 2000. “Out of Our Revolutionary Minds: Towards a Pedagogy of Revolt.” In Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca paso por sus labios, 2nd ed. Boston: South End Press. NACCS Amicus Brief. http://www.vincerabagolaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012 /03/MAS-BRIEF-FILED.pdf. Perez, Emma. 1999. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. El Plan de Los Angeles. 2013. Pamphlet, Raza Studies Now Facebook. El Plan de Santa Barbara. 1969. Oakland, CA: La Causa Publications. Serna, Elias. 2013. “The Eagle Meets the Seagull: The Critical, Kairotic and Public Rhetoric of Raza Studies Now in Los Angeles.” Reflections: Latin@s in Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service-Learning 13(1): 80–93. Serna, Elias. 2013, November 13. “Q&A with Reflections Contributor Elias Serna.” By Cruz Medina. Academia de Cruz Medina. http://www.academiadecruz.com/2013 /11/q-with-reflections-contributor-elias.html. Sleeter, Christine E. 2011. “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review.” Washington, DC: The National Education Association.

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Soldatenko, Michael. 2001. “Radicalism in Higher Education: How Chicano Studies Joined the Curriculum.” In The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education, edited by Eric Margolis. New York: Routledge. Soldatenko, Michael. 2009. Chicano Studies: The Genesis of a Discipline. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Urrieta Jr., Luis, and Margarita Machado-Casas, eds. 2013. The Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education; Special Issue: Book Banning, Censorship, and Ethnic Studies in Urban Schools 45(1). Villanueva Toscano, Silvia. 2013. “Teaching as a Healing Craft: Decolonizing the Classroom and Creating Spaces of Hopeful Resistance through ChicanoIndigenous Pedagogical Praxis.” The Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education; Special Issue: Book Banning, Censorship, and Ethnic Studies in Urban Schools 45(1): 23–40. Villanueva Toscano, Silvia, and Heidi Coronado. N.d. “Restoring our Sacred Balance.” Unpublished article. Yosso, Tara, and Daniel Solorzano. 2006. “Leaks in the Chicana and Chicano Educational Pipeline.” UCLA Chiano Studies Research Center: Latino Policy and Issues Brief 13: 1–4. Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement Manifesto, 2nd ed. 2014. https://www.facebook .com/Xicanao-Pop-Up-Book-Movement-565796656834843/.

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Struggle in the Mud: Stockton, Ethnic Studies, and Community Engagement: An Autoethnography Motecuzoma Sanchez

The old saying goes that the more things change the more they stay the same. Much has changed in our society over recent decades in regard to social justice and civil rights. Certainly we can cite legislation, adjustments in social mores, examples of cultural icons, and so forth. But when we examine the current statistics and contemporary challenges, we must ask ourselves, how far have we really come? Our nation, its institutions and societal norms (as measured by statistical outcomes), is still very much predicated on the notion of race, class, and gender. Institutional racism remains pervasive, even if it’s not as visible as in the past. It’s almost become invisible, like a silent killer that uses its various outlets and avenues to propagate and reinforce itself. It’s not always easily seen, like a virus that hides in the body of the collective, only revealing itself to its victims. The antidote to this begins with the knowledge that it exists and how it operates. Like a doctor or chemist developing a cure, we must understand how the virus works. Sociology is one of those fields that studies the virus, if you will. It informs us how the virus works, how to look for it, and its effect on its victims. But Ethnic Studies goes further than that. Ethnic Studies is more than an interdisciplinary field of study, it is a mandate for informed social action. As an Ethnic Studies practitioner it is my antidote and my sword in today’s culture wars for social and economic justice. This chapter explores the role Ethnic Studies praxis and epistemologies can play to inform, organize, and activate communities to address the current realities and racially oppressive systemic paradigms that permeate American society, particularly in Stockton, California, one of the nation’s most ethnically diverse cities (Anderson 2012). Despite being one of the nation’s most diverse communities, Stockton serves as a case study for how repressive

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systems that devalue historical minorities use local government through the dominance of the political system to control resources and further the role of today’s culture wars to maintain control of power. I define the role that Ethnic Studies critical pedagogy and epistemologies plays in civic engagement and community organizing to inform public policy and address social and political inequities by exploring the roots and mission of Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline. The second part of the chapter explores the historical, social, and political context of continued oppression in the city of Stockton, California, and how Ethnic Studies can inform us as culture warriors and scholars to use the discipline to better understand issues and challenges as well as how to use that knowledge to develop strategies to address those oppressive conditions and systemic functions that produce negative social outcomes for ethnic minorities and the poor. The third part of the chapter focuses on a case study for Ethnic Studies praxis in action with the battle to reopen a public library in a primarily Mexican neighborhood in east Stockton. I conclude the chapter with the results of community’s action to reopen the library as informed by Ethnic Studies critical pedagogy and epistemologies and speak to the implications for the continued and increased need for Ethnic Studies as praxis to empower our communities.

THE ROLE OF ETHNIC STUDIES Unlike sociology, the major premise of Ethnic Studies is that it is not simply enough to know about society’s conditions and their causes. Once you are aware and can identify and define the problem, the next logical step, like a doctor with a vaccine or antidote, is to act in order to change the problem. Ethnic Studies, from its roots in the Third World People’s Revolution, was born in action. Cati V. de los Rios et al. (2015) note that Ethnic Studies—which was first identified as “Third World Studies” and changed at the moment of its institutionalization—emerged from a swiftly flowing confluence of revolutionary work and theorizing in the late 1960s. The Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) coalition, formed at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley, was inspired by the anticolonial, antiracist strivings of the majority of humankind in what W.E.B. Du Bois memorably termed “the problem of the twentieth century.” (86) It is then imperative that this tradition and mandate continue as praxis of critical pedagogy and Ethnic Studies:

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Critical pedagogy is an educational process that engages members of historically underserved groups in humane and problem-posing dialogue to name and ultimately transform oppressive social and structural conditions within schools and the larger society (Freire 1970).  .  .  . Critical pedagogy is committed to democratizing power and access through collective action that involves those who have been muted, disregarded, or even worse, targeted as objects of scorn, hate, or rejection (McLaren 1994). Critical pedagogy is a belief in the potential of everyday people to function as catalysts of change; it is a dialogic and mutually constitutive process between educators and students that develops skills, sensibilities, and identities; and it holds the promise to become one of the most relevant and revolutionary tools in urban education today (DuncanAndrade and Morrell 2008). While critical pedagogy has much to offer, it lacks an explicit attention to race and racial relations that is at the center of Ethnic Studies. (de los Rios, Lopez, & Morell 2015, 86) One must take what they learn in the discipline and apply it to real world problems and issues as exemplified in the mission and purpose statement of San Francisco State’s Ethnic Studies department: In our teaching, scholarship, and creative work, we specifically analyze structural forms of oppression and address the intersections of race, ethnicity, with other forms of identity and social status. We additionally affirm comparative and trans-disciplinary approaches to national and diasporic questions. The College of Ethnic Studies aims to actively implement a vision of social justice focusing on eliminating inequalities motivated by race and ethnicity. Therefore our teaching, encouragement, and mentoring of students and student organizations have the goal of developing long-term leadership skills, knowledge of self, and collaborative activist abilities for those working within and between communities of color and indigenous peoples.1 And there is no shortage of opportunities to operate in the field of today’s political, social, and cultural environment. There is no greater field of battle than the nexus of the local community, local government, and control of resources. Pedagogy must translate into practical application. Otherwise it is useless. While we may receive our degrees from institutions of higher learning, we must recognize that the true classroom is the community. The streets. El barrio. The true measure of our pedagogy and epistemologies is the effectiveness they have in the community and the ability to empower those communities to address the issues facing them. As an undergraduate student of Ethnic Studies and a graduate student of Public Policy/Administration via

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the Capitol Fellowship working in the State Assembly through Sacramento State, I learned the valuable discipline of how to do research. I also learned how to take that research, which may include empirical studies, statistics, historical ethnography, oral research etc.; analysis and presentation; and informed practical application through community engagement and outreach as praxis to address real issues and inform policy in my community. Ethnic Studies is a discipline that provides the pedagogy and tools to address the very issues and realities studied in an academic setting as they pertain to society. The community in this relationship becomes the lab of the practitioner. Indeed I think every student, teacher, practitioner, or culture warrior can agree that their awareness was most likely born in the lab of a community plagued by the social ills that are so disparately found in Brown and Black communities today and historically. That lab for me has been Stockton, California, my hometown, where I was born and raised and am now raising my family.

STOCKTON: HISTORICAL BACKDROP I have become accustomed to comparing my hometown to a Petri dish where all of the social ills so prevalent in our society can be found in abundance. Stockton, like so many cities in the “golden state” of progress, has a long history of social and racial inequality as enforced by housing and educational segregation. The thirteenth largest city in California and sixty-fourth in the nation, Stockton was founded with a Mexican land grant and born in the fire of the Mexican American war, as evidenced by its namesake—Robert F. Stockton—a commodore in the U.S. Navy who helped take California from Mexican control.2 This baptism by Manifest Destiny was solidified with the Gold Rush of 1849, setting the paradigm for generations to come. The paradigm set was that overnight Stockton (nicknamed Mudville, because it is a port city and is connected to the delta and it flooded regularly) would become a multicultural place of opportunity and opportunism (Gendzel 2009). Men of risk and desperation from all over the world, including Mexicans and indigenous Miwok and Yokuts, would try their luck at striking it rich. In reality the ones who controlled the business class, supply, and transportation markets would be the ones who got rich, many times off the misfortunes of the others. This environment was fostered by a system of opportunism and exploitation, as exasperated tense relationships between ethnic groups, primarily with native Mexicans who were not only on the losing end of a major war, but now inundated with foreigners, and Anglos, who looked to “get theirs by any means.”3 These tensions would spark racial violence and discriminatory laws rigging the system against now ethnic minorities, such as Mexicans, giving rise to legendary folk heroes of the time, such as Joaquin

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Murrieta, who mounted a physical and violent resistance to the new white power structure and became known as the “Robin Hood of El Dorado” (“Review” 2000). This parallel could be drawn generations later during the city’s second gold rush—agriculture. Once again men would be brought in from around the world, but this time primarily the Philippines (as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act and Gentlemen’s Agreement barring the immigration of Chinese and Japanese men) (Gendzel, 2009). Filipinos (aka Pinoy) were the acceptable alternative since the Philippines became U.S. territory as a result of the Spanish American War in the early twentieth century (Mabalon et al. 2008). Poor whites (aka Okies and Arkies) escaping the Dust Bowl of the Midwest and Mexicans during World War II as a result of the Bracero Program agreement with the Mexican government also were used to fill the labor shortage on the home front. Martin (2003) states that the decision to use Mexican labor was a reluctant one, “A Chamber of Commerce spokesperson summed up these arguments in testimony to Congress in 1926: ‘We, gentlemen, are just as anxious as you are not to build the civilization of California or any other western district upon a Mexican foundation. We take him because there is nothing else available.’ ” The profits made from the agricultural industry, still the largest in the city, would then be used to invest in the third gold rush—real estate. Taking advantage of the economic reality some economists noted that farmers . . . wanted immigration to continue and farm wages to remain low to protect the value of land—land that “had been capitalized on the basis of five decades of cheap labor.” High land prices, they concluded, could be maintained only with the “continued availability of Mexican labor.” When urged to pay higher wages to attract US workers, some farmers countered that California agriculture could afford to pay workers when they were needed, and that if “we should be forced to maintain our [farm] labor when it is idle we would be forced out of business.” In the spring of 1942, California farmers predicted that there would be labor shortages for the fall harvest, and they called for the importation of between 40,000 and 100,000 Mexican farm workers. Reformers who were hoping to use the Grapes of Wrath to bring about fundamental reforms in farm structure and the farm labor market complained that there was no shortage of workers, only a repeat of “the age-old obsession of all farmers for a surplus labor supply.” (Martin 2003) Originally farmlands, whole swaths of land would be bought up in northern Stockton and developed for housing and schools primarily for white families. During all three of these phases the system would be rigged along racial lines

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and enforced by legislation and social, cultural, and political enforcement (i.e., zoning laws and restrictive covenants barring nonwhites from owning or renting a home or business north of certain streets) creating de facto segregated schools and neighborhoods whose disparate outcomes can easily be compared today to the northern area of the city (Ramos 2001). These social health outcome indicators can be seen in the disparate graduation and education rates, poverty rates, median incomes, crime rates, unemployment rates, median home values and ownership, insurance coverage, and even life expectancies (Sanchez 2013). In fact there is a twenty-one-year difference in life expectancies between two zip codes adjacent to each other, one in the north, and the other in the south.4 Essentially the past practices of racial segregation, housing discrimination, economic disinvestment, unequal access to resources, and voting practices that disenfranchised people based on ethnicity and class have created the present conditions in Stockton. These practices were not only institutionalized, but were ingrained in many ways in the minds and attitudes of the dominant group. Attitudes and cultural perceptions and biases do not change overnight because a law does; their effects still linger as evidenced by the way certain communities are valued (or not), resources are allocated, and needs are prioritized. Part of the mandate and duty of Ethnic Studies is that after researching these problems, we must address them and organize the community to become aware of the severity of the problems and then to understand not only how they manifest themselves, but how they are perpetuated year after year, generation after generation. This is where community engagement and organization become key because while everyone who lives in the affected areas or are a part of the affected groups can see the realities, they do not necessarily understand the social, cultural, and political forces that create and enforce them. Ethnic Studies empowers by not only educating the affected groups and general public at large, but by organizing an actionable response that the community can respond to and facilitate change. This is where the challenge lies; research and study are the easy parts of this equation. To create a nexus between pedagogy, epistemology, and praxis is what is needed to move the needle and create change. This activity must be strategic and one of the areas where community activists informed by Ethnic Studies pedagogy can be effective is in the realm of political empowerment and action.

STOCKTON: POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you. Pericles

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If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake. —Mahatma Gandhi Political engagement is a high priority because politics is the vehicle that creates, enacts, and enforces the public policies, laws, and structural paradigms that in turn foster and reinforce the social outcomes so prevalent in our communities, affecting marginalized ones disproportionally. Politics is the arena in which these decisions are made and therefore must be actively engaged. In California, where Mexicans have become the largest single ethnic group in the population (40%) they are still far behind in political participation and only constitute 19% of the electorate.5 Based on my experience in Stockton this reality is no different. Mexicans comprise the largest ethnic group in the city and they appear to have almost nonexistent representation in local government from the council to the commissions and committees that make decisions that affect their communities. This also appears to be reflected in the demographics of city staff from the city manager to department heads. For instance, the Stockton Police Department is 69% white, while non-Hispanic whites comprise only 23% of the city’s population (U.S. Census 2010).6 Mexicans and Latinos comprise 40% of the population (Mexicans are 36% overall), but are only 16% of the police department (Sanchez 2013). At almost every level of decision making Chicanos and Latinos are absent from the process. Looking at the data we can draw the conclusion that the reason historical minority groups are not represented is the direct result of their lack of participation. This data, however, can be misleading without knowledge of the past and the power structure that perpetuates this system and is reflected in the numbers and results. Historically one of the policies initiated to consolidate control into the hands of the wealthy in particular and the white community in general is the election process itself. This is true in many cities throughout California, especially the Central Valley, which historically has operated like a grand plantation system where the ethnic groups provide the manual labor workforce that sustains the agricultural industry. These workers are barred from reaping the fruits of their labor and sharing in the success; instead the profits and benefits go primarily to the wealthy owners, who are primarily white. Historically, there has been not only a distinct division in shares of the wealth, but also in living spaces, public spaces, and social structures in general. These divisions were reinforced by those who had political control and, in Stockton, like many other cities, those who voted decided who would represent them at the district level, which was decided by the city at large (Sanchez 2013).

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This practice, in direct violation of the California Voting Rights Act, favors the wealthy who have the resources to give money to candidates. Under this model these candidates have a greater advantage and are more reliant on wealthy funders and interest groups (De Burgh & Cole 2015). In Stockton this was changed to remove the longest-serving councilman in Stockton history, Ralph White, and is openly referred to as the Ralph White Rule (Sanchez 2013). White was elected four times and served for sixteen years as a Black council member representing the south side of the city, which was and remains a primarily minority area. Once the change to at-large voting was instituted and districts were decreased from nine to six, which also increased the size of the districts, he was never again able to win an election. While it is feasible for a grassroots candidate in tune with the needs of the community to mount a campaign in the geographical region of their district, which takes place during the primary, it becomes almost impossible to do the same over the entire city, which the top two vote getters from the primary are forced to do. This is equivalent to a mayoral race, only unlike the mayor’s position, city council members are part time without benefits. Now instead of one candidate running a citywide race for mayor, district candidates are also forced to cover the same geographical electorate giving the strategic advantage to those with the money and resources to do so, allowing political machines, like real estate developers, to pool their resources by running their endorsed candidates as a slate. Also, under this model people who live on the opposite side of town and who may have no relation to the issues affecting the districts candidates are running for now have the power to decide who should represent that area. In some instances candidates who were the top vote getter in the primary for their district have lost citywide in the general election, just as Chris Eley did in 2008, violating and nullifying the wishes of the voters in that district. The results appear to be candidates who are beholden to wealthy real estate developers who can raise money and consolidate resources for citywide races. These candidates, at least in perception if not reality, then vote in ways favorable to their business dealings and cultural and social norms. They are recruited and developed by these business entities to run in each district, which were also gerrymandered to allow someone not from the lower income, more concentrated ethnic minority areas to represent them without having to live among them in their neighborhoods. Sometimes ethnic minorities from those areas are groomed and supported so long as they remain loyal to the agendas of the gatekeepers. This leads to a false sense of representation among residents in those minority districts and translates into outcomes experienced by the community at large (Sanchez 2013). The solution to this problem has recently been the focus of the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund (MALDEF) and the California state

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chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) as well as other groups. Their tactic has been the threat of a lawsuit followed by an actual lawsuit for cities who fail to comply (Hulett 2015). Recently this tactic has proven successful with multiple cities in the state, including Modesto, Ceres, Palmdale, Bellflower, Compton, Anaheim, Escondido, Whittier, Santa Clarita, Merced, Turlock, Los Banos, Fullerton, Highland, Riverbank, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Visalia, that have acquiesced to the demands or been sued to alter their discriminatory voting practices of at-large voting for district representation (De Burgh & Cole 2015). In March 2015 I was able to work with Michael Orosco of United Latinos to help him successfully advocate for the inclusion of Stockton on a list of cities LULAC would submit to MALDEF to target for their voting practices.

IN THE MARGINS Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today. —Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary (1970) In today’s culture wars and struggle for social and economic justice, while the display of its reality has changed, the challenges remain in many ways exactly the same. The manifestations have changed, but the results are the same. The structure is organized in a way to protect and propagate itself, even if its outward appearance is camouflaged. Today there are no restrictive racial covenants preventing nonwhites from moving into neighborhoods or signs hanging up that warn “Positively No Filipinos Allowed” (Tiongson et al. 2006). Yet in many ways conditions have worsened for those targeted groups. In Stockton, which has the second highest crime rate in California and perennially one of the highest in the nation, 92% of all homicide victims and perpetrators are Mexican/Latino, Black, or Asian (California Partnership for Safe Communities 2013). Twenty-five percent of the city lives below the poverty line, but in neighborhoods that are predominantly Mexican or Black that number rises over 40%.7 The unemployment rate is sometimes double that of the state’s and triple that of the nation’s at 18–20%, but in areas like south and east Stockton there are neighborhoods where it is higher than 50%. Despite having several colleges and the oldest university on the West Coast, University of the Pacific, only 15.8% of the population has a college degree. The national average is 32% and California’s average is 36%.8 When race, class, and location are factored in, the data show those numbers are

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consistently worse in the areas that are majority-minority as shaped by generations of public policy and private practice. The city, county, and even state levels of government can claim dissociation from the various factors that plague these communities even when it is their policies or failure to act that may foster them. This systematic operation of bureaucratic and cultural neglect translates into the reciprocating cycle of producing more of the unhealthy outcomes and poor social welfare indicators. And when attention is given to the issues, it seems that those usually informing those decisions are those whose government agencies or interest groups (i.e., police associations) benefit from those decisions. For example, the solution to Stockton’s high crime rates seems to always be “we need more cops” and “cops need raises,” which benefits the members of that agency and police association while failing to commit resources to strategically address the causal factors such as poverty, low educational attainment, substance abuse, mental health, and so forth. However, one facet they cannot separate themselves from, in particular, is the library system. The city controls the libraries and with Stockton consistently ranking poor in national literacy measures, one would think a higher priority would be placed on the increased operation of these libraries.9 Instead one library in Stockton in particular has become a battleground with implications concerning social justice and ethnic equity.

Fair Oaks Public Library In 2010 amid severe budget cuts brought on by the great recession, bad investments by city hall, such as a new arena and a foreclosure crisis (Stockton had the highest rates of foreclosure in the nation), the Fair Oaks Public Library was shuttered. This library was selected for closure as part of a 43% reduction in nonemergency services and staff because it was the weakest link because it did not have any financial penalties like grants associated with it (Sanchez 2015). According to a city staff member, it was also not linked to any other agency, such as a school district like another library was, or state grants that helped fund their construction and would need to be repaid if closed under a certain time frame, nor was it the library with the highest rate of usage in the city (John Alita, personal interview, October 2014). In 2012 Stockton became the largest city in U.S. history (before Detroit a year later) to declare bankruptcy. The police and fire departments, which make up the collective public safety and constitute 80% of the city’s budget, also experienced cuts, and many officers, unhappy with their reduction in pay, jumped ship for other cities (Smith 2012). With 60% of all Stockton police officers not actually living in Stockton, it was no surprise (Sanchez 2013). During this same time, 2011–12, the city would see an increase in crime breaking a twenty-year record for homicides and setting a new one the

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year after that. These cuts would be felt all over the city, but were exacerbated in the already underserved sectors like east and south Stockton (Sanchez 2013). Voters would pass a tax in a low voter turnout as a result of this dire situation in 2013. In this election, 21% of registered voters voted to raise the sales tax 1% making it among the highest in the state (Marcum 2013). Measure A authorized the tax increase for the promise of hiring more police officers and Measure B complemented that by promising an oversight committee to ensure that no less than 65% of the revenues would be used for hiring new officers and the remaining 35% would go toward “debt services” associated with the bankruptcy and restoration of other services cut, such as libraries.10 In a clear ode to the distrust of city hall and Stockton politicians by voters, Measure B would receive 1,500 more votes than Measure A (Smith 2013). With this new tax bringing in $27–28 million dollars in revenue a year,11 and Stockton’s bankruptcy plan approved in court, the logical conclusion was that services such as libraries would be restored along with additional police personnel hired and other services returned. Education advocates such as myself figured it would only be a matter of time until the shuttered library located in east Stockton would be reopened. East Stockton demographically is primarily Chicanos, Latinos, heavily immigrant, African Americans, and poor whites. The city itself acknowledged that 61% of the area was primarily Spanish-speaking households (Alita 2015). And yet, when I and others inquired about plans for its reopening we were met with excuses, delays, and “alternatives.” In 2013 I founded a program that I’ve developed into an organization called Scholastic Educational Movement in Language Literacy and Scholarship (SEMILLAS) to promote literacy and education, especially among gente from these underserved and historically disenfranchised areas. As the director of SEMILLAS, I recruited a core group of ten volunteers, which included educators, college students, and community activists to help improve the educational outcomes in Stockton through literacy. In April 2014 we met to develop a strategic plan and identified community resources as a major initiative we would address. The most pressing need identified was returning the library to the east side to address a great resource deficiency. Using my Ethnic Studies research background and critical pedagogy we developed a strategy to reopen Fair Oaks. This began with political engagement—meeting with stakeholders like the new library services director and city council members to lobby them with our position. Before this could occur we began to gather all available data on the library, including the unexpected fact that the closed building was up for sale for a fraction of the price of what it would cost to build a new one. This informed our position as well as gave us a direction for inquiry with city hall. It also signaled that the city had no intention of ever reopening the library, which was originally closed due to a temporary economic recession. It was

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apparent they were attempting to create a permanent solution for what we thought was a temporary problem. We immediately suspected it was because of the lack of value placed on the residents of that area by the power structure and their representatives (i.e., city hall/council). This assumption, based on historical precedence and Ethnic/Chicano Studies epistemologies, directed our overall strategy and tactics. Our SEMILLAS members knew that if diplomacy failed we would have to wage a more intensive public campaign. We tried to avoid that campaign by presenting direct requests. We launched an online petition on Change.org and began sharing it on social media. While lobbying for the reopening of the library, we found an ally in the council member for the district in which Fair Oaks was located: Christina Fugazi, a white woman whose family was one of the original immigrants to the city. Fugazi, who is also a grade school teacher working primarily with ethnic minority students, is passionate about education and understands some of the problems faced by residents of the city as informed through her students’ experiences. Where she lived in the city also made her a natural advocate for our cause. Levering her position on the council we were able to amplify our concern that the building was up for sale and began to create public pressure and buzz, taking our battle to both the streets and the “air waves.” Our first victory came when the city manager, who would become the main obstacle to our cause, was forced to remove the building from the surplus for sale list. He also, however, vowed that it would be a temporary move. While we counted this as a victory, we knew the fight was far from over. The library was still closed and now the city manager was against us, so we needed to identify his strategy in order to counter it. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power. We discovered that his strategy would be cloaked in fiscal responsibility by his use of associative buzzwords such as “bankruptcy.” He meant to ellicit a subliminal response and neutralize our position to the community that was now growing in its support for the return of Fair Oaks Library. This took us to the next phase, which was to gather data and research and tailor our strategy to counter that of the city manager’s. We immediately requested financial information. We wanted to know the operating costs of the library prior to its closure, as well as the operating costs of the other libraries with reduced hours initiated during the budget cuts, so we could create a proposal for Fair Oaks’ funding in the budget. We expected a sure victory based on broad public support and the expected value of education and literacy services that a library can provide, especially in an area with so much need. We felt confident with the demographic and social makeup of the council to support our cause. The reality would be the opposite, with the majority of the council following the lead of the city manager against reopening the library. The city staff’s response would be to fail to deliver the requested financial data and operating costs. Prepared for this, in May and June,

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leading up to the budget vote, we organized free book giveaways in front of the shuttered library to raise awareness in the community, used the local media, and shared resources with children in the neighborhood. I educated our volunteer base using Ethnic Studies critical pedagogy and praxis to understand the greater importance of the library to the community beyond a physical building. The volunteers in turn were able to communicate organically to the local community, as well as learn from them what specific concerns they had in order to add to our depth of knowledge and to fine-tune our approach in regard to city hall and the city at large. The vanguard for these actions would consist of SEMILLAS members and community activists, along with their children and volunteers from the East Side. In the 100-degree heat of a Central Valley summer, activists would canvas the East Side knocking on doors to educate citizens about the effort to reopen the library and collect signatures for our petition. Support from the community, across all ethnic and class boundaries, was unanimous from veterano cholos and retired African Americans to Spanish-speaking field workers and gang-affiliated youngsters and working-class whites. Kids who were wary of something positive happening in their neighborhood would leave and come back with their friends and cousins on bikes after we explained to them the books were free and we were trying to help them get their library back. Adults drove up to see what was going on and children stepped up with their own initiative to explain the cause and get signatures for the petition. We were engaging the community and the community was responding. These children and activists carried signs proclaiming “We Deserve Books Too,” “More Books Less Bullets,” “Where’s the $$$$?,” and “We Want Our Library Back.” On the day of the budget session at city hall, May 27, we relocated to city hall and addressed the council during public comments. It was a beautiful sight to witness the children unscripted and unrehearsed step up and give impassioned speeches about why reading was so important to them and their community, as well as why the city should support reopening the library. Scenes like that bring a kind of joy that remind and rekindle the fire in community activists with hope and pride and reassurance that our cause is just and necessary, especially in a city such as Stockton where control is repressive and genuine community advocates are far and few between. Too often there are advocates and nonprofits whose intentions are more about self-inurement than community transformation. After public comments, it would go to discussion of the council members. During this interaction it was made clear that the majority of the council, following the lead of the city manager, would not be in support, citing concerns of “fiscal responsibility.” They also used the fear tactic by insinuating that the reopening of the library would somehow force the city back into bankruptcy. The new director of library services presented his “skewed fiscal projections”

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to the council under the direction of the city manager and offered the possibility of an “alternative,” which was to use a room in a nearby community center as the library. As someone educated in Ethnic Studies and political science, debate, marketing, and campaigning, it was plain as day to me to see the tactics being employed to shoot down the reopening of the library. The reopening of Fair Oaks was being rejected, not outright, since that would be a bad political move, but with a diversionary alternative. Rather than say “no” to a community that needed to get their library back postbankruptcy, the recreational community center, Stribley, a mile away from Fair Oaks Library, was substituted in lieu of a “21st century contemporary library.” This was not an acceptable alternative for us, as the site was a fraction of the size of the shuttered library. In our assessment, even reopening the library full-time was not sufficient to meet the great need. Fair Oaks Library was instead shelved pending further “study,” although no specifics were given as to what exactly was to be studied and by whom.

A RESOURCE DEFERRED, A COMMUNITY DEVALUED The movement to reopen the library did not end with the selection of an alternative center. In fact, as a result of our intense pressure and public demonstrations and letters to the editor published in the local newspaper, $150,000 was allocated for the renovation of the shuttered building where Fair Oaks was located. The amount being allocated to set up Stribley for use as a library was $217,000. The original projected cost of operation for Fair Oaks at full capacity was $700,000 and $545,000 for operating part-time at twenty-five hours a week (the level created as a result of budget cuts during the recession). We advocated for the twenty-five-hour level as a compromise thinking it would increase our chance of success. The argument was being made by the city that the reopening of the library, as presented in a thirty-year budget projection, was expected to force the city back into bankruptcy. The reality was that the $545,000 to operate the library part-time made up less than one-tenth of 1% of the city’s $605 million dollar budget.12 To us it was an obscene comparison and a false association. I created a document using Ethnic Studies epistemologies and research called “The Case to Re-Open Fair Oaks Public Library in Stockton, CA,” which was also an assignment for my graduate program at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. It just so happened that my professor for the class was California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr who also signed on to support the library, writing a letter to the current state librarian. I compiled demographic data for the East Side area in comparison to the rest of the city, suspecting that the real cause for the opposition to Fair Oaks

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was not financial, but social and cultural. The differences were stark, and understanding the implementation of the city’s anticrime efforts, including a version of Operation Ceasefire, an antiviolence initiative originally implemented in Boston to address gun violence, and national research supported by the Department of Justice showing a strong correlation between low literacy and higher crime and incarceration rates (Sanchez 2015), the strategy refocused to incorporate this information into the revised argument. Ned Leiba, a certified public accountant and member of the Measure A oversight committee, also began offering his assistance with the research of the city budget. It turned out that the city manager was failing to offer updated budget information and in fact the city council was being presented with and voting on numbers that had not been updated for six months or two fiscal quarters since the previous year. The city council claimed concern over fiscal responsibility despite a $32,000,000 surplus, which Leiba (2015) said in reality should be between $50–70 million once the updated numbers were presented. Regardless of the true amount, one thing was certain for us, it was apparent that this was an issue of priorities. Further substantiating this theory was the fact that the city council in subsequent weeks would approve in the budget an additional $500,000 to subsidize the Stockton Arena, which had played a major role in the city declaring bankruptcy. This was an increase to the additional $3 million subsidy from the previous year. SMG, the managing company from Chicago, not only requested more funding, but they even lowered their output with fewer events planned for the arena than the previous year. Also coming up on the agenda was a vote approving $900,000 a year for ten years to real estate developers for superficial improvements to the dilapidated downtown area. That same $900,000 or $9 million dollars over ten years would fund the operation of the library for seventeen years (Phillips 2015). The battle for Fair Oaks is a perfect example of today’s culture wars and the continued need for Ethnic Studies praxis and critical pedagogy in academia and within the community. What should have been a viable solution became an all-out battle. In today’s culture wars no one comes straight out and says, “We don’t care about poor brown people”; instead they produce false arguments without providing any concrete evidence while placing the burden on community advocates and citizens to prove their justification for their requests. As city manager Wilson (2015) stated in his memo to the city council regarding the library, “If the advocates are able to bring their funding concept to fruition it would be a boost for everyone.” We had no say in its closing, but the burden was on us, the community and academia, to figure out the details and do the jobs politicians are paid to do by taxpayers. While we were not able to reopen Fair Oaks in the immediate time frame, our actions certainly accomplished raising awareness in both the East Side

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neighborhood and the city at large. We were able to inspire community members hungry for change to action and prove to them that there are people who do care, and that they do have power. This power was realized in the fact that we were able to create change through organized action. While the Fair Oaks Public Library had been closed for five years with the promise that the Stribley Community Center would take the books and offer library services, this has yet to be realized. Hardly anyone beyond the neighborhood even remembered there was a library on the East Side let alone had it at the top of their priority list; however, we were able to get committed library resources to the area in just a few short months of activism and advocacy. We were able to use Ethnic Studies critical pedagogy and epistemologies to activate community members to engage their local government, which was something most of them had never done or knew they could do. Using Ethnic Studies critical pedagogy, these community members and school age children were able to collaborate, participate, and take charge of their reality by actively engaging in praxis to bring about change. Those collective actions, engagement, and advocacy forced city hall to offer an alternative to the full library at Stribley, allocating resources to a new endeavor with new books, computers, iPads, a 3D printer, and programs, such as bilingual story time for families in an area of town that is usually overlooked and where the original library was put up for sale with no plan of replacement. The result was that we were responsible for resources now being allocated to a disenfranchised community. An alternative victory, but a victory nonetheless. But, the fight did not end there. We shifted into “plan D” and kept orga­ nizing. Every time an expenditure was approved by the city council we were there to not only question it, but criticize the financial excuse they were using to justify not allocating the money for Fair Oaks. We kept up the pressure by becoming a bane to their existence. We even protested one of the council members at a local Starbucks coffee shop where she regularly hosted her “office hours” for constituents. She was met with protest signs, which drew honks from passing cars. She was characterized as only caring about the rich in her neighborhood; for instance, one protest sign was in the shape of a spoon wrapped in foil to signify her “silver spoon” existence and decision to not support the reopening of the library. She was questioned one-on-one about her vote and was asked to justify it. In an election year with three of the council members who voted against the library running for re-election, we used this to spread the word of their vote. This was effective because of the widespread support for the reopening of the library in the community. We not only kept the issue fresh and relevant, but also turned it into a campaign issue calling into question the validity of any candidate who voted against or refused to support our cause to advance literacy and education in Stockton.

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We continued to gather signatures for our petition with the help of our ally organization, the Mexican American Human Rights Organization, led by former city councilman Ted Gonzalez and Native American activist Steven Bojorques. The pressure did not stop and our numbers grew. We began to attend Measure A Oversight Committee meetings calling for them to honor the promise made to voters to hire more police officers and “restore services cut such as libraries.” On this committee were two new candidates (the chair and vice chair), who were running for office against the incumbents. As we maintained our constant campaign of accountability, the tide began to turn. In December 2015, six months after the reopening of Fair Oaks was rejected, the city announced an $8.5 million surplus available for “one-time expenditures.” On the agenda were many items, including a police helicopter, which was scrapped a few years prior because of costs, and a report on Fair Oaks with three alternatives including the opening of a library on the north side of Stockton. This report was prompted by my request to city staff about the lack of progress for the building’s renovation approved six months prior. Mobilizing our network, we turned out to city hall and again called into question the logic and hypocrisy of approving other expenditures while neglecting the library. Using research skills learned in my Ethnic Studies courses from Sacramento State and public finance learned from my MPA program at USC, I created a two-page fact sheet countering the city staff’s alternative recommendations. The greatest change I noticed was that amid such a large spending proposal, the city manager and staff had abandoned the argument that reopening the library was “fiscally imprudent.” We called for a rejection of opening any new library before reopening Fair Oaks citing the Grand Jury report, which stated that the city government was systematically neglecting south and east Stockton. We also saw a lot of new faces turn out to address the issue and to back our position. With the stage set, and much to our surprise, the mayor made the motion, backed by our elected champion Councilwoman Christina Fugazi. The council voted 5–2 to allocate funds to reopen Fair Oaks. Finally!

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE: LA LUCHA CONTINUA No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed The social ills and challenges that affect our communities today are not much different than what they were two generations ago. Schools are no longer

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segregated de jure, but they still are de facto. High schools may not set ethnic minority students on educational tracks that lead them toward menial and physical labor jobs like in the past, but if a student is so overwhelmed by their environment and underwhelmed by access to resources, the outcome of their economic options may be the same. There are no laws restricting us from voting (i.e., poll taxes or literacy tests), but our political representation remains abysmal even when we are the majority of the population. The effects and practices of institutional racism and bias, both explicit and implicit, still permeate so many aspects of life in Stockton. Stockton, while serving as a profound case study, is no different from cities across the United States and especially the Central Valley of California where its impoverished reality stands in stark contrast to the realities found in Silicon Valley and gentrified hubs like San Francisco and increasingly Los Angeles. Like a colonial plantation system, we provide the labor while the wealthy few reap the rewards. We live adjacent, but not part of, with disparate realities more akin to separate nations, realities, rules, and outcomes. Ethnic Studies informs us that history is a continuum, policy decisions aren’t made in a vacuum, and governance is not always in the best interests of all governed, especially when race, class, and gender converge. These factors have had long-ranging consequences for our communities. For those of us who have the talent, discipline, dedication, and sometimes luck to escape the traps so prevalent in many of our communities, we bear a responsibility to struggle against those systemic roots that so often produce these consequences. For Ethnic Studies scholars and culture warriors, it is our responsibility to be that vanguard whose mission is to educate and empower our gente/people. The nexus between critical pedagogy and Ethnic Studies epistemologies provides us with the effective praxis to create social and institutional change. Public policy in itself falls short of addressing the needs of our communities whether by default or by “colorblind” design. Ethnic Studies epistemologies have immense value in filling those gaps and informing policy makers as well as the community at large. And where that fails, organizing and activism is required. My struggle for the welfare and future of my community continues. As I develop more skills and acquire more knowledge and education, the effectiveness by which I can serve the community increases as well. This is a mission that affects everyone, but not everyone is so readily aware. Nevertheless my efforts continue to recruit, educate, and develop more community members passionate for change, and they in turn will be “the change they seek” and become leaders themselves. Our mission to affect change in our community begins at the grassroots level as we rise up to confront an oppressive and failed status quo that is unacceptable to us. We will continue to fight greater concerns, such as low educational attainment, by being strategic and focusing

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on things we have the capacity to address, such as literacy and reading. We will not be quieted and will continue to devise strategies that ultimately will empower the community to make decisions for themselves, while holding accountable those currently in positions of power to do so. We should not be satisfied with false appeasement and “alternatives.” While we succeeded in getting resources allocated for Stribley Community Center and the commitment by the city to reopen Fair Oaks, we will not only continue to ensure they honor that commitment, but will also push for an increase in allocated resources at both locations. We proved that an institutional impact is possible through informed and strategic action with a critical mass built through community empowerment. In less than a year, we went from the building being put for sale, the city manager being stoutly against our request, and a 5–2 city council vote against us to the city council removing the building from the surplus for sale list. As a result there was an allocation of funds to renovate the building, the community and media played a more active role, and a 5–2 vote in favor of reopening the library was accomplished. We fought city hall and won for the benefit of our community! The library is much more than a physical building that has books available for checkout. The library is a community resource, a resource that we envision as serving to meet local community needs. More than just books, it’s a place to acquire liberating knowledge so necessary to raise the educational levels and levels of expectation for a community and people downtrodden for generations. It’s a safe haven for children and elderly from the storm of crime and other stressors in the neighborhood. We envision it also as being a hub to offer needed services such as bilingual education, immigration resource services education, family engagement through literacy and community empowerment programs; job search and résumé building assistance; space for groups to collaborate and build community; a cultural center promoting education and arts; and resources for local residents to study for tests like the CBEST, SAT, GRE, and so forth. It’s also a civic symbol of equity. The battle for the Fair Oaks Public Library was never just about a physical building, it was and is about social justice and forcing the local government to recognize the value of a community neglected for too long. Residents in the impoverished, marginalized areas of Stockton and every other town, USA, also matter and deserve the same services that one might expect in other more affluent areas of the city. Fair Oaks Public Library is a symbol for justice and hope as well as a message that the disenfranchised will no longer accept crumbs, externally or internally. In conclusion, Stockton, California, serves as a case study for how repressive systems that devalue historical minorities, using local government through the dominance of the political system, to control resources to maintain control of power can be challenged as well as the need for further

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engagement. Ethnic Studies critical pedagogy and epistemologies can play a major role in civic engagement and community organizing to inform public policy and address social and political inequities by exploring the roots of the problems. This case study carries out the mission of Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline and fulfills the premise outlined in San Francisco State’s mission and purpose, “The College of Ethnic Studies provides safe academic spaces for all to learn the histories, cultures, and intellectual traditions of Native peoples and communities of color in the U.S. in the first-person and also practice theories of resistance and liberation to eliminate racism and other forms of oppression.”13 Stockton is but one city facing the continued effects of historical, social, and political oppression that converge to perpetuate a system of inequity. There are many more cities and communities that have these challenges in common and can therefore benefit from Ethnic Studies praxis. Ethnic Studies can inform us as culture warriors and scholar practitioners to use the discipline to better understand issues and challenges as well as how to use that knowledge to develop strategies that address and challenge those oppressive conditions and systemic functions and dysfunctions that produce negative social outcomes for marginalized ethnic groups. By using our academic skills as a warrior would a sword in today’s Ethnic Studies culture wars for equity and social justice we can forge the path to more educated and empowered communities. We can transform outcomes through informed praxis. We should not shy away from this, but confront it as a doctor would a debilitating virus developing antidotes with the power to inoculate future generations against becoming victims of the pervasive conditions that challenge our society today.

NOTES 1. College of Ethnic Studies, “Mission and Purpose,” San Francisco State University, August 24, 2015, http://ethnicstudies.sfsu.edu/home3. 2. “History: A Look into Stockton’s Past, Gold Discovery and Early Development,” Stocktongov.com, May 4, 2015, http://www.stocktongov.com/discover/his tory/hist.html. Stockton Fun Facts, History, Population,” Visit Stockton, http://www .visitstockton.org/about-us/fun-facts. 3. “The Gold Rush: California Transformed,” California State University Northridge, http://www.csun.edu/~sg4002/courses/417/readings/gold_rush.pdf. 4. “Place Matters for Health in the San Joaquin Valley: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All,” Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, March 2012. 5. University of California, Davis Center for Regional Change, “Changing Political Tides: Demographics and the Impact of the Rising Latino Vote.” The California Civic Engagement Project. Policy Brief Issue 6. May 2013, http://explore.regional change.ucdavis.edu/ourwork/publications/ccep/ucdavis-ccep-brief-6-impact-of-ca -latino-vote.

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6. U.S. Census 2010, “Stockton (city), California,” State & County Quick Facts, August 6, 2015, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0675000.html. 7. City-Data.com, “Stockton, CA,” Advameg, Inc. 2015, http://www.city-data .com/city/Stockton-California.html. 8. Ibid. 9. “The Five Least Literate Cities in America,” Time.com. February 25, 2014, http://time.com/9549/the-5-least-literate-cities-in-america/. 10. City of Stockton, “Measure A Background,” stocktongov.com, January 28, 2015, http://www.stocktongov.com/government/departments/manager/pubMeasureA .html. 11. City of Stockton, “Attachment A: General Fund Measure A and B FY 2014– 2015 2nd Quarter Report,” Annotated Agenda Measure A Citizen’s Advisory Committee, May 19, 2015, http://stockton.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php ?view_id=49&clip_id=5168. 12. City of Stockton, “City Council Agenda: Item 16.6, Legislation Text. File #15–1740, Version 1,” June 9, 2015. 13. College of Ethnic Studies, “Mission and Purpose,” San Francisco State University, August 24, 2015, http://ethnicstudies.sfsu.edu/home3.

REFERENCES Anderson, Jessica Cumberbatch. 2012. “Most and Least Diverse Cities: Brown University Study Evaluates Diversity in the U.S.” Huffington Post. November 19. http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/most-least-diverse-cities-brown-university -study_n_1865715.html. Alita, John. 2015, May 26. “Presentation to City Council.” Stockton City Council Budget Session. Stockton, CA. Video. http://stockton.granicus.com/MediaPlayer .php?view_id=48&clip_id=5177. California Partnership for Safe Communities. 2013, February. “Stockton Marshal Plan Symposium Presentation.” Stockton, CA. http://www.stocktongov.com /files/2013_2_08_MarshallPlan_Symposium_CAPartnershipSafeCommunities Powerpoint_24pages.pdf. City of Stockton. 2015, May 4. “History: A Look into Stockton’s Past, Gold Discovery and Early Development.” Stocktongov.com. http://www.stocktongov.com /discover/history/hist.html. De Burgh, Sean D., and Derek P. Cole, and Cota Cole, LLP. 2015. “The Voting Rights Act—Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going.” League of California Cities, City Attorney’s Department Spring Conference. https://www.cacities.org/Resources -Documents/Member-Engagement/Professional-Departments/City-Attorneys /Library/2015/2015-Spring-Conference/5–2015-Spring-Sean-De-Burgh-Derek -Cole-The-Voting.aspx. De los Rios, Cati V., Jorge Lopez, and Ernest Morell. 2015, January 8. “Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Race: Ethnic Studies and Literacies of Power in High School Classrooms.” New York: Springer Science+Business Media. http://www.academia .edu/6774804/Toward_a_Critical_Pedagogy_of_Race_Ethnic_Studies_and _Literacies_of_Power_in_High_School_Classrooms.

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Gendzel, Glen. 2009. “It Didn’t Start With Proposition 187: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Nativist Legislation in California.” Journal of the West 48. http://scholar works.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=hist_pub. Hulett, Denise. 2015, June 3. “Letter to Garden Grove regarding District Elections.” MALDEF. Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. 2012, March. “Place Matters for Health in the San Joaquin Valley: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All.” Fresnostate.edu. https://www.fresnostate.edu/chhs/cvhpi/documents/cvhpi -jointcenter-sanjoaquin.pdf. Leiba, Ned. 2015, June 3. “Money There to Re-open Fair Oaks Library.” Letter to the Editor, The Record. Mabalon, Dawn B., Rico Reyes, The Stockton Chapter, Filipino American National Historical Society, and The Little Manilla Foundation. 2008. Filipinos in Stockton. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Marcum, Diana. 2013, November 6. “Stockton Voters Approve New Tax Measure for Bankrupt City.” LA Times. Martin, Phillip. 2003. “Promise Unfulfilled: Unions, Immigration, and Farm Workers.” Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Phillips, Roger. 2015, June 24. “Contentiousness, Then Consensus.” The Record. Ramos, Christopher. 2001. “The Educational Legacy of Racially Restrictive Covenants: Their Long Term Impact on Mexican Americans.” 4 Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Minority Issues 149: 184, 159–66. “Review: Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush.” 2000. American Scholar 69(1): 142. Sanchez, Motecuzoma P. 2013. Mudville Harvest: The Untold Story of Stockton, California. Directed by Motecuzoma Sanchez. Stockton, CA: Independent. DVD. Sanchez, Motecuzoma P. 2015. “The Case to Re-open Fair Oaks Public Library in Stockton, Ca.” Sol Price School of Public Policy (Spring). Smith, Keith. 2013, November 6. “Fun With Numbers.” Political Science at University of the Pacific. https://pacificpoliticalscience.wordpress.com/tag/measure-a/. Smith, Scott. 2012, August 22. “Exodus Hits PD Hard.” The Record. Tiongson, Antonio T., Edgardo V. Gutierrez, and Ricardo V. Gutierrez. 2006. Positively No Filipinos Allowed: Building Communities and Discourse. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Visit Stockton. “Stockton Fun Facts, History, Population.” VisitStockton.org. http:// www.visitstockton.org/about-us/fun-facts. Wilson, Kurt. 2015, May 22. “Library Briefing.” City of Stockton.

Part III

Critical Practitioner Preparations

9

The Power of Ethnic Studies: Developing Culturally and Community Responsive Leaders Arlene Daus-Magbual and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales

Ethnic Studies is rooted in the history of activism and community organizing, a movement that has created critical leaders and organizers who foster strong community leadership. The relationship between Ethnic Studies and leadership development is understudied and undertheorized, and in this chapter we assert that Ethnic Studies provides a framework that rearticulates leadership to resist current models of power and management existing in traditional educational institutions. This study investigates how Ethnic Studies can challenge and replace leadership models rooted in paradigms of oppression, domination, authority, and hierarchy. Accordingly, Ethnic Studies programs produces leaders—in schools, nonprofit organizations, and various businesses—whose purpose is to be culturally and community responsive. The focus of this study is Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), a fifteenyear-old Ethnic Studies pipeline that employs Critical Leadership Praxis (CLP), a leadership pedagogy centered on the commitment to both self and community growth, which we argue produces an unprecedented number of critical leaders in classrooms, schools, and the community. Current leadership models define leadership as positioning key people over the masses. We argue that the nexus between a CLP and the teaching and learning of Ethnic Studies provides counterspaces producing much-needed culturally and community-responsive leaders who work with the people and not on behalf of the people. Pablo Freire (2000) states, The revolution is made neither by the leaders for the people, nor by the people for the leaders, but by both acting together in unshakable solidarity. This solidarity is born only when the leaders witness to it by their

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humble and loving, and courageous encounter with the people. Not all men and women have sufficient courage for this encounter—but when they avoid encounter they become inflexible and treat others as mere objects; instead of nurturing life, they kill life; instead of searching for life, they flee from it. And these are oppressor characteristics. (129) CLP is a framework created in PEP and implemented within the organization to align with our purpose of education as a means of liberation. CLP focuses on the practice of leadership grounded in equity and social justice and is influenced by critical theories such as critical pedagogy and transformative leadership because CLP critiques systems of power and oppression and how that plays a role to one’s leadership practice and relationship with the people. This case study examines CLP through data collected in a previous study and is an effective example of the power of Ethnic Studies to develop critical leaders. In response to this traditional hegemony of leadership, we examine how, when rooted in Ethnic Studies, critical pedagogy, transformative leadership, and CLP have shaped the leadership of PEP educators during their time within the program and as they moved on to other educational and community spaces. One of the main objectives for the PEP program is to use education as a means for personal and social liberation. PEP addresses the need for more Filipina/o American teachers, the creation and implementation of critical Filipina/o American content in classroom curriculums, and furthering research on Filipina/o American social issues. The PEP program creates a critical learning space, which allows PEP teachers and students to reflect upon their cultural backgrounds in relation to the parallel struggles and survival stories of Filipinas/os and Filipina/o Americans. PEP is deeply rooted in the hopes and dreams of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, as an educational space to develop students as community-oriented agents to serve the needs of their communities equipped with the skills and knowledge to serve the needs of self-determination and agency. The foundation of critical pedagogy and Filipina/o American Studies challenges transformative pedagogical leaders and educators on how to critically question, reflect, and become active participants in changing the world in which we live. PEP teachers are actively engaged in the community and with the community in ways that foster the goals of a social justice–oriented progressive political and social agenda. In the past fifteen years, PEP has developed critical educators who have moved on to credential programs, master’s programs, doctoral programs, and professorships all over the United States and has served K–doctorate students over the past fifteen years. The following statistics are an example of PEP’s impact on Ethnic Studies in San Francisco, California:

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• 230 total have participated as PEP teachers over the past fifteen years. • 23 PEP teachers have entered, are currently enrolled, or have completed a doctoratal program. • 136 former and/or current PEP teachers are in various graduate and/or educational credential programs throughout the nation, which include the fields of social work, Asian American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and creative writing. • 95% of former and/or current PEP teachers have gone on to work in education or in the community. (“Impact,” Pin@y Educational Partnerships,” http://www.pepsf.org/impact.html) Many PEP teachers have pursued higher levels of education and are engaged in community organizing and student activism. PEP has also developed a critical leadership praxis focused on practicing leadership skills engaged with a purpose rooted in equity and social justice. PEP’s critical leadership model builds on two major relationships: one’s relationship to oneself and one’s relationships to one’s communities (e.g., neighborhood, racial/ethnic, cultural, global) (Daus-Magbual 2011; Tintiangco-Cubales 2010). PEP’s critical leadership praxis includes individual and community leadership goals. The individual leadership goals allow the leader to connect to the people and communities they belong to and to determine how they will take action toward improving and transforming one’s life and community. The community leadership goals allow students to take their individual goals and participate in their communities’ movement toward equity and social justice (Tintiangco-Cubales 2010). Critical leaders participate in community engagement, commitment, and action to improve social conditions for themselves and their community. The introduction of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed serves as a foundational text for new and current coordinators and teachers in PEP. Pedagogy of the Oppressed provides PEP leaders with a theoretical framework to examine how education is a means for personal and social liberation by deconstructing the purposes of traditional Westernized schooling. Freire informs PEP’s vision, mission, and purpose to use education as a means for freedom and as a transformative text that molds the leadership of PEP coordinators, teachers, and students. Freire’s philosophies and practices inform the praxis of PEP teachers in the classroom and Freire’s text becomes the basis of the critical leadership that manifests in the PEP space.

LEADERSHIP Within critical circles of education, engaging the possibilities of pedagogical and political leadership often falls through the cracks

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of conversation, because the idea of leadership carries with it legacies of patriarchy, “governmentality,” hierarchal administrative practices, authoritarianism, and domination—all things that critical educators generally want to avoid or change. —Eric Weiner (2003, 89) For the past thirty years, transactional and transformational theories have been the dominant paradigms used to discuss organizational and educational leadership. Yet, these traditional leadership models are rooted in capitalist and imperialist motivations that have historically led to practices of gaining authority over people and automating production. In some instances, these motivations are hidden in neoliberal pursuits of political power. In response to such models focused on production and capital gain, education has begun to take a critical look at the inequities in achievement and have found a need for more transformative leadership models to reshape teaching and learning and to also achieve social justice. Leadership within the process of a liberating education is often avoided because of the oppressive legacies it carries with it such as imperialism, colonization, and governmentality. As a result, the oppressive legacy of leadership maintains the ways in which most institutions and leaders operate. In this section, we will provide context for different models of leadership, such as transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and transformative leadership as we move toward CLP. It is also important to understand that leadership is complex and different types of leadership models can influence how one leads and that there is a need to understand where leadership comes from and how we can shape it to be more critical of social structures so we can respond to the needs of our communities. Transactional leadership is concerned with maintaining day-to-day operations in an institution, organization, or company and maintaining the status quo. Rooted in government, military, and corporate organizations, transactional leadership style provides an efficient means to maintain the flow of capital and create policy where a dominant group of people benefits while others do not. Transactional leadership is based in contingency, where rewards and punishment is dependent on assessments of performance. This style of leadership was created to have a clear structure of what is required of its subordinates and the rewards they get for following orders. Transactional leadership is used to maintain the status quo and work within the systems of oppression to keep their power and interests in mind. James Burns, a distinguished leadership scholar at the Academy of Leadership of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, says transactional leadership is based on a leader-follower relationship that incorporates a series of exchanges and bargains. Leaders set objectives for the followers to accomplish and if goals are

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met, the follower will receive a reward or recognition. Most rewards can be merit increases or bonuses, which are linked to how well someone performs. Its dominant values, according to Burns, are honesty, responsibility, fairness, and honoring commitments—without which transactional leadership could not work. Transactional leaders ensure smooth and efficient organizational operation through transactions and are influenced by bureaucratic leadership and its emphasis is the means to an end. Burns (1978) states that transforming leadership “occurs when the leader recognizes and exploits an existing need or demand of a potential follower[,] . . . looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower” (4). Burns then transcends from transactional leadership to a more transformational leadership model, which is less about maintaining an organization, and more about developing “new” practices that take members or employees to a different level of investment that leads to better performances and, ultimately, more success for their organization. Transformational leadership has been used for fundamental change in the political, economic, and social institutions of politics. This form of leadership often challenges the modes of operation and gets members and employees to buy into the leadership’s purpose. Transformational leadership goes beyond exchanging transactions for good performance by developing, intellectually stimulating, and inspiring followers to go beyond their own self-interests for a higher collective purpose, vision, and mission within the organization or company, a vision that is set by the leader. Companies and organizations use this model to motivate their employees’ creativity. This broadens the range of leadership that goes beyond focusing on corrective or constructive transactions but does not necessarily change the goals of the organization. Transformational leaders need the organization to run smoothly and efficiently by understanding the organizational culture and usually shift the culture to make sure the organization is performing at its optimum quality. These leaders are inspirational and charismatic and oftentimes engage in transactional behaviors to meet the organizational goals. Transactional and transformational leadership are not at opposite ends of the spectrum but are sometimes used together to meet expectations. As shown above, transactional and transformational models of leadership can be very complex, but if a leader’s purpose is to question, critique, and respond to systems of oppression through social justice and equity then their leadership will move toward a more transformative model. Transformative leaders in education are not interchangeable with transformational leaders. Transformative leadership offers a theory that moves beyond the legacies of the past. Eric J. Weiner (2003) defines transformative leadership as “an exercise of power and authority that begins with questions of justice, democracy, and the dialectic between individual accountability and social responsibility” (89). Transformative leadership promotes a collective

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partnership among the leadership, administrators, teachers, students, and community members involved in the educational institution, while instigating structural transformations and the ideological work that is done at the pedagogical level. Transformative leadership goes beyond a transformational model by asserting the need to be deeply rooted in moral and ethical values in a social context while also calling for larger impact on systematic or sustainable change. Transformative educational leaders will work to create school communities that value equity, social justice, and the quality of life. Carolyn Shields proclaims, I contend that socially just learning is embedded in deeply democratic ideas and in relational pedagogy. Hence, an educational orientation to social justice and democratic community requires pedagogy forged with, not for, students to permit them to develop meaningful and socially constructed understandings. (2004, 115) Through transformative leadership, leaders create a community where everyone’s voice is heard and applied. This notion of transformative leadership critically challenges educational leaders to create and maintain positive relationships and spaces in which they work and develop a dialogue with students to facilitate a critical understanding of the world in which they live. According to Shields (2004), traditional leadership dehumanizes those who are led because this model does not allow for democratic participation and lacks a discursive space to critique existing oppressive structures. Transformative leadership humanizes the experiences of the leader, teacher, student, family, and community and is in constant dialogue with reading and transforming the world. Shields articulates a framework that can help an educational leader become firmly grounded in a moral and purposeful approach to leadership. Transformative leaders, in collaboration with students, families, and teachers, can become agents that transform the current narrative of education and address equity by centering the discourse on issues of race, class, and gender. Similar to transformative leadership and critical leadership praxis, leadership born out of Ethnic Studies is rooted in social change. “Ethnic Studies is used to develop students’ critical understanding of the world and their place in it, and ultimately prepare them to transform their world. . . . In keeping with its Third World Liberation Front Movement roots, decolonization, selfdetermination, and anti-racism are central to the purpose of Ethnic Studies” (Tintiangco-Cubales et al. 2014). With the purpose of decolonization, self-determination, and antiracism, Ethnic Studies has provided a training ground to develop a leadership model that addresses systems of oppression and is responsive to the cultural and

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community needs of students and teachers. Through a critique on various leadership models, CLP was created in PEP and assessed through the data collected in Arlene Daus-Magbual’s dissertation.

CRITICAL LEADERSHIP PRAXIS Critical leadership praxis (CLP) focuses on the practice of leadership skills grounded in equity and social justice. CLP connects critical theory to one’s leadership practice so individuals and communities can create and sustain a critical community whose purpose is to transform the world. CLP is a central approach used among the students, teachers, directors, and community partners involved in Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP). In 2001, PEP was created to address the needs and issues of Filipina/o Americans in education specifically to address the high rates of dropout, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, violence, and the conflict between Filipina/o immigrant and Filipina/o American students at Balboa High School (Tintiangco-Cubale 2007). CLP in PEP is in direct response to the need to support the students and their communities while also providing training and experience for the teachers and teacher leaders/coordinators to learn how to serve and lead in their students’ communities. We examine data collected over a span of three years to understand the inner workings of CLP through interviews with seven PEP leaders and participant observation field notes taken during PEP events and meetings, coupled with our own perspectives as part of the PEP leadership team. We wanted to understand the growth of leaders in PEP and translate this into a practice that can be used in other spaces. PEP implements CLP by building on two dynamic relationships: one’s relationship to self and relationships with one’s communities. This research is unique because it provides insight on what happens in both the personal and communal process of becoming a critical leader.

Relationship to Oneself Critical leadership praxis begins with one’s relationship to one’s personal and political development. PEP provides a space for leaders to understand their personal connection to their racial identity by researching, writing, and teaching Ethnic Studies and Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history and experiences. Learning and practicing critical pedagogy coupled with Ethnic Studies and Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history exposes the oppression that produces and reproduces inequities. The relationship to history and critical pedagogy contributes to an ethical self-consciousness that is critical, reflexive, and informs leaders with a language of pedagogical practices that turns oppression into freedom (Freire 1998). Leaders begin to discover their own agency

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by taking action in shaping their own history while uplifting those around them. Leadership at this personal level consists of the following concepts: selfconnection, self-determination, and self-reflection.

Self-Connection Tintiangco-Cubales defines self-connection as, “Connecting to one’s identity that is formed through one’s ethnic and racial history. This connection is a process of decolonization where people of color learn to love themselves” (2010, 1). Building on Tintiangco-Cubales’s definition, we found that for PEP’s critical leaders there is a process of self-connection that begins with confronting racism and oppression in one’s own educational experiences. Then they connect their own personal and family’s history to their work and ultimately connect their personal goals to the betterment of their community. When Samtoy moved on to high school, she was introduced to PEP and began to develop consciousness about her identity as a Pinay. She was one of the first students in PEP who was inspired by the leadership of the PEP director and PEP teachers who came to her high school where they conducted workshops on Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history and experience during the lunch period. Her experience in PEP as a student motivated her to go to San Francisco State University (SFSU) to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Asian American Studies. After a few years at SFSU, Samtoy decided to apply to become a PEP teacher at the very high school from which she graduated, working with the community where she was born and raised. Samtoy explained, PEP in high school really transformed my life in terms of my career goals or what I wanted to do in the future. What PEP really did was make my culture relevant to education and put a time and a place in history for me, my people, my ancestors, my family. I really was one of the first or I am one of the first high school students to ever experience an Ethnic Studies class in San Francisco and to say that I was blessed with that opportunity. I really wanted to give back. (Samtoy, interview by Arlene Daus-Magbual, February 10, 2011) As a college student, Samtoy came back to PEP as a PEP teacher because she saw how PEP transformed her and she had a desire to share what she had learned with students. PEP also provided her a space of healing to cope and transform from the trauma she identified within her own life. The confrontation of racism in her own schooling experience greatly informed her growth as a leader. She directly addresses the lack of Filipino teachers and curriculum by being a leader within PEP. She states, “I am proud to be the

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first PEP student to become a PEP teacher. I hope to pave the road for more to come” (Samtoy interview by Arlene Daus-Magbual, February 10, 2011). Along with connecting our experiences in PEP with our personal pasts and familial history, PEP leaders also connect what they want to pursue as their future. Many PEP teachers’ aspirations go beyond personal gain; instead their goals become centered on community needs. When Bayani applied to PEP, he was a leader of a student group and was ready to share his experiences with others in PEP. As Bayani gained experience within PEP, first as a teacher and then a coordinator, he realized how seeing the importance of connecting himself with his community transf ormed his purpose so that now he is working toward becoming a professor. After four years of being in PEP, Bayani graduated with his master’s and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. Bayani explained: “I’ve developed a deeper understanding of Filipino American Studies coupled with critical pedagogy. I really feel like PEP has groomed me for my future. I feel like I’ve been able to be a part of PEP’s growth and it’s been a part of my own growth.” (Bayani interview by Arlene Daus-Magbual, February 8, 2011) The concept of self-connection in CLP is deeply rooted in the foundation for self-love through learning and connecting one’s racial and ethnic history. The teaching and learning of Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history for our research participants produced a leadership style to love oneself hand in hand with a connection to the communities they serve. Samtoy connected her life experience growing up as a Pinay in San Francisco to Filipina/o American history and knew that it was important for her to go on to higher education. Bayani found agency in his self-connection to history and his community, which led him to realize the importance of having critical Pin@ys in higher education, and thus, to his career goals. Self-connection influences critical consciousness with leaders and allows them to find a purpose and intention in how they serve themselves and the people they lead. These leaders have developed a platform that goes beyond individualized empowerment, and toward action through building community and creating possibilities for hope.

Self-Determination The leaders’ development of critical consciousness stemmed from their self-connection to Filipina/o American history and experiences of indignation to the oppressive conditions they face as People of Color. The leaders find it necessary to take action for the well-being of themselves and their communities. Tintiangco-Cubales (2010) defines self-determination for critical

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leadership praxis as “having the power to determine one’s goals and not be limited by stereotypical representations of one’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or class” (1). Critical leaders have the agency to transform the world by participating in creating history rather than adapting to it. To be indignant is to courageously denounce all forms of authoritarianism by cultivating hope and taking a critical position to announce the dream we have for our world and ourselves. This act requires leaders to take risks. Friere (2004) explained, I know what risks I run but I know that, as a presence in the world, I run them. The fact is that risk is a necessary ingredient in mobility, without which there is no culture or history. Therefore, it is important that education, rather than trying to deny risk, encourages men and women to take it. It is by taking on risk, its inevitability[,] that I become prepared to take this given risk that challenges me now, and to which I must respond. (5) Being a leader in a nonhierarchical context also means there is always teaching involved, whether it encompasses the teacher teaching, or the students teaching the teacher or each other. The teaching that occurs in the PEP space is rooted in critical pedagogy. In the PEP space, we believe that leaders need to be able to make and remake themselves throughout a lifetime because just like history, life is dynamic. The leaders in PEP realize that they take risks every day by teaching critical Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history, engaging in critical dialogue, and fighting for socially just education. As critical leaders in PEP, we encourage others to find the leader within themselves, to write their own history, and fight for what they believe in. With PEP leaders, we found that having a purpose for oneself and for one’s community is necessary for self-determination as a critical leader. During Inosanto’s interview, he described what he gained through his experience in PEP: I’m a lot more critical of what I’m learning and how I’m learning. Which helps me because I’ve been able to give myself more purpose in what I’m doing in this credential program I’m in; so having a purpose in that program helps me stay focused on what I have to do; helps me try a little harder on things, I stay up a little later to get things done, just so I know that I can really be in a place where I want to be in the future. And also just living up to expectations that I would have of my own students, I’d want them to try their hardest and do the most that they can do, so why shouldn’t I myself? (Inosanto, interview by Arlene DausMagbual, February 11, 2011)

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Inosanto joined PEP in 2007 as a teacher at one of the high school sites. After a year at the PEP high school site, Inosanto transferred to our elementary school site and soon became a coordinator. Through his experience teaching and working with the students, he felt that there was a lack of Filipino male teachers at the elementary school level. With the theories and experiences he gained in PEP, Inosanto developed his purpose to reach his own goals and support his teachers and students to find their selfdetermination. Self-determination is necessary for critical leaders to have the power to determine one’s goals. In our research, we found that agency is necessary for teachers to create a purpose for their lives and relate that purpose to the people they serve. Having a community where people can see others they care about achieving their goals by going to graduate school, getting their credentials, or finding jobs in the community, gives them the courage to try it out for themselves. Self-determination allows leaders to critique and transform from the traditional model of leadership, where goals and expectations are met for the organization, to also creating goals and expectations for themselves.

Self-Reflection The concept of self-reflection in CLP provides a deep sense of self-exploration and assessment. Reflection allows the coordinators an opportunity to examine their leadership style to become more effective social justice leaders. In critical self-reflection, teachers think about how they can better connect themselves to their community and often, by doing so, new practices are born. Leaders are encouraged to revisit their vision to ensure that their actions are consistent with their purpose (Tintiangco-Cubales 2010). In the beginning of each school year, leaders are asked to create a vision and mission for their school site. PEP leaders, along with their teachers, students, and partners, create a plan of action and implement it throughout the school year. As they complete each goal they are asked to complete an evaluation of themselves and their school site. In this study, we learned that our participants struggled with self-reflection because they had a difficult time evaluating themselves. There is a level of pain that comes from remembering past mistakes or instances where they felt tension in the classroom or with their school site or how they felt at a certain point in the semester. But the leaders reported that the more they were able to reflect, the more chance they had to change their perspectives on the process of meeting goals and, ultimately, transforming as a person. Self-reflection is necessary for leaders to revisit their purpose and see if they are meeting their own goals as a critical social justice leader. Each

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semester is filled with many projects, support for teachers and students, and administrative work for the organization. Leaders can get caught up with everyday work that they sometimes forget to evaluate and assess their own performance. Gabriela shared the same sentiment about PEP: I really feel indebted to PEP. How I carry myself in and outside of school, with work—when I was working at my previous job in retail, I was a manager, all of these different concepts and terms that you learn in PEP like humanization, hope and love, before they were just words to me. But praxis, is a big thing. How do I—better this other human being that I’m working with. It’s like I’m really trying to get to the root of the problem because there are particular values that we have in PEP that we learn and practice and carry that out into the world. I have to make sure I walk the talk because if I believe in humanization, then I better practice that in my everyday life. (Inosanto, interview by Arlene DausMagbual, February 10, 2011) Throughout her interview, Gabriela reflected deeply on the kind of leader she has become. She was surprised at what she was saying because she admitted it is hard to reflect because she often works in crisis mode. When she reflected, she expressed that it is humbling to understand how much she has grown. She admits that she needs to reflect more, to look back on her growth, and to see what she needs to do to achieve her goals in the future. According to the participants, self-reflection is also about being vulnerable. In PEP, teachers and students are always asked to share with each other to build a deeper relationship and provide mutual support to reach goals. The PEP leaders felt that it is important to be vulnerable when sharing. Gabriela reflected, I’m still learning how to develop that aspect of being vulnerable. I think that was the one thing that I promised to PEP is learning how to be vulnerable at my first retreat, four years ago. I’m slowly still learning to do that while I learn to coordinate at the same time. It’s wearing—it wears me down a little bit. But you just have to always maintain your focus, and revisit your purpose. So again, it’s just being conscious of all that. (Inosanto interview) Gabriela was struggling with her role as a first-year coordinator, but now that she is in her second year as a leader, she is much more open with how she is feeling and at identifying times when she needs help. When we observed her site meeting, Gabriela built in a reflection with her teachers to check in on their classroom performance. The check-in activity gave the space for leaders

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and teachers to see what worked and what areas needed to be better addressed. Opening up communication modeled for other participants that challenges can and should be collectively solved. Self-reflection is necessary for CLP because it allows leaders to learn from their past and to inform their leadership in the future. There can be no praxis for a critical leader if reflection is divorced from the process. Gabriela can feel the physical and mental effects of avoiding self-reflection and Daya notices that her own behavior changes when she does not build in space for her to center herself in the work. Oftentimes, leaders in PEP put their teachers, students, work, and school first and they get lost in their purpose to serve other people. The pain that the leaders feel when they look back at their experience arises from the tension of a new awareness and anxiety of how to move forward. When leaders are able to reflect, new leadership practices are created to transform oneself and one’s communities.

Summary of Relationship to Oneself To advocate that self-love and understanding of a leader is connected with the people he or she serves, CLP employs a relationship to oneself through self-connection, self-determination, and self-reflection. PEP creates a space where the leaders, teachers, and students learn about who they are by researching and teaching Filipina/o American history and seeing how it connects to their personal experiences. The process of self-love promotes the leaders to create their own critical purpose in leading their lives and leading with the people. Creating their purpose allows them to connect back to their overall vision, to determine what they will do to move forward with others, and to constantly reflect on their actions and impact as a leader.

Relationship to the Community The growth of a critical leader significantly develops a sense of community inside and outside the PEP classroom. The relationship built between PEP teachers and students creates a bond that helps address oppression in our communities. The synergy created in the PEP space is shaped toward action by the sharing of personal narratives from teachers and students and seeing their connection to the historical trajectory of Filipina/o American history. PEP’s connection to the larger community links everyday issues of students and teachers to what is being learned in the classroom. In this section, we will expand on critical leadership praxis in relationship to the community through the following themes: community engagement, community commitment, and community action.

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Community Engagement PEP engages the community by providing a space where leaders, teachers, and students can facilitate critical dialogue on the issues they are facing as individuals and in which they can create a plan of action to address them. PEP leaders develop their relationship with the communities that their students belong to by first “reading the world,” an engagement that requires them to really get to know the central problems that need to be addressed (Freire 2000; TintiangcoCubales 2010). “Community engagement is praxis, a problem-solving process where both student and teacher work together to pursue solutions. Teachers become part of their students’ communities physically, emotionally, and politically” (Tintiangco-Cubales 2010, 2). “The world . . . becomes the object of that transforming action by men and women which results in their humanization” (Freire 2000, 86). The reciprocal relationship of learning and teaching between teachers and students informs their purpose to address the inequities and injustices of the larger community. This revolutionary act embodies the courage and hope to transform the world through humanization of self and others. With this theme, we found that community action in PEP is built on the foundation of strong relationships among leaders, teachers, and students. Community engagement in PEP starts with constructing authentic and genuine relationships between teachers and students. The relationships manifest in reciprocity, so that teachers are also students, and students are also teachers (Freire 2000). The camaraderie built in PEP helps us understand how to best serve our students and the community in which they reside. Manny suggests that a critical leader has to understand the community they serve to inform their decisions and actions as a leader: PEP serves the community. I am a person of the community. I live in the community and I also want to make sure that a lot of the youth and families are served appropriately. So I’m coming from whomever the teachers are teaching, especially those students. I’m living in the same neighborhood as them. I’m walking the same streets. I know the same bus lines. And I think it’s just important to see what’s going on. (Manny, interview by Arlene Daus-Magbual, February 12, 2011) Similar to Manny’s experiences, many PEP teachers live in proximity to their students. Living together in the same communities provides a shared understanding of experiences and conditions, which includes getting students involved with other community-based organizations to use resources that are offered for youth and families. Community engagement is important to PEP because it informs how we provide services. Engagement in PEP begins with simple conversations to

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establish common ground between teachers and students, and as relationships deepen, we become increasingly intentional in providing avenues for discussion regarding issues relevant to participants’ lives. Manny knows that simple check-ins with each other can mean growth and transformation for everyone involved. Cumulatively, these interactions build a foundation of trust in knowing that leaders, teachers, and students are accountable to each other.

Community Commitment “Community commitment is a relentless dedication to pursue justice for the community that one is serving” (Tintiangco-Cubales 2010, 2). The tenet of commitment to the community within PEP’s CLP encourages PEP leaders to continuously evaluate the purpose of their work, particularly during difficult moments and without material compensation. The stamina involved to balance their various roles as teachers, students, parents, and activists in their communities creates PEP leaders’ commitment to their work. This requires a vast amount of time, sacrifice, selflessness, and sometimes disappointment. Building on this theme, we found that the participants experienced many struggles that led them to question their own commitment to PEP, yet somehow they maintained an unwavering resiliency to continue their work. Manny elaborated, You will be slapped emotionally because administrators, students, and community members will insult you. You will be overlooked, whether it’s your position as a woman of color, a man of color. So when you do get slapped, are you going to back down? Because a slap means, symbolically, that they’re going to test you in terms of your stance on an issue in your position as a leader.  .  .  . Going into the field of community worker [and] education is definitely one of the most beautiful things to do, but it’s also one of the most difficult and hardest.” (Manny interview, by Arlene Daus-Magbual, February 12, 2011) As Manny described, PEP leaders demonstrated that they must have resiliency and tremendous fortitude to fulfill their everyday responsibilities. PEP participants commit to more than fifteen hours a week for eleven months out of the year. They come to work every day, have meetings outside of the classroom to create lesson plans, work on administrative tasks, support teachers and students in their personal endeavors, and sacrifice weekends and weekdays to make sure that their community is served appropriately—and all on a volunteer basis. Their work in the community transcends any job description and encompasses a larger vision for social justice through engagement with their communities.

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Community Action toward Sustainable Social Justice Whereas commitment to community drives PEP leadership, participants recognize that their work must extend beyond their time and involvement. Taking collective action toward sustainable social justice is a collaborative process in the transformation of communities. Building on the definition of community action, we found it necessary to foster relationships with teachers and students that considers the changing context within the community, and serves to foster an education leadership pipeline that sustains the practices learned in PEP. The pipeline is encouraged through various class and community assignments such as the Oral History and the Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) projects. The Oral History project requires students to interview a family elder to learn about their struggles and survival stories of living in the United States as a person of color. The YPAR project allows leaders, teachers, and students to work together to identify, address, and take action on issues that affect their community. Through these projects PEP participants explore, reflect, and engage in creating counternarratives to mainstream history that often leave out their experiences. These two projects also foster relationships among PEP leaders, teachers, and students and develop lifelong organizing skills, such as critical thinking and oral presentation practices. Many PEP participants have used the lessons and experiences to pursue academic and career ambitions in Ethnic Studies, education, and other community-based fields. However, PEP leaders acknowledge how their work transcends any profession and instead informs their lifestyles. Manny continues, “Ultimately, [students] are going to become maybe the future PEP teachers or more engaged in determining what they want to do, and it’s in their lives contributing back to the community” (Manny interview). Going beyond the parameters of a classroom, PEP provides a sense of hope and space to engage in various social justice endeavors. PEP provides leaders, teachers, and students the confidence, empowerment, and belief that they can pursue lifelong work dedicated to positive social change.

CONCLUSION PEP provides a counterspace for leaders to develop their courage and confidence to take risks. Yet the challenge of hopelessness arises due to schooling and the reproduction of oppressive narratives and becomes a dialectic with these positive emotions. The oppressive systems in place challenge humanization and hope. Processes of healing, love, and transformative relationships make the leaders indignant and help them find hope again. Critical leaders need the courage to take risks to re-create and rename their world by finding a

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home that will help one heal from trauma and regain the hopefulness of the struggle. The opportunity to interview these seven individuals in the Pin@y community has given us the chance to understand their experiences as courageous and critical leaders in the struggle to change the schooling system that opposes their beliefs in humanizing pedagogy. Our analysis of the data suggests that CLP is the foundation of PEP’s leadership in the schools and in the community and provides a framework that starts with courageously denouncing all forms of authoritarianism and creates a situation that includes love, humanization, hope, and possibilities for oneself and the community in which one serves. In response to the hegemony of traditional leadership, we take a look at how transformative leadership and CLP have shaped PEP’s leadership, a leadership rooted in Ethnic Studies. Through our findings, we show the nexus between the teaching and learning of Ethnic Studies and transformative leadership practices shapes PEP’s CLP, which redefines home as a space to create healing from oppressive trauma and to offer the possibilities of hope to develop a sustainable lifelong pursuit of social change. This study addresses the need to cultivate, support, and sustain critical educational leaders of color and the need to develop partnerships among educational leaders, teacher leaders, and community leaders. The building of a critical community and transformative relationships serves as a space where leaders are learning to grow and foster their development of critical leadership.

REFERENCES Astin, Alexander W., and Helen S. Astin. 2000. Leadership Reconsidered: Engaging Higher Education in Social Change. Battle Creek: W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Bass, Bernard M. 1985. Leadership and Performance. New York: Free Press. Brown, Kathleen M. 2004. “Leadership for Social Justice and Equity: Weaving a Transformative Framework and Pedagogy.” Educational Administration Quarterly 40(1): 79–110. Burns, James M. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row, Onursal Arkan. Cammarota, Julio, and Michelle Fine, eds. 2008. Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. New York: Routledge. Daus-Magbual, Arlene. 2011. “Courageous Hope: Critical Leadership Praxis of Pin@y Educational Partnerships.” PhD diss., San Francisco State University, California. Foster, William. 1986. Paradigms and Promises. Amherst: Prometheus Books. Freire, Paulo. 1998. Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Agency, trans. P. Clarke. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Blooms­ bury Academic. Freire, Paulo. 2004. Pedagogy of Indignation. Boulder: Paradigm. Ginwright, Shawn, and Julio Cammarota. 2007. “Youth Activism in the Urban Community: Learning Critical Civic Praxis within Community Organizations. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 20(6): 693–710.

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Sagor, Richard. 1992. “Three Principals Who Make a Difference” Educational Leadership 49(5): 13–18. Shields, Carolyn. 2004. “Dialogic Leadership for Social Justice: Overcoming Pathologies of Silence.” Educational Administration Quarterly 40(109): 109–132. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson. 2007. Pin@y Educational Partnerships: A Filipina/o Ameri­­can Studies Sourcebook. Volume I: Philippine and Filipina/o American History. Santa Clara: Phoenix Publishing House. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson, Rita Kohli, Jocyl Sacramento, Nick Henning, Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, and Christine Sleeter. 2005. “Toward an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Implications for K–12 Schools from the Research.” The Urban Review 47(1): 104–25. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson. 2010. “Ethnic Studies Critical Leadership Praxis. Unpublished. San Francisco, CA. Weiner, Eric J. 2003. “Secretariat Paulo Freire and the Democratization of Power: Toward a Theory of Transformative Leadership.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 35(1): 88–104.

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Brown Washing Hermeneutics: Historically Responsive Pedagogy in Ethnic Studies Roderick Daus-Magbual

The purpose of teaching Ethnic Studies is more than just learning the histories of People of Color, it also provides students with an understanding of oppression in society and develops within them a sense of purpose that becomes a path toward community action. It transcends the “banking” process of acquiring knowledge from teacher to student and helps students think critically about how historical narratives shape identity and can potentially serve as a means toward a vocation committed to social justice. With the passage of Ethnic Studies requirements in school districts around the nation, it is necessary to not fall in the pedagogical trap in using Ethnic Studies as an assimilationist approach that reinforces America as a “melting pot.” In this chapter, I explore how researching, learning, and teaching Ethnic Studies informs one to think critically about history, to move beyond a sense of selfempowerment, and to move toward collective action through Historical Responsive Pedagogy (HRP). HRP is derived from the fields of critical hermeneutics and critical pedagogy as a way of seeing and a practice of understanding historical narratives of People of Color and how that shapes identity with the responsibility to act. I examined the experiences of nine former teachers from the Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), a service-learning Filipina/o American education leadership pipeline in San Francisco, California, that uses Ethnic Studies as a medium to serve and teach students in the K–college pipeline and how their work has informed HRP. PEP, as an education leadership pipeline, provided teachers a sense of hope and achievement in higher education and beyond. Founded by Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales in 2001, PEP provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students from surrounding universities in the Bay Area to develop skills in curriculum writing, lesson plan development, and pedagogy in teaching Filipina/o American Studies. PEP is

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a grassroots project in which students and teachers use the classroom to create community and where they collaborate to examine and address the systemic issues that affect their community. PEP consists of a faculty of over fifty teachers who are split between elementary, middle school, high school, and college sites. PEP teachers develop and teach a year-long Ethnic Studies curriculum focused on the Filipina/o American experience at Longfellow Elementary School as an afterschool program; James Denman Middle School as an elective course; Philip & Sala Burton High School and Balboa High School, for college credit and to satisfy the “G” requirement for California State University and University of California applications; and Skyline College, under “Sociology 142: Filipina/o Community Issues”; in the Kababayan Learning Community (KLC) and the University of San Francisco, under the “Knowledge Activism” class in the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program (YPSP) for college credit. The work in PEP has been instrumental in the formation of HRP through years spent developing a culturally relevant and community responsive curriculum and pedagogy. The foundations of HRP are based on how history is related to identity, politics, and action. Shifting the historical discourse beyond specific dates, wars, and icons and toward narrative and identity creates a connection for students to understand who they are and their relationship to present-day social issues (Goodson & Gill 2014; Ricouer 1992). Relating history to power provides a context for students to politically understand how historical narratives are legitimized, communicated, and normalized in society. It can also provide students a sense of purpose to respond to how history has been a tool to oppress, as well as a way to become authors of social change. The significance of this research reveals how HRP serves as a pedagogical praxis that examines, embodies, and engages People of Color’s experiences in becoming critical Ethnic Studies educators and leaders in their communities. I argue that HRP is an important tool for educator practitioners to use in the teaching of Ethnic Studies at the K–12 level.

LITERATURE REVIEW HRP is derived from critical hermeneutics and critical pedagogy. Critical hermeneutics—the study of interpretation—has been a field relegated to European scholarship in the fields of religion, law, architecture, philosophy, and sociology. In the United States, critical hermeneutics within Ethnic Studies and education is a rarity (Leonardo 2003). Although this area of work remains untapped, it has the potential to reveal the ontological influence of researching, teaching, and learning in the field of Ethnic Studies and education. Critical pedagogy serves as praxis to address oppression through dialogue between teacher and student and student and teachers (Freire 2002).

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Critical hermeneutics and critical pedagogy informs HRP by examining how narrative, identity, dialogue, and praxis unveils how Ethnic Studies can move one toward lifework that is committed to service and activism.

Critical Hermeneutics Mimesis123, Narrative Identity, and Critical Narrative Pathway Critical hermeneutics is the study of interpretation that addresses issues of power in analyzing the sociocultural, political, historical, and economical fabric of our society. It explores the transmission of messages in society and how the power of narrative, via interpretation, can shape policy, curriculum, and/or identity (Habermas 1987). The foundations of critical hermeneutics are rooted in language, discourse, and text. Critical hermeneutics is a process of “developing a story as a whole that opens up new ways of thinking and acting” (Herda 1999, 4). It reveals how history as narrative informs the identities of people and nation through story, tradition, and culture. The critical hermeneutics of mimesis, narrative identity, and critical narrative pathways reveal how educational practitioners can become responsive to the needs of the classroom and community by understanding, embodying, and creating history. HRP reframes our linear understanding of history by understanding the past and future through the tension of the present. Using history as a form of decolonization, Leny Strobel states, “Decolonization means to reconnect with the past in order to understand the present and to be able to envision the future. These three—past, present, and future—on another level of consciousness co-exist simultaneously” (2001, 118). Mimesis reflects Strobel’s work in decolonization by reinterpreting history through three-fold time: mimesis1 (past), mimesis2 (present), and mimesis3 (future) (Ricoeur 1990). The role of mimesis in HRP conveys how history is not viewed as dead, but alive. Ricouer explains, “My task is to show how the narrative structures of history and of the story . . . operate in a parallel fashion to create new forms of human time, and therefore new forms of human community is also a social and cultural act” (Kearney 2004, 130). Mimesis informs HRP by understanding the past and future through the eyes and actions of the present. Mimesis situates how past history molds the present and where we can create our envisioned future. HRP creates a framework for students to become historically responsive by understanding how history has affected the present and where they can create change to shape the future. Narrative identity involves the orientation of time, history, and the formation of identity in relationship to grand narratives and possible counternarratives. The experiences of Filipina/o Americans are tied to colonial narratives that of Spain and the United States as saviors to the savage Filipina/o. The embodiment of these historical narratives shape people’s identities to become

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storied beings. As storied beings, we manifest into the narrative that is imposed to the dominant culture. It can also potentially serve as a space and process in creating new notions of self by understanding one’s history. The data in this study reveals the critical role of identity in raising one’s horizon to understand their families’ history, the narrative identity of Filipina/o Americans, and the possibilities to reconfigure identity and community. Narrative identity also reveals how decolonization can transform themselves, as well as others, and reconfigure our understanding of community, mentorship, and construct new orientations of being. Narrative identity informs HRP by helping students reexamine history and relate how those narratives can “otherize” People of Color, as well as providing an approach to develop counterstories of agency, resiliency, and action. Ivor Goodson and Scherto Gill incorporate critical narrative as pedagogy as a process for students to engage in reflexivity, learning toward humanization and personal transformation centered on stories. They explore how life narratives can be shaped in the making and remaking of identity through the process of constructing history through critical narrative pathways. Critical narrative pathways is defined as “a creative and formative journey where learners consolidate who we are as individuals and communities, where we find our voice, our place in the world and the story that we inhabit and belong, the stories that we truly are and where we continue to engage in social action” (Goodson & Gill 2014, 5). Critical narrative pathways, within HRP, serve as communal spaces of teaching and learning where Ethnic Studies serve as a basis to embody narratives and identities of resistance, community, and opportunities to serve their communities. HRP bridges the narratives of students to the content of the classroom in revealing a sense of solidarity, purpose, and historical orientation toward addressing oppression in their lives. In relation to understanding Filipina/o American history, HRP reexamines and rearticulates the experiences of Filipina/o Americans by unveiling a narrative of decolonization and resistance that shape identity. HRP serves as a space for employing new narratives and identities in curtailing Filipina/o American experience in relation to the legacy of Filipina/o and Filipina/o American activism. Goodson and Gill point out that “Narrative provides avenues for individuals to accompany each other’s journey of inquiry and quest, and to listen to our hearts, drawing inspiration from the deepest source of our values—a shared humanity” (2014, 99). As one PEP teacher expressed in their teacher training, “Understanding history represents a sense of power. By understanding history you begin to grasp how it affects us today and how you can change the future” (Daus-Magbual 2014). HRP places narrative, identity, and responsibility in relationship to critical pedagogy by identifying how history has been used to oppress, but also as praxis to address current social issues and a means for personal, local, and global transformation.

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Critical Pedagogy, Community Cultural Wealth, and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Critical pedagogy is foundational to HRP as a form of praxis in analyzing and developing plans of action to address oppression at the personal, local, and global levels. Critical pedagogy serves as an educational discourse to critique the institutional role of education in informing the values, practices, and normativity of society. Paulo Freire challenged these notions by developing a liberatory educational approach that promotes critical thinking, selfdetermination, reflection, and action through dialogue. Freire introduced the concepts of banking and problem posing pedagogy. Freire described the “banking concept,” as the “depositing of knowledge” from the teacher to “depositories,” which represent the student (2002, 72–73). Problem posing pedagogy levels the hierarchal relationship between teacher and student and they become co-learners and co-teachers in the classroom. The heart of critical pedagogy is concerned with the elimination of oppression and the creation of a new world of hope and possibility that we can inhabit. Critical pedagogy contributes to HRP by naming and articulating the political nature of education as an apparatus to dehumanize, while having also the potential to humanize. Freire reminds us that in education, “A political act is pedagogical and the pedagogical is political” (2004, 115). HRP illuminates how teaching and learning history is political and transformative and reveals a historical narrative to act. The research participants shared a common theme of discovering their purpose to teach and serve students, which was guided through their indignation when discovering who they are as Filipina/o Americans. The PEP teachers found that critical pedagogy provided a philosophy and approach that uses education as a vehicle for liberation. Tara Yosso’s concept of community cultural wealth plays an essential role in HRP by using the cultural capital of students of color by legitimizing their identities as forms of cultural assets and resources that enrich the classroom, shape curriculum and pedagogy, and serve as learning spaces to challenge traditional models of cultural deficiency. Yosso believes that community cultural wealth encompasses aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant capital as forms of wealth that students of color bring to the classroom. HRP legitimizes the identities of students of color in the classroom where their history, culture, and experiences become the center of discourse. Community culture wealth also informs HRP as a means for students to identify to a lineage connected to historical legacies of resistance that have been marginalized in their schooling. Decolonizing colonial narratives of Filipinas/ os through Ethnic Studies help students develop a relationship of how their people resisted and survived. HRP serves as a form of cultural and historical capital by understanding the history of People of Color as agents of change.

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Gloria Ladson-Billing’s culturally relevant pedagogy is fundamental to HRP by using students of color’s experiences, culture, and education as a means toward academic success and challenging social inequities through the classroom. Ladson-Billings explained that in culturally relevant pedagogy students “must experience academic success; .  .  . develop and/or maintain cultural competence; [and] . . . develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo” (2004, 115). The relationship between teacher and student is central to HRP, which embraces the principles of culturally relevant pedagogy. Teachers’ awareness of student identities is essential for them to connect the social, historical, cultural, and political experiences as a means to develop student success and a learning space to develop a critical consciousness. Critical hermeneutics and critical pedagogy allow us to incorporate how narratives shape identity as a means to think critically and engage in understanding and creating history through HRP. Freire writes, “Understanding history as possibility implies recognizing or realizing the importance of conscience in the knowledge process, in the process of intervening in the world. History as a time of possibility presupposes human beings’ capacity for observing, breaking away, and for being responsible” (2004, 113). Through this study, the research participants expressed how learning and teaching Filipina/o American Studies created a sense of purpose, identity, service, and action. HRP revealed a sense of self-discovery, responsibility, and duty for PEP teachers to connect history to the identities of their students and as a process to respond to trajectories of oppression.

METHODS Through an interpretive anthropological and participatory study, I used the work of critical hermeneutic scholars Ellen Herda, Paul Ricouer, Jürgen Habermas, Ivor Goodson, and Scherto Gill to understand how narratives shape identity and create possibilities for action. I explore how Ethnic Studies educators develop an identity of historical duty and responsibility by developing curriculum, pedagogy, and implementing lesson plans in teaching Filipina/o American Studies. I conducted nine in-depth interviews with former teachers from the Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) to qualitatively examine how they developed and engaged in HRP in their years involved in the organization from 2007–10. The research participants consisted of six Pinays (Filipina Americans) and three Pinoys (Filipino Americans). The teachers ranged in age from mid-twenties to early thirties; have at least one to four years of teaching experience in PEP; have taken Ethnic Studies courses prior to PEP; and eight of the nine participants have graduated from undergraduate and have gone on to graduate programs focused in social justice education, Asian

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American Studies, social work, and teacher education programs throughout California. The interviews focused on how their involvement in the PEP program transformed their identity through the praxis of learning and teaching Filipina/o American Studies. I studied the refiguration of memory, identity, and action through the creation of curriculum and community that is rooted in the critical historical legacies of Filipina/o Americans.

RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS Angelica Posadas-Bautista Angelica Posadas-Bautista is a second-generation Pinay from the Excelsior neighborhood of San Francisco. She was one of the first PEP students at Balboa High School in the spring of 2001 and was instrumental in organizing her peers in institutionalizing PEP as an Ethnic Studies course. She became a PEP teacher in the 2004–05 school year and held the program coordinator position at Balboa High School from 2005–06 to 2010–11. She graduated from San Francisco State University (SFSU) in Asian American Studies in 2007, finished her MA in school counseling from the University of San Francisco in 2015, and is currently a seventh grade counselor at James Denman Middle School.

Aristel de la Cruz A second generation Pinoy, born and raised in San Francisco, Aristel attended Balboa High School and received his BA, teaching credential, and MA in Social Justice Education and Equity at SFSU. He uses his talents as a hip-hop emcee, music producer, and scholar to spread political, cultural, and educational awareness in his community. He has worked closely with students of all ages and backgrounds throughout San Francisco as a teacher, tutor, and youth worker. His five years of involvement in PEP included being a former PEP Longfellow Elementary teacher and current Balboa teacher and curriculum coordinator. He currently teaches literature with an emphasis in Ethnic Studies at South San Francisco High School.

Aldrich Sabac Jr. Aldrich Sabac is a teacher, songwriter, and youth advocate who grew up on the south side of Stockton, California. Aldrich is a second-generation Pinoy who has been involved in PEP from 2007–08 to 2009–10 where he taught at the Longfellow Elementary and Balboa High School sites. Outside his work with PEP, he has been heavily involved with various church and

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community groups in Stockton, such as St. George Church and the Little Manila Foundation, where he served as the afterschool program teacher. Aldrich obtained his MA and teaching credential from UCLA’s Teacher Education Program in 2012 and was a teacher at Team Charter Elementary School. He is now teaching at his alma mater, Edison High School in Stockton, California.

Sharon Paray Growing up in a military family, Sharon Paray’s experience has been one that captures a global worldview. As a daughter of a serviceman, Sharon is a second-generation Pinay, who has lived in various areas of the world, including Japan, Germany, the Middle East, Texas, and, currently, San Francisco. As a Pinay nurtured in various locations of the world, her understanding of identity came when she enrolled at SFSU in 2007. With a background as a culinary chef, entrepreneur, and educator, Sharon provides an eclectic perspective to the PEP space. She graduated with a double major in Business and Asian American Studies at SFSU.

Liza Gesuden Raised in Fontana, California, Liza Gesuden’s journey involves a voyage of seeking peace, clarity, community, and personal transformation. A secondgeneration Pinay, she was a former PEP teacher and program coordinator at Burton High School from the 2008–09 to 2009–10 school years. During her time in PEP, she also taught at Oakland School of the Arts. Her work stems from her roots as a spoken-word artist, healer, and educator. She also obtained her MA in Social Justice Education and Equity at SFSU, where her work is centered on Filipina/o American decolonization.

Nicollete Magsambol Growing up in Santa Rosa, California, Nicollete Magsambol, also known as Nikkie, is a mother and second-generation Pinay. Nikkie primarily works with Filipina/o and Filipina/o American youth from two major neighborhoods where Filipinas/os reside in San Francisco: the South of Market (SOMA) and Excelsior. Nikkie’s involvement in PEP stemmed from being a former PEP Balboa teacher, Longfellow Elementary teacher and coordinator, CCSF teacher and coordinator, and PEP James Denman MS Coordinator. Through her seven years in PEP, Nikkie has been instrumental in expanding PEP to the elementary and middle school sites. She graduated with her MA in Asian American Studies in 2006 and is the program manager for

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the Asian Youth Prevention Services (AYPS) at the Filipino Community Center.

Jonell Molina Jonell Molina, a second-generation Pinoy and in his seventh year with PEP, has worked as a teacher and coordinator at Balboa High School and CCSF. He also serves as the coordinator of the MALONG Project where he coordinates and organizes a community network that supports PEP student and teacher wellness. Jonell has a MA in Education from the Social Justice and Equity program at SFSU and has worked at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center (VYDC) in the Tenderloin Violence Intervention Prevention Program as case manager and youth advocate. Jonell currently works in the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco as the High School services director at the Tenderloin Clubhouse.

Sheridan Marie Estacio Sheridan Marie Estacio was involved in PEP from 2005–09. Marie’s experience as a second-generation Pinay is rooted in her upbringing in the Middle East, Midwest America, and in Hayward, California. Her work was instrumental in the establishment of the Longfellow Elementary site as a former PEP teacher and coordinator at Longfellow Elementary. Marie graduated from SFSU in 2009 and from the UCLA Teacher Education Program in 2011 and currently works for Roses in Concrete Community School as the second– third grade teacher in Oakland, California.

Allyson Remigio Allyson Remigio is a former PEP CCSF student, board member, and teacher. Her journey as a second-generation Pinay stems from her experience growing up in Pittsburg, California. Her trials and tribulations of jumping around various city colleges in the Bay Area landed her in a PEP class in 2007 at CCSF. Allyson also brings with her a vast amount of service through her work with the Hemophilia Foundation of Northern California. Allyson graduated from UC Berkeley in Ethnic Studies and received her MA in Asian American Studies at SFSU.

AUTOETHNOGRAPHY I used autoethnography to record my personal thoughts, reflections, and revelations while I was a participant observer in PEP classrooms and events

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from 2007 to 2014. Journal reflections documented the growth of the research participants in relationship to creating curriculum, developing lesson plans, interaction among PEP teachers and students, and in-class teaching. The research journal provided a depiction of ideas and experiences, which enhanced the text from the interactions with research participants. Autoethnography enabled me to capture the nuances of PEP teacher development through their voyage of researching, learning, and teaching Ethnic Studies.

FINDINGS The stories of my research participants regarding their process of becoming PEP teachers reveal personal narratives that I categorized into the following themes: history and identity; history as political; and historical duty and action. These themes capture their process of self-discovery in learning about who they are as Filipina/o Americans; how Ethnic Studies has politicized their understanding of history; and by embodying the content, unveil a shift from a transformative narrative identity and toward narrative action. Narrative action encompasses the understanding of personal identity, in relationship to historical narrative, where teachers and students become authors and change agents that address the social, cultural, and political oppression that shapes contemporary social issues. Their stories articulate the importance of Ethnic Studies in supporting and encouraging Filipina/o Americans toward vocations committed to social justice work. Speaking on the presence of Filipina/o Americans within higher education, Emily Lawsin (1998) adamantly voices: “We are in the academic pipeline, now let our people flow! By teaching Filipino American studies . . . we provide a mechanism which can keep academia accountable to the growing community and vice versa” (195). In the following pages, the voices of PEP teachers reveal stories of personal transformation, key moments within PEP, and narratives of hope and action. Through our conversations, I present how history can address the needs of students through Historical Responsive Pedagogy (HRP).

History and Identity A common theme among the research participants is their personal transformation in becoming PEP teachers. Influenced by generations of colonialism, Filipina/o and Filipina/o American identity remains an issue that is constantly challenged and questioned. The research participants shared stories of selfdiscovery in understanding their identities as Filipina/o Americans. They expressed that the absence of discussing Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history within their families and in education left them with a fragmented

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sense of being Filipina/o American. According to Linda Revilla (1997), “We must define who we are as Filipino Americans. . . . Educating ourselves about our history and our culture is one way to confront our identity crisis” (109). The research participants expressed that being in PEP provided a cultural, political, and educational space to process their identities as critical Filipina/o American educators. Their process of learning and teaching Ethnic Studies revealed two subthemes: indignation and self-discovery.

Indignation The lack of Filipina/o American studies curriculum in our educational settings plays a critical role in the crisis of identity among Filipina/o Americans. Many immigrant Filipina/o parents depend on the educational system as the sole medium for knowledge and pathway toward success in American society. During many of my conversations while conducting this study participants shared similar experiences where learning about Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history was irrelevant in comparison to what they learned in school. Sharon Paray conveys: “My parents were just big on whatever you learn in school is what should be retain[ed]. And if I’m not learning that, then I should not be retaining it. . . . Until I started understanding [in PEP] . . . we have a history” (interview with author, July 9, 2009). Sharon’s upbringing is an example of immigrant parents’ trust and reliance on the American educational system to achieve the “American Dream.” This master narrative in education reveals a tradition of silence that played a role in my research participants’ experience in searching for understanding that fueled their indignation to discover who they are as Filipina/o Americans and to become Ethnic Studies educators. Many of the research participants expressed their pain because of the under- and misrepresentation of Filipina/o American experiences in the educational curriculum. Their exposure to Ethnic Studies, either at the high school or college levels, was a critical moment in questioning their U.S. schooling experiences and toward a politicization of their identity. Angelica PosadasBautista declared, I was angry at the fact that nobody cared about my education, or that it wasn’t that important, or I only had a small paragraph in a textbook, and when there are a multitude of resources to teach me who I am. Ethnic Studies can really change a person’s education, especially at a young age. Why wait till you get to college to learn about yourself? (Interview with author, December 2, 2009) Sharon Paray added:

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There was nothing permanent here that we can follow and see. Everything we learned was just through what my parents liked. So I thought . . . that was it, that encapsulated what I was supposed to like and what it was to be Filipino. I didn’t think there were any other venues or channels where we can be like, “Oh, well we could be [that] too!” (Interview with Paray) Like many participants in this research study, Posadas-Bautista and Paray expressed that learning their history as Filipina/o Americans fueled their indignation to become teachers in PEP. Sharon’s first exposure to Filipina/o American Studies as a student at SFSU through “Asian American Studies 363: Philippine Literature,” taught by Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, provided the opportunity to delve into her identity. Sharon expressed, Going into class and getting the syllabus and realized that there are 13 books that we need to read in this semester and of course supplements. . . . I was overwhelmed, but at the same time I felt a little proud for that moment, I was ready to explore, I was ready to see what else was out there.  .  .  . Allyson emphasized the importance of voice and how they are different but they each bring about something vital to our journey. (Interview with Paray) Similar to Sharon’s experience, Angelica’s experience in learning about Ethnic Studies served as a conduit to understand her knowledge of self. Angelica further explained, “PEP is responsible for . . . helping me educate about being Filipino, about who I am, and telling my story” (interview with Posadas-Bautista).

Self-Discovery The relationships in PEP provided a community for PEP teachers to engage in dialogue, share interests, and contribute to each other’s growth in discovering who they are as Filipina/o Americans. Goodson and Gill communicated, “The community of interlocutors plays a key role in the formation of our values and our sense of the good. It forms the basis of who we are and what we love and consider as meaningful, and which direction we are heading in life” (2014, 27). Through curriculum building, lesson planning, classroom dialogues, and building community culture, PEP teachers develop a common historical purpose of what it means to be a Filipina/o American Studies teacher. PEP teachers transform their identities through the process of researching, developing syllabi, collaborative lesson planning, to co-teaching in the classroom. Sheridan Marie Estacio shared, “I just realized that little things

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like meetings and teaching and seeing the kids . . . helps ground me and reminds me why I do what I do” (Sheridan Estacio, interview with author, July 16, 2009). Becoming a PEP teacher reveals dual purposes of one’s personal transformation to understand their identity, as well as creates a communal goal of the classroom to explore and expose students to history that has traditionally been misrepresented and marginalized in K–college curricula. PEP provided a personal, emotional, and political relationship for PEP teachers through their self-discovery as Filipina/o American educators. The research participants shared how being in PEP led them on a journey to understanding their identity. Allyson Remigio voiced: For the first time in my life I felt wanted. . . . I can’t find a better word than completely engaged because it was such a personal experience for me, this is an academic course, but it was so self-enriching, you find yourself through learning about your own culture and it, it blows my mind. PEP blows my mind . . . PEP saved my life, it really saved me. (Allyson Fernandez Remigio, interview with author, September 21, 2009) The PEP space provided an intellectual, personal, and political space for PEP teachers to find themselves as young Filipina/o American adults. Being a PEP teacher provided a sense of purpose and a community to engage with. Allyson added, One of the reason why I’m so thankful to PEP because it gave me this confidence even with my family like my brother and I are so close now. I know when it started changing when I really started being in PEP. Even my parents they see how serious I am with my life, they’re inspired, it’s amazing to me how PEP can come in and just rock my world. (Interview with Fernandez Remigio) Jonell Molina further explained, “I got into PEP and meeting good folks . . . Vibe with folks or kind of curious on what they’re about and on that level we can combine or integrate from being intellectual, academic, personal, you know [what] I’m saying? I think that’s what brought me into PEP” (Jonell Molina, interview with author, July 3, 2009). The community that is constructed in PEP serves as a cultural, political, academic, social, and dialogical space for PEP teachers to discover and legitimize their identities as Filipina/o American Studies educators. The PEP space serves as a place that nurtures PEP teachers and supports their educational, academic, and professional endeavors. It takes people with common interests in self-discovery and helps them develop a critical identity in teaching Filipina/o American history.

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History and identity in relationship to indignation and self-discovery for PEP teachers not only contributed to their growth in developing curriculum, syllabus, lesson plans, and teaching skills, but also served as a space to harness their personal, emotional, and political interests as Ethnic Studies educators. The PEP teachers in this study shared how learning about Filipina/o American history and experiences ignited a deep purpose in understanding themselves and contributed to their choice in becoming a PEP teacher. Sharon Paray expressed, “Being in this PEP space is the camaraderie [and] the willingness for people to help you get better” (interview with Paray). By becoming PEP teachers, it incited their indignation and self-discovery, which led to their political purpose as PEP teachers. By teaching Filipina/o American history, their political purpose in the teaching history as a process of decolonization and how it contributed to their purpose in becoming an Ethnic Studies educator was heightened.

HISTORY AS POLITICAL The research participants shared that by teaching Filipina/o American experiences through a decolonizing perspective reframed history as a means for personal and political transformation. According to Leny Strobel (2001), decolonization centers on the search for cognitive knowledge about Filipino and Filipino American history and culture; a positive confrontation with the emotional aspects of this process; and a search for a new way of constructing knowledge in a language that weaves together the various aspects of decolonization. The retelling of Filipina/o American history influenced the identities of PEP teachers through an articulation of colonial legacies and reconfiguring new narratives toward social justice and decolonization. “It is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character” (Ricoeur 1978, 148). In my conversation with my research participants, the building of curriculum, syllabi, and lesson plans rooted within the narratives of historical responsibility critically influenced the practices and identities of PEP teachers. For these educators, Filipina/o American history brought forth a purpose in teaching the content as a means for decolonization with explicit political intention and purpose.

Teaching History as Decolonization Becoming an Ethnic Studies teacher symbolizes more than just being a person of color in front of the classroom; it represents an embodiment of historical resistance and purpose. Aristel de la Cruz, a former teacher in PEP and current Ethnic Studies high school teacher, expressed that our school system needs to move beyond just having educators of color in front of the classroom,

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but to develop teachers who are politically, socially, and culturally consciousness: “To have a Filipino American teacher . . . it’s inspirational and the presence we overlook that, but then I look at what is a critical Pinoy pedagogy? It’s not enough just to be a model” (Aristel de la Cruz, interview with author, July 14, 2009). Dela Cruz’s statement is an example of how becoming an Ethnic Studies educator comes with the duty to act. It is more than just being a model, but also encompasses the need to understand the larger systemic and structural factors of schooling and to use one’s position as an educator to push students to think critically and address issues that are relevant to the students. Having an Ethnic Studies teacher of color is more than just a physical representation of one’s skin color; it is having teachers who embody the historical responsibility to retell and engage students toward narratives that have been excluded from popular discourse. Developing curriculum and lesson plans that are intentional toward social change are key elements in developing agency and responding to the needs of the classroom. The research participants all shared similar stories about the importance of present-day social issues and its connection to historical movements. Aldrich Sabac Jr., a former PEP teacher and current elementary school teacher, conveyed, I remember . . . I talked about the I-Hotel and presented it through the book Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel. . . . So when I was with these first graders talking about gentrification .  .  . I asked them, “What do you think? Let’s talk about this.” And they had all these ideas like: “We should strike!” or “We can’t let that happen . . .” And it’s not just them talking, but I can feel the seriousness [in] their voice, like they were serious. . . . That day was a life-changing day for me at Longfellow during that lesson plan. I’ve never seen them that serious or caring about . . . how people can really lose their house. (Interview with Sabac Jr.) During the 1970s the fight against the demolition of the International Hotel (I-Hotel), a residence for elder Filipinas/os and Chinese and what represented the last remnants of San Francisco Manilatown, served as a critical narrative in the long history of Filipina/o American activism. The I-Hotel represented “a fight for housing rights versus private-property rights; for a neighborhood’s existence versus extinction and dispersal; and for the extension of democratic rights to the poor and working class” (Habal 2007, 3). Aldrich was able to connect the realities of first graders to the complex matters of gentrification. The connection of gentrification in San Francisco with the I-Hotel struggle personalized the content for students to engage in serious dialogue about issues affecting their present-day lives. Leny Strobel described that decolonization is a process that makes the mythical and historical past available to the

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present and creates bridges for students to connect to the content. The importance of relating historical content to contemporary times is significant because it provide students a culturally relevant and responsive education. It breathes life into issues of the past that are still relevant today.

History with Purpose A common theme among the research participants was teaching Filipina/o American history with intention and purpose. A key component was to go beyond just teaching the content, but to discover how teachers can reach students to connect larger historical and cultural contexts to students’ everyday lives. Community building in the classroom and teaching content that is culturally relevant and community responsive are pillars in teaching history with purpose. Themes of community, friendship, and support emerged through my conversations. As young adults searching to understand identity, narrative, and engagement in the act of service, PEP teachers use this praxis to fulfill their understanding of who they are as critical Filipina/o Americans. Ricoeur (1978) states: “In this way lack dwells at the heart of the most solid friendship” (187). The PEP space fulfills this void through a collaborative exploration of a critical Filipina/o American identity; a social, political, cultural space to engage in social justice; and camaraderie. A cornerstone of PEP’s teaching approach is its use of Barangay pedagogy, which emphasizes the communal spirit of precolonial Philippine Indigenous practices through community teaching and learning. “Teacher barangays” or team teaching tradition in PEP shifts the teacher paradigm from an individual act to a collaborative orientation (Tintiangco-Cubales 2007). In Barangay pedagogy, the PEP teachers are organized into teaching groups of two to four people, known as Teaching Barangays or groups. It is the responsibility for Teacher Barangays to collaboratively develop and implement lesson plans. One teacher in the Teacher Barangay rotates weekly as the lead teacher, while the other team members contribute to the lesson plan as co-facilitators to specific sections of the lesson plan. The classroom is broken down into barangay units where students collaborate in learning and teaching the classroom. This provides students smaller group settings to participate in group discussions and in teaching the class. As classroom size increases, there is a need to have more teachers to support student learning. Liza Gesuden, a former PEP teacher and current high school English teacher, shared that there is a need for community support in the profession of teaching. She explained that PEP addresses the essential needs for teachers in providing a community that promotes wellness, confidence, mentorship, and guidance. Liza conveyed that teaching is an isolating profession and PEP provides a community that all new and veteran teachers need. She explained,

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You really need a lot of support, right? And if you don’t have that support, you burn out. I think for a period of time I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore. It was so tiring, but then I had good folks around me. . . . If there was some way we can structure [teacher education programs] like how we teach in barangays, that’s like totally revolutionary! People never teach in groups, you always teach by yourself like this singular action. (Liza Gesuden, interview with author, July 8, 2009) For Liza, PEP represents a collaborative teaching experience that fosters community support, shared memories, and an anchor to refocus the purpose of social justice education. The PEP communities are “social counterspaces [that] allow room . . . for students to vent frustrations and to get to know people who share many of their experiences” (Yosso 2005, 121). The community that PEP provides for teachers and students is a supportive world that embraces and legitimizes their work, identity, and transformation. This shared world of the PEP community provides a sense of security to spaces where their identities, work, and political ideologies are challenged. An essential element in HRP is connecting a critical lens of history to the lives of their students. HRP interprets history through a mimetic mode where history is not taught as dead, but alive. PEP students through their Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project voiced that their schooling experience was irrelevant to them because it failed to connect what was happening outside of the classroom to what they were learning in the classroom. Aristel dela Cruz continued, “History is happening now right, and the way that history has always been narrated as a youth like this is how the world is, this is how the day came to be, and that’s it and you can’t do anything about it.” In HRP, teaching history through a critical historical interpretation that analyzes oppression is explicit, intentional, and essential for students to connect their lives to the content of the classroom. Aristel de la Cruz discusses how PEP reframes history from a disconnected subject to a relevant space for empowerment and action: “Everyday people change history. Even by the way we think or the way we interact with one another and really changing it, their own present, their own future, and their own communities, their homes, right? If not in the homes, but in the classroom . . . where Filipino born is talking to Filipino American” (interview with Aristel de la Cruz). Aristel explains how teaching Filipina/o American history in PEP is purposeful in the political aim of reframing history to understand the conditions that divide the Filipina/o American community and how the classroom serves as a dialogical space to build community between Filipina/o American and immigrant students. History as a form of decolonization with political purpose is essential to HRP. Paulo Freire (2004) reminds us that “human beings are by nature

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inclined toward intervention in the world, as a result of which they make history” (106). Teaching history to deconstruct imperialism and colonialism and its effects on Filipinas/os and Filipina/o Americans connects how colonial narratives have shaped identity and contribute to today’s social issues. Aristel de la Cruz added, “Having a bigger picture beyond the individual I think that’s where and that’s how I became to be right now. . . . In terms of what I want to do for my life for what I want to do in the community I find myself” (interview with Aristel de la Cruz). HRP uncovers a critical history to the lives of students and teachers where the content causes people to act. HRP is intentionally and explicitly political in nature and situates history as relevant and purposeful.

HISTORICAL DUTY AND ACTION The PEP teachers expressed that teaching Filipina/o American history comes with responsibility and a duty to respond to the needs of their communities. The PEP curriculum and pedagogy influences both teachers and students to be historically responsive by encompassing how colonial histories have shaped people’s identities, but also having the self-determination to create new narratives. Assata Shakur (2001) reminds us, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains” (52). HRP reveals an orientation from narrative identity to critical narrative action and I provide examples below of how HRP is utilized in the PEP space.

Critical Narrative Action An essential theme I found in my research is how PEP teachers embodied the content they teach and which in turn motivated them to act. They expressed that their involvement in PEP provided a sense of agency and urgency through teaching Ethnic Studies. A crucial element to HRP is critical narrative action where teachers and students undergo a process of personal transformation and become active agents of history. Their reading of Filipina/o and Filipina/o American historical narratives allowed them to see themselves in history as agents dedicated to authoring new orientations of being Filipina/o American. Leny Strobel (2001) asserted, “Understanding the nature of the Filipinos’ colonial history and the process of decolonization may inform pedagogical methods that can create spaces for the emergence of voice” (20–21). Research participants shared similar responses and felt that teaching in PEP provided a model of how Ethnic Studies and history can be applied. The relationship between content, relevance, and responsiveness are key elements in applying HRP. Aristel de la Cruz elaborated, “The possibilities in terms of

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what we can do in education and in terms of the need for Filipino American studies, or relevant education, ethnic studies at a K–12 level is like . . . We got to integrate things, not just content wise, but also pedagogically” (interview with Aristel de la Cruz). Sheriden Marie Estacio added, Our students do know and they encounter what it means to be Filipino, but what do they really know? They know their family and stuff like that, but the history aspect .  .  . they’re like, “Wow, that really happened? And that’s why Mom is a nurse?” It totally begins to sink in for all of them and for them to have a root in something because you really don’t get anything about being Filipino in any history book. (Interview with Sheriden Marie Estacio) These narratives reveal that HRP is more than teaching the content; it connects the lessons learned in the classroom to the lives of students and engages them the process of action. Critical narrative action moves from identity toward responsibility and responsiveness based on understanding how history has influenced the present and how teachers and students can be engaged in collective action.

Critical Praxis in HRP and Examples Another essential element to HRP is the integration of critical praxis. Freire (2009) defines critical praxis as a five-stage process for addressing social issues: (1) identifying the problem, (2) researching the problem, (3) creating a collective plan of action, (4) implementating the plan, and (5) analyzing and evaluating the plan. In PEP, teachers institute many projects that encompass Freire’s critical praxis such as the Performing Resistance Project (PRP) and Teacher Participatory Action Research (TPAR). These two projects are examples of how to develop responsiveness for both students and teachers. Instituted in the fall of 2012, the Performing our Resistance Project (PRP) was created through a collaborative effort of both PEP Balboa and Burton High School sites. The purpose of the project was to have students and teachers work together and take concepts learned from the semester and interpret them through a showcase of visual arts, media, movement/dance, poetry/rap, and theater. Students and teachers were responsible for organizing the event from the theme to the logistics of the show. Some of the themes that students talked about were school to prison pipeline, white supremacy, and American schooling in the Philippines and its effect on Filipina/o and Filipina/o American identity. The PRP project was a reflection of HRP because it integrated the content to the lives of students and teachers and displayed how history becomes embodied and alive through creative expressions.

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PRP is an example of HRP as a form of critical narrative action as well as a medium for responsiveness.

TEACHER PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH Participatory Action Research has been a growing trend in social justice education and also in the field of Asian American Studies and research on Asian American youth. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) “provides young people with opportunities to study social problems affecting their lives and then determine actions to rectify these problems” (Cammarota & Fine 2008, 2). These often amazing research projects conducted by youth are supported by their teachers. Inspired by the framework and methods employed in YPAR, PEP came up with Teacher Participatory Action Research (TPAR). Similar to YPAR, TPAR provides teachers with opportunities to study and address the social issues their students are confronted with and develop curriculum and pedagogies to better serve them. PEP’s development of TPAR authentically engages teachers in a process of culturally and community responsive research that aims to improve their effectiveness and their service to the youth in their classrooms. TPAR encourages teachers to ask meaningful questions about the issues their students are facing. TPAR also gives teachers the knowledge and skills to conduct deep investigation of the central root causes of these issues. Ultimately, TPAR’s goal is to create teacher action plans that guide how they create curriculum, how they implement their lesson plans, and how they create meaningful relationships with their students and the communities in which they live. PEP’s TPAR projects are conducted at the beginning of the semester to serve as a way for teachers to learn more about their students by centralizing student narratives into the classroom and discovering how to utilize the cultural and community wealth they bring with them. Critical narrative action brings forth an understanding of historical narrative that manifests a critical identity where teachers and students engage in action to become authors of change. Critical narrative action builds the responsiveness in the classroom to understand how history shapes the present and plays a role in contemporary issues. Through the PRP and TPAR proj­ ects, teachers teach with political intention and connect content to the lives of students. In the process they also become active agents in determining who they are and how they can participate in community transformation.

CONCLUSION History in terms of identity, politics, and responsibility are foundational tenets to HRP. Understanding and embodying histories of resistance creates

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a sense of purpose, urgency, and duty to serve communities. Understanding the manifestation of Filipina/o American identity within mimesis123 interweaves the past and possible future narrative through the tension of the pres­ ent. As critical Filipina/o American educators, the PEP teachers in this study articulated the tension of the present by creating new texts to explain how colonial legacies are influencing contemporary issues of a disjointed Filipina/o American community; the invisibility of Filipina/o and Filipina/o American history in education; and poverty, self-hate, substance abuse, Pinay suicide, and violence. As agents of history and narrative, PEP teachers drew upon their curriculum, lesson plans, and critical pedagogy as mediums to engage students in conversations about their lives in connection with history. As agents of historical narrative, PEP teachers develop relationships with students through education as a means to understand their identity and world. This configuration, represents the power-to-do described by Ricoeur: the “power to act, the capacity possessed by an agent to constitute himself or herself as author of action” (1978, 220). In my research conversations, a prominent theme among the teachers was that PEP must embrace both the duty of understanding history as well as the responsibility to transform the world. Through the praxis of teaching and learning Filipina/o American studies, PEP teachers embody history that informs a narrative to act. The purpose of this research is to uncover how Filipina/o American educators are transforming their identities through the praxis of Filipina/o American studies as PEP teachers in developing HRP. A critical hermeneutical approach in unearthing these narratives, “Reflects a moral and historical stance. . . . That the creation of a text is one way we can see where we have been, where we are, and what future we might envision and project” (Herda 1999, 89). HRP illuminates how history can be responsive to the needs of students by helping them understand how history shapes identity, understanding, and action. With the growing number of Ethnic Studies courses emerging around school districts nationwide, there is a need to root the purpose and implementation of Ethnic Studies to be relevant and responsive to the needs of students. HRP is significant to Ethnic Studies in the K–12 pipeline to provide students with the understanding and opportunities to change history. HRP has the potential to provide students with the self-actualization to think beyond themselves and to help others. Projects such as the TPAR/YPAR and Performing our Resistance Project allow students to not only understand, but embody the content and address history’s wrongs. It positions students to take what they have learned and engage in action to produce new narratives of identity and community. It also places accountability on Ethnic Studies educators to not only teach the content, but to embody and practice it. The importance of historical and personal narratives is essential for teach­­ers to build relationships with their students. Through HRP, narratives are

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important to understand the student, their relationship to the content, and how to engage them in action.

REFERENCES Cammarota, Julio, and Michelle Fine. 2008. Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. New York: Routledge. Daus-Magbual, Roderick. 2014, August 7. “Ancestors, Predecessor, and Successors.” Presentation, Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) TIBAK Training, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California. Freire, Paulo. 2004. Pedagogy of Indignation. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004. Freire, Paulo. 2002 [1973]. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 3rd ed. New York: Continuum. Goodson, Ivor, and Scherto Gill. 2014. Critical Narrative as Pedagogy. New York: Bloomsbury. Habal, Estella. 2007. San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American in the Anti-Eviction Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Herda, Ellen. 1999. Research Conversations and Narrative: A Critical Hermeneutic Orientation in Participatory Inquiry. Westport: Praeger. Kearney, Richard. 2004. On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of the Minerva. London: Ashgate. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995. “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” Theory into Practice 34(3): 159–65. Lawsin, Emily. 1998. “Empowering the Bayinihan Spirit: Teaching Filipina/o American Studies.” Teaching Asian America: Diversity and the Problem of Community, edited by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, 187–97. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Leonardo, Zeus. 2003. “Interpretation and the Problem of Domination: Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics.” Studies in Philosophies and Education 22: 329–50. Pin@y Educational Partnerships Balboa High School Site. 2014, May 9. “Youth Participatory Action Research Project.” Presentation, PEP Community Show 2014: The YES Movement, Youth Educating Society, San Francisco, California. Revilla, Linda. 1997. “Filipino American Identity: Transcending the Crisis.” In Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity, edited by Maria P. P. Root, 95–111. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ricoeur, Paul. 1986. Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator. Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library. New York: Springer. Ricoeur, Paul. 1990 [1984]. Time and Narrative, Volume 1. Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricouer, Paul. 1992. Oneself as Another. Trans, Katheleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shakur, Assata. 2001. Assata: An Autobiography. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. Sleeter, Christine E. 2005. Un-standardizing Curriculum: Multicultural Teaching in Standards-based Classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Strobel, Leny M. 2001. Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post 1965 Filipino Americans. Quezon City: Giraffe Books.

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Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson. 2007. Pin@y Educational Partnerships: A Filipina/o American Studies Sourcebook Series. Volume 1: Philippine and Filipina/o American History. Santa Clara: Phoenix Publishing House. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson. 2014, August 5. “Growing our Own Community Responsiveness” Presentation, Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) TIBAK Training, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California. Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson, Rita Kohli, Jocyl Sacramento, Nick Henning, Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, and Christine Sleeter. 2015. “Toward an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Implications for K–12 Schools from the Research” The Urban Review 47(1): 104–25. Trinh Võ, Linda. 2000. “Performing Ethnography in Asian American Communities: Beyond the Insider-Versus-Outsider Perspective. In Cultural Compass: Ethnographic Explorations of Asian America, edited by Martin Manalansan, 17–37. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Yosso, Tara J. 2005. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. New York: Routledge. Yosso, Tara. 2005. “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth.” Race Ethnicity and Education 8(1): 69–91.

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Common Struggle: High School Ethnic Studies Approaches to Building Solidarity between Black and Brown Youth Jerica Coffey and Ron Espiritu

On November 18, 2014, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) passed a resolution making Ethnic Studies courses a graduation requirement for all high school students in the district. The Ethnic Studies Now Coalition backed the resolution with the written support of over fifty community-based organizations, dozens of professors, and petitions signed by thousands of students, parents, teachers, and community members. On the day of the vote, more than a thousand students and supporters attended the school board meeting and marched and chanted outside to pressure board members to vote in favor of the resolution. The vote was an important first step to bring Ethnic Studies classes and approaches to the second largest school district in the nation serving 90% students of color. Before the LAUSD vote, El Rancho Unified School District had already created a plan to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement. The San Francisco Unified School District and dozens of other local school districts across California have passed similar resolutions that will expand Ethnic Studies classes and pedagogical approaches from elementary schools to high schools. In September 2015 the California Legislature passed AB 101, a bill written and supported by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Salinas) that calls for the creation of model Ethnic Studies curriculum that can then be implemented by teachers in local school districts. While these victories are important, extensive work lies ahead for K–12 Ethnic Studies advocates. For example, as of October 2015 LAUSD still needs to fully fund the resolution, hire qualified teachers, develop curriculum, and create ongoing professional development within Ethnic Studies frameworks that will properly train and support a new cadre of teachers. The movement to expand Ethnic Studies has far-reaching implications in southern California, an area that boasts the most segregated school districts

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in the region—a concentration of what researchers call “apartheid schools” or schools where 99–100% of students are nonwhite (Orfield & Ee 2014). The average Black student in California attends a school where the majority of students are Latino. There is also a strong correlation between Latinos and African Americans that corresponds to the percentage of poor students in a school as both are considered disadvantaged groups. Although in many ways this hypersegregation can and does lead to limited access to resources and disparate achievement rates (Frankerberg, Lee & Orfield 2003), as practitioners of Ethnic Studies in apartheid schools for the past thirteen years, we have responded to these conditions as a unique pedagogical opportunity for making our classrooms and professional learning spaces responsive to the needs of Black and Brown Brown youth by developing pedagogies within an Ethnic Studies framework. We believe the new shifts in policy at the district level to include Ethnic Studies courses as part of the general curricula present an important opportunity for building a movement of solidarity in Black and Latino communities that confronts the material conditions both communities face, such as substandard schooling conditions and other effects of racism and poverty. To this end, the work outlined in this chapter focuses on a project done in an afterschool program and a unit designed for a high school Ethnic Studies class in two different South Los Angeles high schools to illustrate how an Ethnic Studies pedagogy can inform curricular approaches across a range of contexts.

ETHNIC STUDIES PEDAGOGY IN K–12 SETTINGS With movements in California and the Southwest working to expand Ethnic Studies course offerings, researchers and teacher educators are calling for the development of a range of supports to ensure that K–12 Ethnic Studies teachers and programs succeed (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell 2008; Sleeter 2011; Tintiangco-Cubales et al.). In efforts to move toward preparing teachers to successfully teach Ethnic Studies at the K–12 level, recent scholarship has synthesized a definition of Ethnic Studies as a pedagogical approach. In a summary of research that investigates pedagogical practices of effective K–12 Ethnic Studies teachers, Tintiago-Cubales et al. (2014) articulate the following elements as central to an effective Ethnic Studies pedagogy: 1. Engagement with the purpose of Ethnic Studies, which is to eliminate racism by critiquing, resisting, and transforming systems of oppression on institutional, interpersonal, and internal levels; 2. Knowledge about personal, cultural, and community contexts that impact students’ epistemologies and positionalities while creating strong relationships with families and community organizations in local areas;

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3. Development of rigorous curriculum that is responsive to student’s cultural, historical, and contemporary experiences; 4. Practices and methods that are responsive to the community needs and problems; and 5. Self-reflection on teacher identity and making explicit how identity impacts power relations in the classroom and in the community. It is important to mention that while localized community efforts to institutionalize Ethnic Studies courses are an essential step in improving the quality of education for all students, relegating the pedagogy outlined above to a series of specific courses can present a missed opportunity as the pedagogy can improve outcomes for students across content areas (Cabrera 2012; Cabrera et al. 2014; Sleeter 2011).

ETHNIC STUDIES AS IDEOLOGICAL LITERACY Proponents of Critical Pan-ethnic Studies (Duncan-Andrade & Morell 2008) and community responsive pedagogy (Picower 2012; Schecter & Cummins 2004; Tintiago-Cubales et al. 2015) argue for approaches in urban education that bring teachers and students together to investigate injustices in their communities as they collaborate to change them. In this view, pedagogy has the potential to operate as a community intervention. We found one of the most pressing community needs informing our curricular choices to be the oppressive, internalized deficit thinking that creates tension and division between Black and Brown youth. This ideology continues to reinforce racial hierarchies and can prevent communities of color from uniting to change oppressive conditions. Despite this, we also know that in Los Angeles, there is a history of collective resistance where both Black and Latino communities have come together to fight for change. In our schools, we have found that most of our students do not know this history of collective struggle as it is rarely, if ever, reflected in what they learn in school. Camangian (2013) argues for the importance of urban youth engaging in a curriculum that fosters their ideological literacy. Camangian defines this type of literacy as the ability to identify and analyze “the social, political, and cultural processes through which dominant cultures, and the ruling class, use communication strategies to construct, renew, reinforce, and defend forms of domination by promoting its ideology over others” (1). He further argues that this form of literacy allows students to engage in liberatory, humanizing thought that directly challenges political, economic, and social hegemony. Because we know the potential power of interethnic organizing to struggle against the internal neocolonial conditions communities of color face, we began to ask ourselves what a curriculum might look like that developed a

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consciousness of solidarity between Black and Brown youth. To move students toward this consciousness we worked together to consider what texts, media, and other curricular resources could be used and developed that would allow students to unpack and critique racialized, constructed, and normalized notions of the “other.” Our aims are to continually create space, both during the school day and after school, for students to develop this form of ideological literacy that allows them to understand the common history they share as oppressed peoples and unpack the ways conflict and tension are constructed by hegemonic institutions. For this reason, we create opportunities for youth to examine the ways their thinking about the “other” is shaped, conditioned, and constructed to reproduce oppressive conditions. This examination helps them explore the ways their thinking can be reshaped and reconstructed to serve both Black and Brown peoples as they struggle against similar marginalizing conditions. To this end, we make sure that on a regular basis, our students have an opportunity to identify pervasive messages about their community promoted in the dominant culture. This practice, as a form of ideological literacy, allows students to consider how the racialization of youth of color in Los Angeles holds the same purpose and has similar effects in terms of disenfranchising and marginalizing the community as a whole.

WATTS YOUTH VOICES: DEVELOPING YOUTH LEADERSHIP In this section, Jerica, a Xicana in her thirteenth year teaching English in public schools, writes about using an Ethnic Studies pedagogy to address racialized violence on a south Los Angeles high school campus. She describes developing youth leaders with the analytical skills and motivation to confront and ultimately change school policies that fueled tensions in the community and created a toxic culture of competition and violence in their school. Created intentionally as a space to foster students’ ideological literacy and as a response to repressive schooling conditions, Watts Youth Voices (WYV), an afterschool program, operated for five years in one of the largest comprehensive high schools in south Los Angeles. Deemed “failing” with a history of high dropout/push-out rates and a reputation for chaos and violence, the school had recently been taken over by a charter management organization (CMO) that divided the campus into five different semi-autonomous schools. “Color-blind” school reform policies immediately enacted as part of the “reform” process divided enrollment such that African Americans were overrepresented in the campus school that housed most of the special education programs and Latino youth became overrepresented in the school housing all programming for English Language Learners and the only Advanced Placement courses offered on the campus as a whole.

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Over the first few years of the takeover, the various school identities quickly became racialized through these policies—one school becoming known as the “good” school, and the other the “bad” school. What’s more, students in the school with high Latino enrollment were forced by the CMO to wear white shirts and the students in the school with high African American enrollment were forced to wear black shirts as part of their school uniform. These physical markers imposed on student bodies further fueled racialized identities that became associated with disparate access to resources and achievement. To make matters worse, teachers and students from the campuses were encouraged by CMO leaders to compete over test scores, which further exacerbated the problem of racialized school identities when year after year, the school with special education services and high African American school enrollment lagged behind the other campuses in terms of achievement on standardized tests. Concurrently, the school with disproportionate Latino enrollment, and all the Advanced Placement courses, consis­ tently made the largest gains. We found students, teachers, and community members to be closely in tune with the messaging this created about status and race as a perverse culture of competition became central in shaping school culture on the campus as a whole. Aside from sports, which were also ethnically segregated although open to all students on campus, there were limited opportunities for students from the different schools to build community and develop leadership, even though youth were living in the same neighborhoods. It was in this context that WYV was founded. Because it took place after school, we had the freedom to organize learning in ways that allowed students to address what they felt were the most pressing injustices they faced on their campuses without the constraints of testing benchmarks. Outside of sports teams, it was one of the few spaces where youth from the various schools came together. Weekly meetings, led by student leaders, included political education and leadership development, spoken word workshops, and community building. The core leadership of the group was racially balanced, although approximately half was consistently made up of students from the “black shirt” school. For this reason, when rivalry and tension between schools, racialized by the CMO’s reform policies, erupted into ongoing instances of violence involving large groups of students along lines of school affiliation and race, leaders from WYV felt it was important to respond. Before WYV youth took action, typical responses that year by school leaders were to suspend, punish, or arrest large numbers of youth, often completely ignoring how violence or tension was racialized by school policies. Lock downs became a common response that prevented students from going to lunch or moving around campus freely. Largely, teachers and school leaders dismissed racial tensions and violence as a cultural phenomenon or

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“community issue” and responded with band-aid approaches that maintained the status quo. Because the violence became everyday and “normative,” and the response from adults did not include youth voices, in the afterschool space, students chose to take action on the violence and the disruption it was causing to their learning. I worked alongside this group of student leaders to design political education workshops and activities that exposed the larger WYV community of students who attended our meetings to the concepts of internal colonialism, divide and conquer, and Frantz Fanon’s (1963) notion of horizontal violence. As an English teacher who draws from an Ethnic Studies pedagogy, I engaged youth with these concepts and theories to move them to strategic action. It is important that their attempts to address community needs were informed by these concepts, which they used as a lens for making sense of the problems before enacting solutions. Once students had a strong analysis of the root causes of the violence, it became clear to them that the CMO had, in many ways, reproduced inequities along lines of race in their attempt to maintain order and control. With support from two English teachers, graduate students from a local university, and one Ethnic Studies teacher from one of the campus schools, WYV youth developed the “One Love Black and Brown Solidarity Campaign.” The campaign culminated in a week of action that included a series of workshops bringing together over 350 students from three of the five schools on campus that had experienced regular instances of violence. To build community in a safe, student-led space and to dialogue about what they felt were the root causes of the violence, WYV youth used their existing organizational structures, such as standing meetings and committees, to carefully craft an agenda for the workshops that included spoken-word performances, space to force cross-campus and cross-ethnic dialogue, community building activities, small group discussions, and activities that messaged the extent to which Black and Brown youth in south Los Angeles face similar struggles with racism, policing, poverty, and poor schooling conditions as well as share a history of common struggle against those conditions. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) became a powerful component of the campaign as a method of both understanding the problem from the perspectives of a broad cross-section of youth on our campus and demanding change from school leaders. YPAR is well documented as a method for fostering a sense of agency, civic engagement, and critical hope in response to violence and other social toxins (Bautista & Martinez 2016; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell 2008; McIntyre 2000). As part of their campaign, students conducted research in the form of 360 surveys given out across three schools and video recorded interviews of teachers and peers to document student voices about racial tension, school policies, and violence.

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One of the questions asked in the survey the students created was, “Does the separation of the schools make you feel safe on this campus?” Overwhelmingly, the students surveyed answered “no.” To probe further into why students felt unsafe on the campus despite heavy policing and barriers put around the hallways dividing one school from another, students from WYV took digital cameras around the school and conducted interviews. They produced a short film that shared the survey data as well as their interviews. To the aforementioned question some students responded as follows: Student 1: “I feel like, if like, we’re in jail because we can’t cross the gate.” Student 2: “When they make boundaries, they think it makes it safer for us, but it just makes it more racial because they are labeling us, they are keeping us separated.” Student 3: “It makes me feel like I am crossing the border, like you [are an] immigrant go[ing] back on that side, you don’t belong on this side.” The student perspectives captured in this set of interviews highlight two critical points. First, many students believed separation bred conflict and mis­ understanding. Second, the policies put in place by the CMO’s leadership fueled tension and racialized students creating the context for violence to occur. The students’ responses make an important connection between their treatment in school and the treatment of criminalized communities, such as migrant crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. Conducted during the school day in the library, on each of the four days of the week of action, the workshops were attended by four classes from each school, approximately seventy-five students a day, and facilitated completely by youth from WYV with adults physically present as support but not in a facilitation role. Never before had students from the various schools been in a room working together. The workshops included activities that structured community building and dialogue between students from different campuses about what they felt were causes of and solutions to the violence. The workshops also included poetry performances by WYV students written to promote a consciousness of solidarity, watching and discussing the video of student research, and culminating in all students signing a solidarity pledge that committed them to stopping the violence and working for change on their campuses. Below is a short excerpt of the poem that seven WYV youth wrote and performed together to open the workshops each day. If these halls could talk, They would scream, They would call everyone’s name

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And tell them they have been destroyed, That a name has become their identity That they have defined themselves with weakness, That they have pointed fingers, but these fingers Are pointless. These halls would shout, this school is a division. We have been taught hate, We have manifested it, We have empowered it, We have adored it. These halls would scream. They would scream how much we have destroyed one another. We have been silenced, we have been blind. If these halls could talk, they’d help us see the errors of our ways And how far we’ve strayed from the ways of our ancestors. If these halls could talk, they would say People who don’t know their ancestors Don’t know the blood, sweat, and tears That are the roots of our struggle. If these walls could talk, they would scream, Why are two groups fighting each other Instead of fighting not to be another statistic. After each workshop, poster-sized copies of the solidarity statement and students’ signatures were posted throughout each of the campuses for the rest of the year. Many students who attended the workshops throughout the week were directly involved in the violence that year, yet sat in the room together and discussed their perspectives with youth from the other schools. Most of the students had never been in a youth-led space on our campus because there were none outside of WYV and most had never interacted with students from the other schools during the school day. They spoke to the power of this repeatedly in each of the four workshops and asked that instead of the typical administrator responses to increase security and police presence and stagger lunch hours and release times, more spaces be created for students to interact, a far more humanizing approach to the problem. The week of action culminated in a spoken-word event held for the broader community in the evening where students from several schools in the area performed poems with the theme of Black and Brown solidarity. The event was well attended with more than 150 community members and youth

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coming together to listen to the student poets. All of the adults involved in supporting WYV leveraged our relationship with school administrators, counselors, and teachers to get them to attend both the workshops and the spokenword event. Although we cannot say that WYV students immediately changed the culture of the entire school that year or ended all violence on campus, they did create a space where youth could examine how the school as an institution made decisions to foster conflict, competition, and inequality. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of this work was that the students were engaging Ethnic Studies pedagogy as a community intervention. The following year CMO leaders dramatically shifted their policies and appropriated the students’ campaign slogan from the week of action, “One Love,” to roll out new policies that included offering AP and special education courses across all the schools so that students have opportunities to interact with each other, more time for teacher collaboration across schools, and the CMO’s chief academic officer admitting, publicly, that the organization’s policies had “fostered a perverse culture of competition.” Three years later, the CMO continues to use “One Love” banners around the school. Perhaps most important, youth modeled for adults how to nonpunitively address violence, and how, when provided adequate support from adults, youth leadership can have a positive impact on toxic school cultures.

BUILDING SOLIDARITY BETWEEN BLACK AND BROWN YOUTH: THE AFRO-LATINO UNIT In this section, Ron Espiritu, a Xicano in his tenth year teaching Ethnic Studies in South Los Angeles public high schools outlines a unit that teaches the history of collective struggle between Black and Brown peoples in the Americas and in the United States. The curriculum and pedagogical approach of an Ethnic Studies class must be community responsive and based on the specific student population that the school serves. The school where this particular unit was taught was a school that served a student population that was roughly 45% Black and 55% Latino. In high school Ethnic Studies courses it is important that curriculum develop students’ understanding of the shared struggle all People of Color face in the United States and internationally as a result of racism and the legacy of colonialism. It is important to note that the curriculum in these courses must pay equal attention to the shared legacy of resistance and the ways in which that resistance has continued to be interconnected for more than five hundred years in this hemisphere. One of the most important realizations that I had while designing a critical Pan-ethnic Studies (DuncanAndrade & Morrell 2008) year-long pacing plan for my ninth grade Ethnic

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Studies class was the need to help my students understand that Black, Indigenous, and Latino histories have been directly linked for more than five hundred years. Once I came to the realization that a Eurocentric approach to teaching history divides up our stories and decontextualizes our collective struggles, I began designing all my units with an intersectional approach. One of these units is a centerpiece unit titled “Afro-Latinos: The Untaught Story of Our Shared Historical Resistance.” The Afro-Latino Unity unit investigates the history of the more than 150 million people of African descent in Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean and their role in connection with Indigenous and Mestizo people in liberation struggles throughout the continent. Students are often incredibly surprised to find out that there are an estimated 150 million Afro-Latinos (people of African descent) living in Latin America (Gates 2011) compared to the 42 million African American people living in the United States (2010 U.S. Census). For all Latinos who are Mestizos, the African ancestral heritage is the third root of our racial makeup and has been hidden from many of our students because of a colonial education in the United States and in Latin America. In some regions and countries, the African cultural and ancestral heritage is more prevalent and widespread, but the African lineage is present throughout the Americas. Historically African, Indigenous, and Mestizo people have worked together to fight for the end of slavery and colonial rule through wars of independence. Throughout the unit, students are able to investigate how this shared history in North and South America is directly connected to Black and Brown unity in the civil rights, Black Power, and Chicano movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the third world liberation struggles that have taken place over the past one hundred years. The goal of the unit is for students to connect their learning and apply these lessons to the opportunities for African Americans and Latinos to unite to fight against similar forms of oppression in their shared communities. Their research and analysis is displayed in the creation of “the missing chapter on Black and Brown unity” and in in-class theater performances. Students also teach the community about this forgotten history in a community forum where teachers, students, parents, and community members are invited to attend. Learning and understanding this history can help lead Black and Brown students to intercultural breakthroughs and an intersectional understanding of the power of unity to work together toward solving and addressing many of the same struggles that both groups of students face at school and in the larger society. On the first day of the unit students walk into the class to see stacks of textbooks on their desks all around the room. I tell the students that they are going to be tasked with searching for the history of African, Indigenous, and Mestizo unity throughout Latin America’s history in the state-approved

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history books that are used in their school. I give students a handout with ten examples of African and Indigenous unity in Latin America with examples like Jose Maria Morelos and Vicente Guerrero, two men of African descent who fought in Mexico’s war of independence, and Tupac Amaru II in Peru who united Incan Indigenous people with enslaved African people in 1782. I also include ten examples of Black and Brown solidarity in the United States from the 1930s to today offering candy bars or A’s for the day to the first student to locate these historical events in a chapter, page, or paragraph in the state-sanctioned textbooks that I’ve gathered. As the students flip through the pages, it becomes evident that the chapter does not exist. Reactions are mixed as some students begin to question whether or not the stories that I shared with them actually happened and others become frustrated with me for asking them to complete an impossible task. In each class there are always a few students who push their peers to think that perhaps the state textbooks and even the state Eurocentric stan­ dards have erased or forgotten our collective history on purpose and with those realizations, students develop the counterhegemonic ideological literacy that becomes an incredibly important tool they carry with them for the entire year. After the students see for themselves how their history of shared resistance is made invisible in the state textbooks, I pull out the dozens of books and films that I have on Afro-Latino history and Black and Brown unity. We talk about why this history has been ignored or deemed “unimportant” to the people who create the state standards and the state textbooks. As students look through the books and resources that I have brought, I tell them it is important that we create resources that are accessible to other students, to their families, and to the community so that the knowledge doesn’t stay trapped in these academic books but is made available to them and to their families. The students are given their project assignment to write the missing chapter on Afro-Latinos and our shared historical resistance in Latin America and in the United States. Using Microsoft Publisher, students respond in writing to different prompts that demonstrate their own learning and understanding of the historical concepts. They then bind these chapters into an easy-to-read format for people new to the subject. The students are given a reader that includes high school friendly expository texts from journalists, researchers, historians, public intellectuals, poets, and musicians that include Elizabeth Martinez, Carlos Jimenez, Ron Wilkins, Molefe Kete Asante, Louis Reyes Rivera, and others. The unit also includes critical viewing of the documentary film series titled Black in Latin America and Afro-Latinos: The Untaught Story. The students are paired off in teams of two (Black and Latino students paired together) and from the readings and classroom activities students write and then publish the different components

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of the missing chapter. The parts of the project include a historical explanation of the mestizaje that documents the three roots: Indigenous, African, and European; analysis of the role of Vicente Guerrero and Jose Maria Morelos in the War of Independence and the abolition of slavery in Mexico; and different slave revolts throughout North and South America that included mutual cooperation between African and Indigenous leaders. The chapter book also includes student analytical essays that connect historical events to present-day struggles, as well as a historical overview of how divide and conquer was used and continues to be used as a colonial strategy that divided our ancestors and that divides our community, and case studies of the African population of specific countries in Latin America. Students engage in rigorous reading and writing throughout the unit in order to document their own learning and research and package it in a way that is visually appealing to their peers and family members. Students are taken through different activities and lessons over the next few weeks while they also take time to write and work on different parts of the chapter. In one of the lessons, we engage in a dialogue designed to unpack the root causes of tension that exists between the Black and Latino community in South Los Angeles. Students are asked to explore and unpack their own prejudices and stereotypes of the other group. These conversations are never easy and require the creation of norms for the conversation and to build on previous positive relationship-building activities that happened earlier in the semester. In previous units students will have already engaged in a “privilege walk” where students shared similar experiences. Students have also learned lessons about Filipino, Latino, and African American unity during the Farm Worker Movement and we begin each class with the unity clap to remind them of this unity. An example of the creation of a norm is when a student offers an idea about a cause of tension, they are speaking about what they have heard not necessarily what they believe. In that way when an idea is introduced they can frame it in a way that they are challenging the idea, not necessarily believing or reaffirming the idea. As students talk about the tension, what oftentimes comes up is competition over low-paying jobs, lack of cultural understanding of each other, competition over the drug trade, and tension that exists inside prisons and jails. It is important for students to have a candid conversation with each other because it helps them to connect the present-day struggles in their own community to the colonial strategy of divide and conquer and divide and rule, which has historical roots in the United States and Latin America. In order to strengthen students’ understanding of how divide and conquer and divide and rule continues to play out in our communities, I use a role play that was shared with me by a respected teacher. The idea is to simulate the competitiveness that communities often experience with the limited resources

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that are available to them. I divide students into different small incorporated cities in Los Angeles and I tell them that they are charged with creating a plan for their city using Starbursts as resources to build whatever their small city or community needs, such as schools, hospitals, and libraries. The teacher (representing the local, state, and federal government) divvies out resources to students in a “resource grab” where students fumble over each other to grab Starbursts that are thrown onto the floor. The teacher also takes resources from the students in the form of budget cuts. Some groups are given less and some are given more. Without fail, most students argue with each other rather than uniting against the government that is allocating and taking away the resources. Students are asked to reflect on what they’ve learned in writing and most come to the conclusion that in our communities Black and Brown students often compete with each other for low-paying jobs, entrance into magnet or charter schools, access to AP and advanced classes, and/or afterschool programs. Oftentimes this competition stops our community from organizing together to demand real substantive change for all. As a follow-up to the role play, I have students create short Actos in the spirit of Teatro Campesino. We talk about how divide and conquer and divide and rule have historically separated communities that should be or could be natural allies. I tell students that they need to come up with theater performances for the class where they demonstrate how divide and conquer has negatively impacted our community or our ancestors and what could have happened differently to change the course of history or the course of events in the present. For the theater performances, students use different historical examples we learn earlier in the year or examples they come up with on their own that they have experienced in the community. Some examples students come up with are: Cortez turning the Tlaxcalans against the Mexica people in the Spanish invasion of Tenochtitlan in 1521; European invaders recruiting different African ethnic groups against each other during the colonization of Africa; and the FBI’s Cointelpro program, which tried to pit different Black Power Movement organizations against each other during the 1970s. Students also create performances of Black or Brown students fighting other Black or Brown students based on various disagreements on the bus, in school, or walking home from school. In each performance students act out what transpired as a result of the divide and conquer strategies of European colonizers or the divisive mentality that People of Color oftentimes employ with each other. Students then perform a “rewind” and gave an alternate version of history if the people in each example had chosen differently and instead had united and worked toward common goals. During the previous three weeks while we are working on these different activities, students are engaging in rigorous reading from our unit reader,

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which provides students with an ideological literacy that connects a shared history of resistance to colonialism with the need for Black and Latino youth to unite to resist current forms of oppression. From poverty, to lack of quality education, unemployment, gang warfare, police terror, mass incarceration, and mass detention and deportation of undocumented people, students are able to connect their learning throughout the unit to the need for unity in our communities. A major part of the project is the opinion essay in which students share how the history and knowledge learned during the class applies to their own community and school. One of my ninth graders expressed the following in her closing essay in her missing chapter: Oftentimes we grow up believing that Blacks and Latinos are arch rivals only because we aren’t taught any better. How can we expect to be taught otherwise when our parents, grandparents and so on have been taught the same thing or have been sheltered from the truth? The truth is that Blacks and Latinos are not enemies; in fact, they are allies and have faced many of the same struggles throughout the course of history. . . . We need to address our struggles and unite with one another to try to overcome them. If we were to learn about how Africans and Indigenous worked together to benefit one another maybe we could gain the sense to do the same.—London Edwards, ninth grade Her words are profound because she is able to express an ideological literacy that can call into question the damaging effects that generations of Eurocentric miseducation can have on a community that is divided based on perceived economic competition. Without the intervention of a Pan-ethnic Studies approach many students go to school and graduate without ever having access to this pedagogy; a pedagogy that has the power to build important consciousness of Black and Brown unity. After the end of the project, students are given the opportunity to share their findings with their peers, teachers, parents, and community members in an open forum where the projects are displayed. During the display time students share poetry, reflections, and artwork that was created during this unit and in previous units as well. Students have also visited other classrooms and other schools to share their findings and their work with younger students as a way of putting their learning to action.

THE WAY FORWARD: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES We offer the description of teaching outlined in this chapter as a demonstration of concrete ways Ethnic Studies pedagogy can positively shape classroom life and school culture. Although the movement to institutionalize

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Ethnic Studies at the K–12 levels is an important one, teachers need not wait for their schools and districts to sanction this vision of education. Ethnic Studies pedagogy can be put into practice in a range of contexts and disciplines to powerfully engage young people in meaningful and motivating learning that challenges racism and other forms of domination that create division in communities of color. Even without the policies and supports in place, we understand it as our responsibility to create and sustain the critical, liberatory learning contexts we know children deserve. Undoubtedly, effective Ethnic Studies pedagogy that supports young people in developing rigorous academic and critical literacy skills as a vehicle for critiquing, resisting, and transforming systems of oppression on institutional, interpersonal, and internal levels requires a tremendous commitment of time and energy beyond the school day as it demands a stance of inquiry and consistent personal and professional reflection. However, we believe that until our children live in a world where racism, poverty, and other forms of oppression and injustice cease to function as central in shaping the opportunities they have access to, educators have a moral duty to work tirelessly in service of creating a more just and sustainable world.

REFERENCES Cabrera, Hawley, W. D. 2012. An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within Tucson Unified School District. PhD diss., University of Arizona. Camangian, Patrick. 2011. “Subverting the Master’s Syllabus.” Monthly Review 63(3, July–August). Camangian, Patrick, 2013. “Seeing Through Lies: Teaching Ideological Literacy as a Corrective Lens. Equity & Excellence in Education, 46(1), 119–34. Duncan-Andrade, J. M., and E. Morrell. 2008. The Art of Critical Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang. Fanon, F. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Frankerberg, E., C. Lee, and G. Orfield. 2003. “A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?” The Civil Rights Project. Los Angeles, CA. Gates Jr., Henry Louis. 2011. Black in Latin America. New York: New York University Press. McIntyre, A. 2000. Constructing Meaning about Violence, School, and Community: Participatory Action Research with Urban Youth. The Urban Review, 32(2), 123– 154. Nolan L. Cabrera, Jeffrey F. Milem, Ozan Jaquette, and Ronald W. Marx. 2014. “Missing the (Student Achievement) Forest for all the (Political) Trees: Empiricism and the Mexican American Studies Controversy in Tucson.” American Educational Research Journal. Orfield, G., & Ee, J. 2014. Segregating California’s Future: Inequality and Its Alternative 60 Years After Brown V. Board of Education.

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Picower, B. 2012. “Teacher Activism: Enacting a Vision for Social Justice.” Equity & Excellence in Education 45(4): 561–74. Schecter, S. R., and J. Cummins. 2004. “Multilingual Education in Practice: Using Diversity as a Resource.” Book Notices 761, 756. Sleeter, C. E. 2011. “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review.” National Education Association Research Department. Tintiangco-Cubales, A., R., et al. 2014. “Toward an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Implications for K–12 Schools from the Research.” The Urban Review 47(1): 104–25.

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Resistance and Resilience in Tucson: The Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) as a Form of Resistance and Liberation Anita Fernández

XITO has impacted my self-concept of being, and treated me not just as an educator, but as a human being who can and will love and carry a critical consciousness to impact my gente. —XITO institute participant, 2014 In the summer of 2014, two and half years after the long battle to save Ethnic Studies in Arizona and the eventual elimination of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) held its third urban education institute, which brought together professors, teachers, and community organizers from across the country. Located in Tucson, the institute included three full days of professional development in the former MAS pedagogy and Xican@ indigenous epistemology, which has been quantifiably proven to increase graduation and matriculation rates to college, as well as raising state test scores, but is now illegal in Arizona (Cabrera, Milem & Marx, 2012). For the first time since the program’s ban in January 2012, the core of the MAS teachers were united, but not to discuss pending lawsuits, state sanctioned attacks on their work, or to share the strain the long struggle has put on all of their families, which had become the norm. This gathering was different. In maestra Norma Gonzalez’s words, “This was the first time we were all together again doing the work” (July 13, 2014). XITO’s attempt to carry on the legacy of the MAS program by offering professional development in the decolonial, barrio pedagogies, seemed to be coming to fruition and witnessing the MAS teachers together in that context offered the rest of us a glimpse into the past and provided hope for our

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collective future. Maestro Lorenzo Lopez described those three days, saying he “hadn’t felt that type of love in a long time. It reminded me of the MAS days, in the trenches” (email to author, July 21, 2014). Simultaneously, that summer, the architects of the law that destroyed the MAS program re-engaged in their war against Mexican American Studies vowing to continue their “crusade” against the program (Ingram 2014). Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and State Superintendent of Instruction John Huppenthal attempted to leverage their disdain for Mexican American Studies by once again using it as their midterm election campaign platform. Both Huppenthal and Horne had undergone scrutiny even from their own party due to their lawless behavior and in Huppenthal’s case, secret blog posts that included statements comparing the MAS teachers to the KKK and a declaration that all Spanish-language media should be abolished (Stellar 2014). But in the summer of 2014 a glimmer of justice prevailed as both Huppenthal and Horne were defeated in their primary election races eliminating the two highest-ranking officials in Arizona who had done irreparable damage to Chican@/Latin@ youth during their tenure. XITO had emerged and while the new culture wars were very much still at play, two of the heads of the neoliberal “hydra” had been chopped off.1

THE NEW CULTURE WARS AND THE STRUGGLE IN TUCSON After the passage of AZ HB 2281 (now ARS 15-111 and 15-112) the highly renowned MAS program was eliminated from the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) and Arizona was aptly labeled the “State of Hate,” where racial profiling, book banning, and the deliberate erasing of Chicana/o history was, and still is, a daily occurrence. The new state superintendent of instruction of Arizona, John Huppenthal, was elected on his platform that promised to “Stop La Raza,” which included a step-by-step description of how this would be enacted, including references to Carthage and Bodica (Zinn 2012). Arizona had become, and remains today, the capital of neoliberal racism, a strategy that rejects (and claims to be offended by) older forms of racism grounded in claims of white superiority (Giroux 2004). More specifically, Arizona activist-scholars Anita Fernández and Zoe Hammer (2013) accurately point out the pervasiveness of Arizona’s neoliberal racist maneuvers, “Not only does this strategy moralize against the very recognition of systemic and institutional racism, ironically labeling such recognition ‘racist,’ neoliberal racism promotes entrenched racial hierarchies by demanding the use of the institutional capacities of an increasingly authoritarian state to surveil, criminalize, and crush anti-racist, reparational, and unequivocally democratic projects, such as the hugely successful TUSD MAS Program” (67).

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Meanwhile, thousands of Tucson youth are being withheld an education that has both qualitative and quantitative research-based evidence of its success with youth of color, particularly for Chicana/o-Latina/o students (Cabrera et al. 2012; Sleeter 2011). In an attempt to counter the agenda to dehumanize Brown children and their familias, we began to build from the ashes of the long struggle for Ethnic Studies by using our resources and many forms of cultural, political, social, and economic capital to reverse the trend that seemed to be suffocating our community in Tucson (Yosso 2005). One of the results of this process was the formation of XITO. While other effective urban educational programs using effective pedagogical/curricular frameworks that directly address the needs of Chicana/oLatina/o youth exist throughout the Southwest (and throughout the country for that matter), there were (before the State of Arizona outlawed MAS along with TUSD dismantling the department in 2012) some significant distinctions within Tucson’s MAS program, curriculum, and pedagogy. The following characteristics that set MAS apart were: it was the only K–12 comprehensive Chicana/o-Studies program that was fully integrated into an urban public school system that served thousands of students over a fourteenyear period; it was the only urban public school program that came under full attack from the state (via state legislation—AZ HB 2281 now ARS 15-111 and ARS 15-112) and its school district—TUSD (in collision with the state through its elimination of MAS); its teachers were demonized and dehumanized via slander and libel in the mass popular media by TUSD officials, rightwing political zealots, and supposed Democrat sympathizers; personal lawsuits were filed by state operatives (funded by state officials) against MAS teachers; the daily harassment of all of the MAS teachers by TUSD administration and state officials; its own district’s (TUSD) banning of books written by Chicana/o-Latina/o, Black, and Native authors that were used in its curriculum; three independent audits/studies on the program that demonstrated unprecedented success and efficacy for Chicana/o-Latina/o youth in an urban public education program (Yosso 2005); the firing of the MAS director and an MAS teacher for standing up to and contesting the State of Arizona, the TUSD administration, and governing board to preserve MAS; and most important, the use of a Mexicano/Chicano Indigenous-based decolonizing pedagogical framework that we refer to as a Barrio Pedagogy (Arce & Fernández 2014).

DECOLONIAL BARRIO PEDAGOGIES The prominent decolonizing and culturally affirming components of Barrio Pedagogy that the MAS teachers used within their comprehensive K–12 daily pedagogical practices were Tezcatlipoca (memory, self-reflection), Quetzalcoatl

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(precious and beautiful knowledge), Huitzilopochtli (la voluntad—the will to act), and Xipe Totec (transformation) (Acosta 2007; Romero & Arce 2009, 179; Romero, Arce & Cammarota 2009; Villanueva 2013). These four principles are represented in the center of what is commonly referred to as the Aztec calendar, signifying the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) and the four elements of life (earth, wind, fire, and water) (Díaz, Rod­ gers & Byland 1993). Barrio pedagogue and MAS maestra Norma Gonzalez describes the importance of this framework. “Professor Arturo Meza Gutierrez, a respected professor of Mexican Indigenous culture in Mexico City, states that the Tonalmachoitl (known as the Aztec Calendar by most) communicates to us that we have the right to live a just and happy life and that we must respect the four life giving elements; that is the Nahui Ollin. The vehicle for attaining this right can be found in the Nahui Ollin[,] an indigenous philosophy that refers to life and a decision making system that fosters community, harmony and balance of mind, body and essence” (email to author, September 2, 2014). A critical part of engaging in Barrio Pedagogy is the ongoing process of selfreflection (for both students and teachers), a necessary component of any critical praxis or pedagogical project that calls for decolonization and liberation. In the MAS program, teachers and students collaboratively practiced “Tezcatlipoca, a Chicano Indigenous epistemology/concept/principle that speaks to a critical reflection of self, family, and community that calls for the liberation of the mind and spirit, we help our students create their counterstories” (Romero, Arce & Cammarota 2009, 218). Self-reflection includes recognizing the capital and resources that we have at our disposal for engaging in the critical work of decolonizing education. Chicano scholar-activist and cofounder of Raza Studies Now, Elias Serna, hands us this charge and reminds us that “It is a responsibility of those who struggle to decolonize education, for the sake and liberation of the masses of Black and Brown youth in particular. Without this vision and work, the destiny of our youth will remain in the hands of bureaucratic outsiders who see our youth as statistics, disposable, and presume this group’s secondary status in society’s Eurocentric master plan” (Serna, ch. 7, this volume). Decolonial barrio pedagogies require this vision and work Serna names in order for there to be tangible change and resistance to the current educational structures.

XITO AS A FORM OF RESISTANCE AND LIBERATION The defeat of the MAS program highlighted not only the incessant neoliberal racism that has permeated Arizona, but also brought to light the direct

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need for teachers to be trained in community organizing in order to withstand the kind of battle the MAS teachers had endured. For teachers to resist the “new culture wars,” they need skills beyond pedagogy to be prepared to defend the decolonial practices they are engaging in while teaching. Ethnic Studies programs that counter the hegemonic structure have, and will, come under attack, and, in the case of Tucson, the threat to hegemony was so great that state legislation had to be developed to stop such a program—and the legislation cast a statewide net for all K–12 public schools, including charter schools, although the target was one program within one school district in an entire state. This need for activist-oriented pedagogy and community-organizing skills drove the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing to go beyond just the pedagogy and philosophy of MAS and to consciously develop an urban education institute as a direct form of resistance and liberation. One of the cofounders of XITO, and the former director of the MAS program, Sean Arce, describes XITO as “an education for liberation organization and ever evolving space that utilizes Xican@ Indigenous Epistemologies, including both theoretical and practical frameworks, to facilitate the critical and necessary processes of decolonization and re-humanization in educational contexts and beyond. The grounding of teachers served by XITO, who work primarily with and for Xican@/Latino youth, within these epistemic frameworks affords revolutionary and paradigm shifting educational possibilities” (email to author, September 4, 2014). XITO’s mission to support the Xican@/Latin@ community through teacher preparation, social justice pedagogy, and community organizing was framed in the context of addressing the implications of neoliberal legislation while continuing the legacy of the MAS program. The “X” in Xican@ emphasizes the Xican@ indigenous, decolonial pedagogy XITO offers as well as how our collective tackles all aspects of the organization while recognizing what it means to “develop projects by and for Indigenous and Raza communities within/ against the colonizing discourses and practices of university spaces” (Zavala 2013, 56). This recognition warrants thorough analysis in XITO’s case as a sponsored institute of a historically white institution, Prescott College, further problematizing a decolonial frame within this space. Our collective, made up of myself and four of the former MAS teachers, acknowledge this dissonance and work to engage in critical dialogue about the nature of higher education, and public education in general, as a colonial structure while also embracing the need for this indigenous, decolonial pedagogy within the public school system.2 XITO developed out of a need to carry on the MAS legacy while HB 2281 (now ARS 15-111 and 15-112) is appealed in the Ninth District Court and, realistically, well beyond that appeal. We began to develop professional development workshops that focused on supporting teachers and organizers to

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become critically conscious, culturally responsive, and community responsive practitioners. We define those terms as such: • Critically conscious: Critically conscious teachers and organizers aim to understand the necessary links between pedagogical practice and the lived experiences of students, teachers, parents, administrators, organiz­ ers, and the community. Critical awareness is an essential element in the process of developing analyses of social injustices in our world and building toward the transformation of such practices with emphasis upon human dignity and equality. • Culturally responsive: In public schools, curriculum plays as important a role as pedagogy. Multicultural and culturally responsive education and curriculum that embraces themes of social justice, youth empowerment, and emancipation from the social reproductive aspects of education that lead to disengagement and failure can be pivotal in students acquiring a sense of self. For generations the Eurocentric curriculum of American public schools fostered a sense of alienation and inadequacy for students of color that was often reflected in low achievement, disengagement, and abandonment of their scholastic career before graduation (Sleeter 2011; Yosso 2005). Critically responsive education that is oriented around a framework of social action and transformation can be used as a corrective to low academic results and can reverse the trend for students to drop out or feel pushed out of the public school system (Nieto 1999). • Community responsive: Community responsiveness is a socio-politicalcultural framework that encourages the local community to implement their vision of social justice. Community responsiveness is critical to ensuring that the individuals most impacted by specific policies, systems, and structures are the ones organizing and determining the response for the larger community. The rationale for this professional development, beyond carrying on the MAS legacy, was countering Arizona’s trend as a testing ground for antiLatin@ laws, policies, and practices, including HB 2281. Given that many such political “experiments” have been successfully exported from Arizona to the larger nation, XITO addressed the implications of this legislation by offering workshops to counter this trend. One of XITO’s main offerings has been its professional development institutes. Simultaneously, a critical element of XITO is the continuation of teaching MAS classes outside of the public schools, for college credit. This structure was developed early on as the classes were banned and the need for transformative, culturally responsive education to continue in Tucson, and resulted in the creation of CLASS—Chican@ Literature and Social Studies.

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CLASS: CHICAN@ LITERATURE AND SOCIAL STUDIES Just days after the TUSD school board voted to eliminate the MAS program and the district removed books by Latina/o and Native authors from the classroom shelves, Curtis Acosta was determined to continue teaching Chicana/o literature by any means necessary. In that spirit, he and a handful of MAS students began to meet on Sundays to continue sharing the stories, literature, and pedagogy that had become illegal. I had seen our time together in CLASS as life saving for me personally, since I was banned from all of my former curriculum, pedagogy, and intellectual property after the state takeover of our classroom spaces. This was a directive from our school district upon the termination of our program along with the mandate that we were no longer to teach from a “Mexican American Studies perspective.” Of course, this was never defined for us, yet we knew that these edicts were truly telling us to abandon everything we had created for our MAS students. It was like teaching with your mind in prison. (Acosta 2014, 3) CLASS became the sole remnant of the MAS program as Curtis Acosta and I began to discuss the need for some mechanism to continue this offering for the community’s youth, while also offering some kind of deserved incentive. Because of my position as a college professor, I had access to resources that could support a Freedom School model that could offer college credit for the Sunday CLASS, for no charge, and reward the students’ work in a manner that would support them on their educational journey. Prescott College, which had already made public statements against HB 2281 and SB 1070 (Arizona’s “show me your papers” immigration law), agreed to award college credit for CLASS due to the fact that the college recognized not only the importance of continuing MAS as a part of their social justice mission, but also that the level of critical analysis and literary theory being covered in CLASS was at the college level and deserving of college credit.3 XITO raised the funds through generous supporters to cover the cost of the college tuition, ensuring that every student had free access to this course. As a result of CLASS, and Curtis Acosta’s commitment to the students and to culturally responsive teaching, CLASS was labeled as the new MAS Freedom School.4 The CLASS youth, along with our XITO collective of educators, traveled to Chicago and presented at the Free Minds Free People conference— travel costs for the students were covered by national support. The young scholars delivered their research and testiminios in Chicago sharing their precious and beautiful knowledge with other young activists and educators from across the country. CLASS had not only offered a space for learning and sharing, it had

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also become a platform for the youth to demonstrate their capacity for doing college-level work and delivering that work to a national audience. Following Curtis Acosta’s Sunday CLASS, XITO continued to offer the banned curriculum on the weekends for college credit with MAS teachers Jose Gonzalez and Norma Gonzalez facilitating the next group of students. While both teachers continue to teach in TUSD today, they are restricted to what and how they can teach so CLASS offered them the opportunity to once again engage in the MAS curriculum even though it was an added commitment to their very busy lives. Jose Gonzalez describes his experience teaching CLASS: To once again engage in exposing students to an epistemological framework which is informed by an indigenous, decolonizing, and humanizing pedagogical approach was medicine to my heart. On January 10th, 2012, a date which is seared into my consciousness, my pedagogical lens was placed in peril. However, this past spring semester, once a week CLASS afforded me the opportunity to re-engage in this healing, cultural sustaining approach to teaching that was once and seems so long ago, a daily ritual. To see how my CLASS students receive this pedagogical approach and how it changed their lives speaks to the critical nature of why these “out-lawed” Mexican American classes must re-instated. A CLASS student this past spring eloquently and poignantly asserted, “When I first came into this class, I had no idea who I was. I had no roots, therefore, I had no foundation to stand on, and I was weak. I started asking my family of my roots. I discovered we were indigenous, not Indian because I’m not from India. I used to think my family did absolutely nothing for me. But now I know they have sacrificed their lives and worked extremely hard to get me where I am, so I can succeed in life and gain knowledge to break the cycle of mistakes.” (email to author, September 2, 2014) CLASS offered an escape from the “prison” of teaching and learning that is now void of any indigenous barrio pedagogy and while it has been on a relatively small scale, in the margins, this Freedom School model is our hope for the future of MAS. If the state and TUSD continue to refuse to reinstate Mexican American Studies, XITO will offer the curriculum for college credit and will continue to increase the size and scope of the offerings as our institution builds capacity and develops partnerships.

XITO’S PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: IN LAK’ECH: TEACHING JUSTICE AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING The need for decolonial barrio pedagogies within professional development has been a main focus of XITO’s offerings. When developing XITO’s

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institute workshops, our collective focused on the need to reach a wide range of P–16 educators as well as community organizers and administrators. We consciously grounded the three-day institutes in nontraditional, Xican@ Indigenous epistemologies, mirroring the framework used in the MAS program and informing both theory and practice. Decolonial theories were intentionally set at the center of our workshops as a way of naming decolonization as “anti-colonial struggle that grows out of grassroot spaces” and to model for the participants how decolonial, barrio pedagogies can be applied to a variety of settings (Zavala 2013, 57). Drawing on critical pedagogy and Latina/o critical race theory (LatCRT), we also emphasized the importance of recognizing how historical trauma and the conscious working with and through that trauma could move youth from self-defeating resistance to transformative resistance (Solorzano & Bernal 2001). In addition, a revolutionary praxis of hope and love were embedded as a direct means to a liberatory education that could ultimately counter the neoliberal, racist agenda we are witnessing in Arizona and across the nation (Darder 2002; Freire 1993). At the core of the XITO institutes are a melding of the four Xican@ Indigenous principles of Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totec and processes that encourage a greater concientización through grassroots activism for liberation that the participants can embrace for themselves and take back to their community work as teachers and organizers. The concept of Xinachtli, meaning “germinating seed” in Nahuatl, is also brought to life as participants are encouraged to nurture the seeds of their own cultura to grow as a way of experiencing the power of this process in an educational setting that is committed to decolonial practices and cultural responsiveness (Godina 2003). The Maya concept of In Lak’Ech became the overarching title for our institutes as it roughly translates to “you are my other self” and emphasizes the reciprocal nature of working for justice with our youth and in our communities. In Lak’Ech embodied the duality of our experiences—a naming of the world and our part in the self-reflective process necessary for liberatory teaching and learning. At the opening of one of our institutes, maestra Gonzalez led us through an exercise of gazing into another colegas’s eyes and genuinely seeing that person, our other self, and taking time to consider their experiences and how they impact us both; how doing harm to them would do harm to ourselves and loving and respecting them would show love and respect to ourselves. The opening of XITO’s institutes developed over time to include critical aspects of embedding the indigeneity of decolonial barrio pedagogies into the learning space. This includes a daily opening ceremonia shared by a member of the Calpolli Teoxicalli, recognizing the land on which we are gathered and

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asking permission to all of creation. Grounding XITO’s institutes in this Indigenous-based framework and tradition in itself has been a form of resis­ tance to the traditional hegemonic structure educators are normally exposed to in their training, further creating a counterstory to the Eurocentricity of our educational system and practices. By practicing these traditions in an educational, or learning, space, we are reclaiming and recentering indigeneity within the context of teaching, learning, and organizing. Following an opening ceremonia, each XITO institute begins with the framing of the political landscape of Arizona to ensure that participants are aware of the factors that led to the elimination of Tucson’s MAS program as well as the issues nationally impacting Chican@/Latin@ youth. The need for activist-oriented pedagogy as a response to neoliberal racism permeating education serves as a theme throughout our professional development workshops tying all the content and pedagogy back to a measurable goal supporting the production of activist-oriented educators while reframing the usual Arizona strategy of exporting its anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican policies to exporting decolonial, barrio pedagogies and critical Raza Studies. XITO strives to directly counter the Chicana/o education pipeline, which highlights the dismal graduation rates for Chicana/o youth as well as the direct push-out rates, which results in bleak statistics, such as only 45% of Chicana/o students graduate from high school (Yosso & Solórzano 2006). Framing the political landscape and naming the issues educators and organizers face in their communities lays the groundwork for the context of the three days. In the Freirian sense, we open with a naming of the world in order to work together to transform it together, collectively striving for liberation (Freire 1993).

XITO WORKSHOPS XITO’s workshops attempt to cover a wide range of content and grade levels while also considering participants who don’t teach in a traditional classroom but might be administrators or community organizers. Arranging the delivery of the three-day institutes was a surprisingly lengthy process and one that grew and changed as we became more familiar with the content participants were most interested in along with which areas we realized they needed more grounding in, such as the Nahui Ollin and how it can be used as a framework for teaching and organizing. One example of a workshop connecting Indigenous knowledge to classroom practice is “Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl in the Classroom: Knowing Ourselves, Our Students, and Our Community,” which was created and facilitated by Sean Arce. In this workshop, an overview of defining and explaining the energias of Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl is followed by classroom practices and exercises using these ways of knowing to investigate, analyze, and

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reflect on history, literature, and lived experiences. Arce reminds us, “The endeavor we are involved in is about liberation. A liberation of ourselves, of our familias, it is multifaceted . . . like Tupac says it is that smoking mirror— we must gaze into it. We don’t need to start adopting the colonizer’s gaze, we need to gaze at ourselves”(July 12, 2014). Tezcatlipoca, or “smoking of the mirror,” represents one’s memories and reflections, which one can see through the smoke if you are conscious and accepting of your past. Quetzalcoatl, as defined by Tupac Enrique Acosta, long-time Indigenous activist of Tonatierra in Phoenix, is “from the memory of our identity, the knowledge of our collective history [from which] we draw the perspective that draws us to the contemporary reality. From this orientation we achieve stability, a direction found in time tested precepts that allows our awareness and knowledge of the surrounding environment to develop. This awareness and knowledge merge to form the ‘conciencia’ of a mature human being” (Arce 2014). In this workshop, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl drive the analysis of specific events in history or passages from literary pieces that explore oppressive experiences and the hegemonic factors leading to those experiences. By reflecting on those specific experiences (Tezcatlipoca), participants make connections to their own lived experiences and also critically analyze the precious knowledge they are exposed to (Quetzalcoatl) and how that knowledge is connected to their lives and, most likely, is left out of the standard curriculum. One example from these exercises is an image of a Chicano lynching in Santa Cruz, California, in 1877, with a caption describing the thousands of Chicano lynchings that took place during this time period with very little, if any, punishment to the perpetrators. The use of this image for this exercise guides participants to ask themselves why the lynchings of Chicanos is largely missing from our collective record and memory and, as a result, our histories. What are the conditions that allow for collective memory to erase these heinous acts? In addition, taking into consideration the work of Richard Delgado (2009), what does this noose represent and how do we reconcile that “If one stands still and one does not resist, the cord will not choke” (312). Using the framework of Tezcatlipoca, how do we as educators and organizers use this precious knowledge (Quetzalcoatl) to bring “clarity to the mirror” and work toward decolonizing education and centering this historical event in the context of removing the noose from Chicanas/os and all oppressed peoples’ necks?5 How do we begin to gaze at ourselves, as Arce reminds us, in critical self-reflection? Exercises like the one mentioned above lead into deep, rich discussions that give the participants an opportunity to practice dialoguing and developing critical consciousness that will support their community work back home. The framework of the elements of the Nahui Ollin in these strategies

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decenters the Eurocentricity of the practice and re-indigenizes the learning from a counterhegemonic paradigm. Participants engage in this work with drive and determination and always come away feeling grateful that they have had an opportunity to reframe a learning experience in a way that speaks to them, and that often has a familiarity that one participant at the 2014 XITO institute described as “feeling I’d been here before; learning this . . . it felt like coming home.” Participants in these workshops have similar experiences to the ones MAS students had in their high school classrooms. Norma Gonzalez describes this experience of learning through the Nahui Ollin as, “A curriculum centered on these precepts appeals to the students’ humanity and thus yields tremendous growth, as evidenced by human measures. Focusing on growth based on students’ human measures positively and drastically promotes progress in all areas, including academically through the acquisition of an identity. This curricular focus imparts to students the keys to their indigenous identity (culture), their intellectual heritage and their rights as planetary citizens of this continent, thus cementing their purpose in life, their responsibility and their sense of self, their humanity” (email to author, September 2, 2014). This humanization through connecting with one’s identity and sense of self was also embedded in XITO’s institutes with specific events that brought participants into the community and conversely brought members of the Tucson community into XITO. An integral component of the former MAS program was the community/parent connection with the teachers and the students, and monthly Encuentros, where parents had an opportunity to hear their children share their research and engage with social justice issues. In that spirit, XITO invited MAS alumni to present to the participants and describe how Mexican American Studies impacted their lives. Providing a bridge between what the institute participants were learning and examples of youth who had engaged in this type of teaching during their high school experiences gave voice to the content of the institute and provided a forum for the youth to once again share their palabra and knowledge. The deep gratitude each alumni shared for their maestr@s was a testament to the impact the program had on these young people’s lives and the rehumanizing pedagogy the MAS teachers so skillfully delivered and also embodied themselves. An additional community aspect of the XITO institutes is a barrio mural tour through South Tucson as a means for embedding community art and history into the context of the learning that was taking place. Tucson has a rich history of murals depicting, among other things, the melding of Indigenous, religious, and conquista images, highlighting the complex history of the people and land that was originally called Chuk Shon.6 Murals of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata sit on the same block as a mural of Coyolxauhqui,

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and images of Columbus’s ships and Tonantzin share a wall—offering an ideal location for dialogue on the roots of history in the region and the absence of this knowledge in our public schools, yet it lives in the barrios of South Tucson.7 Barrio knowledge, as a form of the cultural wealth of a community continues to be dismissed in traditional education and as a result perpetuates the whitewashing of curriculum and state-sanctioned colonization of education (Yosso 2005). Part of countering the new culture wars is to name and center this barrio knowledge wealth in the curriculum and connect it to the lives of students, as was done in Tucson’s MAS program.

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNITY HEALING The final afternoon of the XITO three-day institutes focuses on participants’ individual goals for embedding what they have learned back into their work in their own communities. Recognizing that teachers and community workers rarely have the time to collaborate and plan together, this intentional exercise emphasizes the value of solidarity in sharing ideas and goals with the encouragement of generating realistic timelines and measures of success. Again, we see this as disrupting the neoliberal strategy of isolation and obsession with individuality—neoliberal racism defies solidarity of any kind and focuses instead on colorblind, individualistic modalities that in education include preventing teachers from collaborating and rather forcing an obsession with their own individual practice to meet the corporate-driven goals of high-stakes testing and raising profits for private corporations. XITO’s participants develop plans and goals to take back to their communities that vary from the very personal to the curricular to much-larger goals, such as generating statewide legislation to include Ethnic Studies in their states’ required curriculum. A few samples of the goals set by former institute participants are as follows: • Create a flex day for community college professors to engage in culturally responsive training • Share learning with local Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlán organizers (MEChistAs) • Focus on self-healing • Develop a parent engagement program at a high school • Develop preservice teachers of color professional development workshops • Embed cultura into environmental education courses • Sustain and build allyship in local Xican@ community • Work on statewide implementation of Texas Ethnic Studies legislation • Create a Napa, California institute in next two years • Develop a canvassing campaign for support for Ethnic Studies locally

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• Integrate learning into a seventh grade activism class • Develop a process for reflection, Tezcatlipoca, for the classroom • Incorporate MAS pedagogy into math curriculum at the community college level The time provided to focus on this work was appreciated by participants as a valuable use of time to structure how they would bring their experience in Tucson back home. One participant wrote, “There is no other workshop that has helped me and my comunidad be more reflective and transformative, and no other workshop allowed me to create plans for additional transformation. I am eternally grateful.” Another educator wrote, “Is there a way XITO can be longer? I don’t want to leave!”, shedding light on how necessary this time is for critical educators to do collaborative work and develop plans and goals within a setting that encourages radical imagination and healing through solidarity. The collective consciousness that these gatherings have offered the facilitators and the participants has been palpable and carries on the critical practice of healing in education, which Chavez Leyva (2002) describes as “a crucial and legitimate pedagogical function” and offers a place to “confront historical trauma in a productive way” (10). The elimination of the MAS program and its decolonial barrio pedagogy is the elimination of this pedagogical function and strips away the ability for Chican@/Latin@ youth to heal from the historical, psychological violence they and their gente have endured.

XITO AS A DIRECT RESPONSE TO THE NEW CULTURE WARS Our collective work in the creation of XITO and the continuation of the MAS curriculum and teacher training has been a direct act of resistance and love, consciously countering the new culture wars we are faced within Arizona and the nation. While young Brown and Black bodies are being pushed out of school, incarcerated, deported, and killed, we have a responsibility to resist the state-sanctioned removal of programs that literally save lives. Programs like MAS have the capacity to intervene in “conditions that produce differentiated vulnerabilities that lead to premature death” (Gilmore 2006, 247) and it is that capacity for intervention that is their very demise. The new culture wars intentionally dismantle these radical, decolonial opportunities for fear of the colorblind paradigm shifting and true liberation emerging. Our work through XITO has developed out of necessity and responsibility, even from the margins, to consciously fight for liberation of our schools, our youth, and our communities. This work has to encompass a revolutionary praxis of love and the belief that our marginality “as a site of possibility, a

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space of resistance” can, with all its risks, lead to liberation and freedom (hooks 1990, 145–53).

NOTES 1. Edwin Mayorga shared the analogy of the “neoliberal hydra” in his keynote talk, “Slaying the Hydra(s) of Racial Capitalist Education Reform,” at the National Association for Multicultural Education Conference, Chicago, Illinois, in November 2011. 2. The Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) is made up of former MAS cofounder and director, Sean Arce, along with MAS teachers Curtis Acosta, Jose Gonzalez, Norma Gonzalez, and Anita Fernández. 3. “Prescott College’s Response to SB 1070 and HB 2281,” last modified October 1, 2012, http://www.prescott.edu/experience/news/2010–10–1-pc-response-to-sb1070 -hb2281.html. 4. “Freedom College: Prescott School Grants Credit to Outlawed Mexican American Studies Course in Tucson,” last modified December 18, 2012, http://www.huffing tonpost.com/jeff-biggers/freedom-college-prescott_1_b_2322088.html. 5. Norma Gonzalez uses the phrase, bringing “clarity to the mirror,” in her presentation “Tezcatlipoca and Self-Love,” presented at the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing,Tucson, Arizona, July 2014. 6. “Chuk Shon” is the Tohono O’Oodham (the original peoples of the Sonoran Desert) word from which the Spanish colonizers of the region interpreted, appropriated, and accordingly named “Tucson.” It means “spring at the foot of the black mountain.” 7. Emiliano Zapata was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution; Coyolxauhqui is a Nahuatl representation of the moon; Tonantzin is our respectable Mother Earth.

REFERENCES Acosta, Curtis. 2007. “Developing Critical Consciousness: Resistance Literature in a Chicano Literature Class.” English Journal 97(2): 36–42. Acosta, Curtis. 2014. “Huitzilopochtli: The Will and Resiliency of Tucson Youth to Keep Mexican American Studies Alive.” Multicultural Perspectives 16(1): 3–7. Arce, Sean. 2014, July. “Los Cuatro Tezcatlipocas—The Nahui Ollin: Pedagogy, Organizing and Principles to Live By.” Presentation at the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing, Tucson, Arizona. Arce, Sean, and Anita Fernández. 2014. “Barrio Pedagogy: Praxis Within the Tucson Social Justice Education Semester.” Regeneración: The Association of Raza Educators Journal 5: 19–23. Cabrera, N. L., J. F. Milem, and R. W. Marx. 2012. “An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within Unified School District, Tucson, AZ.” Report to Special Master Dr. Willis D. Hawley on the Tucson Unified School District Desegregation Case.

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Darder, Antonia. 2002. Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Delgado, Richard. 2009. “Law of the Noose: A History of Latino Lynching.” Harvard CR-CLL Review 44: 297–312. Díaz, Gisele, Alan Rodgers, and Bruce E. Byland, eds. 1993. The Codex Borgia: A Fullcolor Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript. New York: Courier Dover Publications. Fernández, Anita, and Zoe Hammer. 2013. “Red Scare in the Red State: The Attack on Mexican-American Studies in Arizona and Opportunities for Building National Solidarity.” Association of Mexican American Educators Journal 6(1): 65–70. Freire, Paulo. 1993 [1970]. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, rev. ed. New York: Continuum. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2006. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Vol. 21. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giroux, Henry A. 2004. The Terror of Neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Godina, Heriberto. 2003. “Mesocentrism and Students of Mexican Background: A Community Intervention for Culturally Relevant Instruction.” Journal of Latinos and Education 2(3): 141–57. hooks, bell. 1990. “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness.” In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, 145–53. Boston: South End Press. Ingram, Paul. 2014, August 22. “Horne Vows to Continue ‘Crusade’ vs. Ethnic Studies.” Tucson Sentinel. Leyva, Yolanda Chávez. 2002. “The Re-visioning of History Es Una Gran Limpia: Teaching and Historical Trauma in Chicana/o History, Part II.” La Voz de Esperanza 15(7). Nieto, Sonia. 1999. The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities. New York: Teachers College Press. Romero, Augustine F., and Martín Sean Arce. 2009. “Culture as a Resource: Critically Compassionate Intellectualism and Its Struggle against Racism, Fascism, and Intellectual Apartheid in Arizona.” Hamline Journal of Public Law & Policy 31: 179. Romero, Augustine, Sean Arce, and Julio Cammarota. 2009. “A Barrio Pedagogy: Identity, Intellectualism, Activism, and Academic Achievement through the Evolution of Critically Compassionate Intellectualism.” Race Ethnicity and Education 12(2): 217–33. Sleeter, Christine E. 2011. “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review.” National Education Association Research Department. Solorzano, Daniel G., and Dolores Delgado Bernal. 2001. “Examining Transformational Resistance through a Critical Race and LatCrit Theory Framework Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context.” Urban Education 36(3): 308–42. Stellar, Tim. 2014, June 25. “On Blogs: Huppenthal Reveals His Inner Ugliness.” Arizona Daily Star. Villanueva, Silvia Toscano. 2013. “Teaching as a Healing Craft: Decolonizing the Classroom and Creating Spaces of Hopeful Resistance through Chicano-Indigenous Pedagogical Praxis.” The Urban Review 45(1): 23–40.

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Yosso, Tara J. 2005. “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth.” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 8(1): 69–91. Yosso, Tara, and Daniel Solórzano. 2006. “Leaks in the Chicana and Chicano Educational Pipeline.” UCLA Chicano Studies/Latino Policy & Issues Brief 13. Zavala, Miguel. 2013. “What Do We Mean by Decolonizing Research Strategies? Lessons from Decolonizing, Indigenous Research Projects in New Zealand and Latin America.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2(1). Zinn, Brad. 2012, February 29. Western Free Press interviews John Huppenthal, Arizona superintendent of public instruction [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=IOqG1niwPx8.

13

The Story of Our Day: Moving Our Imaginations to the Immense Revolutionary Potential in America Luis J. Rodríguez

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree. —Henry David Thoreau To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself. —Karl Marx You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming. —Pablo Neruda Every age has its story, the mythology of the day if you will, that actually corresponds to real processes, real motive forces, and can typify where we need to go. This essay tries to get at revolution from another angle, one that maintains the content of our science, based on intense study and experiences, and uses the powerful means of the imagination and the arts. Let me say plainly, the arts are not a peripheral or nice thing to do as we endeavor to shape and bring about a truly just and encompassing world. In fact, as society moves toward a more creative/inventive stage in history— based on the digital modes of production, among other things—the arts become key to our core, enlivened by this statement: To become a complete human being is to become a complete artist. We need a society that aligns all its resources, technology, and wealth to this aim, where every human being is healthy in body, mind, and spirit and is

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able to draw on their gifts, passions, and propensities to contribute and make their mark in this world. Governance streamlined to the full and comprehensive benefit of everyone. For now let’s summarize where we’re at today: We are living in uncertain times. Everything is in crisis—economies, politics, families, work, structures, ideologies, and even religions. The past is tearing apart the present. The pres­ ent appears to be on skates, speeding downhill with no brakes. And the future looms with a challenge—can we make the adequate societal choices, move from a world of scarcity into one of abundance, bringing harmony to crucial relationships that can regenerate life, relationships key to nature, our personal natures, and each other? Can we have healthy and strong people in a healthy and strong earth?

THE LEFT IN TODAY’S SHIFTING REALITIES It’s evident to me that the global “Left,” whatever arose from progressive, revolutionary thought and organization in the last century, is also floundering. If everything is in crisis, so are organizations that claim the mantle of revolution. This makes sense and is quite necessary. Much of the Left acts as if they are immune to this fact. Revolutionary organizations must change or die—change the form to save the content. The content, however, is shifting as the economic base of society shifts. The revolutionaries and activists who are succeeding know where we’re going, and how to invigorate a new way of getting there. The next phase of human development is integrality, the conscious structural transformations that integrate truth, beauty, and whatever is decent in this world (call this the proper unity of science, art, and morality). This can only be unleashed when the foundations of society are no longer based on class rule, private property, and exploitation. This level of wellness must include the idea that everyone have their own authority, their own minds and hearts, and be allowed to tap into their own inexhaustible capacities. All of this is unequivocally incompatible with global capitalism. Therefore, the predicament we face is this: Can humanity continue to progress while under the stranglehold of the current economic and political system whose driving force is maximum profits? The simple answer: We can’t.

THE JUNCTURE IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT For the first time, humanity is faced with the evolutionary growth of our planet that is not just contingent on organic biological changes (following

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Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection), where external pressures force corresponding internal alterations so that life can persist. Today the conscious human participation of aligned ideas, plans, technologies, and governance must be brought to bear, or we fail to continue as a species. We are in a time of a true awakening, a time to know, instead of believe; to think, instead of react; to imagine greater instead of staying caught in the outmoded class-based matrix that includes such illusions as borders, mortgages, the wage system, hierarchical power, and even money. Certainly this is a weighty proposition, full of risks, with seemingly insurmountable obstacles and no evident guideposts. This is largely because we are entering a “pathless path.” We’ve been here before, but at the same time we have never been at this exact point as human beings. What we’ve learned over the millenniums about social interaction, natural and cosmic alignments, the primacy of objective/material life, the powerful impact of a connected spiritual life, and our own bodies and brains, will definitely help. Social knowledge up to the present, including any sophisticated revolutionary theories, can be our guide. However, I contend we also have to figure out new ways through this. In 2011, some forty activists, thinkers, and artists established the Network for Revolutionary Change in Chicago to draw out, teach, and engender another generation of visionary and practical leaders to respond powerfully to the unraveling economic and political realities. We also needed to take part in and push forward a growing revolutionary tide in the United States. At the time, almost 250,000 people marched regularly in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Occupy movement was establishing itself on Wall Street and beyond. Our goal was to unite the scattered movements, regardless of their ideologies or political bents, into a powerful conscious social force to realign the prevailing system of production, distribution, and rule. In other words, a force to unite against capitalism itself, while at the same time not to fall into the traps of the old Left. As we can see, this is quite a dance, one with many missteps and stumbling. To reiterate, the once heroic and amazingly responsive Left in the United States is in shambles. This is characterized by destructive infighting, big egos, self-sabotage (even if we take into account agents and disrupters). The result is a deepening disconnection. In relation to this, the majority of the Left has fallen into two major pitfalls: Sectarianism or “tailism.” Many on the Left are so “correct” they can’t muddy themselves in real practical activity or they get lured and caught up in rudderless activities, forgetting to lend strategic direction from within. Huge gaps now exist between the ideological thinkers and those leaders flowering organically from the social struggles. Despite our best efforts, the network is also caught in this dilemma. Still I’m convinced we can—with

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creative thinking and appropriate actions—move forward through the opportunity the crisis presents.

THE STORIES TO GUIDE US How to proceed? What stories can possibly carry the vigor and character of what must be done? First, it’s evident that the “racial” story cannot hold as firmly as before. Neither can the “there-are-no-classes” story or the concept of the trickledown “generosity” of the capitalist class. I can go on and on. Even if many of these narratives still gather steam, that train is largely coming to a halt. Second, it’s important to note that churches, unions, community organizations, nonprofits, trailer parks, and other similar “spaces,” often not considered part of the revolutionary process, also have the potential for new ways of thinking, organizing, and winning. As a network we have to go beyond preconceptions and consider the very real, although hard to fathom, possibilities that our participants may also come from the NRA, militias, evangelicals, and more. For sure, we’ll have to influence and win over millions of Christians. Even with deep indoctrination (not the case for all, mind you) they are also being pushed into the crossroads with the rest of us. You cannot have revolution in this country without Christians at the heart of it. Nonetheless we can start with the currently pissed off and moving— the undeterred women, youth, immigrants, LGBT communities, communities of color, the artists, the unemployed, students, and others—who are in some way the least vested in keeping capitalism going. They run the gamut from class conscious to variably socially conscious. They number in the millions. What story, strategies, or plans can possibly pull together such a diverse spectrum of the U.S. population? We can start by clarifying the unity-indiversity needed for real revolution. This requires we reach out beyond the obvious differences to the common issues connecting these people—poverty, peace, environmental health, and social justice. And we must clarify how inseparable these issues are—we cannot have environmental and social justice as long as there is poverty, and no peace without environmental and social justice. This is why our stories can also draw from the long-held U.S. ideals of fairness, equity, common good, and more—by making sure our future is aligned to Nature and its laws, and by being class conscious, philosophically mature, global in content, and unable to be taken off track.

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THE LEARNING PROCESS How do we learn? For sure, we can’t be afraid of mistakes. We are following a historical trajectory, but also standing on new ground. Fear of mistakes is tantamount to fear of growth. Yet, learn and learn we must. Doing the same thing over and over again with little or no results only places us among the insane. The point is to make mistakes in the right direction, toward more inclusive and widening nets, instead of mistakes in the direction of subterfuge, disguise, not being “found out” to avoid scrutiny by the state at any costs, essentially being “safe” at the expense of making history. Since we can’t totally avoid dangers in this work, let’s be in the right “danger.” Yet this isn’t a call for provocative, heavy-handed, or cage-rattling tactics, or to be naïve about the power of the state. This is a call to be bold, think big, while maintaining vision and artfulness. Proper adaptations come from having firm and deep roots. And adapt we must. Our gauge should be the revolutionizing practice of the working class—the more developed and united they become the better we know our influence and strength. Any selfrespecting revolutionary has no other measure. Either our ideas are grasped by a significant number of people, prepared to carry out corresponding organizing and actions, or we have not done what we set out to do. No more disconnections, no more schizophrenic divisions between “leaders” and “followers,” teachings and practice, authoritative people and so-called nonauthoritative people, theory and reality, a “mass” medium and a “classconscious” one. To repeat, the value of arts in revolution is more paramount than ever. Again we need stories, which are also schools, but also other sense-and-spirit activating mediums. Stealth is how to do battle “under the radar,” so to speak, without drawing unwanted attention, yet effectively spreading ideas through the powers of the pen, the paintbrush, the drum, the dance . . . as well as the Internet, smart phones, on apps and podcasts. Subtlety is the art of refinement: How to draw on flowing language, aesthetic qualities, and resonating concepts. This is battle without doing battle.

STILL THE WAR IS UPON US Of course, we should prepare for actual battles. We can’t doubt the ruling class will respond as they always have—with violence, fear, and deflection. They are doing so as we speak. The growing militarization of the police, where the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home, is their answer to increasing poverty and growing discontent. The police juggernaut strikes hardest at the Achilles heel of U.S capitalism, the African American people, who are disproportionately targeted by

262

“White” Washing American Education

police and mass incarceration. But the long-range aim is all of us. That’s why “Black Lives Matter.” No argument there. But the move for us is to declare all lives are sacred, uniting with the African American mass response as well as connecting the dots. That’s one crucial reason why the Salinas police murders need more widespread attention and support. Not one more death at the hands of police, regardless of race, sexual orientation, or mental state. The fractured responses in the long run will hurt us.

TAPPING INTO THE RHYTHMS OF REVOLUTION Reaching people by stories means they plug into revolutionary politics and activities by connecting to their own stories, regardless of ideologies or beliefs. This is different than using ideology as the main way to plug in people since this requires that they only do so by accepting one major “idea.” One way. One connection. Extremely limiting. Monotony is rooted in the concept of “one tone,” which is tiresome and repetitive. We need to speak, write, and move in many “tones,” reaching through a spectrum of ideas, sentiments, and hopes to move in many rhythms. To expand on this we need to master the “art” of revolution—how we speak, write, teach, and organize is all driven by the artful competence in each of us. It has to be complex, pleasing, and able to delve into deep emotions. Use aesthetic arrest enough to get people to stop and think. Yet authentic and heart-felt enough to reach millions. Art is the nexus of science and imagination.

TO SUMMARIZE . . . Let’s carry forth the rich and invaluable knowledge, concepts, history, and content of revolutionaries everywhere, but do this with new forms, new language, new means of participation. As others have said better than me, we need to reframe the dialogue, fully challenge the official stories as well as the scarcity thinking and living framed by the fear-driven precepts of this ruling class, its political parties and mass media. This is not an attempt to move toward “the middle,” which Democrats and Republicans are always doing, not changing positions but their “message” so they can attract the majority of U.S. voters. Or to be “populist,” sacrificing the long-range for short-range acceptance. We must be generative, far-reaching, cutting edge while not straying from the foundations of this greatest of all causes—removing the last shackles on human minds, labor, sexuality, visions, and capacities. For us, reforms push forward revolution and revolution completes all reforms.

The Story of Our Day263

To borrow from John Lennon: Imagine a world free of banks, corporations, landed aristocrats, wars, and poverty; imagine a world free of injustice, hunger, homelessness, and despair. And envision what kind of world is truly possible, already being born as we gather, already pulsing beneath the skin of its workers, the poor, the pushed out; already seeded in their hearts, in their songs, in their best dreams for America and the world. And then imagine the Network for Revolutionary Change as indispensable for this to happen—from dream to vision to reality.

Index

Acosta, Curtis, 30, 31, 51, 245 Acosta, Tupac Enrique, 32, 33, 249 activism, public discourse, and decolonial curriculums in Los Angeles, 133–156; Bernal, Dolores Delgado, 134; Chican@ Studies and the dialectics of decolonization, 134–137; Chicano Movement alternative schools, 135; Escuela Tlatelolco (Denver), 135; Ethnic Studies, invoking of, 147–152; Intercultural District Advisory Committee (IDAC), 138–139; Jameson, Fredric, 136; Mexican American Studies department (MAS), Tucson, 136, 137, 239–240; overview of, 133–134; Raza Studies Now, 139, 151, 152; Raza Studies Now (3), 140, 141–145; rhetoric and, 136–137, 149; Santa Monica, inside and outside the system in (a case study), 137–141; teatro campesino, 135, 152n2; Xican@ paradigm, 139–140; Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement (XPUB), 140; Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement (XPUB) and allegories of decolonization, 145–147 Acuña, Rodolfo, 21, 148 Adelante Partnership, 68

Afro-Latino unit, 231–236; Actos in the spirit of Teatro Campesino, 235; Afro-Latinos, number of living in Latin America, 232; “Afro-Latinos: The Untaught Story of Our Shared Historical Resistance,” 232; Edwards, London, 236; Espiritu, Ron, 231; Guerrero, Vicente, 232; Mestizos, 232; Morelos, Jose Maria, 232; opinion essay, 236; overview of, 231–232; role play, 234–235; state textbooks and identity, 232; theater performances, 235; the Untaught Story, 232 Aklasan Records, 126 Akom, Antwi, 100 Alejo, Luis A., 3, 149, 223 Alejo Bill, 3, 151, 153n6 Alim, H. Sami, 37 Alvarez, Alvin, 124 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 16, 68, 69, 70, 77 “apartheid schools,” 224 Arce, Martín Sean, 34, 35, 47–48, 142–143, 153n7, 243, 249 Arizona, outlawing K–12 “Ethnic Studies” in, 12 Assembly Bill 101 (CA AB 101), xxiii Association of Raza Educators, 152 AZ HB 2281 (now ARS 15–111 and 15–112), vii, viii, ix, 240

266Index

Bag, Alice, 129 “banking education,” 26–27 banking methods, 117, 128 Barangay pedagogy, 214 barrio mural tour, 250–251 Barrio Pedagogy, 241–242 Batalla, Bonfil, 17–18, 19, 20–21, 21 Bautista, Mark A., 105 Berkeley High School, xiii–xiv. See also Chicana/o and Latina/o studies program at Berkeley High School Bernal, Dolores Delgado, 134 Berta-Ávila, Margarita, 25–26 Beyond the Screams: A U.S. Latino Hardcore Punk Documentary (1999), 123 Black Lives Matters movement, 149, 262 Bojorques, Steven, 173 Brewer, Jan, vii Brown, Jerry, xxiii, xxiv Broyles-González, Y., 19 Burns, James M., 184, 185 Cabrera, Nolan, x, xi California Assembly Bill (101), 3 California Assembly Bill (1750), 3 Camangian, Patrick, 225 Cammarota, Julio, 34, 35, 100, 103 capitalism, 258, 259 Carspecken, Phil F., 102 Charter Management Organization (CMO) reform policies, 226–227, 231 Chican@ Studies and the dialectics of decolonization, 134–137; alternative schools, 135; institution of Chican@ Studies, 137; Mexican American Studies department (MAS), Tucson, 136, 137; Quetzalcoatl/Precious Knowledge quadrant, 137; rhetoric and, 136; Valences of the Dialectic (Jameson), 136 Chicana/o, Chican@, or Xican@ identity, reclaiming of, 151–152

Chicana/o and Latina/o studies program at Berkeley High School, 3–10; achievement levels between racial/ethnic groups, 4, 9n1; Berkeley High School and Ethnic Studies, 4; California Assembly Bill (1750), 3; current status of, 8; Gonzalez-Luna, Julia, 7; grievances strategies, 5; growth of, 7; Huerta, Mario, 5; at the K–12 level, 7; Melgoza, Jorge, 5, 8; ninth grade orientation classes, 4, 5; overview of, 3–4; recommendations for future Ethnic Studies Programs, 8–9; Sanders, Mercedes, 5; Segura, Regina, 4–5; “small learning communities” model, 7–8, 10n6; student activism, 6, 104n; walkouts, effect of, 6; walkouts and parents, 6 Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo, 16 “Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo” (Pizarro), 14–15 Chicano lynching image, 249 Chicano Secret Service, 135 Chicano-Indigenous pedagogical praxis, 25 Chuk Shon, 250, 253n6 CLASS—Chican@ Literature and Social Studies, 244–246 College of Ethnic Studies, 176 colonized mentality, 21 Connor Elementary school, 68 Council of Youth Research (CYR), 98, 100, 102, 103 Covarrubias, Tessa, 122 critical ethnography, 102 critical hermeneutics mimesis 123 , narrative identity, and critical narrative pathway, 201–203 Critical Leadership Praxis (CLP): community commitment, 195; conclusion concerning, 196–197; focus of, 182; Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) and, 181; purpose of, 187; self-reflection and, 191–193

Index267

critical pedagogy, community cultural wealth, and culturally relevant pedagogy, 203–204 cultural schizophrenia, 21 “Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy” (CSRP), 27 Darder, Antonia, 14 Daus-Magbual, Arlene, xxi de los Rios, Cati V., xi, 158 decolonial barrio pedagogies, 241–242 decolonization: Chican@ Studies and the dialectics of, 134–137; colonial narratives of Filipinas/os, 203; history with political purpose, 215; Strobel, Leny, on, 201; teaching history as, 212–214; Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement (XPUB) and allegories of, 145–147 de-Indianization, 17 dela Cruz, Aristel, 205, 212–213, 215, 216, 216–217 Delgado, Dolores, 18 Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M. R., 22, 47 education in nepantla: a Chicana feminist approach to engaging Latina/o elementary youth in Ethnic Studies, 67–94; Adelante Partnership, 68; Anzaldúa’s theoretical concept of the borderlands, 89, 90; borderlands, 87–90; borderlands in educational spaces, 69–71; Chicana feminist epistemology, 69; Connor Elementary school, 68; Coyolxauhqui concept, 70, 80, 90; embodied knowledges, 83; “happy childhood,” 82; implications for Ethnic Studies, 90–91; mestiza consciousness, 83; mestiza consciousness narrative, 83–86; overview of, 67–68; participants in, 68–69; path of conocimiento, 68, 71; path of conocimiento and nepantla

with Latina/o youth (narratives), 80–90; plática concerning, 81–82, 87–90; rasquachismo pedagogy, 71–72; rasquachismo pedagogy, glimpses of, 72–80; rasquachismo pedagogy, healing through, 80–90; stereotype writing activity, 86–87 Edwards, London, 236 El Rancho Unified School District (ERUSD), xv, 223 Escuela Tlatelolco (Denver), 135 Espiritu, Ron, 143, 231 Estacio, Sheridan Marie, 207, 210–211, 217 Estanislao, Rupert, 126, 127 Ethnic Studies: AZ HB 2281 (now ARS 15–111 and 15–112), vii, viii, ix, 240; case studies, x–xii; community leadership and, 181; contemporary K–12 Ethnic Studies movement, xiii–xvi; devaluation of, vii; expansion of, 223–224; explanation of, ix–xiii; K-12 ethnic studies, toward a, xvi–xxiii; legal challenge to, vii; misdefining of, viii– ix; notable programs and projects serving K-12 students, xiv; objective of, 119; pedagogy in K-12 settings, 224–225; pedagogy in practice, xix– xxi; Pin@y Educational Partnerships working definition of, xvi; premise of, 158; purpose of teaching, 199; role of, 158–160, 176; teacher punishment and, xxv; as theological literacy, 225–226; Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), xiii Ethnic Studies Now Coalition, 223 Ethnic Studies, power of: developing culturally and community responsive leaders, 181–198; community commitment, 195; community engagement, 194–195; conclusion concerning, 196–197; Critical Leadership Praxis (CLP), 181, 182, 187; leadership, 183–187; overview

268Index

of, 181–182; relationship to oneself, 187–188; relationship to oneself, summary of, 193; relationship to the community, 193; self-connection, 187–189; self-determination, 189– 191; self-reflection and CLP, 191– 193. See also Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) Eurocentric knowledge, 17 “Examining Transformational Resistance Through a Critical Race and Latcrit Theory Framework: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context” (Solórzano and Delgado), 18 Fair Oaks Public Library, closure of, 166–170; alternative center, 170; as a campaign issue, 172; “The Case to Re-Open Fair Oaks Public Library in Stockton, CA,” 170–171; city bankruptcy and, 169, 170; community engagement and, 169– 170; diversionary alternativediversionary alternative, 170; financial data and operating costs, 168, 171; Fugazi, Christina, 168, 173; Leiba, Ned, 171; Operation Ceasefire, 171; political engagement, 167–168; rejection of, 169–170; relationship to oneself, 172; reopening of, 173; Scholastic Educational Movement in Language Literacy and Scholarship (SEMILLAS), 167; skewed fiscal projections, 170; social and cultural opposition, 171; Stribley Library, 170, 172; Wilson, Kurt, 171. See also Stockton (CA), Ethnic Studies, and community engagement Fanon, Frantz, 228 Fernandez, Anita, 139 Filipino/o American studies and punk rock pedagogy, 117–131; Aklasan Records, 126; Alice Bag, 122, 123,

129; banking methods, 117, 128; Beyond the Screams: A U.S. Latino Hardcore Punk Documentary (1999), 123; The Brat, 122; community engagement (third pillar of PRP), 126–127; Filipino/o American history (first pillar of PRP), 123–124; Filipino/o American studies, 118– 119; future of punk rock pedagogy in Ethnic Studies, 127–129; HabellPallan, Michelle, 121–122; Los Crudos, 122, 123, 129; model minority myth, 118; notable punk music, 129; overview of, 117–118; Pin@y Education Partnerships (PEP), 119, 129; Pinoi! Punk movement, 126; punk as historical and theoretical framework (second pillar of PRP), 124–126; punk rock pedagogy (PRP), 117–118, 120–121; punk rock pedagogy (PRP), purpose of, 124; punk rock pedagogy (PRP), three pillars of, 121–123; Taqwacore scene, 129 Fine, Michelle, 103 Forbes, Jack D., 23 Fránquiz, María E., 28, 29 Freire, Paulo, 184; “banking education,” 26, 117; critical consciousness development, 103; critical praxis, definition of, 217; Historical Responsive Pedagogy (HRP), 204; on history, 215–216; Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 183; quoted on solidarity, 181–182; quoted on the oppressed, 173; on risks, 190; shift of power dynamics, 110 Fugazi, Christina, 168, 173 Galarza, Ernesto, 148 Gallagher-Geurtsen, Tricia, 47 Gesuden, Liza, 206, 214–215 Gill, Scherto, 202, 204, 210 Ginwright, Shawn, 100 Gonzalez, Jose, 246

Index269

Gonzalez, Norma, 144, 242, 246, 250 Gonzalez, Ted, 173 Gonzalez-Luna, Julia, 7 Goodson, Ivor, 202, 204, 210 Gramsci, Antonio, 103 Grande, Sandy, 47 Guerrero, Vicente, 232 Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, 153n9 Ha¯lau Ku¯ Ma¯na charter school, xiv, xv Habbell-Pallan, Michelle, 121–122, 129 Habermas, Jürgen, 204 Halagao, Patricia, 120 Henderson, Jim, 6 Herda, Ellen, 204 hermeneutics, brown washing, 199– 221; critical hermeneutics mimesis 123 , narrative identity, and critical narrative pathway, 201–203; critical pedagogy, community cultural wealth, and culturally relevant pedagogy, 203–204; overview of, 199–200; Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), 199–200. See also Historical Responsive Pedagogy (HRP); Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) high school ethnic studies approaches to building solidarity between black and brown youth, 223–238; Advanced Placement courses, 227; “apartheid schools,” 224; Camangian, Patrick, 225; charter management organization (CMO) reform policies, 226–227, 228, 231; “color-blind” school reform, 226; Ethnic Studies as theological literacy, 225–226; Ethnic Studies Now Coalition, 223; Ethnic Studies pedagogy in K-12 settings, 224–225; expansion of Ethnic Studies, 223–224; Latinos and African Americans, collusion between, 224; Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), 223; “One Love Black and Brown Solidarity

Campaign,” 228; overview of, 223– 224; possibilities and challenges, 236–237; spoken-word event, 230–231; workshops, 229–230; Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), 228. See also Afro-Latino unit; Watts Youth Voices (WYV) Historical Responsive Pedagogy (HRP): autoethnography, 207–208; community cultural wealth, 203; conclusion concerning, 218–220; critical hermeneutics and, 200–201, 204; critical hermeneutics mimesis 123 , narrative identity, and critical narrative pathway, 201–203; critical narrative action, 216–217; critical narrative pathways, 202; critical pedagogy and, 200–201, 203, 204; critical pedagogy, community cultural wealth, and culturally relevant pedagogy, 203–204; critical praxis in HRP and examples, 217– 218; Dela Cruz, Aristel, 205; Estacio, Sheridan Marie, 207; foundations of, 200; Gesuden, Liza, 206; historical duty and action, 216–218; historical duty and action (critical narrative action), 216–217; history as political, 212–216; history with purpose, 214–216; Ladson-Billing, Gloria, 204; literature review, 200–204; Magsambol, Nicollete, 206–207; methods, 204–205; mimesis, role of, 201; Molina, Jonell, 207; narrative identity, 201–202; Paray, Sharon, 206; Performing our Resistance Project (PRP), 217–218; PosadasBautista, Angelica, 205; purpose of, 199; Remigio, Allyson, 207; research participants, 204–205; Sabac, Alldredge, Jr., 205–206; Teacher Participatory Action Research (TPAR), 217, 218; teaching history as decolonization, 212–214; Yosso, Tara J., 203

270Index

history as political, 212–216; dela Cruz, Aristel, 212–213, 216; history with purpose, 214–216; International Hotel (I-Hotel) fight, 213; PEP teachers and, 212, 213; Sabac, Aldrich, Jr., 213; Strobel, Leny, 212, 213–214; Teaching Barangays, 214; teaching history as decolonization, 212–214 hooks, bell, 137 Horne, Tom, 240 Huerta, Mario, 5 Huitzilopochtli, 34–35, 247 Huppenthal, John, 240 indigenous resistance, 18–19 integrality, 258 Intercultural District Advisory Committee (IDAC), 138–139 International Hotel (I-Hotel) fight, 213 James Logan High School, xiv Jameson, Fredric, 136 Kailua High School, Hawai’i, xv K–12 Ethnic Studies movement (contemporary), xiii–xvi K–12 Ethnic Studies, toward a, xvi– xxiii; critical practitioner preparation, xxi–xxiii; historical and theoretical considerations, xvii–xix; pedagogy in practice, xix–xxi La Raza Unida, 6 Ladson-Billings, Gloria, 103, 204 In Lak’Ech (poem), 30 In Lak’Ech, Maya concept of, 247 Lapu, Ricky, 57–58, 59 Lara, Jose, 142, 149 Latinos and African Americans, collusion between, 224 LAUSD Ethnic Studies campaign, 151 Lawsin, Emily, 208 Lee, Tiffany S., 27 the Left in today’s shifting realities, 258

Leiba, Ned, 171 Lennon, John, 263 Leonardo, Zeus, 208 León-Portilla, Miguel, 23–24 Leyva, Chávez, 23, 252 Licona, Adela, 144 Loo, Chalsa, 100 López, Jorge, xi–xii Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), xii, xv, 223 Los Crudos, 122, 123, 129 Luna, Jennie, 143, 144 Magsambol, Nicollete, 206–207 Mar, Don, 100 Marx, Ronald, x McCarty, Teresa L., 27 McIntyre, Alice, 101 MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlan ), 6 Melgoza, Jorge, 5, 8 mestiza consciousness, 83 Mestizos, 232 Mexican American Human Rights Organization, 173 Mexican American Studies department (MAS), Tucson, 136, 137, 239–240 Mexican American/Raza Studies Department (MARSD), Tucson, vii México profundo and the imaginary Mexico, 21 México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization (Batalla), 17 Milem, Jeffrey, x model minority myth, 118 Molina, Jonell, 207, 211, 212–213 Mora, Juana, 137 Moraga, Cherrie, 134 Morelos, Jose Maria, 232 Morrell, Ernest, xii, 47 Nahua principles of education, 12 Nahui Ollin, 31, 35, 249, 250 Network for Revolutionary Change, 259, 263

Index271

New World Hegemon Empire, 52, 53

“the Other,” 21–23

objective of Ethnic Studies, 119 Occupied America (Acuña), 148 “One Love Black and Brown Solidarity Campaign,” 228 Operation Ceasefire, 171 oppositional behavior, 18 Oral History project, 196 organic intellectual and counterhegemony terms, 103–104 organic Rx, resistance, and regeneration in the classroom, 43– 66; community cultural wealth (CCW) theory, 46–47, 58; culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy (CRP), 44–45, 46, 58; CxRxPx, 45, 55; home/ancestral capital, 51–52; indigeneity, reclaiming of, 54; Ines, experience of, 53–54, 60–61; Isabel, experience of, 57; Ixchell, experience of, 57–58; Juan, experience of, 50– 52, 56–57; Julia, the experience of, 56; Libertad, experience of, 52–53; linguistic capital, 52; Maria, experience of, 50; Nelli, experience of, 52, 54; New World Hegemon Empire, 52, 53; “official” identities, 55; overview of, 43–46; in practice for rooted and transformative racial/ ethnic identity development among Brown students, 49–58; Ricky, experience of, 57–58, 59; social justice geography (SJG), 48–49, 52; Social Justice Humanitas Academy (SJHA), 48; student tlahtolli/ testimonios at Ethnic Studies Now Youth Summit, 58–61; T3SA (Transformative 3rd Space Autoethnographies), 49, 51; T3SA assignment, questions 8 and 9, 50– 52, 54; theoretical background of, 46–48; U.S. Census form (2010), 49, 50, 56; Xican@, 54, 55, 62n23 Oropeza, Ramírez, 14, 20, 21, 22

Paray, Sharon, 206, 209–210 Paris, Django, 37 participatory action research (PAR), 101 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 183 People’s Education Movement, 152 Performing our Resistance Project (PRP), 217–218, 219 Pico Youth and Family Center (PYFC), 139 Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), 189–191; Balboa High School site, 220; Barangay pedagogy, 214; Bayani interview, 189; community action toward sustainable social justice, 196; community engagement, 194–195; conclusion concerning, 196–197; critical leadership model, 183; Critical Leadership Praxis (CLP) and, 181, 182, 187; Dela Cruz, Aristel, 205, 212–213, 215, 216–217; Estacio, Sheridan Marie, 207, 210– 211; faculty of, 200; findings involving, 208; Freire, Paulo, 183, 190; Gabriela interview, 192–193; Gesuden, Liza, 206, 214; historical duty and action, 216–218; history and identity, 208–209; history with purpose, 214–216; impact on Ethnic Studies in San Francisco, 182–183; indignation, 209–210; Inosanto interview, 190–191; Lawsin, Emily, 208; Magsambol, Nicollete, 206– 207; a main objective of, 182; Manny interview, 194, 195, 196; mission of, 119; Molina, Jonell, 207, 211; Paray, Sharon, 206, 209–210; Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 183; Posadas-Bautista, Angelica, 209, 210; relationship to oneself, 187–188; relationship to oneself, summary of, 193; relationship to the community, 193; Remigio, Allyson,

272Index

207, 211; Revilla, Linda, 209; Sabac, Alldredge, Jr., 205–206, 213; Samtoy interview, 188–189; schools involved in, 200; self-connection, 187–189; self-determination, 189–191; selfdiscovery, 210–212; self-reflection and CLP, 191–193; TintiangcoCubales, Allyson, 199–200; working definition of Ethnic Studie, xvi Pizarro, Marc, 13–15, 17 Posadas-Bautista, Angelica, 205, 209, 210 “The Power of Ethnic Studies” (DausMagbual and Tintiangco-Cubales), xxi problematization, 28 punk rock pedagogy (PRP), 117–118 Quetzalcoatl, 33–34, 247, 249 Quetzalcoatl/Precious Knowledge quadrant, 137 Ramirez, Johnny, 138 rasquachismo pedagogy, 71–72 Raza Studies Now, 139, 151, 152 Raza Studies Now (3), 141–145 reactionary behavior, 18 Remigio, Allyson, 211 restrictive racial covenants, 165 Rethinking Columbus (Bigelow), 49 Revilla, Linda, 209 Revolutionary Change in Chicago, 259 rhetoric, 136–137, 149 Ricouer, Paul, 201, 204, 214, 219 Rios, Cati de los, 36 Roman, Javier San, 141 Romano-V., O. I., 16 Romero, A., 34, 35 Sabac, Alldredge, Jr., 205–206, 213 Said, E. W., 21 Salazar, María del Carmen, 28, 29 San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), xiv–xv

Sanders, Mercedes, 5 Santa Monica (CA) Ethnic Studies activism (a case study), 137–141 Santa Monica High School (Samohi), 139 Scholastic Educational Movement in Language Literacy and Scholarship (SEMILLAS), 167 sectarianism, 259 Segura, Regina, 4–5 self-connection, 187–189 self-defeating resistance, 18 self-determination, 189–191 self-reflection, 191–193, 242 Serna, Elias, 242 Shakur, Assata, 216 Shields, Carolyn, 186 Sleeter, Christine E., viii, x Social Justice Humanitas Academy (SJHA), 48 Solórzano, Daniel, 18 Starr, Kevin, 170 Stockton (CA), Ethnic Studies, and community engagement, 157–179; bureaucratic and cultural neglect, 166; city bankruptcy, 166; College of Ethnic Studies, 176; conclusion and future, 173–176; crime, increase in, 166; de los Rios, Cati V., 158; education levels in, 165; financial data and operating costs, 168, 171, 173; Fugazi, Christina, 168; historical backdrop, 158–162; literacy in, 166; overview of, 157–158; police and fire departments budget cuts, 166–167; political engagement, 162–165, 167– 168; poverty in, 165; restrictive racial covenants, 165; tax increase, 167. See also Fair Oaks Public Library, closure of story of our day, 257–263; Black Lives Matters movement, 262; capitalism, 258, 259; human development, the juncture in, 258–260; integrality, 258; learning process, the, 261; the

Index273

Left in today’s shifting realities, 258; Network for Revolutionary Change, 259, 263; overview of, 257–258; Revolutionary Change in Chicago, 259; rhythms of revolution, tapping into, 262; sectarianism, 259; stories to guide us, 260; summarizing of, 262–263; summary of where we are today, 258; tailism, 259; value of arts in revolution, 261; war, still it is upon us, 261–262 Strobel, Leny, on decolonization, 201, 212, 213–214, 216 student tlahtolli/testimonios at Ethnic Studies Now Youth Summit, 58–61 tailism, 259 Taqwacore scene, 129 Teacher Participatory Action Research (TPAR), 217, 218 Teaching Barangays, 214 teatro campesino, 135, 152n2 Tejeda, Carlos, 120 Texas State Board of Education, xv Tezcatlipoca, 32–33, 247, 249 “Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl in the Classroom: Knowing Ourselves, Our Students, and Our Community,” 248–249 Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), xiii, 99 Tintiangco-Cubales, Allyson, xii, xxi, 37, 120, 188, 189, 199, 224 Toltecáyotl: Aspectos de la cultura náhuatl (León-Portilla), 23 Tonalmachiotl (Aztec calendar), 20 transformational resistance, 18, 19 Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American/Raza Studies Department (MARSD), 11, 12, 31, 34–35, 36–38 Untaught Story, the, 232 Utley, Michael, 120

Valdez, Luis, 30 Valences of the Dialectic (Jameson), 136 Vasquez, Armando, 148–149 Velasquez, Alice Armendariz, 122 Villanueva, Silvia Toscano, 25, 143–144 Watts Youth Voices (WYV), 226–231; Advanced Placement courses, 226, 227; charter management organization (CMO), 226–227, 228, 231; conclusion concerning, 231; interviews, 229; Jerica interview, 226; “One Love Black and Brown Solidarity Campaign,” 228; poem, 229–230; purpose of, 226; spokenword event, 230–231; violence and students, 228; workshops, 229–230; Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), 228–229 Webb, Kitaro, 139 Weiner, Eric J., 184, 185 Williams v. State of California settlement (2004), 102 Wilson, Kurt, 171 Xican@, 54, 55, 151 Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO), 150–151 Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) as a form of resistance and liberation, 239–255; Acosta, Tupac Enrique, 249; Arce, Martín Sean, 243, 249; barrio mural tour, 250–251; Barrio Pedagogy, 241– 242; Chicano lynching image, 249; CLASS—Chican@ Literature and Social Studies, 244–246; collective consciousness and community healing, 251–252; community responsive defined, 244; critically conscious defined, 244; critically responsive defined, 244; decolonial barrio pedagogies, 241–242; Gonzalez, Norma, 242; Horne, Tom,

274Index

240; Huppenthal, John, 240; identity and sense of self, 250; In Lak’Ech, Maya concept of, 247; members of, 253n2; Mexican American Studies department (MAS), Tucson, 239– 240; Nahui Ollin, 249, 250; new culture wars and the struggle in Tucson, 240–241; new culture wars, as a direct response to, 252–253; opening of XITO’s institutes, 247– 248; overview of, 239–240; professional development, 243–244, 246–248; professional development institutes, 244–245; purpose of, 243; Quetzalcoatl, 249; resistance and liberation, as a form of, 242–244; self-reflection, 242; Tezcatlipoca, 249; “Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl in the Classroom: Knowing Ourselves, Our Students, and Our Community,” 248–249; workshops, 248–251; Xican@ Indigenous principles, 247 Xican@ paradigm, 139–140 Xican@ Pop-Up Book Movement (XPUB): and allegories of decolonization, 145–147; beginnings of, 145; Manifesto, 156; purpose of, 147; at RSN3, 145; student assignments, 146–147 Xicana/o indigenous epistemologies, 13–23; Batalla, Bonfil, 17–18, 19, 20–21; Broyles-González, Y., 19; Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo, 15; “Chicana/o Spiritualization through Indigenismo” (Pizarro), 14–15; colonized mentality, 21; cultural schizophrenia, 21; Darder, Antonia, 14; de-Indianization, 17; Eurocentric knowledge, 17; government attacks on, 12; holistic needs of Xicana/o students, 16; imposition of the Spanish culture and religion, 18; Indigenous resistance, 18–19; K–12

Chicana/o Studies, 16, 17; K–12 Mexican American/Raza Studies program, 13; México profundo and the imaginary Mexico, 21; México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization (Batalla), 17; oppositional behavior, 18; Oropeza, Ramírez, 14, 20, 21, 22; “the Other,” 21–23; outlawing K–12 “Ethnic Studies” in the State of Arizona, 12; overview of, 11–13; Pizarro, Marc, 13–15, 17; reactionary behavior, 18; Romano-V., O. I., 16; self-defeating resistance, 18; Tonalmachiotl (Aztec calendar), 20; transformational resistance, 18, 19 Xicana/o youth: chapter sections concerning, 12–13; colonization and, 11, 12; public schools and, 11; Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American/Raza Studies Department (MARSD), 12, 13 Xicana/o youth, attributes of the temachtiani: Nahua principles of education as decolonizing teacher pedagogy for, 23–31; attributes of the teacher, five essential, 23–24; “banking education,” 26–27; buen ejemplo, 30; Chicano-Indigenous pedagogical praxis, 25; confianza, practice of, 29; consejos (verbal teachings), 29–30; “Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy” (CSRP), 27; Huehuehtlahtolli, 29–30; in ixtli in yollotl —“a face, a heart” concept, 23; In Lak’Ech (poem), 30; Nahua principles of education, 12, 39n4; Netlacaneco, attributes of, 28– 30; problematization, 28; respeto, 29; strong face, instilling of, 26; Teixcuitiani—“causing others to take a face,” 24–25; Tetezcahuiani –“one who places a mirror in front of others,” 27–28; Tlayolpachitivia–“one

Index275

in relation with things, whom makes the heart strong,” 30–31; Voice, 25–26 Xicana/o youth indigenous epistemological praxis, toward a: Tucson’s K–12 Mexican American/ Raza Studies Department, 31–36; Acosta, Tupac Enrique, 32, 33; conclusions and implications, 36–38; Huitzilopochtli, 34–35; Nahui Ollin, 31, 35; Quetzalcoatl, 33–34; Tezcatlipoca, 32–33; tridimensionalization, 35; Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American/Raza Studies Department (MARSD), 31, 34–35, 36–38; Xipe Totec, 35–36. See also Xicana/o indigenous epistemologies Xikan@, 54–55 Xinachtli concept, 247 Xipe Totec, 35–36, 247 XITO—the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing, 139, 152 Ybarra-Frausto, Tomas, 71 Yosso, Tara J., 24, 46, 103, 203 Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), 91n6, 97–115; agency, fostering of, 105–107; collective action, 107–111; Council of Youth

Research (CYR), 98, 100; Council of Youth Research (CYR), themes for the 2010–11, 102; critical consciousness, developing, 103–105; Ethnic Studies pedagogy and research, 99–100; example of (Fernando and Mr. Derrick), 107– 108; Hooks High Schools (California), 102, 107–108, 109– 110; Langston Hughes High School (California), 102, 103, 104; methods, 102; organic intellectual and counter-hegemony, 103; overview of, 97–99, 100–102, 218; Panther High School (California), 102, 105–106; participatory action research (PAR), 101; Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), 196, 215; projects of, 101– 102, 112, 113; research questions focused upon, 98; solidarity between black and brown youth, 228; Teacher Participatory Action Research (TPAR), 218; Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), xiii, 99; as a vehicle to connect Ethnic Studies to communities, 111–113; Watts Youth Voices (WYV), 228; Williams v. State of California settlement (2004), 102 Zapata, Emiliano, 250, 253n7

About the Editors and Contributors

Editors DENISE M. SANDOVAL, PhD, is professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her research interests include popular culture and the arts, cultural histories of Los Angeles, oral history and community histories. ANTHONY J. RATCLIFF, PhD, is assistant professor in the Department of PanAfrican Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. His research interests include Ancient and Pre-Colonial African history, Black Feminist theory and praxis, the impact of colonialism, mass incarceration, and immigration on Hip-Hop cultural production. TRACY LACHICA BUENAVISTA, PhD, is associate professor in the Department of Asian American Studies and a core faculty member in the doctoral program in educational leadership at California State University, Northridge. In her research she uses critical race theory to examine how education, immigration and militarization shape the contemporary experiences of Pilipinxs in the U.S. JAMES R. MARÍN, EdD, is a principal at Animo College Prep Academy, a Green Dot Public School on the campus of Jordan High School in Watts, Los Angeles. His research is focused around teacher development in urban schools of color and culturally relevant instructional practices for Latino and Black males.

Contributors MARTÍN SEAN ARCE is a high school Chicano Studies teacher in Azusa Unfied School District, California and an educational consultant with the Xican@ Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO). Arce helped create the renowned Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, Arizona and is currently a doctoral candidate in Education at the University of Arizona.

278

About the Editors and Contributors

MARK BAUTISTA, PhD, is an adjunct professor in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and is the Ethnic Studies and Education Coordinator in the Metro College Success Program. Mark’s teaching and scholarship focuses on the agency and self-determination of disadvantaged peoples, critical pedagogy, decolonizing education, critical media literacies, and participatory action research (PAR). JERICA COFFEY taught English for 15 years in San Francisco and Los Angeles. She currently coordinates a Transformative Justice initiative at Holyoke High School and is a founding member of the People’s Education Movement, a teacher-led organization engaged in struggles for educational justice in Los Angeles. R. TOLTEKA CUAUHTIN, MA, is an interdisciplinary social justice educator, theorist, and artist. He is the Coordinator of Curricular Integrity for the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition, co-founder of XOCHITL-LA, and a teacher at Social Justice Humanitas Academy in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). ARLENE DAUS-MAGBUAL, EdD, is the Organizational Director of Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), adjunct faculty in the School of Education at University of San Francisco, and instructor in the College of Ethnic Studies/Department of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. Her scholarship focuses on Ethnic Studies, Educational Leadership, and Research Methodology. RODERICK DAUS-MAGBUAL, EdD, is the Director of Program Development for the Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), an Ethnic Studies education leadership pipeline that utilizes Filipina/o American Studies to nurture undergraduate and graduate students to become urban educators and leaders in their communities. He currently teaches at Skyline College in San Bruno, CA, under the Kababayan Learning Community (KLC); University of San Francisco in the School of Education; and has taught in various colleges and universities throughout northern California. DOLORES DELGADO BERNAL, PhD, is a professor of Education and Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah. Her scholarship addresses educational (in)equity, university-school-community partnerships, and Chicana feminist methodologies and pedagogies. RON ESPIRITU, MA, has been teaching Ethnic Studies to high school students for the past ten years in Los Angeles. He is a founding member of the People’s Education Movement, a board member for the Education for Liberation Network, and a participant in local efforts to promote and expand Ethnic Studies to K-12 Students.

About the Editors and Contributors279

ANITA FERNÁNDEZ, PhD, is currently the Director of Prescott College, Tucson, and faculty in the undergraduate Education Program as well as in the Master of Arts Program in Social Justice and Human Rights. She is the co-founder and Director of the Xican@ Institute for Teaching & Organizing (www.xicanoinsti tute.org) and the co-founder of La Tierra Community School (www.latierracom munityschool.org), a K-8 Expeditionary Learning school in Prescott. PABLO GONZALEZ, PhD, is a lecturer in Chicana/o Studies at the University of California Berkeley. His teaching and research interests include transnational social movements, illegality and criminality, and dispossession. SYLVIA MENDOZA AVIÑA, PhD, is assistant professor of Chicano Studies at Palomar College. Her research interests include Anzaldúan philosophy and Chicana/o studies in K-12 schools. SOCORRO MORALES, PhD, is a Research Fellow with the Center for Critical Race Studies at UCLA. Her research interests include Chicana feminist epistemologies, Critical Race Theory, and Chican@ schooling practices in K-12. ANTONIO NIEVES MARTINEZ, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Social Justice Education Concentration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research interests include critical ethnic studies pedagogies, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), teacher organizing, and education for liberation. DANI O’BRIEN is an educator, activist, and doctoral candidate in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her activism and research attempt to understand and push back against neoliberal policies that undermine the promise of public education and stand in the way of social justice. LUIS J. RODRIGUEZ, the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles (2014–2016), is a novelist/memoirist/short story writer/children’s book writer as well as a community and urban peace activist, mentor, healer, youth and arts advocate, husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He has 15 books in all genres, including the best-selling memoir, Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. He is founding editor of Tia Chucha Press, now in its 25th year, and co-founder/president of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley. NOAH ROMERO is an advisor at the University of California, Berkeley and a doctoral student at the University of San Francisco. His work explores the use of art, alternative educational models, critical pedagogy, and postcolonial feminism to teach and promote human rights. MOTECUZOMA SANCHEZ, MPA, is a father, veteran, community advocate and social justice activist, artist, and educator. He is the founder and director for

280

About the Editors and Contributors

SEMILLAS, a community-based organization that advocates and encourages community empowerment through educational advancement, the founder of Stockton CAN community coalition, and founder of the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition Stockton, which is working together with Stockton Unified School District to develop Ethnic Studies curriculum for the district. ELIAS SERNA is an educator, artist, and community activist currently completing a PhD in English/Rhetoric at UC Riverside. At UC Berkeley, he co-founded the teatro-comedy group Chicano Secret Service and he has helped build the Pico Youth and Family Center in his hometown of Santa Monica. ALLYSON TINTIANGCO-CUBALES, PhD, is a professor in the College of Ethnic Studies/Department of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and the Founder and Director of Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP). Her scholarship focuses on Ethnic Studies pedagogy.

“White” Washing American Education

“White” Washing American Education The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies Volume 2: Higher Education Denise M. Sandoval, Anthony J. Ratcliff, Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and James R. Marín, Editors

Copyright © 2016 by Denise M. Sandoval, Anthony J. Ratcliff, Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and James R. Marín All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sandoval, Denise M, editor. Title: “White” washing American education : the new culture wars in ethnic studies   / Denise M. Sandoval, Anthony J. Ratcliff, Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and   James R. Marín, editors. Description: Santa Barbara, California : Praeger, 2016- | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016005000 | ISBN 9781440832550 (hardback)   | ISBN 9781440845765 (volume 1) | ISBN 9781440845772 (volume 2)   | ISBN 9781440832567 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: United States—Ethnic relations—Study and teaching (Higher)   | Education—United States. Classification: LCC E184.A1 W3975 2016 | DDC 378.00973–dc23 LC record   available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005000 ISBN: 978-1-4408-3255-0 (set) ISBN: 978-1-4408-4576-5 (Vol. 1) ISBN: 978-1-4408-4577-2 (Vol. 2) EISBN: 978-1-4408-3256-7 20 19 18 1 16  1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available as an eBook. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 www.abc-clio.com This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Volume 2: Higher Education Introduction: “Picking Up the Torch in Higher Education”: Ethnic Studies Culture Wars in the Twenty-first Century Anthony J. Ratcliff and Denise M. Sandoval

ix

PART I ETHNIC STUDIES INTELLECTUAL TRADITIONS: POLITICAL AND THEORETICAL SHIFTS IN ACADEMIA   1. Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands: An Ongoing Struggle for Equality and Human Rights Antonia Darder

3

  2. “But It’s a Dry Hate”: Illegal Americans, Other Americans, and the Citizenship Regime T. Mark Montoya

19

  3. Insurrectional Knowledge: Antiprison Africana Pedagogy, Ethnic Studies, and the Undoing of the Carceral State Christopher M. Tinson

41

  4. Issues in the Ethnic Studies Culture Wars: A Veteran’s Insights Rodolfo F. Acuña

57

viContents

PART II COUNTER-NARRATIVES: TEACHING ETHNIC STUDIES AT WHITE INSTITUTIONS   5. The Battle to Decolonize Knowledge: Theories, Experiences, and Perspectives Teaching Ethnic Studies in Arizona Xamuel Bañales and Mary Roaf

69

  6. On Building Latino Studies in the White, Liberal Arts, Corporatized University: An Autoethnography Oriel María Siu

95

  7. Why Ethnic Studies Matters: A Personal Narrative from a Community College Educator Monica G. Killen

115

  8. We Are Not “the Help”: A Composite Autoethnography of Service and Struggle in Ethnic Studies womyn of color collective

121

  9. Where Are All of the Latina/os?: Teaching Latina/o Studies in the Midwest Luis H. Moreno

143

10. Presumed Biased: The Challenge and Rewards of Teaching “Post-Racial” Students to See Racism Barbara Harris Combs

149

PART III SHARING OUR STORIES: ETHNIC STUDIES RESEARCH AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 11. Militant Humility: The Essential Role of Community Engagement in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy Glenn Omatsu

167

12. Exploring the Intersections between Scholarship and Activism: Our Journey from Community Concerns to Scholarly Work Yarma Velázquez-Vargas, Marta López-Garza, and Mary Pardo

179

13. ¡La Lucha Continua!: Why Community History[-ies] Matters— Ethnic Studies Research, Art Activism, and the Struggle for Space and Place in the Northeast San Fernando Valley Denise M. Sandoval

195

Contentsvii

PART IV HUMANISTIC VISIONS/TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE: STUDENT ACTIVISM AND CLASSROOM PEDAGOGY 14. What We Dream, What We Want, What We Do: CSUN Asian American Studies Students Building Bridges and Forging Movements for a Twenty-first-century Asian American Studies 221 Clement Lai, Lawrence Lan, Alina Nguyen, with contributions from Ilaisaane Fonua, Louise Fonua, Kevin Guzman, Samantha Jones, Presley Kann, Gregory Pancho, Carolina Quintanilla, and Emilyn Vallega 15. ¡Sí Se Pudo!: Student Activism in the Chicana/o Studies Movement at UCLA, 1990–1993 José M. Aguilar-Hernández

249

16. Teaching Ethnic Studies through SWAPA from California to New York: The Classroom as Healing Space Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.

277

17. On Ethnic Studies, Trauma, and Trigger Warnings Araceli Esparza

297

Index 315 About the Editors and Contributors

331

Introduction: “Picking Up the Torch in Higher Education”: Ethnic Studies Culture Wars in the Twenty-first Century Anthony J. Ratcliff and Denise M. Sandoval

There are times when personal experience keeps us from reaching the mountain top and so we let it go because the weight of it is too heavy. And sometimes the mountain top is difficult to reach with all our resources, factual and confessional, so we are just there, collectively grasping, feeling the limitations of knowledge, longing together, yearning for a way to reach that highest point. Even this yearning is a way to know. —bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) In April 2014, the American Cultures requirement celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary at the University of California, Berkeley, an important campus to the history of the struggle for Ethnic Studies units within higher education. The Ethnic Studies department was established in 1969 during the turbulent era of civil rights and anti–Vietnam War protests. Berkeley was a hotbed for political protest during this time, so much so that Governor Ronald Reagan sent the National Guard to the campus to stop the student protests. The campus has been a model for Ethnic Studies departments within the United States, and though not perfect (what university department is?), the Ethnic Studies department at UC Berkeley has trained and graduated many Ethnic Studies practitioners—including Denise Sandoval and Tracy Lachica Buenavista, two contributors to this volume—who impact academia and beyond.

xIntroduction

The previous work of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley was instrumental in the creation of the American Cultures requirement first introduced in 1989 and then finally implemented in 1991.1 It impacted the campus culture manifold, since the goal of the American Cultures requirement “was influenced by an increase in minorities in student demographics and the anti-apartheid movement on campus. As students protested on campus to show their support of ending the apartheid regime in South Africa, they looked at their own campus and wanted to apply the same social justice principles closer to home” (Jeong 2014). As the population of students of color increased at UC Berkeley as the result of affirmative action programs, a campus environment that thrived off of political protests meant that the students of the 1990s were poised to make their voices heard by “picking up the torch” from the previous generation. However, the demographic shifts in California (or the “Browning of California” as some have called it) also resulted in the rise of nativist and racist attacks on the Latino and other communities of color. For instance, California legislation such as Proposition 187 (1994) denied health and educational services to undocumented people; Proposition 209 (1996) effectively put an end to affirmative action programs; and Proposition 227 (1998) eliminated bilingual education in public schools. These propositions revealed the changing political climate in California in the 1990s and the conservative backlash against the wins of the civil rights and other radical social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, where Ethnic Studies first emerged. The American Cultures requirement was and is an important tool to educate students to the themes of critical thinking, social justice, diversity, and multiculturalism, as well as an opportunity to link classroom learning to communities that are marginalized and oppressed both in the United States and internationally. These themes have long been advocated by Ethnic Studies departments/ programs and are found in many of the classes we teach. Ethnic Studies pedagogy also informs the work we do outside the classroom, in research and activist spaces. It motivates the yearning for a socially just world where the voices of marginalized people are not only embraced, but their needs are met; a sentiment echoed by bell hooks as we “teach to transgress” for “the practice of freedom.” What does this mean, exactly? It means a collective vision(s) of people working toward the transformation of social injustice within higher education, but more important, for and in our communities. At the time of this writing (2016), the Black Lives Matter movement in opposition to state-sanctioned violence is an important reminder that little has changed since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, especially for poor Black and other communities of color. The call to activism that this movement has inspired reminds us that our work is not over as Ethnic Studies practitioners.

Introductionxi

Ethnic Studies as a movement and a pedagogy are important resources for our students and communities in these new, sometimes recycled, culture wars. It is our desire for a more humanistic world founded on social justice and equality that continues to motivate the work we do as we “pick up the torch.” Therefore, this second volume White Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies seeks to provide readers a historical context in which to place the current struggles and attacks on Ethnic Studies by understanding the various cultural and political “wars” that impact American higher education. In particular, the assembled pieces explore how the whitewashing of curriculums and stories at the university level impacts students, faculty, and communities of color in this so-called postracial era. At the same time, it emboldens those in positions of power to work toward the delegitimizing and dismantling of Ethnic Studies programs, such as has occurred in Arizona and elsewhere. This volume demonstrates the value and necessity of Ethnic Studies in the twenty-first century from those who are in the trenches (educators, students, community activists, cultural workers) by using multidisciplinary approaches, highlighting the intersectionality of race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientations, nationality, and other markers of difference.

WHAT IS ETHNIC STUDIES? Simply put, Ethnic Studies in higher education is an interdisciplinary academic field that challenges the white supremacist foundations of U.S. colleges and universities (Hu-DeHart 1993). It primarily encompasses Africana/ African American/Black Studies, Chicana/o & Latina/o Studies, Asian American/Pacific Islander Studies, Native American/Indigenous Studies, as well as comparative Ethnic Studies units. The impetus behind these disciplines began as a radical response to the historical erasure and marginalization of People of Color2 from college campuses and Eurocentric curriculums. As civil rights activists and other social movements fought for inclusion and representation in the U.S. political and economic system during the late 1950s and early 1960s, students of color, sympathetic faculty, grassroots organizers, and community members engaged in campaigns for increased access to predominantly white institutions (PWIs) across the country (La Belle & Ward 1996). However, with the growth in students of color at formerly allwhite colleges and universities came the realization that access to these vaunted institutions did not necessarily improve campus racial climates nor did it alter the content of classroom curriculum. Consequently, the coalescing of revolutionary Black, Latina/o, Asian American, and Native American social movements for people’s power in the late 1960s, increased antiwar agitation, and deepening anticolonial struggles abroad radicalized the student of

xiiIntroduction

color movement, which intensified their requests for access and equality to militant demands for self-determination on campus and a complete transformation of academia (Yamane 2002). These forces first took shape at San Francisco State University (then College). In March 1968, members of the Black Student Union were joined by El Renacimiento, a Mexican American student organization, the Latin American Students Organization, Asian American Political Alliance, Filipino American Collegiate Endeavor, and the Native American Students Union to organize the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF). In addition to fighting for the immediate needs of Black students on campus, the TWLF expressed solidarity with radical social movements transpiring in the United States as well as revolutionary anticolonial movements occurring in the Third World. TWLF student organizers subsequently launched a protracted student strike and occupied administrative buildings to demand the establishment of a Black Studies Program, a School of Ethnic Studies, the hiring of faculty of color, and the recruitment of more students from low-income communities of color. Inspired by events at SFSU, students of color at UC Berkeley formed their own Third World Liberation Front making similar demands and ultimately calling for the creation of a Third World College. Not long after, student unrest ensued at UC Santa Barbara, California State University Northridge, California State University Los Angeles, UCLA, and it eventually spread to campuses across the nation. By the early 1970s, there were hundreds of Ethnic Studies programs and departments at colleges and universities throughout the country (with the vast majority being in California) that radically reconfigured the complexion of higher education (Fukumori 2014). The development of professional organizations has further led to the legitimization of Ethnic Studies as a field within the academy, as well as served as a source of professional and personal support for Ethnic Studies scholars and practitioners. Most of the Ethnic Studies professional associations were created in the 1970s and 1980s. However, there have since been others created as recently as this century, which represents the continued need for professional spaces that are grounded in the experiences of scholars of color. What is more, unlike the professional associations of traditional disciplines, most of the Ethnic Studies associations make an effort to welcome undergraduate students as well as community members. Some of the more established Ethnic Studies professional organizations are: National Association of Ethnic Studies (NAES), National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS), National Council of Black Studies (NCBS), National Association of African American Studies (NAAAS), Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), and Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA). This

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aforementioned list is by no means complete, but it illustrates a diverse trajectory of the growth of Ethnic Studies professional organizations. There are many other professional associations that link Ethnic Studies in the United States to international professional associations in Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, but the authors chose to highlight professional organizations that have played critical roles in the development of Ethnic Studies units within institutions of higher education in the United States. At the same time, we recognize (and will speak to) the tensions that arise with the increased professionalization of the field as it often diminishes the role of activists, students, community members, and others who may not hold advanced degrees or are not considered “academics” in the traditional sense of the word.

CONTESTING THE CULTURE WARS IN HIGHER EDUCATION Ethnic Studies departments/programs have remained sites of contestation ever since their inception. Few other fields of academic study were established in the context of social activism and upheaval, as was Ethnic Studies. Moreover, its worldview developed from connections students of color in the United States made with revolutionaries in the Third World and their struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Thus, an objective of the Ethnic Studies campus insurgency was to challenge and decolonize the Eurocentric canons of traditional academic disciplines and to replace them with transformational interdisciplinary scholarship and pedagogy focusing critically on race and ethnicity. For many Ethnic Studies scholar-activists, especially feminists of color, this includes interrogating how race and racism intersect with other aspects of social identity, such as class, gender, and sexual orientation (Collins 2008). Almost invariably, conservative white administrators, scholars, and politicians viewed this radical reorientation as an epistemological, ontological, and physical threat to their entrenched power in academia and society. They subsequently sought to delegitimize Ethnic Studies by labeling it as intellectually inferior and a cultural war on “traditional American” (read white) customs, ideas, and values. In addition to overtly racist critiques, opponents of Ethnic Studies used budgetary crises to impose economic discipline on radical Ethnic Studies scholars, students, and departments within higher education. For instance, the economic recession of the mid-1970s had a deleterious effect on Ethnic Studies, with over half of the programs and departments created in the late 1960s experiencing retrenchment or closure (Yang 2000). Since the 1980s, with the advent of Reaganomics—which economists now correlate with neoliberalism—state expenditures to public colleges and universities have been severely diminished. As a result, the first sectors on campus impacted by budget

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cuts are most often humanities and Ethnic Studies departments/programs (Giroux 2014; Darder 2012). When reactionary forces realized they could not completely prevent the movement, they initiated other means in which to co-opt and whitewash Ethnic Studies with commodified versions of multiculturalism that decoupled cultural expression from the racialized and economic contexts that produced them (La Belle & Ward 1996). Gradually, the conservative backlash against Ethnic Studies and charges of illegitimacy led some Ethnic Studies scholars and units to retreat from the radical Third World orientation of early Ethnic Studies toward more essentialist notions of identity politics and cultural nationalism (Okihiro 2007). These shifts not only diminished comparative approaches and solidarity between discursive Ethnic Studies divisions, but they also tended to limit the curricular scope of many units to solely concentrate on the experiences of its specific racial or ethnic group identity within the United States. At times, this narrowing of perspective even led Ethnic Studies units on the same campus to fight with each other for scarce resources rather than against the campus administration that often fomented and celebrated the discord (Butler 2011). These points notwithstanding, many of the Ethnic Studies scholars and units that embraced Afrocentricity, Kawaida, Chicanismo, and other cultural nationalist philosophies saw this as necessary in order to position themselves in opposition to white supremacy (see Asante 1987; Chin 1974; Garcia 1997b; Karenga 1993). By centering the racial histories and cultural particularities of their ethnic groups as the intellectual well from which to produce knowledge, they sought to deconstruct Eurocentric epistemologies and methodologies as well as Western claims to universality and objectivity. Moreover, Ethnic Studies cultural nationalists encouraged adherents to reconnect with ancient, if at times romanticized, homelands that had been disrupted and displaced by European enslavement, colonialism, and genocide (see Anaya & Lomeli 1991; Van Sertima 1976). A salient criticism directed against cultural nationalism in Ethnic Studies, however, is its propensity to reify heteropatriarchal norms, which marginalizes women and LGBTQ People of Color (Chiang 2009; Garcia 1997; Smith el al. 1982). In response, numerous feminist and queer scholar-activists produced counter-narratives and critical research that not only challenged race and racism, but also classism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression that permeate society. Moreover, by interrogating the multiple burdens affecting women and LGBTQ People of Color, their groundbreaking scholarship has incorporated new theoretical and methodological frameworks into Ethnic Studies. Several of the seminal texts in this field are All the Women Are White, All the Men Are Black, But Some of Us Are Brave (1982) by Barbara Smith, Gloria T. Hull, and Patricia Bell-Scott; Borderland/La Frontera (1987) by Gloria Anzaldúa, Norma Cantú, and Aída Hurtado; Dragon Ladies: Asian

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American Feminists Breathe Fire (1999) by Sonia Shah; and Plum Nelly: New Essays in Black Queer Studies (2000) by Jennifer DeVere Brody and Dwight A. McBride. These contributions represent an expanding segment of Ethnic Studies scholarship and pedagogy that remains in critical and dialogical conversation with Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, LGBT Studies, and Critical Race Feminism, among others (Butler & Walter 1991). Another line of internal criticism toward the excesses of cultural nationalism has come from radical, left-leaning, Marxist, and Freirean-oriented scholars of color who challenge its lack of attention to economic and working-class issues. A number of Ethnic Studies scholars working from these perspectives are Robin D. G. Kelley, Cedric Robinson, Rudy Acuña, Angela Davis, Lisa Lowe, Sidney Lemelle, Vijay Prashad, Antonia Darder, Abdul Alkalimat, Agustin Lao-Montes, and Steven Salatia, among others. Though most of these radical intellectuals recognize the centrality of “race” in analyzing the oppression People of Color experience, they also view it as an interrelated product of the global spread of European capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. Equally vital to many left-leaning Ethnic Studies scholars is the examination of international and transnational connections and linkages between racialized, gendered, and economically exploited groups displaced by the capitalist/colonialist world system. As a result, they have been integral to new and expanding areas of transnational Ethnic Studies, such as Critical Ethnic Studies, African Diaspora Studies, Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies, Afro-Latina/o Studies, Global South Studies, Puerto Rican Studies, Pan African Studies, to name a few. Neoliberal economic policies and conservative culture wars have had a direct impact on how we structure and organize Ethnic Studies units. A clear outcome has been the heavy emphasis on institutionalizing and professionalizing the field to make it more acceptable to people in power. In order for Ethnic Studies units to maintain a presence and guarantee their longevity in higher education it necessitated that they carve out space within academic institutions. While this often happened in the form of centers, institutes, or programs being developed, academic departmentalization was the best way to assure greater permanence (Hine 1997). However, as these units became more institutionalized, too often it meant lessening or even completely silencing structural critiques of the academic industrial complex. What is more, though professionalization has helped legitimize Ethnic Studies in the eyes of campus administrators, it subsequently delegitimizes scholarship that comes from most individuals who do not hold an advanced degree from an accredited university (Bhattacharyya 2003). A more immediate issue that results from these processes is the difficulty scholars of color have maintaining a balance between the complex needs of the students and communities from which the field emerged and the obligations placed upon them by university administrators and policies. Unfortunately, far

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too often the requirements of research, departmental service, tenure, and other administrative duties that come with increasing institutionalization and professionalization consumes much of the time of Ethnic Studies faculty and staff, leaving limited opportunities for direct engagement with students outside of class or with people and organizations in the community. Finally, there are a growing number of faculty members who come to Ethnic Studies units unaware of the historical legacy of the Ethnic Studies campus insurgencies and as a consequence they are more focused on career advancement than on supporting the struggles of students and community members. In this volume we include the perspectives of Ethnic Studies scholars, practitioners, and students, who collectively offer readers in-depth accounts of Ethnic Studies projects in higher education and other spaces. The contributors share historical background of key ideas and politics that shape Ethnic Studies programs in higher education; share Ethnic Studies teaching experiences and strategies, from diverse university campuses to predominantly white institutions; offer resistance strategies they have employed to connect Ethnic Studies research to their local communities; and illustrate humanistic visions of how Ethnic Studies can contribute to transformative social change regarding issues of human rights and social justice. The chapters can be characterized under four major themes: Ethnic Studies intellectual traditions, history, and ideological foundations; counter-narratives through teaching Ethnic Studies; Ethnic Studies research and community engagement; and humanistic visions/transformative change.

PART I: ETHNIC STUDIES INTELLECTUAL TRADITIONS: POLITICAL AND THEORETICAL SHIFTS IN ACADEMIA Campus struggles over autonomy and resources for Ethnic Studies units are inherently influenced by shifts in external economic and political regimes. The initial precipitous growth and spread of Ethnic Studies programs and departments occurred at the apex of progressive social movements for racial and social justice during the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, once the national and international revolutionary winds began to subside, a neoliberal backlash ensued that mollified the more radical elements of the Ethnic Studies campus insurgency. Not only has this had a serious impact on public higher education, but it has also corresponded with educational, legal, and legislative assaults on immigrants of color, the rise of the prison industrial complex, and other conservative ideological and political attempts to further marginalize communities of color. The chapters in part I of this volume examine the ways that Ethnic Studies scholars have responded to these changing cultural, economic, and political situations.

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In our first chapter, “Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands: An Ongoing Struggle for Equality and Human Rights,” the acclaimed critical theorist Antonia Darder describes the neoliberal assault on public education as a nefarious attempt by “mega-rich ultraconservatives, conservatives, and liberals alike” to privatize and defund colleges and universities. While this counterinsurgency has impacted disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, it is most keenly felt by Ethnic Studies programs and departments, which Darder argues are being turned into “multicultural market niches.” In order to forestall attempts by university administrators to employ neoliberal exigencies as a rationale to close units or terminate faculty wholesale, an increasing number of Ethnic Studies programs and departments have compromised “their emancipatory intellectual agenda” to maintain a presence on campus. She views this as an unfortunate consequence since challenges to longstanding structural oppression and social marginalization experienced by People of Color have historically originated at the “academic borderlands.” Ultimately, Darder urges intellectuals of color who exist at the racialized, cultural, economic, gendered, and sexual borders of society to adopt an Ethnic Studies critical pedagogy that articulates a revolutionary vision of democratic human rights and radical possibilities. A major contradiction of neoliberalism is its championing of “free trade,” which permits goods and capital to traverse borders with few regulations, while it tightly regulates and criminalizes humans who cross the same borders. Building upon Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of “borderlands,” T. Mark Montoya seeks to construct a critical pedagogy of “borderdom” as a counter to “traditional notions of citizenship” in the United States that exclude nonwhite immigrant populations. His chapter “But It’s a Dry Hate: Other Americans, Illegal Americans, and the Citizenship Regime” examines how two pieces of legislation in Arizona— Senate Bill 1070 and House Bill 2281—have codified anti-immigrant sentiments throughout the state and nation. SB 1070 allows law enforcement to check the immigration status of anyone they deem to be “undocumented,” while HB 2281 bans Ethnic Studies curriculum from K–12 classrooms. Though neither bill is directed at Ethnic Studies departments or programs at the university level, they nonetheless create a hostile intellectual environment where any Ethnic Studies endeavor becomes suspect. Montoya suggests that scrutiny from state officials intensifies pressures on Ethnic Studies scholars to tone down overt criticisms, which has the effect of “whitewashing education” and perpetuating “new culture wars.” Moreover, he articulates that what is of particular interest to the proponents of these legal and legislative assaults on immigrants and Ethnic Studies is the maintenance of a narrowly defined “citizenship regime.” Mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex has been another method in which the “citizenship regime” determines who can and cannot participate in U.S. democracy. Angela Davis (2003) argues,

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the prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism. (16) An increasing number of Ethnic Studies scholars have examined mass incarceration and its racist, classist, and gendered construction. However, few critically interrogate the intellectual production of Black political prisoners as part of Africana and Ethnic Studies scholarship. In “Insurrectional Knowledge: Antiprison, Africana Pedagogy, Ethnic Studies, and the Undoing of the Carceral State,” Christopher M. Tinson encourages Black and other scholars of color in the academy to expose their students to the scholarship of imprisoned and exiled Black revolutionary intellectuals, such as Assata Shakur, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Russell Maroon Shoatz, and Sufiya Bukhari. Moreover, he argues this “critical reappraisal” of their work is vital in order to fully understand the “emergence of the carceral state,” as well as what we can do to bring about its abolition. What makes Tinson’s contribution to this volume so important is its call to action for Ethnic Studies scholars to seriously consider the prison industrial complex as a fulcrum on which all forms of systematic oppression rest. For our final chapter of this part, we turn to a veteran scholar who has been in the Ethnic Studies trenches since the late 1960s. In “Issues in the Ethnic Studies Culture Wars: A Veteran’s Insights,” the renowned Chicana/o Studies professor, radical intellectual, and author of Occupied America: The Chicano Struggle for Liberation, Rodolfo F. Acuña provides critical commentary on several key issues confronting Ethnic Studies practitioners and units. His first contribution explores the myth and contradiction of the “American Dream” in the age of escalating anti-immigration fervor. Although undocumented youth have adopted the appellation “Dreamers” in recognition of the series of Dream Acts proposed and passed in state legislatures, the American Dream itself “includes an imperialist foreign policy.” The inconsistencies between American ideals and actions are taken up in his next commentary on the banning of books in Arizona and the adoption of revisionist historical textbooks in Texas. These reactionary decisions highlight two overt attempts by conservatives to whitewash school curriculum and further marginalize students of color. Acuña’s last piece discusses the relationship of President Barack Obama’s immigration orders and Ethnic Studies. In it, he identifies the paradox of the president’s proposed executive order to cease the deportation of undocumented parents of U.S.-born children (DAPA), even though

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he is responsible for the greatest number of deportations of any U.S. president. Similarly, Acuña suggests the drive to establish Ethnic Studies at the K–12 level in California is equally paradoxical unless it aligns itself more closely with the numerous Mexican American and other Ethnic Studies units in higher education.

PART II: COUNTER-NARRATIVES: TEACHING ETHNIC STUDIES AT WHITE INSTITUTIONS The strengthening of neoliberalism at universities has often translated to the reality wherein diversity and multiculturalism become code words that actually work to hide the blatant racism on college campuses both on an institutional and personal level. The privatization of higher education also means that many times Ethnic Studies is simply used as “a title” or “a name” to be marketed on campus to promote diversity and equity and the actions of these classes or programs has led to a complicated experience, particularly for the faculty of color hired to teach these courses. This part includes voices of faculty who teach Ethnic Studies courses at universities where oftentimes students of color are underrepresented and white students are overrepresented demographically. Most of the writers in this section were once students of Ethnic Studies and now are professors and activists in the discipline. These chapters explore the importance and impact of Ethnic Studies on college campuses for students, faculty, and the community. Moreover, they demonstrate the myriad of ways that faculty of color on campuses also work within challenging climates and the process of tenure often means these faculty might have to silence their experiences in order to keep their jobs. The groundbreaking book Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (2012) was an important contribution that powerfully illustrates the experiences of women of color within the “ivory tower,” where women-ofcolor faculty are marginally represented. In Presumed Incompetent, and Harris and González state, While the nation’s student population is becoming increasingly diverse, the overwhelming majority of full-time faculty positions continue to be filled by white men and women. From 1997 to 2007, for example, the percentage of students of color enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities climbed from 25 to 30 percent (Ryu 2010). However, the percentage of full-time faculty positions held by people of color increased only slightly—from 13 percent in 1997 to 17 percent in 2007 (Ryu 2010). Women of color, in particular, continue to be underrepresented. In 2007, women of color held only 7.5 percent of full-time faculty positions. (2)

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These statistics are important to understand the campus climate that faculty of color work in and also reveal the added pressures of being a woman of color in academia, particularly in the classroom. While Ethnic Studies courses can connect students of color to their stories and their cultures and can empower them, there are also benefits for white students who take Ethnic Studies courses—but moments of resistance in the classroom often occur. This part highlights the unmasking of these stories by faculty who teach Ethnic Studies at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) as important teaching moments, but also provide solutions on how to counter resistance in the classroom. The first chapter in this section “The Battle to Decolonize Knowledge: Theories, Experiences, and Perspectives Teaching Ethnic Studies in Arizona” traces the experiences of two faculty of color who teach Ethnic Studies at a white university in northern Arizona, Xamuel Bañales and Mary Roaf. Baña­ les and Roaf connect the cultural climate regarding teaching Ethnic Studies in Arizona during the banning of Ethnic Studies courses by the Tucson School District to the overall racism that is present in Arizona, and, in particular, how this climate impacts teaching Ethnic Studies at the university level in Arizona. One particular question posed in this chapter is how does a field that was created by student activists of the 1960s and 1970s and spoke to the need for the inclusion of courses that dealt with the history of racism and histories of People of Color within the walls of academia, also work to “decolonize knowledge” in the present? The authors posit that the field of Ethnic Studies “is also important for transforming traditional understanding of knowledge as it simultaneously challenges the European imperial culture’s hegemony and beyond” and this means Ethnic Studies can still be controversial on college campuses today. The Ethnic Studies program was created on this northern Arizona campus as a result of student protests, which resulted in establishing a minor in Ethnic Studies. Another important issue was an institutional policy that made it a requirement that all students take a course that fits an “ethnic diversity requirement” for graduation. The authors share their experiences teaching these courses for students who are required to take them and share moments of blatant resistance by white students while in their courses. In process, the chapter demonstrates why Ethnic Studies courses are an important tool in the culture wars for white students as well. Yet, this type of emotionally charged classroom climate can be a challenge for faculty who teach these courses and who sometimes are attacked and challenged in ways that other faculty are not. The authors present us with a case study on how to teach Ethnic Studies to white students, and, in particular, how do we critically engage students by using “critically compassionate” pedagogy? This chapter then raises important questions on the culture wars that are present on many university campuses and speaks to the necessity and value of Ethnic Studies.

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In “On Building Latino Studies in the White, Liberal Arts, Corporatized University: An Autoethnography,” Oriel María Siu documents some of the issues and challenges involved in trying to establish a Latino Studies program at a private white liberal arts university in the Northwest. Siu shares her journey within Ethnic Studies from a student-activist to now a professor, and she speaks to the myriad of ways in which the university structure often demands more of faculty of color in order to create “diversity.” Specifically, when traditionally white universities decide to establish Ethnic Studies programs, the few faculty hired to complete this process are often overworked to meet those expectations, or, as in Sui’s case, she was the lone hire. Her chapter also addresses the fact that faculty of color often must deal with the added pressures of racism or other microagressions on campus. More important, her story elucidates the ways that Latino Studies programs may be “more co-opted” in order to paint a picture of multiculturalism on campus, while deeper issues like institutional racism continue to go unchecked. For instance, sometimes the experiences of students of color and faculty of color are silenced on these campuses. Siu applies a critical pedagogical approach through her story because the case study of Latino Studies at her institution is a template for how other institutions that serve primarily white students are working to create Latino Studies or Ethnic Studies programs/departments. Important questions raised in this chapter are: What does this mean when there are few students of color on campus and how does it potentially impact the efficacy of Ethnic Studies? Furthermore, what is the result if these same institutions work to “whitewash” or depoliticize Ethnic Studies? In the end, Siu’s chapter powerfully asserts that as Ethnic Studies practitioners, we must not be silenced and our stories are necessary in order to create change on university campuses by “dismantling the myth of inclusion in higher education.” Personal narrative, then, is an important tool to understand the experiences of Ethnic Studies practitioners in the classroom. These stories not only speak to the challenges of teaching Ethnic Studies, but also give insight into what solutions are needed to continue to advocate for more Ethnic Studies classes in higher education. Monica G. Killen, in “Why Ethnic Studies Matters: A Personal Narrative from a Community College Educator,” continues to advocate for more Ethnic Studies courses at the community college level. Killen shares her story of finding Chicana/o Studies while in college and how it helped shape her personal identity, but also helped fill in the gaps of her previous Eurocentric education by learning about the histories of People of Color. At the community college level, Ethnic Studies classes are often found in traditional academic departments like English, sociology, anthropology, and so forth and oftentimes Ethnic Studies courses are taught by adjunct faculty who are trained to teach these courses. She shares her experiences teaching Ethnic Studies courses and the impact these courses had on some of

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her students, as well the campus climate an adjunct faculty member faces while teaching Ethnic Studies. In the end, Killen’s chapter makes a strong case that community colleges are important spaces to work toward creating and advocating for more Ethnic Studies courses. Oftentimes, the focus for more Ethnic Studies courses is at the four-year-university level, which means community colleges can be overlooked, yet they are increasingly important sites in these culture wars. Written as part autoethnography and part manifesto, “We Are Not ‘the Help’: An Autoethnography of Service, Servitude, and Struggle in Ethnic Studies,” by—members of the womyn of color collective—brings attention to the double burden women-of-color faculty face in Ethnic Studies units. Due to the gendered and racial marginalization experienced by women “educatorscholar-activists,” their opportunities to mentor students, build curriculum, programs, and departments, and to foster growth in the field of Ethnic Studies are severely curtailed. The authors employ counter-narratives from a critical race and feminist of color theoretical framework to unearth “sites of resis­ tance” women-of-color faculty create at their respective institutions. The authors brilliantly tap into the rich tradition of counter-storytelling theorized by Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Danny Solórzano, and other critical race theory scholars. However, they argue for the necessity of developing “composite” counter-narratives that proffer women of color in the academy greater anonymity from the “real threat of retaliation and backlash.” Notwithstanding any assumptions that Ethnic Studies units are “freer” from exploitation and marginalization than traditional disciplines due to their radical histories, the womyn of color collective illustrate how women-of-color faculty often become “servants” in Ethnic Studies programs and departments that are themselves “subservient” in the hierarchy of the academy. Returning to the theme of personal narratives, “Where Are All of the Latina/os?: Teaching Latina/o Studies in the Midwest,” by Luis H. Moreno, examines the difficulties of teaching Ethnic Studies at a predominantly white institution in Ohio. Although students of color first demanded Ethnic Studies courses, programs, and departments in order to deconstruct and transform Eurocentric curricula, a growing number of campuses now acknowledge the value of educating all students about the histories of People of Color. As a result, colleges and universities across the country have begun hiring more faculty of color to teach these courses with various degrees of success. The main theoretical framework that grounds Moreno’s approach to teaching majority white classrooms about Chicana/o and Latina/o histories is critical pedagogy, which he honed while working as a community organizer in social justice movements in southern California. He specifically incorporates the method of counter-narrative to expose his students to the stories of Lati­ ­nas/os who rarely are given voice in mainstream U.S. history classrooms. While

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early on Moreno suggests most white students are resistant to his courses’ heavily focus on race, class, and gender, by the end of the semester he often witnesses growth on their part with a handful even becoming tacit supporters of social justice issues themselves. Conversations about race and racism can be problematic regardless of the social context. However, this process is especially daunting in parts of the country where state capitols and institutions of higher learning still fly the flag of the Confederacy. Barbara Harris Combs assumes the arduous task of engaging students in the Deep South to have critical discussions about race in her chapter, “Presumed Biased: The Challenge and Rewards of Teaching ‘Postracial’ Students to See Racism.” Despite the proclamation that the United States is postracial—which has gained salience with the election of Barack Obama—we live in a highly racialized society. Recognizing this as a critical race scholar is one thing; however, convincing majority white classrooms (and faculty) in the Deep South of its historical and contemporary influences on society is another endeavor altogether. Nevertheless, Combs uses her positionality as a Black woman faculty member and the methodology of counter-narratives to encourage her students to see the ways race impacts the structural and interpersonal opportunities of People of Color.

PART III: SHARING OUR STORIES: ETHNIC STUDIES RESEARCH AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT An important aspect of Ethnic Studies research and a core theme echoed in this volume is the importance of community engagement; specifically how do we as Ethnic Studies scholars link our work to the communities beyond the university? For many of us, the topics we choose to research are influenced by the communities that we collaborate with, and these communities are ones that are often marginalized by the broader society due to race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, or the formerly incarcerated to name some examples. Therefore, how can we use Ethnic Studies research to impact transformative change for those communities? A first step is to share our stories about the work we do with and in the community, but we must also work toward sustaining an Ethnic Studies research pedagogy aimed at institutional change, both for our community and individual empowerment. The power of claiming our stories and our truth as communities of color is a necessary step in Ethnic Studies research and this part highlights that approach as well as proposes ways to continue to do this work among the communities we research and collaborate with. It is important to begin this part with a veteran of the struggle for Ethnic Studies and a cultural worker who embodies the pedagogy that Ethnic Studies must serve our communities at the university with what he calls “militant

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humility.” In his chapter “Militant Humility: The Essential Role of Community Engagement in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy” Glenn Omatsu reminds us that what makes Ethnic Studies at the university so radical is that it was not created by the university system, but rather by students, faculty, and community activists who demanded its creation within the university in the 1960s and 1970s. For Omatsu this fact becomes the basis of an Ethnic Studies epistemology based on community engagement. He writes, “We ground ourselves in the communities in which we serve.” This means Ethnic Studies needs to not only be in the community, but also bring the community to the university. For Omatsu, he uses his work as teacher and mentor for the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at California State University, Northridge to demonstrate this praxis. “Exploring the Intersections between Scholarship and Activism: Our Journey from Community Concerns to Scholarly Work” is a collaborative chapter by Yarma Velázquez-Vargas, Marta López-Garza, and Mary Pardo and expands further on Omatsu’s ideas of Ethnic Studies pedagogy based on community engagement. Their chapter explores the complexities of conducting community-based research projects, particularly how Ethnic Studies researchers collect and interpret data, as well as how they connect their positionalities as researchers and as activists to their community collaborative research projects. For instance, how do we speak for marginalized communities and capture the concerns of those communities truthfully and accurately since “as critical researchers we have responsibility for the stories”? These three Ethnic Studies researchers share their reflections from the field and their work with three different communities: exotic dancers/sex workers, queer Latino/a immigrants, and formerly incarcerated women of color. The reflective dialogue is necessary to examine the complexities we engage in when our work is “grounded in community needs and concerns.” Their reflections posit that what is needed in Ethnic Studies is scholarship activism along with the intersection of Ethnic Studies pedagogy with a feminist positionality. These authors assert that as feminist Ethnic Studies practitioners, they must be aware of their privileged position as university researchers; yet, as women-of-scholar researchers, they are also marginalized within academia where they are underrepresented and face a myriad of challenges based on intersections of race, class, and gender. Furthermore, these authors raise the question of the role and impact of gender politics within Ethnic Studies research and offer solutions to others engaged in similar research projects engaged in community. In the end, they challenge Ethnic Studies researchers to embrace their privilege as women-of-color researchers dedicated to Ethnic Studies in order to best represent the lived experiences of women in research projects. “¡La Lucha Continua!: Why Community History[-ies] Matters—Ethnic Studies Research, Art Activism, and the Struggle for Space and Place in the

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Northeast San Fernando Valley,” by Denise M. Sandoval, continues to investigate the role of the community in Ethnic Studies research by examining the community enabling and sustaining practices such as art activism or “artivism” to bring out transformative social change within the Chicano/Latino communities in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. This chapter shares her research documenting the work of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and other artivists in this community through the collaborative book project Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community (2012). The book project allows these communities to tell their stories through essays, photos, poetry, and art; the project speaks to the power of the arts to sustain these communities over the last twenty years. Art is a resource and a tool of counter-resistance toward the various culture wars that often plague neighborhoods in Los Angeles; particularly those marginalized due to poverty and lack of other resources communities need to thrive. The artivists in this chapter continue to build on the art and activist legacy of the Chicana/o Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and by telling their stories offer up many examples of how community[-ies] histories and activism are important building blocks for social change. This chapter also demonstrates the power of collaborative Ethnic Studies research with the communities we serve and provides a model for future research projects grounded in the Ethnic Studies pedagogy of “community engagement.” Research is an important contribution of Ethnic Studies and the continued work of Ethnic Studies scholars to link their work to the community speaks to the power of research to document our diverse stories as communities of color. This collection of chapters strongly demonstrates that Ethnic Studies will continue to be at the forefront of activist research and activist movements outside of the university walls.

PART IV: HUMANISTIC VISIONS/TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE: STUDENT ACTIVISM AND CLASSROOM PEDAGOGY The chapters in this final part continue to challenge us to create new strategies to combat the Ethnic Studies culture wars on university campuses and in our communities. As we contend with increasing attempts to privatize public higher education and continual questions of the “market value” of Ethnic Studies from neoliberal administrators and politicians, we are led to greater internal calls to professionalize and “rebrand” the field. In the shift toward making Ethnic Studies more acceptable to neoliberal dictates, however, not only does it sanitize our revolutionary origin stories to make them palatable for mainstream consumption, but it also marginalizes historical and contemporary student- and scholar-activists who have most often been critical of these reactionary moves. How can we apply successful lessons of

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activism to our Ethnic Studies pedagogy? What are issues that affect the classroom climate and how do we reflect the current needs of our students in our Ethnic Studies classrooms, particularly students who carry with them traumas that impact their engagement with the class material? How can Ethnic Studies continue the pedagogy of empowering our students to see themselves as liberated human beings? Many of these chapters answer these questions, but also raise more questions, which speaks to the need for a more sustained effort of Ethnic Studies practitioners to share their stories and create new ways of knowing and new modes for action around issues of social justice on our university campuses. In “What We Dream, What We Want, What We Do: CSUN Asian American Studies Students Building Bridges and Forging Movements for a Twentyfirst-century Asian American Studies,” Professor Clement Lai along with ten current and former students from the Department of Asian American Studies at California State University, Northridge reflect upon the increased marginalization of working-class students of color in the discipline. This marginalization is mainly due to the rapid institutionalization and professionalization of AAS and its primary professional association, the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS). Though AAAS was initially founded in 1979 as a space to bring together educators, scholars, students, and community members in critical dialogue, it has since become dominated by “professional” academics. To highlight this shift in focus, the chapter features the personal narratives of the AAS student- and scholar-activists who organized two roundtable symposia at the annual AAAS conference in 2014. Of most concern to Lai et al. is the fact that outside of the handful of student-initiated panels and symposia, there are few opportunities for working-class students to center issues of greatest concern to them and the communities they come from in the general proceedings. As has been repeated numerous times throughout this introduction, student activism was the primary impetus behind the founding of Ethnic Studies. In “Si Se Pudo!: Student Activism in the Chicana/o Studies Movement at UCLA, 1990–1993,” José M. Aguilar-Hernández recounts the critical role of radical students in the establishment of the Department of Chicana/o Studies on UCLA’s campus. While there had been several courses and a fledgling program in Chicana/o Studies at the institution since the late 1960s, it could only offer a minimal course of study, and it rarely had decision-making power over the hiring of faculty or budgetary control. Thus, the organizers recognized the importance of departmentalization to ensure that Chicana/o students, scholars, and the community had greater independence over these considerations. Through the use of oral histories, critical race theory, and transformational resistance theory, this chapter documents how students first initiated and then escalated demands for an autonomous Chicana/o Studies

Introductionxxvii

department by launching a series of direct actions. It specifically examines the centrality of women in the movement who were pivotal as both organizers and foot soldiers. Finally, Aguilar-Hernández argues that police repression helped catalyze student-activist and community resolve to continue the protracted struggle to its militant conclusion. In “Teaching Ethnic Studies through SWAPA from California to New York,” Eddy Alvarez writes about his personal experiences in the classroom as a student of Ethnic Studies and now a professor of Ethnic Studies. He believes like many Ethnic Studies practitioners that it is essential to link our learning in the classroom to our communities and that we need to encourage innovative teaching strategies in order to engage our students in critical thinking and praxis. Alvarez does this by using the SWAPA (Spoken-Word-Art-Performance-AsActivism) method, which is a combination of Joteria studies, women of color feminist studies, and Ethnic Studies and was created by his former mentor Chela Sandoval. This method advocates that students learn class material by also connecting their lives to reflecting on the intersectionality and complexity of SWAPA in order to develop “collective consciousness.” This transforms the space of the classroom by building community, but also potentially transforming spaces outside the walls of the classroom. Alvarez shares his experiences teaching in California and New York and includes responses from students who participated in SWAPA. The classroom is an important site in the Ethnic Studies culture wars; these spaces are often politicized by outside forces, yet Alvarez believes that students are agents of transformation and classroom work through SWAPA may assist in healing emotional traumas. In the end, SWAPA method and Ethnic Studies can help build community or “collective strength,” which is an important step toward extending that work in our communities outside the university. The traumas that students carry with them into our classrooms is addressed in the chapter “On Ethnic Studies, Trauma, and Trigger Warnings,” by Ara­ celi Esparza. Esparza contributes to the discussion that our college classrooms are political sites of struggle. This is particularly true of Ethnic Studies classrooms in which an environment of “collective healing” is created by incorporating the ways that gender and sexual violence play out in those classrooms. If one of the goals of Ethnic Studies educators is to create a classroom that is liberating, how do we give our students resources and support when their traumas are triggered by certain class material? Esparza teaches classes on gendered violence in a traditional English department and she uses Ethnic Studies and feminist pedagogy wherein class discussions may assist both individual and collective healing. As Ethnic Studies educators we need to understand the backgrounds of our students. This is a key part of educational justice and is necessary in order to create spaces for “collectivized healing/critical processing.” All classrooms are political, and students’ everyday realities inform their

xxviiiIntroduction

learning, therefore Ethnic Studies educators must teach with intention. This is an important part of creating transformative change, the first step we know is personal, yet it is necessary to begin there in order to create sustained movements of social change in our universities, our communities, and beyond.

CONCLUSION: PICKING UP THE TORCH In the fall of 2015, students of color across the country waged a series of protests against the systemic racism on college campuses. Partially inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Black students at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) sparked campus uprisings, forcing the resignation of Tim Wolfe, the president of the University of Missouri system, after he mishandled several racial incidents at their Columbia campus. Labeling their campus movement “Concerned Students 1950” in recognition of the first generation of Black students who attempted to integrate Mizzou, students, faculty, and alumni demanded that Wolfe step down. They also engaged in several protest tactics, such as rallies, sit-ins, hunger strikes, and members of Missouri’s football team even refused to play until he capitulated. By mid-November 2015, over seventy protests had occurred on campuses nationwide in solidarity with Mizzou students and they took a stand against the prevalence of structural racism at their own campuses as well. Some of the universities that took part in the campus protests were Princeton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Yale, Georgetown, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Occidental College, Claremont McKenna College, California State University Los Angeles, Ithaca College, and the University of Alabama (Pauly & Andrews 2015). Many of the issues that were brought to light in these protests are ones that students of color have struggled with since the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and led to the creation of Ethnic Studies departments and programs. For instance, they called for the hiring of more faculty of color, sensitivity training on racism for faculty and staff, the creation of more Ethnic Studies courses, the hiring of diversity officers on campus, and finally, many called for top administrators who had contributed to racism on campus, consciously or unconsciously, to resign. Of equal importance, the struggle to maintain our existence on campuses can be tenuous due to budget concerns or other university priorities, even with long established Ethnic Studies departments/programs. In early 2016, the administrators at San Francisco State University attempted to reduce the budget significantly for the College of Ethnic Studies. However, student protests, hunger strikes, and community support forced the university to reinstate the College of Ethnic Studies, as well as secure additional funding. The contemporary student campus protests remind us that student and community voices, particularly those from underrepresented groups, are

Introductionxxix

necessary for institutional change. The struggle continues to create campuses that are not only diverse, but are free from institutional oppression across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, to name just a few axes of identi­ ­ty[-ies]. As these students pick up the torch for social and institutional change, we are reminded of the necessity of Ethnic Studies as a discipline to take an active role in creating changes within institutions of higher education. We must continue to yearn and fight for a more liberated world not just on university campuses, but also beyond, in the “practice of freedom.” The fight to end racism in this country, just like the fight to end sexism and homophobia, continues—Ethnic Studies practitioners (students, faculty, cultural workers, administrators, and community members) must be at the forefront of these struggles as we learn from the past, embrace the present, and charge into the future! The chapters in this volume are not a complete examination of the issues that surround Ethnic Studies in higher education, but are an attempt to document stories from those in the field/discipline and the effects of Ethnic Studies beyond the university. In fact, community engagement is a very important theme in this volume. Our goal is to expose readers to some of the research and share the narratives of Ethnic Studies practitioners, so that we can continue to dialogue about the various issues that are impacting Ethnic Studies in higher education. This volume reveals the need for more stories and more books that document Ethnic Studies in higher education, and the hope of this project is to grow more Ethnic Studies programs and departments nationally. We hope this volume is an important contribution to that end.

NOTE 1. 1991 was also the year Denise Sandoval, one of the co-editors of this volume, landed on the UC Berkeley campus as a transfer student. 2. Throughout the volumes, we capitalize “People of Color” to acknowledge a collective, yet fluid, identity formation of the racially minoritized involved and/or impacted by cultural and political movements against white supremacy. However, aligned with our standpoint that Ethnic Studies is varied in form and contextual, the term “people of color” is used when chapter authors choose such naming.

REFERENCES Acuña, Rodolfo. 1972. Occupied America: The Chicano Struggle for Liberation. San Francisco: Canfield Press. Anaya, Rudolfo A., and Francisco A. Lomelí. 1991. Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria Norma Cantú, and Aída Hurtado. 1987. Borderland/La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

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Asante, Molefi. 1987. The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bhattacharyya, Gargi. 2003. “In Defence of Amateurism—On Not Professionalizing Ethnic and Racial Studies.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26(3): 523–27. Brody, Jennifer DeVere, and Dwight A. McBride. 2000. “Plum Nelly: New Essays in Black Queer Studies.” Callaloo 23(1): 286–88. Butler, Johnnella E. 2011. Color-Line to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Butler, Johnnella E., and John Christopher Walter. 1991. Transforming the Curriculum: Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies. New York: SUNY University Press. Chiang, Mark. 2009. The Cultural Capital of Asian American Studies: Autonomy and Representation in the University. New York: New York University Press. Chin, Frank, et al. 1974. Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2008. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge Classics. Darder, Antonia. 2012. “Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands: An On-going Struggle for Equality and Human Rights.” Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association 48(5): 412–26. Davis, Angela. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press. Fukumori, Ryan. 1997. Ethnic Studies, Higher Education, and the “Urban Crisis” in Postwar Los Angeles. Garcia, Alma. 1997a. Chicana Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge. Garcia, Ignacio. 1997b. Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Girox, Henry. 2014. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Hine, Darlene Clark. 1997. “Black Studies: An Overview.” In Africana Studies: A Disciplinary Quest for Both Theory and Method. Edited by James L. Conyers. North Carolina: McFarland & Company. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. 1993. “The History, Development, and Future of Ethnic Studies.” The Phi Delta Kappan 75(1): 50–54. Karenga, Maulana. 1993. Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press. Jeong, Heyun. 2014, April 20. “American Cultures Requirement Celebrates 25th Anniversary.” The Daily Californian. LaBelle, Thomas J., and Christopher R. Ward. 1996. Ethnic Studies and Multiculturalism. New York: SUNY University Press. Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, eds. 2012. Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Okihiro, Gary. 2008, October 15. “The History of Ethnic Studies.” Columbia Spectator. Pauly, Madison, and Becca Andrews. 2015, November 19. “Campus Protests Are Spreading Like Wildfire.” Mother Jones.

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Shah, Sonia. 1999. Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire. Boston: South End Press. Smith, Barbara, Gloria T. Hull, and Patricia Bell-Scott. 1982. All the Women Are White, All the Men Are Black, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. New York: The Feminist Press. Van Sertima, Ivan. 1976. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America. New York: Random House. Yamane, David. 2002. Student Movements for Multiculturalism: Challenging the Curricular Color Line in Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Yang, Philip Q. 2000. Ethnic Studies: Issues and Approaches. New York: SUNY University Press.

Part I

Ethnic Studies Intellectual Traditions: Political and Theoretical Shifts in Academia

1

Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands: An Ongoing Struggle for Equality and Human Rights Antonia Darder

At the heart of neoliberal policies of education is a veiled pursuit to destroy any tacit notion that we in the United States may have once had about the importance of the common good and public education as a human right. Instead, schooling and other public goods have been thrown underhandedly into the up-for-grabs conservative arena of privatization and deregulation. An unrelenting neoliberal culture of rampant greed, wholesale surveillance, and the regulation and monitoring of our humanity have subsumed notions of equality and public responsibility. Similarly, critical notions of multiculturalism and diversity in higher education have been pushed back by an economic ethos that has rendered difference a whore to its own utilitarian pursuits or an enemy of the state. In the process, scholarship and activism for structural equality, political inclusion, economic access, and human rights has given way to an emphasis on multiculturalized market niches, the management of an international workforce, a frenetic focus on the globalization of education through technology, and the occasional portrayals of colored faces and celebratory rhetoric for public relations pamphlets and Web sites. In the efficient, cost-effective, and competitive neoliberal world, questions of difference have been neatly conflated and diffused by a hypocrisy fueled by racism, elitism, and a tenacious disbelief in the equality of those who exist outside the narrow rationality of its profit logic. As a consequence, “deficient” subjects of difference, unable to march to the homogenizing and bootstrap neoliberal refrain, are conveniently tossed aside or criminalized and held behind iron bars, without concern for their numbers or their fate. This disregard for those who do not keep step with the dehumanizing accountability system that neoliberalism demands are

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as much at work within the culture of the university as they are in the corporate world today. There is no question that we are in the midst of a disastrous internationalizing project of neoliberalism. As Michael Peters (2001) argues, neoliberalism has attempted to provide “a Universalist foundation for an extreme form of economic rationalism,” which can be regarded as the latest political–economic formation of advanced capitalism in the West. Furthermore, he insists, “such a philosophy is ultimately destructive of any full-fledged notions of community—national or international, imagined or otherwise” (117). Collective social action, accordingly, is considered a gross obstacle to the freedom of individuals and corporations, with their implacable drive to privatize all that, in another time in our history, would have been protected as a public good. The rampant individualism of neoliberal interests functions as a means to end state regulation and control, considered to be the major culprit in stifling the free-market’s ability to flourish and its capacity to protect private interests—namely the interests of the ruling class. As such, the logic of neoliberalism provides an intellectual anchor from which mega-rich ultraconservatives, conservatives, and liberals alike collaborate together for control of not only the marketplace, but all public and private institutions, including higher education. And even more to the point, as Jodi Melamed (2006) argues in The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Radical Liberalism to Neoliberal Multiculturalism, “Neoliberal policy engenders new racial subjects, as it creates and distinguishes between newly privileged and stigmatized collectivities; yet multiculturalism codes the wealth, mobility, and political power of neoliberalism’s beneficiaries to be the just deserts of ‘multicultural world citizens,’ while representing those neoliberalism dispossesses handicapped by their own ‘monoculturalism’ or other historico-cultural deficiencies” (1). Henry Giroux (2011) identifies economic Darwinism “as a theater of cruelty and mode of public pedagogy . . . [that] extends its reach throughout the globe, undermining all forms of democratic solidarity and social structures” (165). He contends that the notion of economic Darwinism well illustrates the manner in which neoliberal policies within higher education have functioned, overtly and covertly, to support the survival of the fittest. In this instance, policies of deregulation, privatization, and lack of concern for the public good have rendered democratic education an endangered species. Key to this analysis is the manner in which the culture of higher education, today more than ever, functions in the interest of the plutocratic state, by securing the hegemonic consent of professors who, despite their expressed liberal ideals, practice a conservative culture that supports both the corporatization and instrumentalization of higher education. Implicated here, as Giroux (2012) notes, are the values of “unchecked competition, unbridled

Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands5

individualism, and a demoralizing notion of individual responsibility” (16), culprits in the legitimation crisis and moral impoverishment of neoliberal academic players, steeped to the gills in a homogenizing logic that threatens to obstruct the possibility of any genuine form of cultural democracy in the United States. This disabling logic of neoliberalism has become well entrenched across the university, but is most evident within graduate school education, where future academics and public intellectuals are initiated into careerist orientations that alienate them not only from one another and from the world, but also from the critical foundations necessary for the construction of democratizing knowledge—knowledge with the potential to challenge advancing inequalities orchestrated by the wealthy elite. Hence, from the moment that graduate students and young professors are initiated as tenuous agents of the neoliberal academy, they are conditioned into a culture of antidemocratic values that shape the expectations of their teaching, research, and tenure process. Similarly, an infantilizing culture of institutional surveillance, carried out by loyal gatekeepers, is rendered commonplace at every level of the enterprise. As a consequence, many graduate students and junior faculty are counseled to abandon their formerly idealistic progressive intentions and position themselves competitively within the knowledge marketplace, in ways that, on one hand, gain them recognition as so-called innovative thinkers; while on the other, they become willing agents of the university, positioning themselves as a good fit within the institution’s neoliberal purpose. This pernicious contradiction has become ever more intense in the last decade, as colleges and universities have instituted expectations that professors from all disciplines prove themselves to be effective grant writers and fundraisers in their quest for the golden ring of tenure. As a consequence, a good deal of the formation and energies of young professors in major public research universities today is not directed toward teaching or public engagement (despite the rhetoric), but rather toward becoming published within refereed journals; getting publicly noticed as stars in the academic conference circuit; and developing effective grant writing skills—all the while, competitively shaping their research agendas in ways that will procure them greater access to private and public funds, along with the institutional benefits and privileges that these resources afford them. This phenomenon of professorial formation is, as one might expect, also accompanied by junior faculty (particularly those of color and working class) who are either left isolated to clumsily navigate their way through the constantly shifting minefields of the tenure-track process or forced into the mind-bending authoritarian dynamics of junior-senior faculty mentorship relationships, often fraught with deep anxieties and traditional expectations that junior faculty accommodate or suffer rejection at the time of tenure.

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Although this dynamic has long existed within academe, the decreasing number of new tenure-track positions in the last decade and the increasing competition among new doctoral graduates has proven especially treacherous. Moreover, with the exaggerated emphasis placed on the hard sciences and technology, this has made young faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and education particularly susceptible to conforming to neoliberal priorities. Meanwhile, many senior faculty members, who entered the academy prior to the advent of neoliberalism, can also become targets of academic punishments if they refuse to acquiesce or reform to neoliberal expectations—irrespective of the quantity, quality, or intellectual reach of their scholarship. It is a new money game, where the high stakes of accountability rears its head in disturbing ways, particularly with respect to university labor. Nowhere is this more evident than for radical education scholars who, in the Gramscian sense, define their teaching and scholarship organically, within the critical moral precepts of social equality, economic justice, and universal human rights.

NEOLIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM In the midst of the antiwar movement and civil rights struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s, the American university was challenged to break with its elite, lily-white, patriarchal tradition. The seeds of the current neoliberal assault on the academic borderlands began with a long-term strategy put in place by conservatives seeking “to win an ideological war against liberal intellectuals, who argued for holding government and corporate power accountable as a precondition for extending and expanding the promise of an inclusive democracy” (Giroux 2007, 142). Those working to democratize the university called for inclusion of more women, as well as working class, and students and faculty of color. Alongside this call for inclusive admissions and hiring practices, pressure was placed upon colleges and universities to transform their curriculum in ways that would not only be culturally relevant, but that would engage the longstanding historical inequalities and social exclusions that persisted in U.S. society. Hence, the call for a policy of democratic inclusion was also the result of a variety of public struggles that demanded the university make good on its promise of democracy, particularly to those who resided in the margins of mainstream opportunities. Many of the multicultural gains of the time, made within the larger society and the university, were more consistent with liberal Keynesian-inspired economics still at work during that era, which recognized the importance of federal investment in social welfare programs, in order to stave off the downside of corporate capital investments. However, the conservative ideas of classical macroeconomics, which began to gain public currency with the deregulatory

Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands7

policies of Reaganomics, became the powerful precursor to the era of the new economy, with its dramatic economic shift to the current neoliberal values and the ruthless consequences of inequality that we are grappling with today. More to the point, as a larger number of border intellectuals from cultural, racialized, economic, gendered, and sexual borderlands began to penetrate graduate education, the entrance of their politically distinct voices and dissonant perspectives began to cause a clear backlash, whose consequence is being felt forcefully today. This phenomenon is juxtaposed with the ascendance of neoliberalism and the predominance of the economy as the most worthy concern of the nation. In concert, profit-logic not only shaped the priorities of capital, but also began to recast the very purpose of higher education. Some of the most potent first public stirrings of neoliberalism’s creep into educational policies and practices can be found in A Nation at Risk, a national report issued by Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education in 1983. The proposed recovery for the doom and gloom of public education and the forging of global economic superiority were best articulated in the report’s assertion that the American public school system should function as an economic engine. The sprouting neoliberal vision of the ruling elite who manned the Reagan commission, including then Secretary of Education William Bennett, began to also forcefully tug at diversity debates that were underway within higher education. Thus, it’s not surprising that by the early 1990s, the politics of difference had suddenly become well entrapped in the hyperbolic discourse of political correctness. Within the university, growing conservative backlash to the politics of difference extended beyond simply Ethnic Studies faculty, but also to Women and Gender studies, Sexuality studies, Marxists, structuralists, and poststructuralist scholars who, according to Roger Kimball (1990), in Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, had become the new “establishment.” Similar public assaults on higher education were found in Allan Bloom’s (1987) Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh D’Souza’s (1991) Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus that alleged liberal bias at the university and pointed to the destructive impact of multiculturalism to the integrity of the Western canon and the whole of American society. Mean-spirited attacks associated with such politically repressive rhetoric began to gnaw away at the evolving counter-hegemonic visions of equality and inclusion within the university—visions that had been inspired by the civil rights movements and anti-imperialist struggles for self-determination. A variety of legal battles also ensued over three decades, beginning with the Bakke decision in 1978, eroding the delicate fabric of university affirmative action practices meant to remedy the historical impact of discrimination on communities of color. In concert, political correctness debates across the university underhandedly promoted an adherence to both a whitewashed and

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politically lukewarm scholarship, seeking to snuff out the dissenting voices of critical academics whose work aimed to critique, challenge, and transform the intellectual life of higher education, as well as the traditional academic formation of university students. In place of values rooted in a critical vision of difference, the conservative multicultural proponents of economic Darwinism focused attention on the beneficiaries of neoliberalism in such a way that the formerly unattended inequalities associated with racism and other social exclusions were negated, ignored, or sidelined. This gave rise to the phenomenon that some scholars in the field now refer to as neoliberal multiculturalism, a conservative ideology of multiculturalism that deploys a meritocratic justification, linked principally to economic benefit, to justify inequalities (see Darder 2011; Fisk 2005; Melamed 2006, 2011). As such, those who practice neoliberal multiculturalism enact a structure of public recognition, acknowledgment and acceptance of multicultural subjects, based on an ethos of self-reliance, individualism, and competition, while simultaneously (and conveniently) undermining discourses and social practices that call for collective social action and fundamental structural change. Accordingly, in a culture where punitive values of victim-blaming readily adorn the scholarship of economists, social scientists, and educational theorists alike, decolonizing discourses that emphasize the recognition and complexity inherent in a politics of difference, along with the amelioration of poverty and other forms of social, political, and economic inequalities, are deemed disruptive to the prevailing neoliberal order of the university. This is particularly so, when progressive efforts by border scholars become too closely aligned with larger social movement struggles for democratic public life and universal human rights. As a consequence, many border intellectuals who entered the academy during the multicultural era have found themselves further marginalized and derailed, at the very moment when their scholarly and political maturity could serve to more effectively challenge the forces of neoliberalism, as well as forge a more promising democratic vision. In light of this homogenizing neoliberal impetus, serious public pedagogical efforts for transformation are not only seen as professionally suspect, but politically dangerous. By the late 1990s, major economic booms were the daily fare of morning newscasts, as the push toward the internationalization of capital became the universal magic bullet of the new era—as the gap between the rich and the poor began to quickly widen. Within higher education, this shift in the economy also led to several major shifts in the labor of academics, in a variety of ways. The globalization discourse permeated the halls like wildfire, as universities began to fashion themselves like multinational corporations and the use of computerized technology became a mandatory facet of academic life. The

Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands9

first served nicely to undermine gains made in the nation’s multicultural arena by diverting resources and attention away from domestic diversity demands to the global, while the second initiative further intensified the labor of academics across the university, despite the time-saving rhetoric that prom­­ised greater efficiency. Key to this discussion, as Giroux repeatedly asserts, is the political and economic tyranny that neoliberalism incarnates, through policies and practices that seized control of higher education and bludgeoned a critical multicultural vision of university formation, along with critical pedagogical efforts to cultivate and nurture values tied to social justice, economic democracy, universal human rights, and the political self-determination of oppressed populations. Not surprisingly, the educational advances of the era of difference proved to be but a short-lived moment in the history of American higher education, for as more students and faculty from the margins began to find their way into the seats of university classrooms, faculty meetings, and governance tables, the more aggressive conservative and neoliberal forces became in their efforts to swing the pendulum back to a more homogenous cultural moment, where an economically driven meaning of freedom and justice prevailed and the marketplace was herald as the only true purveyor of equality.

WHITEWASHING THE BORDERLANDS By now it should be no surprise to learn that neoliberal multiculturalism, with its economic Darwinist bent and incessant drive to quantify worth, value, or fit by perceived capital return, did not prove friendly to the academic borderlands—that intellectual terrain of struggle where the mixing of cultures, philosophies, histories, spiritualities, and everyday practices of life defied “the transcendent character of the traditional canon’s exclusion—notably of women and people of color—marked as the product of the white male imagination” (Aronowitz 1991, 205). Two of the most significant juxtapositions to the aforementioned economic shifts of the 1980s and 1990s were the increasing number of women and students of color entering colleges and universities and, as a consequence, the quick flourishing of critical scholarship from borderland intellectuals. Much of this liberatory-inspired scholarship—tied to concerns generated by the civil rights movement, anti-imperialist struggles, the politics of difference, and feminist discourses of intersectionality—pushed forcefully against centuries of racializing patriarchal values and bourgeois priorities so prevalent in higher education. Hence, a notable feature of the academic borderland was the overwhelming presence and alliances of dissenting voices calling for greater transparency of government and greater avenues for public democratic action, both

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within and outside of the university. The contentiousness this created resulted in the mean-spirited conservative attacks to the academic borderland, mentioned earlier. Attacks against border academics often centered on both administrative and disciplinary efforts to delegitimize cultural-centric philosophies and oppositional discourses, as well as to stifle the tendency of many border intellectuals to gravitate toward unorthodox research designs, whose validity was often seen as highly questionable. In response, border intellectuals pushed more forcefully for community-centered participatory approaches or critical ethnographic and narrative designs, more closely aligned to political struggles for voice and democratic participation. As would be expected, this rankled mainstream faculty, including those from the hard sciences, who privileged quantitative approaches to knowledge construction. Some complained bitterly about the lack of objectivity and hard empirical evidence, as well as the sloppiness of investigations executed by border academics. Meanwhile, as border intellectuals were transgressing positivist boundaries in a variety of traditional disciplines, rising neoliberal imperatives were making their way into the university just in time to conveniently push back, fiercely, against critical interventions initiated by radical intellectuals—whose projects were precisely designed to challenge the structures of inequality and reinvigorate the democratic potential of higher education. In many colleges and universities, administrators strategically defused so-called cultural wars and attempted to whitewash the borderlands by imposing cries of fiscal exigencies to cut programs, institute hiring freezes, harass tenured radical faculty, reject tenure cases, and move to eliminate entire departments. Despite the struggle to build counter-hegemonic spaces, academic legitimacy, and greater culturally democratic solidarity within the academy, neoliberalism’s world-flattening force worked to undermine discourses of difference—whether these were predicated on class, skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, physical ability, or political ideology. Through neoliberalism’s neat and orderly morality of the marketplace and its professed cultural superiority, all historical forms of political-economic inequalities and social exclusions seemed washed away in the pristine belief in the sanctity of individual private interests and the doctrine of free enterprise, within a political system that has long equated capitalism with democracy. Faculty resistance to enter or defend this totalizing neoliberal vision of the marketplace was often met with slanderous character attacks that sought to brand radical scholars, whose scholarship and pedagogy countered allegiance to the status quo, as egotistical or narcissistic, or of questionable intellect or moral ineptitude. As the liberal democratic purpose of higher education became more and more obfuscated, universities across the country become more deeply aligned with the narrow rationality of neoliberal objectives. Accordingly, border

Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands11

intellectuals teaching against the grain were pushed further and further into the margins with respect to their teaching, research, participation in the life of their departments, and the governance of the university. High-level administrators, now functioning like corporate CEOs, were less and less concerned with past ideals of liberal educational leadership as they spent more of their time hobnobbing with corporate executives, foundation officials, and other big business advocates, who potentially could assist these university presidents to make up for the increasing cuts in public monies. In the process, the values, priorities, and private interests of those who held the reins to research dollars also began to redefine the purpose of higher education, heavily tilting the public enterprise toward the neoliberal mission. With respect to the construction of knowledge, this turn has been attached to an overdependence on scientific interpretations, evidence-based rhetoric, and overarching imperatives strategically deployed to sustain the legitimacy of neoliberal ideals. In the alluring economic fumes of a commonsensical rhetoric that equates profit, progress, and prestige with policies and practices of deregulation, privatization, competition, and bootstrap economics, universities have been too easily herded into the fold with promises of dollars to build new facilities, shore up technology, support homogenizing curriculum, and hire faculty that could carry out the aggressive neoliberal agendas of public and private funders, whose primary vested interest in difference has been motivated by expanding markets and the management of workers at home and abroad. With a sharp eye toward profit and the control of resources—including people as reserve armies—the neoliberal rhetoric of difference functioned strategically as a means to increase production, maximize commerce, and support the growing needs of U.S. militarization worldwide. Hence, through both covert and overt means, the political values and financial priorities of a neoliberal world began to seek greater control of the intellectual formation of graduate students and young faculty, who represent the legitimating research pool for the successful mobilization of new enterprises. As would be expected, the widening impact of neoliberalism also made its way into the academic borderlands. Some Ethnic Studies programs, for example, were forced to dodge efforts of university administrators to terminate or undermine their future influence on the campus by compromising the historical vision and integrity of their emancipatory intellectual agenda. In some instances, faculty in the borderland jumped onto the neoliberal bandwagon, moving toward scholarship considered more acceptable, legitimate, and fundable by university officials. Oftentimes, this required a shift to research interests aimed toward more traditional interpretation of scholarship and research design, in ways that permitted them to more successfully pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) monies—which currently

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postures as the new panacea for recovery of global education and the economic superiority. In concert, funding for faculty positions and research projects that might serve as countervailing forces has become scarce. This resulted in radical intellectual projects being pushed further into the margins. Fewer opportunities and resources were to be found for studies that sought to examine public social issues, such as the democratic responsibility of the welfare state, policies of wealth redistribution, impact of the corporatization of the media, educational benefits of bilingual education, or disabling impact of high-stakes testing on the education of the working class and students of color, just to name a few. In fact, funding waned across the board for critical scholars, even those working within area studies where borderland intellectuals were once more able to enjoy some political respite. Where monies were attained for such research, the language and political center of gravity of the discourse had to remain so camouflaged within neoliberal objectives that the actual conditions and data derived from these studies became distorted to unrecognizable proportions, by conclusions that ignored longstanding structural inequalities. In a similar vein, border scholars are now expected to align themselves more staunchly within their particular disciplines of study, whether history, anthropology, sociology, or economics, in contrast to the more revolutionary ideals that were once at the heart of teaching and scholarship in the borderlands. It seems that in the world of economic Darwinism, the disciplinary tradition provides a much neater and tidier picture of intellectual alliances, than does the messiness of transdisciplinary or even postdisciplinary border scholarship, often associated with ethnic, feminist, postcolonial, and queer sensibilities. In contrast, the traditional disciplinary mechanism works well to police and monitor the scholarship of exiled intellectuals, by means of disciplining values at work, particularly in the evaluation and credentialing of graduate students and junior faculty. This process serves well to weed out those considered not to be a good fit. And, as previously noted, a good fit today is strongly associated with the capacity of junior faculty to bring in dollars. This newly instituted requirement of tenure in many universities serves to ensure that nonconforming academics, whose scholarship exists outside the priorities of state and federal agendas and the guidelines of public and private funding sources, will experience a difficult time remaining viable candidates for tenure. Similarly, as targeted scholarships and fellowships for underrepresented students and faculty have dwindled, opportunities for working-class students and faculty from underrepresented communities have become fewer and fewer. In concert, border intellectuals who persist in their work with disenfranchised communities or anchor their teaching and research on questions of social inequalities or push against the boundaries of traditional methodologies and

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epistemologies are often marginalized and derisively dubbed as activist-scholars. As such, radical scholars can find themselves exiled from meaningful participation in the evolution of university programs and departments by an antidemocratic wave that silences and banishes their contributions to the wasteland of irrelevancy. In a climate where the international control of knowledge and the maximizing of profits is the greatest concern, public universities seem to have fully surrendered to the siren call of neoliberalism.

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC LIFE In Academic Labor in Dark Times, Henry Giroux (2009) argues that at the very least, academics should be more responsible to and for a politics that raises serious questions about how students and educators negotiate the institutional, pedagogical, and social relations shaped by diverse ideologies and dynamics of power, especially as these relations mediate and inform competing visions regarding whose interests the university might serve, what role knowledge plays in furthering both excellence and equity, and how higher education defines and defends its own role in relation to its often stated, though hardly operational, allegiance to egalitarian and democratic impulses. With this, he insists that a political project of democratic public life must be central to our efforts to defy the impact of neoliberalism. Also significant here is concern over the potential of critical pedagogy to serve as an effective educational force in the emancipatory struggle for universal human rights. For without the presence of a larger social struggle for change and a critical pedagogical space to engage our lived histories, many border intellectuals—born and reared in the margins of a classed, racialized, gendered, and heterosexist borderlands— would have been excluded, given that the politics of difference and dissent often predominate our scholarly projects. Many are, in fact, children of dissent, for our presence in the university was spawned directly by counter-hegemonic struggles that pushed against the once impenetrable walls of its discriminatory orthodoxy. For critical intellectuals living in the borderlands of academe, the classroom represents a significant terrain of struggle and a key political space in the forging of a public pedagogy. This is often directly tied to critical pedagogical efforts by professors who seek to create political links between the classroom, campus, and community, in ways that foster a more seamless political democratic understanding of theory and practice. As such, critical pedagogical approaches are effective in creating emancipatory conditions

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within the classroom that support meaningful critical reflection and dialogue, the development of alternative and dissenting voices, collective participation, and the building of solidarity among university students. In fact, as just mentioned, if it were not for critical pedagogy, many scholars of color working today would not have found a place to flourish in the academy, despite legitimate critiques that have been launched and the need for ongoing interrogation. It has been through classroom practices firmly anchored upon critical principles—where transdisciplinary and postdisciplinary understandings are sought, through engaging simultaneously questions of culture, history, economics, politics, hegemony, critique, dialogue, and consciousness—that critical educators have worked with students to not only engage conditions of exploitation and alienation academically, but also to cultivate intimate relationships of teaching and learning that break through the violence of abstraction so prevalent in university classrooms (Neary 2005). A critical pedagogy requires that we create the conditions for university students to grapple rigorously not only with theories and practices of democratic life as cognitive phenomena, but also to tackle in the flesh the meaning and consequences of material and social conditions of exploitation and domination. From this place, the possibility of constructing grounded knowledge and integrating practices of social activism can emerge, as critical reflections and dialogues evolve organically in the process. However, there is no question that this pedagogical potential to support the exercise of dissent, through the political evolution of student voice and social agency, can also easily become a point of contention within the neoliberal university. This is so, not only because the ethical values of a critical democratic praxis are in conflict with the underlying ethos of neoliberalism, but also because there is far more utility in the domesticating pedagogy that Paulo Freire (1971) terms banking education—an appropriate pseudonym for neoliberal academic formation. In the last three decades, we have seen neoliberalism steadily negate the hard-earned opportunities of disenfranchised people in this nation. Economic Darwinism has made endangered species of education and the public good, leaving borderland intellectuals scrambling to regain political equilibrium, following repeated assaults. Unfortunately, the presidency of Barack Obama did not turn out to be the great panacea that so many had imagined. Instead, the Obama administration’s policy decisions on public education, the economy, health care, and the military, to name a few, have left many feeling disappointed and betrayed. Nevertheless, or because of it, everywhere there are struggles being waged for dignity, freedom, and democratic life. Across the country, thousands of people have congregated in a new show of collective dissent. Occupy Wall Street has inspired a movement of people who are quickly expanding and creating new forms of both communal and autonomous formations of dissent. This has left ample room for regional

Neoliberalism in the Academic Borderlands15

groups to bring specific attention to local issues in ways that are meaningful to its members. In New Mexico, for example, activists call themselves (Un)occupy Albuquerque and (Un)occupy Sante Fe, which speaks more accurately to the realities of indigenous history and politics in the region. No matter the case, this national movement is spreading organically and in numbers that we have not seen since the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s and 1970s took to the streets. And despite regional differences, this burgeoning social movement is calling for solidarity across the nation, as everyday folk join to push back the ruling class.

THE MOTIVE FORCE OF REVOLUTION History well confirms that democracy is never guaranteed, even during great movements of people. As such, we are reminded that democracy is never a given, but rather entails an ongoing emancipatory struggle for political voice, participation, and social action. With this in mind, higher education continues to exist as a formative contested terrain of struggle, given the potential of public education to serve as a democratizing force for the evolution of critical consciousness and democratic public life. Yet, in light of the furtive nature of neoliberalism within higher education, border intellectuals cannot challenge its perils and pitfalls, if our work is not firmly grounded in a coherent and revolutionary political vision that critically embraces universal human rights—a vision that privileges the needs of the many, in place of the few. Hence, our struggles against all forms of inequality must recognize that there is no liberation without a revolutionary transformation of the class society. Which, incidentally, is exactly what the occupy movement is demanding! C. L. R. James, writing in At the Rendezvous of Victory speaks dialectically of capitalism and its impact on the intellectual. Production, which should be [our] most natural expression of [our] powers, becomes one long murderous class conflict in which each protagonist can rest not for a single minute. Political government assumes totalitarian forms and government by executive decree masquerades as democracy. . . . The Intellectual is cut off from the world of physical production and the social organization of labor. The divorce between physical and mental labor is complete. The Individual, worker or Intellectual, is no more than the sport of vast forces over which he [or she] has no control. The senses of each are stimulated without possibility of realization. The resentments, the passions of frustrated social existence take revenge in the wildest of individual aberrations. Before these forces psychoanalysis is powerless, and voting every four years becomes a

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ghastly mockery. Facing the disintegration of society, capital mobilizes all available forces for the suppression of what is its own creation—the need for social expression that the modern productive forces instill into every living human being. The explosion of this suppression is the motive force of revolution. (James 1984, 69) How do we nurture “the motive force of revolution” in our everyday lives, pedagogy, and scholarship? How to we bring this dialectical dynamism to bear in our scholarship? How do we remain consistently committed to not only speaking and writing about these issues, but immersing ourselves in collective social movement work? These fundamental questions must inform the labor of all border intellectuals—questions that require our labor within the university to be informed and aligned to the material and social conditions at work in the communities in which we live and teach and to connect these conditions to the life conditions of workers around the world. Moreover, in contrast to neoliberal multiculturalism, we must consistently struggle for a notion of social recognition that embraces a revolutionary understanding of equality, with grounded political projects of action within and across communities. This entails a critical democratic process that encompasses, as Milton Fisk (2005) so rightly argues, “a social recognition . . . beyond the cultural recognition promoted by neoliberalism and its international institutions. It leads to a struggle from below [and in the flesh] for equality. This struggle engages the cooperation of each of the various components of a diverse society. The struggle becomes a common effort to establish public goods that reduce poverty and inequality” (28); and while so doing, confront uncompromisingly racism and other social crimes against humanity. Raya Dunayevskaya (1989) wrote in Philosophy and Revolution: “Thought can transcend only other thought; but to reconstruct society itself, only actions of men and women, masses in motion, will do the ‘transcending,’ and thereby ‘realize’ philosophy, make freedom, and whole men and women, a reality” (415). It is this unquestionable Marxist ethos of equality and human rights that must continue to inform our labor within and without the university.

REFERENCES Aronowitz, Stanley. 1991. “Review of Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education.” Teachers College Record 93: 204–7. Bloom, Allan. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. Darder, Antonia. 2011. A Dissident Voice: Essays on Culture, Pedagogy and Power. New York: Peter Lang. D’Souza, Dinesh. 1991. Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Dunayevskaya, Raya. 1989. Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao, 3rd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Fisk, Milton. 2005. “Multiculturalism and Neoliberalism.” Praxis Filosofica 21: 21–28. http://www.miltonfisk.org/writings/multiculturalism-and-neoliberalism/. Freire, Paulo. 1971. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press. Giroux, Henry. 2011. “The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism.” Policy Futures in Education 9(2): 163–71. Giroux, Henry. 2007. The University in Chains. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Giroux, Henry. 2009, March 11. “Academic Labor in Dark Times.” Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/11/academic-labor-in-dark-times/. Giroux, Henry. 2012. “Higher Education, Critical Pedagogy, and the Challenge of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Role of Academics as Public Intellectuals.” Revista Aula de Encuentro. N’umero Especial. Andaluc’ia, Espana: Servicio de Publicaciones e Intercambo Cient’ifico Universidad de Ja’en, James, C. L. R. 1884. At the Rendezvous of Victory. London: Allison & Busby. Kimball, Roger. 1990. Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. Melamed, Jodi. 2006. “The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Racial Liberalism to Neoliberal Multiculturalism. Social Text 89(24): 1–24. Melamed, Jodi. 2011. Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Neary, Michael. 2005. “Renewing Critical Pedagogy: From Popular Education to Academic Activism—Teaching as a Site of Struggle.” Unpublished paper presented at the Higher Education Academy: Sociology, Anthropology, Politics (C-SAP) International Conference at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. Peters, Michael. 2001. Postructuralism, Marxism, and Neo-liberalism: Between Theory and Politics. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield. U.S. Department of Education. 1983, April. The National Commission on Excellence in Education. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.

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“But It’s a Dry Hate”: Illegal Americans, Other Americans, and the Citizenship Regime T. Mark Montoya

BUT IT’S A DRY HEAT The State of Arizona is known for its arid, scorching, and often unforgiving climate. Detractors remind themselves and visitors that “it’s a dry heat.” In the contemporary political realm, Arizona is also known for its contentious, intense, and often intolerant politics—most notably Senate Bill 1070 (SB 1070) and House Bill 2281 (HB 2281). Signed on April 23, 2010, SB 1070 was the country’s broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration law. Challenged in the courts, SB 1070’s only remaining provision requires that immigration status be checked during law enforcement stops. HB 2281, signed the following month on May 11, effectively banned Ethnic Studies curricula in Arizona public schools and specifically banned the Mexican American Studies curriculum within the Tucson Unified School District. Both bills had their share of vehement support and passionate criticism. Critics pointed to many purposeful details of anti-Mexican and anti–Mexican American discourse surrounding the implementation of the bills, citing the language, history, and actions of the bills’ sponsors as vindictive, ruthless, and hostile. Collectively, the bills sustain a hateful political climate for many of the state’s citizens. But it’s a dry hate. Given the political climate of Arizona, how should we talk about race and racism and their intersections with other oppressions? What are the ways Ethnic Studies contributes to the growing scholarship challenging the complexities of citizenship and its oppressions in the Arizona borderlands and beyond? The answer to these questions is borderlands pedagogy. To borrow from Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), the borderlands are an experience, at once attached and detached from place, always grounded in body. The borderlands are not only observed, they are lived. In the classroom, the borderlands frame

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the stories we tell, the concepts we draw upon, the ways we frame the world, and the general pedagogical experiences we offer students. Inherent in the questions are a number of assumptions. Most important of these assumptions is that citizenship is not a neutral concept. We often overlook the ways in which citizenship is constructed and more important we often overlook who gets to construct citizenship. Linking power to citizenship, we see that identity formations—including race, class, and gender—all factor into the conception of citizenship, particularly in terms of who is granted full citizenship rights and who is not. Borderlands pedagogy, then, develops upon the many educational foundations that assist in challenging and consequently providing systemic change to traditional notions of citizenship by reconciling Borderlands Studies, Citizenship Studies, and Ethnic Studies. My educational background is political science, where I studied citizenship in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, but I teach Ethnic Studies. The Ethnic Studies program at Northern Arizona University was a bit removed from the political debates in Phoenix and in Tucson. We are also a bit off the radar because our program offers only a minor and a graduate certificate—our courses help fulfill Liberal Studies and cultural diversity requirements. However, this is not the only reason why students take our classes. Our classes also fulfill the intangible and unmet needs of the many students who are drawn to Ethnic Studies. And while I do not believe that the state’s universities will have any of their Ethnic Studies or Ethnic Studies–related departments or programs banned, I do fear the hostile environment created by official and legalized state discourse. Ethnic Studies is still under attack, and the watchful eye of state officials continues to be on higher education. On March 28, 2012, Arizona Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal said in an interview with Fox News Latino, “I think that’s where this toxic thing starts from, the universities.” Huppenthal continued, “To me, the pervasive problem was the lack of balance going on in these classes.” Whose balance, I ask? Superintendent Huppenthal’s comments perpetuate the project of defining the citizenship regime against those who would challenge it, and consequently promote the whitewashing of education as a method for protecting structural and institutional oppression, continuing new culture wars against “illegal” and “other” Americans in Arizona. The impact of SB 1070 and HB 2281 across the state is widespread, but the focus here is on citizenship, and particularly on educational citizenship. Ethnic Studies exemplifies an educational citizenship; because education, in this case, goes beyond the four walls of a classroom to include the relationships between teachers, students, families, and communities. In other words, the purpose of this chapter is not to provide a detailed discussion of the bills and their provisions, but instead to examine how the bills affect students and teachers as citizens. Informed by Ethnic Studies, Borderlands Studies, and Citizenship

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Studies, I identify legal, institutional, and discursive realities of the citizenship regime in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, which promote anti-immigrant sentiment and the whitewashing of education, perpetuating new culture wars. More specifically, I describe how SB 1070 and HB 2281 are defined, constructed, and regulated through these realities. To do this, I have divided this chapter into four sections. First, I expand upon citizenship studies to identify the concept of “borderdom” as an emancipatory project that challenges the citizenship regime. Second, I discuss and examine how borderlands pedagogy can be structured in theory and in practice. Next, through the lens of SB 1070 and HB 2281, I devote special attention to the U.S. citizenship regime and its role in rewriting membership rules through immigration enforcement and especially through the banning of Ethnic Studies, which itself reinforces the border. Finally, in my conclusion, I offer a brief account of how Ethnic Studies is about lived experiences, and how these experiences are detrimental to the citizenship regime, and how this is a good thing.

CITIZENSHIP, NATIONALITY, AND RESIDENCY The Citizenship Regime The terms nationality, residency, and rights are linked to our contemporary knowledge of citizenship, and this knowledge is typically made visible through the regulation of borders by states (Anderson 1996). The regulation of borders is also made visible through bills like SB 1070 and HB 2281. The bills reinforce the citizenship regime through anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, and anti–Mexican American sentiment, which produces a persuasive logic rooted in “others” as not belonging to the nation-state (Huntington 2004). Without regard for historical migration patterns or for changing definitions of citizenship, supporters of SB 1070 and HB 2281 are fixated on the nation-state as the only means for citizenship. The issue, however, is the conflict between state-building and nation-building. Benedict Anderson’s characterization of the nation as an “imagined community” is useful in this discussion of belonging to a nation-state. Anderson (1983) writes that a nation “is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (6). Subsequently, a nation is formed of shared identity and culture, and not formed through a consciousness of “self” and “other.” In short, the nation exists in and through public discourses such as language, symbols, and history (Poole 1999). The power of citizenship, however, is that political communities have defined themselves and “others” according to their boundaries; meaning that “imagined” distinctions between people are rooted in an arrangement of “imagined” claims to borders.

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Today, most scholars consider citizenship to be about membership, belonging, rights, and obligations (Heater 1999). The scholars agree that citizenship can be seen as, and has shown to be, both flexible and subject to change. However, it is also important to note that citizenship is “made real” because of social, political, and economic conflict created by the particular citizenship rules of nation-states. In this sense, border people are not only challenging and crossing borders, but are also creating new borders (Meeks 2007). Thus, the dynamic processes of citizenship take place within a context that is shaped by citizenship rules, creating a citizenist perspective and hierarchy. “Citizenism,” Anita Tijerina Revilla (2011) writes, occurs when anti-immigrant “state- and federally sanctioned classification results in a system of unearned advantages for citizens and unwarranted discrimination of noncitizens, such as the denial of basic human rights” (7–8). To describe and explain how challenges to traditional notions of citizenship materialize in and around the bridges, checkpoints, rivers, fences, and asymmetry that mark the frontiers where the United States and Mexico meet, the state’s derived ability, or the citizenship regime, which creates and control citizens must be conceptualized. According to Jane Jenson and Martin Papillon (2000), “A citizenship regime can be defined as the institutional arrangements, rules, and understandings that guide and shape concurrent policy decisions and expenditures of states, problem definitions by states and citizens, and claims making by citizens” (246). Citizenship regimes thus generally have four dimensions: they (1) establish the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion of a political community; (2) set the political rules of the game for a polity and define state institutions, political participation, and claims making; (3) contribute to the definition of nation in the sense that formal, cultural, and historical positions define the political community; and (4) establish and legitimize the geographical borders of the political community as nation (Jenson & Papillon 2000). For these reasons, the citizenship regime is an institution deeply entrenched with the nation-state and, as such, many assume citizenship as the primary political identity within political boundaries. While the citizenship regime, as a concept, system, and discourse goes back to the ancient world, it has re-emerged in the United States and particularly in Arizona with divisive debates concerning its meanings and its legacy. In traditional terms, the citizenship regime is built generally upon conceptual legal definitions of who is to be included in or excluded from a specific political community. Traditional citizenship is at the heart of the citizenship regime— legal citizenship. Conversely, I propose an alternative citizenship of belonging as one with a sense of community, openness, sentiment, and inclusion. The assumption is that border people challenge and create borders because of the breadth and depth of the citizenship regime.

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“Borderdom”: Alternative Citizenship The term border generally refers to the line that surrounds a particular area, as in an edge or margin, or the line that separates two or more distinct regions, as in a boundary or frontier. Complicating matters is the term borderland. Scholars often define borderlands as outlying or transitional regions of a border, illustrating how vague and indefinite border-zones can be. In these two cases, a border is a line and a borderland is a zone. The suffix -dom refers to a realm of jurisdiction, as in a kingdom, but can also refer to a state of being, as in freedom. My notion of “borderdom” is conceptualized as both the realm of jurisdiction at or near a border(land) and as the condition of being bordered. “Borderdom,” however, cannot be so easily characterized. The difficulty with defining the term is due to the contradictions, tensions, and conflicts that happen at border(land)s. According to Oscar J. Martinez (1996), “International borders are likely to be the scene of conflict due to such basic factors as vague territorial limits, unclear title to natural resources, ethnic rivalries, and restrictions on the movement of goods and people across the political line.” The U.S.-Mexico borderlands are the site of a continual and seemingly escalating conflict. Unlike previous border struggles, today’s conflict is not focused on a fixed territorial place, but on an ambiguous political space of “personal identities, movements of persons, and cultural and political hegemony of peoples” (Kearney 1998, 124). Both SB 1070 and HB 2281 embody a battle of the nation versus the state and of ethnic identities versus citizenship rules of inclusion/exclusion. Indeed, the relationship between borderlands and ethnic identities is an embattled one. For example, traditional conceptions of the nation-state emphasize territorial boundaries, but as ethnic classifications show, people are not always bound to one territory. This is not a new notion. Territorial boundaries have never fully conformed to the movement of people (Newman 2000, 21–22). Borders may no longer confine citizens. Instead, alternative citizenship forms may be emerging because of borderlands. Traditional citizenship stands in the way of a fully open and democratic society because it is arbitrarily given to those with power; while People of Color, the poor, and women remain as noncitizens, second-class citizens, or both. As such, my concept of “borderdom” contributes to rethinking what it means to belong. Indeed, there is something significant about what it means to politically, culturally, and socially belong—to live within a “borderdom,” and for most people belonging is articulated through the complexities of everyday experience. I am not alone in suspecting that citizenship may no longer be contained by citizenship regimes. Many theorists do refer to alternative citizenships (see Benton-Cohen 2009; Flores & Benmayor 1997; Glenn 2002; Gutierrez 1995;

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Meeks 2007; Rosaldo 1985, 1989, 2003). Also, drawing upon Saskia Sassen’s (2003) analysis of microtransformations in the institution of citizenship it is possible to argue that while citizenship remains embedded within a citizenship regime, citizenship practices can be “done” by citizens, second-class citizens, and noncitizens (e.g., migrants). Sassen suggests that there are citizenship identities that are not confined to the state, meaning that citizenship can be local, translocal, and supranational. These possibilities are especially important. If citizenship regimes cannot confine citizens or citizenship practices, then careful consideration of citizenship and of citizenship practices at the U.S.-Mexico borderlands against SB 1070 and HB 2281 can shed important light on the political identities of border people, while at the same time systematically examining those practices and identities to determine if a “borderdom” is continuously (re)created (Gutiérrez 1999). Intergovernmental institutions, transnational social movements, international migrations, and ethnic identities have helped create citizenships that cross boundaries. These spaces serve to broaden the definition of citizenship by including nonstate and trans-state actions, like cross-border community activism against SB 1070 and HB 2281, as legitimate expressions of citizenship. Despite the rules and assumptions that surround the legality and processes of citizenship, people practice citizenship even while they are not granted full citizenship rights because citizenship is and has been a fluid and changeable concept. Here is where educational citizenship becomes crucial for students and teachers. Henry Giroux (2003) writes: Education as a moral and political practice always presupposes a preparation for particular forms of social life, a particular vision of community, and a particular version of the future. Americans must address the problems of public schooling in the realms of values and politics, while holding firm the possibilities of public education in strengthening the practice of active citizenship. (123) Challenging SB 1070 and HB 2281 is, indeed, an act of citizenship. As students and teachers, we are called to be active citizens.

BORDER(LANDS) PEDAGOGY Pedagogy “for” the Oppressed Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) is a foundational text of critical pedagogy that was instrumental in confronting and in many cases fundamentally transforming traditional educational citizenship. The work was especially important for poor or working-class ethnic minority students

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who had been negatively affected by citizenship practices. This is not to forget that these citizenship practices also negatively impact female, queer, disabled, and many other “oppressed” students. Following Freire, Giroux argues that pedagogy is a discourse encompassing human dignity, liberty, and social justice; and as Giroux (1992) has noted, pedagogy should engage in social criticism, especially in contrast to grave threats faced by schools, by critical cultural spaces, and by the state of democracy itself. Furthermore, he suggests that border pedagogy offers a perspective to the “understanding of how the relationship between power and knowledge works as both the practice of representation and the representation of practice to secure particular forms of authority.” Giroux continues, “border pedagogy must take up the dual task of not only creating new objects of knowledge but also addressing how inequalities, power, and human suffering are rooted in basic institutional structures” (29). As such, he contends that educators should prepare students as citizens, not separate the abstract rights that come from a crude historical and cultural narrative from everyday experiences. Building upon border pedagogy, and moving toward borderlands pedagogy, I find good reason to assume the possibility of alternative citizenships through education. Arizona offers an intriguing case study of the possibility, in that it is a state that consistently experiments on denying citizenship and citizenship rights to its very citizens. I also build upon border pedagogy, quite frankly, because it both acknowledges and challenges the discourses of power that control and contain “imagined communities” and the citizens they require. Because formal citizenship is marked by legal and societal contexts, the ambiguities and power dynamics the citizenship regime poses to those who are noncitizens—exemplified by SB 1070—and to those who are considered second-class citizens—exemplified by HB 2281—create the discursive realities of the citizenship regime. In short, official citizenship policies have defined, constructed, and regulated (im)migrants and People of Color thus creating a complex classification of illegal Americans (migrants) and other Americans (Mexican Americans). Where control and containment is imperfect, borderlands people find spaces and ways to challenge citizenship, to claim the borderlands as their home, and to thereby create an alternative citizenship. Borderlands pedagogy, as an emancipatory, critical, and culturally relevant pedagogy, thus becomes a space for teaching and learning that lends itself to the conscious decolonization of academia, and consequently the decolonization of citizenship. The critique is of the assumption that citizenship begins and ends solely with official institutions—the same institutions that create and maintain the definition(s) of citizenship—the citizenship regime. With the large concentrations of migrant, ethnic, and other “minority” populations, the nation-state’s hold on citizenship through its official institutions

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and its territorial boundaries should be continuously challenged—creating a space for alternative citizenship. “Borderdom” provides spaces to examine the formation and maintenance of culturally responsive pedagogies and confronts the new culture wars in Ethnic Studies. As bell hooks (1994) suggests, traditional curriculum privileges the very students who belong to the core culture (white, male, heterosexual, etc.). Thus, a curriculum that emphasizes societal norms grants the core culture “authority” in the classroom (and beyond), while alienating students whose histories are skimmed over or even excluded. Borderlands pedagogy engages the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexualities to culture, power, and knowledge. Borderlands pedagogy also builds upon critical, cultural, and feminist theories that help us see that the borderlands and citizenship are part of particular discourses, seeking to expand the exclusiveness and rigidity of citizenship (see Glenn 2002; Shklar 1995). Recognizing the importance of discourse to power, borderlands pedagogy offers a critique of the citizenship regime as a restrictive discourse of belonging, supposes a relationship between state power and the citizenship regime, and conceptualizes the citizenship practices that confront, challenge, and consequently change the citizenship regime. Citizenship regimes make borders, but people’s negotiations with borders are a confrontation of citizenship regimes by which border people can understand, challenge, redefine, or even overcome them. In other words, “borderdom” is founded upon the claims made against traditional notions of citizenship, which has subordinated and oppressed people because of their race, class, gender, and other differences. “Borderdom” involves respect, well-being, dignity, empowerment, and democracy. Furthermore, “borderdom” is not detached, touristic, or voyeuristic, but is instead a lived experience; one that allows us to confront, challenge, and change the very structure of knowledge and power.

IMMIGRATION AND BORDERLANDS PEDAGOGY The Creation of the Illegal American Richard Sigurdson (2000) suggests that cross-border migration impacts Western ideas and practices of citizenship. Thus, to deal with immigration, nation-states have developed the following five broad strategies: rejection or expulsion, restrictions to citizenship (guest-worker programs), assimilation, integration, and cultural pluralism. For instance, the more narrow and xenophobic view of immigration control holds that nation-states have the right to bar immigrants, because once they are allowed in, they must be granted full citizenship (see Waltzer 1981). Another view espouses that as nation-states have the right to bar immigrants, there are basic moral obligations to migrants by both the host and sending countries (Chaney 1981). Finally, the more

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cosmopolitan view suggests that nation-states should not try to exclude immigrants, particularly if immigrants are seeking escape from poverty or suffering from persecution (see Lichtenberg 1981). Malcolm Anderson (1996) argues, “Beliefs, prejudices, contingencies and calculations of interest determine the way in which governments use frontier controls” (129). To include or exclude migrants, thus, raises important theoretical issues about the relationship of individuals to the citizenship regime. Inclusion, broadly defined as citizenship, is a necessity for the state to preserve its identity and culture. Exclusion, however, is generally regarded as a very important function of borders. Here, it seems that Arizona’s focus is on borders and accordingly on exclusion. Indeed, SB 1070 was part of a larger process in the United States that perceived increases in refugee and migration flows would lead to concentrated efforts to close the border, control or halt immigration, and tighten security measures. Consequently, a backlash against immigrants from Mexico and other parts of Latin America persists in Arizona. The nightmare image that drives popular American imagination is that of unruly, diseased, and criminal Mexican aliens illegally coming into the country to take American jobs and to take advantage of benefits that should go to deserving Americans. Offering a Mexican view of migration to the United States, former foreign minister of Mexico, Jorge Castañeda writes, In this long historical process lies the reason why Mexicans in general see migration in a different light from Americans, even well-meaning ones, when the latter underline the imperative need for everybody “to play by the rules.” What are the rules? Mexicans ask. Americans answer: the law, and everyone must respect it, and consequently wait patiently in line at the U.S. Embassy on Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, or at the nine general consulates or thirteen consular agencies in Mexico, to obtain a visa of one type or another. Except the laws have changed countless times, and moreover, the “rules” have always been different from the “laws.” So which is it? Today’s law or yesterday’s rules? (2007, 37–38) To be sure, Castañeda also writes that “most undocumented Mexicans in the United States . . . have no documents” (2007, 148). However, the demand for cheap labor and cheap goods in the United States reinforces the immigration-­ labor cycle. Millions of Mexican migrants are said to be living on the U.S. side of the border. Immigration has also grown to include a multitude of new Mexican immigrants from central and southern Mexico—most of predominately Indigenous descent. Because of immigration laws in the United States, most Mexican immigrants endure great dangers to physically cross the border.

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As the U.S. border continues to become more secure, Mexican migration flows persist; and the actual barriers that separate the two countries remain only a hindrance for most migrants. The issue with SB 1070 is twofold. First, the bill fails to take into account the long history of immigration. Second, it fails to adequately address the racism and discrimination directed at immigrants and at their “mother countries” (Garcia 1997). Furthermore, I agree with Arturo J. Aldama’s suggestion that the word “immigrant” is problematic in understanding Mexican people. He asks, “What is the status for Mexicans who lived in Mexican territories before they were annexed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848?” (2002, 26). The primary concern associated with SB 1070 is the implicit assumption that Mexican migrants pose a cultural and racialized threat to the United States. It is suggested that immigrants refuse to conform to the socalled American culture (read white Anglo Saxon Protestant culture) and continue to stubbornly cling to their “backward” traditions. In addition, there is a presumption that immigrants are seeking to undermine American values and American freedoms. Finally, the discourse of illegality against Mexican migrants frames an unnecessary criminalization of citizens who are neither criminal nor “illegal.”

A Borderlands Critique of SB 1070 What I roughly identify as Critical or Cultural Studies (e.g., Feminist Studies and Critical Race Studies) have been at the forefront of uncovering the hidden meanings of citizenship (see Young 1990). At the center of their arguments is exposing “the reality of the citizen often conceived as ‘male-whiteable-bodied,’ and to take action to enable minority groups to participate in social, political, and civic life, defining and claiming their rights to become equal, active citizens” (Jones & Gaventa 2002, 15–16). Through a borderlands pedagogy, I take from the critical/cultural perspective that citizenship is both complex and repeatedly contested. In addition, with the growth of such activities as migration, citizenship has become even more complicated. According to Derek Heater (1999), there is a growing awareness by both scholars and citizens that traditional citizenship is a hollow and meaningless scheme. This is primarily because the relationship between citizens and governments suffers from a crisis of legitimacy, as exemplified by SB 1070. As Michael Kearney suggests, U.S. immigration policies are not directed at stopping immigration, but instead are focused on regulating the flow of immigration. The problem is that while migrant labor is desired, migrants are not. In a Foucaultian fashion, Kearney also suggests that the activities of the Border Patrol are not intended to prevent illegal immigration into the United States, but are part of a larger system that disciplines workers to work hard

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and accept low wages (1998, 124). In short, immigration policies not only strive to reject particular cultures but they also seek to exploit them. The constant threat of deportation can keep undocumented workers unorganized, undemanding, and obedient. Furthermore, SB 1070 sought not only to control migrants, but also to control any folks who were, as one of its provisions stated, “reasonably suspicious.” Accordingly, an analysis of how SB 1070 was contrived in Arizona exemplifies how universalistic approaches to such concepts as sovereignty and citizenship control human experiences and structure everyday life in much of the world. It is through unclear legal pretexts that Arizona “controls” its border and its citizens. Today, as always, the borderlands can best be understood as one of the zones where the United States experiments with the lives of its citizens (Masco 1999). Borderlands pedagogy reminds us that Mexicans and Mexican Americans are both among the earliest settlers and newest arrivals to the United States. Some are indigenous; some are descendants of people who had settled in what is now the U.S. Southwest and have dwelled in the borderlands for more than four hundred years; others have lived in the United States for several generations; and many have entered the United States in recent years. Most Mexican Americans continue to live in the U.S. Southwest and in distinctly Mexican American neighborhoods, or barrios. More important, however, borderlands pedagogy reminds us that educational discrimination and social isolation have negatively accentuated differences. For example, family income and educational attainment remain much lower than the national average for Mexican Americans (Anderson 2003). Arguably, culture (as opposed solely to skin color) sets Mexican Americans apart from the dominant culture of white Americans. However, since they are American they are also set apart from Mexicans. More notably on the U.S. side of the border, the social construction of the “illegal alien” has stigmatized Mexican Americans, despite the fact that the great majority of them are legal residents.

CHICANA/O CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND BORDERLANDS PEDAGOGY Citizenship as “Borderdom” Since this is a study of citizenship, it is based on the notion that borders exist, that they matter, that they have real functions in various areas of society, and that they exert an important influence on those dwelling in the borderlands. At issue in this section is not how Americans view Mexicans and Mexican Americans, but how belonging to the borderlands becomes associated with being “the Other.” This is a central concern, given that many Chicanas/os can both belong to the borderlands and can be “other” to either side of the

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border—not considered fully Mexican or American. A hybrid or mesitiza/o culture has materialized, only to be shunned by hegemonic centers. Lawrence A. Herzog contends that the importance of culture is magnified in the U.S.Mexico borderlands. And on the U.S.-Mexico border, Chicanas/os can claim two nation-states. More important, Chicanas/os can create unique spatial formations that have evolved under the different cultural codes and conditions of the United States (Herzog 1990). An examination of Chicanas/os and of HB 2281 is a “point of entry” for a deeper discussion of “borderdom.” I am not saying, however, that being Chicana/o is the “borderdom” that I have discussed. Instead, I set out to map a conceptual and theoretical space in which we as students and teachers can engage in new conversations around borderlands and Chicana/o identities. Herein lies the issue with HB 2281. Borderlands pedagogy becomes a dialogue about the system to change the status and statistics of Chicanas/os for the better. Implicit in the political overtones of Chicana/o Studies is the idea that the U.S.-Mexico borderlands are contested territory. Many Chicana/o scholars view the borderlands as a site of political and cultural conflict—a contested terrain shaped by changing individual and collective definitions of belonging and not belonging to the borderlands (Vigil 1998). A primary concern for many Chicana/o scholars is the belief that the creation of the 1848 border, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, split them and created a second-class citizenship of hyphenated Americans. Mexican-Americans, thus, are embodiments of a complex fate shared by those born “other-American”—hybrids always living in the hyphen. Ultimately, Chicana/o Studies is political. Indeed, there will always be a variety of definitions for the term Chicana/o. The scholarly world, at large, has come to view the term Chicana/o as a political term. As a distinctive “identity,” Chicana/o identity takes shape within the confines of the citizenship regime. In short, HB 2281 and the banning of Mexican American Studies in Arizona only made Chicanas/os more visible. The ban has fuelled widespread consciousness-raising with regard to the identity of Mexican Americans and especially of Chicana/o youth. Another way to consider “borderdom,” is to look to Chicana/o Studies, which identifies numerous possibilities. Chicano/a Studies has a long and wide-ranging history, however, and can be noted for its insistence on both cultural and political empowerment; and this empowerment is just the wedge issue for Arizona politicians.

The Creation of the Other American The U.S.-Mexico borderlands, as Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi H. Quiñonez (2002) write, “is a site that is lived and expressed by those who reside in the physical/discursive margins generated by the edge of two nation

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states” (1). They argue that for more than five hundred years, the Americas have attempted to deal with colonial and neocolonial subjugation, and for more than one hundred fifty years, Chicanas/os have dealt with a continued subjugation. Furthermore, in less than fifty years of existence, Chicana/o Studies embodies an anticolonial undoing of more than five hundred years of a colonized pedagogy. The Chicana/o experience stems from the dynamics of colonization. Because manipulation and destruction of oppressed peoples are inherent to colonialism, Franz Fanon (1979) argues that the process of decolonization involves the creation of a national consciousness. The U.S.Mexico borderlands are illustrative of Chicanas/os’ complex relationship to traditional forms of citizenship. Chicanas/os thus become essential to the discussion of the possibilities of “borderdom,” primarily because Chicanas/os dwell within a vague and indefinite borderlands. As James Diego Vigil (1998) writes, “few . . . attempt to grapple with and unravel the complex strands of Chicanos, as the ‘in-between’ people, who straddle both nations with a thin borderline separating the two” (2). What is equally important to note here, as C. Alejandra Elenes calls to mind, is that the problem with mainstream discourses is not that they fail to take into account differences of race, class, gender, and sexuality, but that they fail to adequately theorize and even fail to acknowledge such categories as “white,” “male,” “heterosexual,” and “middle class,” and their interconnectedness (2002, 254). In a similar vein, Norma Alarcón et al. (1999) write, “the nation-state sharpens the defining lines of citizenship for women, racialized ethnicities, and sexualities in the construction of a socially stratified society” (1). In other words, citizenship vis-à-vis the nation-state is both the denial and consolidation of sexual, gendered, and racial differences. Following this argument Sarah Ramirez maintains that what we see in Chicana/o nation-building is a shared cultural indigenous heritage, a common language—a mixture of Spanish and English with some use of the various indigenous languages of Mexico, a deep connection to the land, and a political, social, and historical displacement. The Chicana/o homeland, Aztlán, becomes a unifying concept and base for Chicana/o presence in the United States. Ramirez suggests that saying the word “Aztlán” also becomes a basis of commitment toward acknowledging and claiming indigenous concepts as part of the Chicana/o reality. However, the point that Ramirez (2002) makes is that this “imagined” Chicano nation “served to subjugate, define, and control Chicanas, revealing a contradiction between ideology and praxis” (225). While nation-imagining implies homogeny, many have been uncritical of the official discourses of a solely Chicano nationalist movement—many except for Chicana feminists. The term “Chicana feminist perspective,” writes Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano (2007), “implies certain similarities with and differences from either an exclusively ‘feminist’ or

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‘Chicano’ perspective” (346). Perspectives on Chicana thought are numerous, and are more so, necessary. Indeed, a Chicana feminist critique is a useful starting point for rethinking citizenship, borderlands, and Ethnic Studies away from the binary opposition between “us” and “them,” to questions of difference, power, and knowledge (see Alarcón 1997; Aldama & Quiñonez 2002; Moraga & Anzaldúsa 1981; Trujillo 1998). In my classroom, starting with the Chicana feminist critique in my “Introduction to Chicana/o Studies” courses is as purposeful as it is useful. My own introduction to Chicana/o Studies was through the lens of Chicana feminism and not through the oft-taught starting point of Chicano nationalism. In the process of challenging existing paradigms, Chicana feminists introduce new political identities—borderlands identities—that emerged to challenge both the racism of Anglo American feminism and the sexism of ethnic nationalist movements. Much like a borderlands pedagogy, a borderlands identity is used to challenge and even to defy the ways the citizenship regime confines and separates human communities. Chicana/o Studies, then, offer cultural productions that create a discursive space through a borderlands pedagogy to articulate various forms of resistance to physical barriers, including educational barriers such as HB 2281. As Aldama and Quiñonez (2002) point out, Chicana/o Studies is “a resistance to the multiplicity of oppression across race, class, gender, and sexuality” (3). Aldama continues, “Chicana/o border studies, devoted to understanding the complex dialectics of racialized, subaltern, feminist, and diasporic identities and the aesthetic politics of hybrid mestiza/o cultural production, is at the vanguard of historical, anthropological, literary, cultural, artistic, and theoretical inquiry” (11). As such, critical Chicana/o borderlands studies is part of the attempt to understand Chicana/o identity as one that is synonymous with a borderlands identity. This does not necessarily mean that a Chicana/o needs to physically live on the border or that a border person is a Chicana/o. Borderlands identity also means living in the symbolic borders that differentiate between such identities as ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Subsequently, the social, cultural, and political expression of citizenship rests with the ability to redefine and re-imagine borderlands discourse.

Chicana/o Borderlands Pedagogy It is widely accepted that Chicana/o Studies, as a formalized academic field of study, came into being as a direct result of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s (Avila 2001). The birth of Ethnic Studies was also connected to Third World anti-imperialist struggles, seeking to de-center a Eurocentric/American mythos curriculum. It is also important to note that Chicana/o history and political/cultural movements certainly predate his

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time. Since the making of the current border, when Mexico and the United States signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and later the Mesilla Treaty (the Gadsden Purchase), the borderlands have been an important area for Mexican Americans. By the start of the Chicano Movement (the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement) in the mid-1960s, the borderlands and border crossings became important areas of analysis within Chicana/o Studies. Chicana/o Studies have been key in the emphasis of “borders” as an important academic consideration. More than just focusing on the U.S.-Mexico border, as is commonly perceived, Chicana/o Studies have exposed the importance (and nonimportance) of borders—physical, cultural, geographical, social, and so on—in our lives. Chicana/o identity, therefore, has come to occupy the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, although Chicanas/os are not always confined by the territorial borderlands. Still, Chicana/o educators use as their primary icon the border. For these scholars, the border has great symbolic currency. The border—represented by the fence and the river—become cultural metaphors for Chicanas/os. Most scholarship of the border examines the metaphoric possibilities of the border as a barrier and as a permeable connection between Mexico and the United States. Indeed, Chicana/o Studies, more than any other discipline, has placed considerable attention on the concept of borders; and Chicanas/os claim the border person as their own. Also, as Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez (1996) writes, “the border is among the most important ideas in our lives simply because our identities are so tied to this creation” (265–66). Also, as Americo Paredes (1978) reminds us, “life along the border was not always a matter of conflicting cultures; there was often cooperation of a sort, between peoples of both cultures, since life had to be lived as an everyday affair” (72). Nonetheless, life in the United States for masses of Mexican and Mexican Americans has been anything but easy, yet Chicanismo becomes a way to embrace rather than to reject identities. HB 2281 has failed to look at the larger contribution of Chicanas/os and other Latinas/os, for that matter, in Arizona; and as Stanley R. Ross (1978) explains, “as a larger and more diverse group, a group unique for its cultural mixing, or mestizaje” (2). Ultimately, Chicana/o identity is about “the political.” This political identity is not easily identifiable—it is not visible like skin, wardrobe, or dialect, especially in the borderlands. James Diego Vigil (1980) writes, “To understand the Chicano people is to understand their history. It is to recognize that Chicanos have been shaped by a series of ‘social systems’ ” (221). More important, Chicanas/os are also shaping these social systems. What HB 2281 seeks to do is to strip Chicanas/os of their history and therefore strip them of understanding their rights as citizens. Furthermore, HB 2281 vilifies Chicana/o cultural identities. Cultural identity is so important to the struggle for economic, social, political, and ideological change,

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and many Chicanas/os and “others” are no longer accepting treatment as second-class citizens. Thus, Chicano/as have the ability to confront, challenge, and cross borders and lead this new era of cultural awareness toward a new era of citizenship.

The Continuing Story of the Search for Educational Citizenship HB 2281 has forged an unnecessary phenomenon in race and ethnic relations in the borderlands. Negative racial/ethnic representations of Mexican Americans in the United States stretch back before the U.S.-Mexico War. Mexicans have long been seen as a mongrel race in contrast to their northern neighbors, not only in skin color but also in morality. After the war, Mexicans living in the United States became Mexican Americans, inheritors of a Mexican cultural identity but members of a stratified U.S. society (Pettit 1980). Thus, citizenship is a racialized concept; and as such, HB 2281 is a racialized discourse advanced by continued antagonism against “others” in the state of Arizona. Whereas, SB 1070 further criminalized undocumented migrants, HB 2281 criminalized actual citizens. For example, as Carl Gutierrez-Jones (1995) writes, “The process by which Chicanos have become institutionally and popularly associated with criminality has had a long and complex history that is intimately related to their very construction as a social group in the United States” (1). Indeed, HB 2281 maintains the criminalization of Chicana/o Studies and implicitly of Chicanas/os. Worse still, HB 2281 denies all Arizonans the extensive understanding of the United States that the bill’s supporters say they revere. As C. Alejandra Elenes (2003) argues, education in the United States seeks the assimilation of ethnic subpopulations into the core culture to embrace a national mythos of equality, democracy, and freedom as both factual and attainable. The issue is that these same ethnic subpopulations are themselves suggested to be culturally deficient. Against the cultural deficiency model, Ethnic Studies and particularly Chicana/o Studies programs emerged from the civil rights movement that helped to end school segregation and to implement bilingual and multicultural education. Still Ethnic Studies and Chicana/o Studies moved beyond education reform to curricular transformations that connected Chicana/o youth to their history, their culture, and to their communities; but not without their own issues of nationalism over subjugated identities such as feminism. Chicana/o Studies was and in many cases still is male, heteronormative, and working class. The question is how to confront and challenge traditional pedagogies while remaining committed to inclusivity and to the diversity of internalized oppressions. As such, an Ethnic Studies curriculum must always create new forms of agency rather than adding Chicanas/os to already-existing pedagogies for the sake of inclusion (Elenes 2003).

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CONCLUSION Ethnic Studies as Border Crossing Folks are uncomfortable discussing difference; not only in Ethnic Studies or Women’s Studies courses, but in all classrooms. When discussions of race, gender, or even class break out, there is a tendency to disregard, cut short, or even defend the nonexistence of racism, sexism, and so on—essentially protecting white supremacy and oppression. This is even done along progressive lines, whereby any meaningful discourse surrounding racism is replaced with multiculturalism. New borders are created. Many of our women, queer, and racial/ethnic minority students are left to meander around the actual and very real issues that affect their everyday lives, leaving the majority of students who come from the dominant culture able to justify a false reality that we live in a postracial, postfeminist, or posthomophobic world. The dilemma of borderlands pedagogy is great—to discuss the relevant issues, identities, and ideas that resonate within the excluded (noncitizens) while continuing to ensure that these fluid identities do not themselves become totalizing projects of modernity. We need to embrace ambiguity and to embrace the political mess that is education. Yes, the classroom is a political space. It always has been. However, when we are to hold Christopher Columbus in high acclaim, while simultaneously ignoring genocide, our classrooms have created a politics of disregard toward difference. In the classroom we affirm or deny political hierarchies (McKenna 2003). Education is political, but the politics of banning Ethnic Studies programs should not be involved. What happened in the Tucson Unified School District was to develop a curriculum to address low test scores and high dropout and push-out rates of Mexican Americans. The Mexican American Studies program did just this. HB 2281, however, was instrumental in reversing the successful trends, all in the name of whitewashing education (Cabrera, Milem & Marx 2012). In Arizona, Ethnic Studies finds itself at a crucial crossroad. Although we have made some strides, many struggles remain. At issue is that Mexican and Mexican American identities in the United States are also constructed and developed through various discourses, and these constructions are informed and driven by anti-immigrant and racist sentiments. And while SB 1070 created heightened awareness of immigration, being undocumented is arguably not a significant issue in Arizona because discriminatory conditions continue to exist despite legal status. Such is the case of HB 2281, which itself contradicts classic principles of U.S. democratic theory of full incorporation into U.S. society, requiring that all discriminatory barriers be eliminated. When applying these principles to the struggle for Mexican American equality under the law, it is clear that Mexican Americans have not been granted “full” citizenship in the United States (Valencia, García, Flores & Juárez 2004).

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The relationship between Mexican Americans and citizenship thus raises important questions with regard to notions of knowledge, justice, and power.

The Margins Are Important How is “borderdom” different from traditional forms of citizenship? This question is especially important given that—as I have already suggested— Chicana/o border identities can be both a hybrid of two or more state identities and a rejection of state identities. To understand “borderdom,” it is important to understand experiences as negotiations with borders. While barriers are a strong feature of most border peoples’ experiences, negotiations with borders position border people to cross borders. These border crossers are marginalized. They are already people who are living in the margins. Yet, the margins, as I often remind my classes, are the most important part of reading and understanding texts. When we read—theory, poetry, our fellow student’s narratives—the margins are where we make our notations, where we ask our questions, where we write our comments. Pay attention to the margins. Our deepest understandings come from the margins. We hold on to the margins in Ethnic Studies. Ethnic Studies, thus, becomes social justice for the marginalized through education; but education, in this case, goes much further beyond the four walls of a classroom to include the relationships among teachers, students, families, and communities. Ethnic Studies, thus, is an act of love. Ethnic Studies is an act of humanity. Ethnic Studies soothes our fears, and it realizes our dreams. Ethnic Studies both challenges and expands our boundaries. Ethnic Studies is exactly what is needed to confront, to challenge, and to stop the hate.

REFERENCES Alarcón, Norma. 1997. “Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism.” In Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by A. McClintock, A. Mufti, and E. Shohat, 278–96. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Alarcón, Norma, Caren Kaplan, and Minoo Moallem. 1999. “Introduction: Between Woman and Nation,” In Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State, edited by C. Kaplan, N. Alarcon, and M. Moallem, 1–16. Durham: Duke University Press. Aldama, Arturo J. 2002. “Millennial Anxieties: Borders, Violence, and the Struggle for Chicana and Chicano Subjectivity.” In Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century, edited by A. J. Aldama and N. H. Quiñonez, 11–29. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Aldama, Arturo J., and Naomi H. Quiñonez. 2002. “¡Peligro! Subversive Subjects: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century. In Decolonial Voices:

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Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century, edited by A. J. Aldama and N. H. Quiñonez, 1–7. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Anderson, Joan B. 2003. “The U.S.-Mexico Border: A Half Century of Change.” The Social Science Journal 40(4): 535–54. Anderson, Malcolm. 1996. Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World. Cambridge: Polity Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press. Arizona, State of. 2010a. “Senate Bill 1070.” Accessed August 6, 2014. http://www .azleg.gov/alispdfs/council/SB1070-HB2162.pdf. Arizona, State of. 2010b. “House Bill 2281.” Accessed August 6, 2014. http://www .azleg.gov/legtext/491eg/2r/bills/hb2281p.pdf. Avila, Eric R. 2001. “Decolonizing the Territory: Introduction.” In The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, edited by C. A. Noriega, E. R. Avila, K. M. Davalos, C. Sandoval, and R. Perez-Torres, 3–9. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Benton-Cohen, Kathrine. 2009. Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cabrera, Nolan L., Jeffrey F. Milem, and Ronald W. Marx. 2012. “An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within Tucson Unified School District.” Accessed July 4, 2015. https://www .coe.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/MAS_report_2012_0.pdf. Castañeda, Jorge G. 2007. Ex Mex: From Immigrants to Migrants. New York: The New Press. Chaney, E. M. 1981. “Migrant Workers and National Boundaries: The Basis for Rights and Protections.” In Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits, edited by P. G. Brown and H. Shue, 37–78. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Elenes, C. Alejandra. 2002. “Border/Transformative Pedagogies at the End of the Millennium: Chicana/o Cultural Studies and Education.” In Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century, edited by Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi H. Quiñonez, 245–61. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Elenes, C. Alejandra. 2003. “Reclaiming the Borderlands.” In The Critical Pedagogy Reader, edited by A. Darder, M. Baltodano, and R. D. Torres, 191–210. New York: Routledge. Fanon, Franz. 1979. The Wretched of the Earth: The Handbook for the Black Revolution That Is Changing the Shape of the World. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Flores, William V., and Rina Benmayor, ed. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Boston: Beacon Press. Fox, Claire F. 1999. The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Fox News Latino. 2012. “Arizona Official Considers Targeting Mexican American Studies in University.” Accessed August 16, 2014. http://latino.foxnews.com /latino/politics/2012/03/28/arizona-official—considers-targeting-mexican-ameri can-studies-in-university/. Garcia, Mario T. 1997. “Mexican Immigration in U.S.-Mexican History: Myths and Reality.” In Myths, Misdeeds, and Misunderstandings: The Roots of Conflict in U.S.Mexican Relations, edited by J. E. Rodriguez and K. Vincent, 199–214. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2002. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Giroux, Henry. 1992. Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. New York: Routledge. Giroux, Henry. 2003. “Education Incorporated?” In The Critical Pedagogy Reader, edited by A. Darder, M. Baltodano, and R. D. Torres, 119–25. New York: Routledge. Gutierrez, David G. 1995. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gutierrez-Jones, Carl. 1995. Rethinking the Borderlands: Between Chicano Culture and Legal Discourse. Berkeley: University of California. Heater, Derrick. 1999. What Is Citizenship? Cambridge: Polity Press. Herzog, Lawrence A. 1990. Where North Meets South: Cities, Space, and Politics on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. Huntington, Samuel P. 2004. Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster. Jenson, Jane, and Martin Papillon. 2000. “Challenging the Citizenship Regime: The James Ba Cree and Transnational Action. Politics and Society 28(2): 245–64. Jones, Emma, and John Gaventa. 2002. Concepts of Citizenship: A Review. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies. Kearney, Michael. 1998. “Transnationalism in California and Mexico and the End of Empire.” In Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, edited by T. M. Wilson and H. Donnan, 117–41. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lichtenberg, J. 1981. “National Boundaries and Moral Boundaries: A Cosmopolitan View.” In Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits, edited by P. G. Brown and H. Shue, 79–100. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Martinez, Oscar J., ed. 1996. U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. Masco, Joseph. 1999. “States of Insecurity: Post–Cold War Anxiety in New Mexico, 1992–96.” In Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger, edited by J. Weldes, M. Laffey, H. Gusterson, and R. Duvall, 203–32. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McKenna, Teresa. 2003. “Borderness and Pedagogy: Exposing Culture in the Classroom.” In The Critical Pedagogy Reader, edited by A. Darder, M. Baltodano, and R. D. Torres, 430–39. New York: Routledge.

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Meeks, Eric V. 2007. Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona. Austin: University of Texas Press. Moraga, Cherrie, and Gloria Anzaldúa, ed. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press. Newman, David. 2000. “Boundaries, Territory and Postmodernity: Towards Shared or Separate Spaces? In Borderlands Under Stress, edited by M. Pratt and J. A. Brown, 17–34. London: Kluwer Law International. Paredes, Américo. 1978. “The Problem of Identity in a Changing Culture: Popular Expressions of Culture Conflict Along the Lower Rio Grande Border.” In Views across the Border: The United States and Mexico, edited by S. R. Ross, 68–94. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Pettit, Arthur G. 1980. Images of Mexican American in Fiction and Film. Austin: Texas University Press. Poole, Ross. 1999. Nation and Identity. London: Routledge. Ramirez, Sarah. 2002. “Borders, Feminism, and Spirituality: Movements in Chicana Aesthetic Revisioning.” In Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century, edited by Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi H. Quiñonez, 223–42. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rosaldo, Renato. 1985. “Assimilation Revisited.” Working Paper Series, No. 9. Sanford, CA: Publisher name and contact information, as provided by the publisher; updated only if notified by the publisher. Stanford Center for Chicano Research. Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Rosaldo, Renato, ed. 2003. Cultural Citizenship in Island Southeast Asia: Nation and Belonging in the Hinterlands. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ross, Stanley R., ed. 1978. Views across the Border: The United States and Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Sassen, Saskia. 2003. “Citizenship Destabilized.” Liberal Education (Spring): 14–21. Shklar, Judith N. 1995. American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sigurdson, Richard. 2000. “Crossing Borders: Immigration, Citizenship and the Challenge to Nationality.” In Borderlands Under Stress, edited by M. Pratt and J. A. Brown, 141–61. London: Kluwer Law International. Tijerina Revilla, Anita. 2011. “Introduction” In Marching Students: Chicana and Chicano Activism in Education, 1968 to the Present, edited by M. Berta-Ávila, A. Tijerina Revilla, and J. Lopez Figueroa. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Trujillo, Carla, ed. 1998. Living Chicana Theory. Chicago: Third Woman Press. Valencia, Reynaldo Anaya, Sonia R. García, Henry Flores, and José Roberto Juárez Jr., eds. 2004. Mexican Americans and the Law: ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos G. 1996. Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Vigil, James Diego. 1980. From Indians to Chicanos: The Dynamics of Mexican American Culture. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

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Vigil, James Diego. 1998. From Indians to Chicanos: The Dynamics of Mexican American Culture, 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Waltzer, Michael. 1981. “The Distribution of Membership.” In Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits, edited by P. G. Brown and H. Shue, 1–36. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. 2007. “Chicana Literature from Chicana Feminist Perspective.” In Chicana/o Studies: Survey and Analysis, 3rd ed., edited by D. J. BixlerMárquez, C. F. Ortega, and R. S. Torres, 363–66. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Insurrectional Knowledge: Antiprison Africana Pedagogy, Ethnic Studies, and the Undoing of the Carceral State Christopher M. Tinson

In May 2013, the FBI doubled the bounty on the head of former Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur from $1 million to $2 million. Shakur, granted political asylum from the Cuban government since her escape from prison in 1979, was also the first woman of any race to be placed on the FBI’s newly established Most Wanted Terrorist list. This despite President Obama’s recent move to open up diplomacy with Cuba, which included relieving it from the list of terrorist-sponsoring nations by U.S. officials. The action elevating attention on Shakur was taken under the direction of Eric Holder, the first Black U.S. attorney general, Aaron Ford, the African American head of New Jersey FBI, and with the tacit approval of the first Black U.S. president, now concluding his second term. One Black first begets others. Shakur’s captivity and subsequent escape mark an important epoch in the carceral continuum, a premier form of racial antagonism defining Black existence in the United States. As a self-liberated woman of African descent, her narrative is punctuated by numerous encounters with the full array of carceral technologies. Ranging from state surveillance and bodily harm to imprisonment and character assassination as the face of terror, Assata Shakur offers ample lessons to students, scholars, and activists concerned with the stakes of liberatory visions in the twenty-first century. Thus, while Cuba’s status has changed in the eyes of U.S. officials, within the protracted nature of the War on Terror, and well into her sixth decade, Shakur’s status has worsened. As an Africana Studies scholar who is also trained in Ethnic Studies, I argue for Carceral Studies as a constituent element of what scholars Michael Tillotson and Serie McDougal consider Applied Africana Studies. Ultimately,

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I want to make the argument for Africana Studies, and Ethnic Studies more broadly, providing an intellectual-activist backlash to the carceral state. In my view these activist-academic frameworks should at least form the scaffolding on which to launch an attack (critical interrogation, if one prefers) on the now naturalized and accelerated carceral practices throughout the United States and the world. One way of thinking of the relationship between these fields is to consider Africana Studies the aspect of Ethnic Studies that is chiefly concerned with African descendant populations, historical and contemporary African diaspora formation, Black transnationalism, and struggles against antiblackness. Africana Studies systematically interrogates the historic and contemporary structures proliferating the particular, though not isolated, group marginalization of Black people. Both Africana Studies and the broader frame of Ethnic Studies share an intellectual-activist investment in the historic patterns and reproduction of racial marginalization and suppression; an intention to unearth and reclaim heretofore ignored histories of racialized groups in the shaping of the modern world; and have identified the disruption of Western hegemony over knowledge concerning the function of race, gender, class, and space as central to this scholarly endeavor. Accordingly, Africana and Ethnic Studies scholar-activists must confront what scholar Jared Sexton calls “New World antiblackness” as a way of accounting for both racial formation and the violent structuring of white supremacy in the history of the United States and throughout the modern world. Throughout this chapter I specifically engage the stakes of Africana Studies scholarship, yet my central argument is intended to apply to the field of Ethnic Studies as well. Over the last several years there has been an increase in scholarly attention devoted to imprisonment. Criminologists, legal scholars, critical race theorists, historians, and creative writers have each taken up the subject in numerous settings, yet very little of this new explosion of research has emerged from the desks of Africana Studies and Ethnic Studies scholars.1 Scholars of the African continent and diaspora have written about or even taught courses on incarceration, but few of these have their primary academic home in Africana Studies. In pointing to some of the observable overlaps and divergences in Africana Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Carceral Studies, this chapter seeks to comment on the state of these fields as relates to one of the most challenging issues of our day. My observations also concern how technologies of discipline and repression, such as prisons, have the effect of disciplining scholars away from interrogating the histories, legacies, and legal struggles of political prisoners. The time is ripe to assess the seemingly glaring omission in Africana Studies and Ethnic Studies instruction and research and argue for in-depth attention on Carceral Studies as integral to our scholarship at least over the next twenty years.

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STUDYING PRISONS IN A POST-MOVEMENT CONTEXT Africana Studies and Ethnic Studies, perhaps more than other academic fields, are imbued with the primary responsibility of interpreting and interrogating the legacies of enslavement, Jim Crow, and the stubborn contemporary list of structural oppressions.2 Considering the increased attention paid to imprisonment with the successful publication of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, the cinematic accolades paid to “Twelve Years a Slave,” and the persistent threat to Black life through ritualized state violence of policing and imprisonment viscerally circulated through social media, it is perhaps a good time to take stock of the sociopolitical contexts of this work. As producers of knowledge emanating from African diasporic experiences, how might imprisoned and exiled scholar-activists point toward new directions in Africana Studies? How might Africana Studies benefit from the assertive inclusion of Carceral Studies more generally? What do these imprisoned and exiled scholar-activists have to teach us about the emergence of new technologies and practices of the carceral state? How do their experiences help to demonstrate the transition from the welfare state to the punitive state? With these questions in mind, I have identified five main thrusts or categories that may help to guide the tracing of what I would like to call an issuespecific, post-Movement3 trajectory: (1) scholarship concerning the evolution of Africana and Ethnic Studies; (2) Black feminism; (3) Black politics of liberation, antiprison organizing, and prison rebellion; (4) media justice and critical media production; and (5) the articulation of transnationalism and diaspora as units of analysis (Kelley & Patterson 2000, 11–35). The latter category is especially significant, as internationally prisons (in addition to borders and oceans) have become one way of mapping the conditions of diaspora. For the purposes here, I pay close attention to the first and the third of these although each of these is kept in mind throughout the engagement here. Prisons remain one of the most underresearched areas of inquiry within Africana Studies, no matter the long history of carceral violence carried out on Black bodies. According to the Sentencing Project, of the 2.5 million people currently incarcerated in the United States, more than 60% is comprised of People of Color. While 1 in 17 white men will face a lifetime likelihood of incarceration, the rate is 1 in 6 for Latinos, and 1 in 3 for Black men. On the opposite gender register, 1 in 111 white women will experience imprisonment, while the ratio is 1 in 45 for Latina women, and 1 in 18 for African American women. Although the 2.5 million figure is alarming enough, it misses the fact of an additional six million more who are under carceral control through probation and parole, and another twelve million “churning” in and out of jails annually (Wagner & Sakala 2014). Carceral institutions and their effects remain dubious treasure troves for evaluating Black encounters

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with the state throughout Africana history. Moreover, the criminalization of Black and Brown (im)migrants reminds Ethnic Studies scholars of carceral states’ construction of deviance, destitution, and dissidence as the primary structuring of its regulatory capacity. Until very recently, prisons and imprisonment have been just outside the reach of Black Studies scholars of the civil rights and Black power era (for excellent examples, see Berger 2014a,b), which include the tradition of Black alternative educational histories, Black resistance and movement histories, and currently Africana environmental and ecological studies. Save for a few scholars and activists such as Angela Davis, Joy James, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Beth Richie, Akinyele Umoja, Frank Wilderson, Dylan Rodriguez, and Dan Berger, among others, there seems to have been a move away from studying the prison as a site of crisis and contestation against which scholars of the African diaspora, especially, would have to grapple. Recently, the Journal of African American History released a special issue, “African Americans, Police Brutality, and the U.S. Criminal Justice System Historical Perspectives,” edited by Clarence Taylor, which is a welcomed contribution and will hopefully inspire greater attention to the impact of the police-courts-jail-prison matrix on Black life from within a Black Studies historical frame. These largely academic examples are worthy of our attention and appreciation, but of equal importance is the work of practitioners such as Soffiyah Elijah (Correctional Association of New York), Adwoa Aiyetoro (University of Arkansas, Little Rock), and Joan Gibbs (Center for Law and Social Justice, CUNY) who have worked diligently on behalf of political prisoners for decades. The degree to which Africana Studies builds on the work of scholar-theorists Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and others at the crossroads of Africana Studies and Critical Race Theory remains to be seen. Though individual scholars are the easiest to identify, conference meetings offer additional case studies alerting those concerned of the need for increased attention on the carceral state. The State of the Field conference (Schomburg Center for Research 2011) and the Challenging Punishment conference (Columbia University 2013) were two different, yet related spaces for intellectual engagement, the latter paying direct attention to histories of carceral policy and impact on health disparities of the most vulnerable populations in the United States, while the former offered a broad view of the pedagogical and investigative possibilities of African American Studies. The importance of the Schomburg conference notwithstanding (it included a live call-in by long-held political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in conversation with Schomburg Center director Khalil Gibran Muhammad), it is mentioned here to shine a light on the fact that none of the presenters (including this author) spoke of the state of the carceral state as it specifically related to Africana Studies. While the Challenging Punishment conference met the primary

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goal of targeting imprisonment, the scholars assembled and the focus of the meeting was not within an explicitly critical Africana or Ethnic Studies frame, though without question, some scholars of these fields did participate in the conference. In the far less formal world of social media, a Historians Against the Carceral State group has formed on Facebook. Yet, even here it is not clear what the long-term vision entails besides serving as a platform for sharing a variety of intellectual pursuits and advertising one’s publications. In each of these cases, I observe a yawning gap in our approaches (or lack thereof) in rigorously examining the evolution of incarceration, which is intriguing when we observe the irony of its emergence, which runs parallel to the growth of Black Studies and Ethnic Studies. Considering the crisis of mass incarceration in Black and Brown communities, it is surprising that none of the major national organizations in Africana Studies or African diasporic history have a Carceral Studies caucus. This leads to my central concern: where is the Africana/Ethnic Studies in the current upsurge that is Carceral Studies? I suppose that question can also be reversed. And why have the two gone their separate ways (by and large) over the past four decades? I argue that wherever the breach happened we should close it, so that Carceral Studies scholars will begin to acknowledge the longwinded and long-waged battle by African descendants against imprisonment in each era of social and political movements for justice. Of equal importance is Africana Studies scholars’ recognition of the need to return, more directly, to a sense of continuous and contemporary struggle beyond the academy by looking at one of modern society’s defining institutions, in this case prisons. There is work to be done in both directions. To be fair, many Africana Studies and Ethnic Studies programs and departments are struggling for their existence and autonomy, dodging austere budget cuts and unsympathetic administrators who too often serve as agents of neoliberal educational practice. Yet, while the academy remains the primary institutional home for these programs and departments, it becomes vitally important that this work remains attuned to political struggles beyond the academy. By Africana scholarship I intend to emphasize the specific work and work sites/sights of self-described Africana Studies scholars. This includes those with terminal degrees in Africana Studies, and/or those whose teaching is primarily within Africana Studies departments, and/or those who teach primarily Black students, and/or those who publish in Black Studies journals, web-spaces, and so forth, whose work is also diasporic, transnational, and antiracist in scope and intent. I teach a course on prisons within a decidedly Africana Studies frame (see Tinson 2014). In fact, since many students are drawn to the social capital that comes with studying prisons, I intentionally lure them in and then begin to teach them Africana Studies at an introductory level. This class exposes students to far more history of Black diaspora

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populations in the United States than perhaps they initially imagined, including enslavement, convict leasing, lynching, political disenfranchisement, migration, and deindustrialization as critical background material for our deep dive into the contemporary crisis of imprisonment. Yet, it is not too much off the beaten path to consider the pedagogical move I want to make. Africana Studies, an avowedly interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, or even undisciplinary field of inquiry (by this I mean, refusing a discipline rather than not achieving discipline) is perhaps best suited to do the work of critically examining the impact of incarceration on African descendants in the United States and around the rest of the Black world. While we may know all too well that wherever African descendants dwell they are in some way, shape, or form catching hell, we do not always know or acknowledge what exact kind of hell we find ourselves in. Locating prisons as a key site of contestation for the African diaspora and modern society at large has emerged as a developing field in American Studies, Legal Studies, and other fields focused on the historically marginalized groups that comprise U.S. Ethnic Studies. As Joy James (2002) writes, “Prisons then exist as a central dilemma for a racially constructed and class-stratified [penal] democracy” (xiii). Yet, we may ask, Why the focus on Africana Studies? Aside from accounting for the future priorities of the field, the demographics making up the field clearly justify the need for greater attention. Nearly all Africana Studies scholars are first generation; the vast majority of whom come from families hit hard by the War on Drugs or earlier points along the carceral continuum. They tend to have relatives or loved ones who have been imprisoned at various points. They often continue to face routine police suspicion in the communities in which they live and work, however, often these scholars are not on the forefront of discussions about incarceration, even as attention on mass incarceration has swelled. If proximity to the crisis is not compelling enough, how might these scholars begin an entry into this discussion?

ANTIPRISON AFRICANA PEDAGOGY: ENTRY POINTS AND EXIT WOUNDS Political prisoners or what James and others have termed imprisoned or exiled intellectuals form as good an entry point as any into the teaching and research of Carceral Studies. As direct participants, architects, and torchbearers of Black liberation and anti-imperial politics, their writing represents insurrectional knowledge production. Teaching new generations of students about the impact of imprisonment during and immediately following the urban and prison rebellions of the 1960s and 70s, the work of Black liberationist organizations and activist-intellectuals’ concerted efforts to circulate imprisoned voices among the communities they emerged from comes into greater

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focus. As Maisha Winn (2010) argues, Black print culture, a form of knowledge production, in particular established crucial spaces through which imprisoned voices communicated to the outside world. This was especially critical for those who had been members of subsequently repressed political formations or organizations in the 1960s and 70s. Publications such as The Black Scholar and Black News, as well as P’alante and the Latin Liberation News Service and other outlets, were instrumental in bringing captive voices to sympathetic publics for whom random police terror and unsympathetic courts were routine occurrences (392–416). Importantly, almost all 1960s- and ’70s-era movement publications contained at least some commentary on imprisonment, police brutality, and insufficient legal representation, often written by then current or formerly incarcerated people themselves. Even civil rights activist organizations such as the NAACP were forced to investigate the disproportionate use of the death penalty on African Americans in the early 1960s. In an October 1960 issue of The Crisis, Franklin Williams, former West Coast regional secretarycounsel of the NAACP, attempted to highlight the structural and contradictory dimensions of the carceral state: Society, because of its tolerance of inadequate social and economic arrangements for minorities, is to a great extent responsible when a member of such a group develops vicious criminal habits. Though reformation of the social causes of criminality is painfully slow, the death penalty should not be tolerated as an “easy way out” in correcting evils of the community’s own creation.  .  .  . When we develop a workable system of rehabilitation, and when we can change the kind of thinking that denies minorities an equal place in this competitive society—then, and only then, can we stand up and demand recognition as a truly civilized and enlightened nation. (1960, 501–12) These issues have marked Black and Brown experience in the United States; as such, it is perhaps no surprise that movement publications would take the claims of the incarcerated seriously and struggle alongside with them toward a better world. Moreover, many early Black Studies departments fostered or participated in on-site prison programs. Over the subsequent de­ cades, however, those programs have receded. Nonetheless, numerous groups at the local level such as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Jericho Movement, as well as small but influential publishing outlets such as 4StruggleMag, have worked to build consciousness about political prisoners for a new generation. In the context of Africana traditions of radicalism, Assata Shakur and Safiya Bukhari standout as individuals whose activist lives facilitate an analysis of

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how expressions of revolutionary desires intersect with radical Black feminisms, and by extension inform the pedagogy of Africana Studies. Moreover they reveal the particular forms of violent reprimands reserved for female political dissidents of color. While numerous activists, legal aid groups, lawyers, and academics have consistently rebuked the U.S. government’s attempts to frame Assata as a terrorist, the fact remains that the government has deemed Assata persona non grata. And yet over the decades, she has spoken out, mostly through her writings (especially her own version of the slave narrative), detailing her unwillingness to be complicit in the government’s conspiracy campaign, and writing with unyielding commitment to Black liberation. Though many outside of Cuba have not heard from her in decades, on the anniversary of the death of trooper Werner Forester, Assata’s image was placed atop electronic billboards on the New Jersey turnpike, marking her as the embodiment of terrorism. In one solitary act the state re-inscribed a racial and gendered antagonism that ideologically ensnares Black women as threats to national security. Yet, Assata’s place in the heart and minds of self-described and selfstyled Black activists and those in solidarity with Black liberation claims should not be taken for granted. Safiya Bukhari’s experience as an unwavering, evolving organizer, and long-distance runner in Black liberation politics, especially among those who practice Islam, is especially notable.4 Her work in the Black Panther Party (BPP) as communications and information officer for the East Coast faction following the 1971 split, the Black Liberation Army, her conversion to Islam, and her leadership in the Republic of New Afrika effectively demonstrates her commitment to justice for the Black world. Though she is regrettably not as well known as Assata, Ericka Huggins, Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, or Angela Davis, Safiya worked tirelessly to advocate on behalf of political prisoners and was as responsible as any for keeping their names alive (Bukhari 2010; also James 2003, 125–34). While incarcerated in the late 1970s and 80s, Bukhari continued to organize, maintaining her dedication to Black liberation politics, but specifically, organizing against prison abuse of incarcerated mothers and strategizing support for families torn apart due to a loved one’s incarceration. Prior to her incarceration, she worked out of the Harlem branch of the BPP, editing that faction’s newspaper, Right On! Black Community News Service (Bukhari 2010, 126–31). Buhkari is one of the hundreds of significant BPP members who have escaped scholarly attention. Popular activists and high-profile former members have received much of the attention to date. However, it does not mean that these women and men were unimportant to the organized push for a new day for Black people and People of Color trapped under the weight of police terror, social hostility, and economic exploitation. Individuals like Bukhari have, until very recently, been lost to history. At the time of her death in 2003, only diehard activists and

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deeply committed scholars were knowledgeable of Buhkari’s work. Yet, considering her steadfast commitment to justice struggles for Black people nationally and globally, it is disappointing that too few studies of BPP women include Bukhari’s contributions (see Bukhari, in James 2003, 122–34). On February 27, 2014, Russell Maroon Shoatz, imprisoned intellectual par excellence, was moved from solitary confinement to general population after twenty-five years (twenty-two consecutive) at SCI Graterford in Pennsylvania. His life story brings together traditions of escape (maroonage), articulations of broad-based solidarity, conceptions of ecosocialism, theorizing on matriarchal social orders, and local Black power politics through his membership in Philadelphia’s Black Unity Council and subsequently its Black Panther Party chapter. In Maroon the Implacable, a compilation of Shoatz’s writings, which had previously been circulated in a range of left-media outlets or located only in the personal collections of dyed-in-the-wool activists around Philadelphia, New York, and Oakland, Maroon’s work as activist, antiprison organizer, commentator, and critical theorist are finally coming to wider public attention. Within movement circles, Maroon’s writing has long been touted as visionary. Scholars are only just now beginning to appreciate his range of thought, and his knack for locating contemporary politics squarely within the historic contexts that produced them. Even the name he has taken—Maroon— signifies a location of self in the bosom of radical history. Revisiting the Surinam Maroon Wars of the late eighteenth century, Shoatz also resists the temptation to flatten and simplify histories, marking important distinctions between Boni Maroons (those who were unwilling to compromise their vision of liberation against the Dutch) and “Treaty Maroons” who often worked against the interests of other self-liberated communities. As he writes, Unlike the “treaty maroons,” the Bonis never became dependent upon the imperialists for anything, instead relying on their raiding capabilities to capture guns, powder, cannons, and other useful items. More­ over, they had perfected methods of large-scale open field agriculture that allowed them to raise, harvest and store more food than they could consume. (Shoatz 2013, 113) Maroon’s historical knowledge works to undermine traditional histories of enslavement that minimize resistance. His interrogation of this history invites a reconsideration of organized opposition to slavery in the Americas. Moreover, by locating himself within a tradition of discontent, students and scholars are urged to revisit previous regional histories of enslavement, or mine the historical record for events that have escaped rigorous scholarly attention. Critically, Maroon forces a rethinking of the purpose of education,

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which he believes is to reach younger generations of students, activists, and scholars as well as, and perhaps especially, those imprisoned. For scholars of 1960s-era radicalism, Maroon’s writings provide added texture to the transition from civil rights to Black power especially as these transitions occurred locally in Philadelphia. Arguably, Maroon’s most critical intervention is his analysis of the capitalist underpinnings of patriarchy. In an essay titled, “Respect Our Mothers: Stop Hating Women,” he urges men primarily to work toward undoing their default attachment to patriarchal capitalism: “Most men have gone their whole lives being socialized to either exploit women or simply ignore . . . the obvious disadvantages that a majority of women are forced to live with.” And this is a matter for men of color to resolve, for in his view, “the most exploited or brutalized man still believes in his heart that he’s better than any woman,” a belief that contributes to the frequency of physical violence against women. Maroon’s ability to link movement histories to multiple forms of structural and internalized oppression serves to reassess the past and provide a vision of future possibility (Shoatz 2010, 203). Finally, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s unique blend of media justice and critical Africana social commentary consistently punctures the social consciousness in important ways. Abu-Jamal is arguably the face of the political prisoner in the United States although his experiences are linked to numerous others who have suffered similarly but who have escaped widespread attention. Aside from his relatively recent move from solitary confinement to general population, and the recent crisis of his physical health, Abu-Jamal’s name and case have been in the news recently owing to resurgent efforts to bring him home, and especially due to controversy over Debo Adegbile’s nomination for head of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. The dustup over Adegbile’s past as a castmember of Sesame Street as a youth was certainly the target of ridicule. However, the vehement and vocal opposition to his candidacy during the Senate’s vetting process swelled when it was revealed that Adegbile served as a member of the team of lawyers who challenged the solitary confinement of Abu-Jamal, protecting his constitutional rights, no less. Moreover, Adegbile was heavily scrutinized by the right and its sympathetic, if unwitting, supporters in the press. Through it all, Mumia has persisted, continuing to provide incisive social commentary on a range of issues through his regular commentaries on Prison Radio and broadcasts through a number of online webstreams, podcasts, and noncommercial radio shows around the country. In January 2014, the Feminist Wire held an online forum that explored his case history and his political impact from a range of intellectual and activist angles (see Ford 2014). Mumia kicked off the forum with a stirring tribute to women leaders and activists, such as welfare rights organizers Etta Horn and

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Johnnie Tillman, as well as Frankie Adams of the Brooklyn chapter of the BPP, Kathleen Cleaver, and Safiya Bukhari, all who have been marginalized or ignored in the historical record of the civil rights, women’s rights, and Black power movements (Abu-Jamal 2014). It is important to note that as many women were arrested during the civil rights and Black power movements as men. Often the treatment of women by authorities was as bad or worse as their male counterparts, and they were often exposed to forms of sexual violence only reserved for women. Therefore their absence from the historical record of these movements is disappointing at the very least. Yet, scholars such as Dayo Gore, Tracye Matthews, Kimberly Springer, and others have been on the forefront of resurrecting the histories of late 1950s- and ’60s-era progressive, left-leaning, and radical Black women. Taken together, the activist-intellectual experiences and commitments of Shakur, Bukhari, Shoatz, and Abu-Jamal present a critical point of entry into the study of traditions of resistance, repression, and radical vision. Linking twentieth-century experiences of Black radical activism to the research and writing about the carceral state breathes new life into “history from below” (Bhattacharya 1983, 3–20). Taking these renegade narratives into account, Africana Studies and Ethnic Studies scholars are forced to grapple with a complicated narrative of political activity beyond a neat transitional and often teleological chronology of civil rights and Black power. Moreover, they urge reconsideration of the relationship scholars have to the state. These examples show that a struggle against police brutality, the courts, and the death penalty, as well as infiltration, subversion, and intra-movement strife existed alongside the demands placed on American educational institutions for Black Studies and Ethnic Studies programs and departments.

INSTITUTIONALIZING INSURRECTIONAL KNOWLEDGE(S) Scholars such as Joy James have led the way in the intellectual scrutiny of the carceral state within an Africana Studies pedagogical frame. To advance and in some ways extend her work, James has established the Harriet Tubman Literary Circle (HTLC),5 a digital repository accessible through the University of Texas library. This collection, though not intended to be exhaustive, contains the writings and audio interviews of a range of activists, political prisoners, and the writings of scholars who engage imprisonment in their work, offering a unique online portal for deepening intellectual-activist engagement. Though she is already modeling the work I have described here, we do well to ask ourselves how we can use the academy to advance and accelerate an open opposition to imprisonment, whether through course offerings or campus divestment from the prison industrial complex or more pointedly, capitalist penal democracy. James (2002) places an explanation of the urgency of this agenda before

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scholars of all kinds, but especially before scholars of the African diaspora when she writes, “In this era . . . prisons and policing pose the most visceral and unsettling juxtapositions between freedom and ‘slavery’; between citizenship and subjugation” (xv). Scholars whose work has begun to identify the limits placed on Black and Brown citizenship by race-making institutions, such as financial systems, educational institutions, the courts, health service management, and prisons, are perhaps best suited to do the kinds of work I am calling for here. Over the past forty-plus years, Africana and Ethnic Studies scholarship has been a force for exposing the racial regimes of modern society, having long identified the academy as not only a site for the exchange and interrogation of ideas, but also as a site of life and death struggle over the meaning of Black and Brown humanity. Carceral Studies work helps to identify the prison as a premier race-making institution. One that produces stigma, cements class standing, reserves particular forms of violence for women, queer, and trans-bodies, and efficiently imbricates so-called civil society with new and improved systems of surveillance and control. Carceral Studies views the carceral regime as one in constant crisis rather than in need of neoliberal reforms. Explicitly linking the work of Africana, Ethnic, and Carceral Studies fosters a deeper understanding of structural oppression and opens up numerous possibilities of institutional challenge. In this way, this constellation of scholar-activists and social theorists are contributors, or better yet, co-conspirators in the project of what scholar Reiland Rabaka (2010) has termed Africana critical theory whose primary purpose is to relate radical thought to revolutionary practice, which is to say that its focus—philosophical, social, and political—is always and ever the search for ethical alternatives and viable moral solutions to the most pressing problem of our present age. . . . Africana critical theory is not thought for thought’s sake, but critical thought for life and liberation’s sake. It is not only a style of writing which focuses on radicalism and revolution but, even more, it represents a new way of thinking about and doing revolution that is based and constantly being built on the best of the radicalisms and revolutions of the past. (20–21) Building on the contributions of Rabaka, Joy James, and others, I am invested in searching out the interventions that these activist-intellectuals make in the reading of blackness and difference as criminal, deviant, or dissident, unable to assimilate to quotidian social norms. As well, scholars such as Juanita Díaz-Cotto, B. V. Olguín, and Alan Eladio Gómez have pushed for a deeper appraisal of the carceral state with an intense focus on its historic and continuous reach into the lives of Chicana/o and Latino activists within

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borders and barbed wired dungeons throughout the United States. Much is gained when we read these scholars against a discourse of state and institutional logics that render their struggles mute. My goal here is to single out their critical contributions to critical Africana theory, Ethnic Studies, and liberation politics that will invite scholars to take seriously their contributions and incorporate them into curricula and writing projects as central to the framing of Africana and Ethnic Studies inside and outside of the academy. Moreover, when we interpret their work on intellectual terms, the knowledge production of Shakur, Abu-Jamal, Raúl Salinas, and even white liberationists such as Marilyn Buck and Ray Luc Levassuer, is also insurrectional to a purely aspirational Africana or Ethnic Studies project that merely conforms to preexisting academic behaviors and default expectations, or those that have become indistinct from every other academic program at the college or university. Instead, their work is best framed as the pedagogical legacy of the Black Panther Party, as each of them were members or supporters of the organization at critical junctures in their activist lives, and who in many ways carry that vision forward regardless of the circumstances they face. As AbuJamal (2004) writes at the conclusion of his autobiographical account of the Black Panther Party, “that deep feeling, that sense of alienation lives still in millions of Black hearts at this hour, in every ghetto in America—and elsewhere. The repression of the state muted that expression, driving some of it underground. . . . The Black Panther Party may indeed be history, but the forces that gave rise to it are not” (250). This history is necessarily linked with and informed by sociocultural and political claims urged by formations ranging from the Young Lords, Brown Berets, as well as Native American/ First Nation, and Chicano/a movements for self-determination and radical articulations of citizenship.

CONCLUSION The work of undoing the carceral regime requires that we mobilize a view of history that traces the sickness of imprisonment “back to the auction block,” as the epigraph at the start of this chapter suggests. Taken together, researchers and scholars in common cause with imprisoned and exiled intellectuals can reveal elaborate and often chilling lessons in the technologies, scope, and mutability of state violence. They also facilitate a critical mapping of state hostility toward the production of knowledge that unmasks such violence as a threat to our social well-being. Moreover, political prisoners and exiled intellectuals reveal prisons as the flagship institutions of capitalist democracy. Due in part to their exposure to the full weight of state power, their commentaries and analyses are an indictment of the ritualized, hypertechnological, heavily armored violence trained on the bodies of Black and

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Brown communities. Possessed with a vision toward openly contesting carceral regimes of power, these activists’ works, and the scholarship that increases their visibility, achieve an insurrectional purpose. Collectively, their visionary articulations restore Black people and People of Color into souls committed to liberation. By reminding scholars, students, and activists of the need to systematically interrogate and historically contextualize prison(er) rebellions, hunger strikes, immigrant detention, prison privatization, solitary confinement, queer and trans incarceration, incarcerated pregnant women and mothers, multigenerational incarceration, carceral geriatrics, and theories of prison abolition, in addition to what I have enumerated above, new avenues of intellectual-activist inquiry necessarily emerge. In significant ways, the Black Lives Matter movement inherits and mobilizes this legacy. These case histories, and hundreds of others, must become priorities in scholarship and teaching concerned with advancing social justice. The claims justifying Africana and Ethnic Studies’ engagement are not intended to articulate an easy sense of solidarity, but rather to examine the challenges, relevance, and stakes of activist-driven scholarship. A closer interrogation of imprisonment through an Africana and Ethnic Studies lens offers an enriched knowledge of the prison as a site of struggle, and an institutional logic to be struggled against. It is hoped that such an understanding will structure Africana and Ethnic Studies’ critical engagement with histories of institutional racism and race-making, where front-line engagement is fostered, and where justice claims continue to be made.

NOTES The author wishes to thank Korina Jocson for her critical feedback and editorial comment on an earlier draft of this chapter, and the National Council for Black Studies where many of the arguments presented here were appreciably debated and discussed. 1. I intend to speak directly to Africana Studies scholars, however the field of Ethnic Studies as a whole is within my purview. Considering this, most of the discussion herein is Africana-focused. Yet, Ethnic Studies scholars or imprisoned intellectuals from outside of a specific Africana location are included in this chapter. 2. In this chapter I often use the terms Africana Studies, African American Studies, and Black Studies interchangeably. 3. By “post-Movement” I am referring to movements and efforts that come long after the high water mark of the civil rights and Black power movements. It refers to a period of decentralized organizing around specific, but related issues that have not always cohered into an organizational identity or a firm set of demands and manifestos as happened in earlier periods of social protest. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement is currently an expansive political organizing motif, and its history is still being written.

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4. The term long-distance runner is drawn from the introduction to Gore, Theoharis & Woodard (2009), which they use to describe the multiple ways Black women engaged in liberatory politics and organizations. 5. The Harriet Tubman Literary Circle can be found at http://repositories.lib .utexas.edu/handle/2152/7828, accessed September 23, 2014.

REFERENCES Abu-Jamal, Mumia. 2004. We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. Cambridge: South End Press. Abu-Jamal, Mumia. 2014, January 20. “Mumia on Martin Luther King, Women, and the Movement,” The Feminist Wire. Abu-Jamal, Mumia, and Johanna Fernandez, eds. 2014, November. “The Roots of Mass Incarceration: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor,” Socialism and Democracy, Special Issue 66. Berger, Dan. 2014a. Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Berger, Dan. 2014b. The Struggle Within: Prisons, Political Prisoners and Mass Movements in the United States. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi. 1983. “History from Below.” Social Scientist 11(4): 3–20. Boghosian, Heidi, and Johanna Fernandez. 2015, April 16. “A Slow Death for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Thousands of Prisoners in America. Huffington Post. Bukhari, Safiya. 2003. “Coming of Age: A Black Revolutionary (1979).” In Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion, edited by Joy James, 122–34. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bukhari, Safiya. 2010. The War Before: The True Story of Becoming a Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison, and Fighting for Those Left Behind. New York: The Feminist Press. Daulatzai, Sohail. 2013, May 9. “Are We All Muslim Now? Assata Shakur and the Terrordome,” AlJazeera. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. 2015, May 29. “U.S. Removes Cuba from State-Sponsored Terrorism List,” New York Times. Díaz-Cotto, Juanita. 2006. Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice: Voices from El Barrio. Austin: University of Texas Press. Eromosele, Diana Ozemeboyha. 2015, April 17. “U.S. Official: Extradition of Assata Shakur to States Still Up for Discussion,” The Root. Ford, Tanisha C. 2014, January 20. “Fire in the Skies: Introduction to the Mumia and Mass Incarceration Forum,” The Feminist Wire. Gómez, Alan Eladio. 2006. “Resisting Living Death at Marion Federal Penitentiary, 1972,” Radical History Review 96(Fall): 58–86. Gore, Dayo, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard, eds. Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Black Women in the Black Freedom Struggle. New York: New York University Press. James, Joy, ed. 2002. States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. James, Joy, ed. 2003. Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Kelley, Robin D. G., and Tiffany Patterson. 2000. “Unfinished Migrations,” African Studies Review 43(1): 11–35. “Lifetime Likelihood of Imprisonment.” The Sentencing Project. http://www.sen tencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=122. Accessed on June 21, 2015. Lowery, Wesley, and Ed O’Keefe. 2014, March 5. “Senate Rejects Obama Appointment of Debo Adegbile to Top Civil Rights Post,” Washington Post. Maag, Christopher. 2013, May 2. “New Push to Capture Woman in ’73 Killing of State Trooper,” New York Times. Accessed July 15, 2013. Olguín, B.V. 2010. La Pinta: Chicano/a Prisoner Literature, Culture and Politics. Austin: University of Texas Press. Rabaka, Reiland. 2010. Against Epistemic Apartheid: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Disciplinary Decadence of Sociology. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Sexton, Jared. 2007. “Racial Profiling and the Societies of Control.” In Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy, edited by Joy James, 197–218. Durham: Duke University Press. Shakur, Assata. 1987. Assata: An Autobiography. London: Zed Books. Shakur, Assata. 1987. “To My Momma” (poem), In Assata: An Autobiography, 193– 94. London: Zed Books. Shoatz, Russell Maroon. 2013. Maroon: The Implacable, edited by Fred Ho and Quincy Saul. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Shoatz, Russell Maroon. 2013. “Respect Our Mothers: Stop Hating Women (2010).” In Maroon: The Implacable, edited by Fred Ho and Quincy Saul, 191–214. Oakland: PM Press. Tillotson, Michael, and Serie McDougal. 2013. “Applied Africana Studies,” Journal of Black Studies 44(1): 101–13. Tinson, Christopher M. 2014, January 20. “Schooling the Generations: Education and the Relevance of Mumia Abu-Jamal in Times of Crisis,” The Feminist Wire. Tinson, Christopher, and Carlos McBride. 2013. “Hip Hop, Critical Pedagogy, and Radical Education in a Time of Crisis: Introduction to Special Issue,” Radical Teacher 97(Fall): 1–9. Wacquant, Loïc. 2001. “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh.” Punishment & Society 3(1): 95–134. Wacquant, Loïc. 2005. “Race as Civic Felony.” International Social Science Journal 57(183): 127–42. Wagner, Peter, and Leah Sakala. 2014, March 12. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie.” Prison Policy Institute. http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie.html. Accessed June 21, 2015. Wilderson, Frank. 2010. Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham: Duke University Press. Williams, Franklin H. 1960. “The Death Penalty and the Negro.” The Crisis 67(8): 501–12. Winn, Maisha T. 2010. “We Are All Prisoners: Privileging Prison Voices in Black Print Culture.” Journal of African American History 95(3–4): 392–416. Wun, Connie. 2013, July 11. “Guided Home to Port: Assata Shakur, State Terror and Black Resistance.” The Feminist Wire.

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Issues in the Ethnic Studies Culture Wars: A Veteran’s Insights Rodolfo F. Acuña

ARIZONA: THE AMERICAN DREAM The National Committee for Protection of Foreign Born Workers was established in 1923 in reaction to the virulent xenophobia of a Republican Congress and president toward immigrant workers. The committee also organized for the workers’ right to organize and strike. This campaign resulted in the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. The latter ushered in an era of racial engineering designed to keep America “American,” which meant not only white but northern European and Protestant. The protection for the foreign-born movement was not new—it dated back to the 1820s as church people sought to protect Irish workers and their families. Over the years it became part of progressive thinking in the United States. The American Dream was different in the nineteenth century. The meaning of what constitutes an American was more narrowly defined. The suffragette movement and birth control was part of a dream for equality for women, but it also harbored the dreams of a white and Protestant America. But even then, a progressive strain existed within these movements that had a broader and more inclusive and humane vision. For example, twenty years ago I had the honor of staying at the Alma Mathews House in New York. It was part of a women’s settlement house movement and the activists would go down to the docks to meet the boatloads of immigrants. They would compete with the pimps and take young girls to the house and give them free lodging until they could find jobs. Mainstream labor at first did not seek to accommodate the immigrant; its American dream was all white. Indeed, the Western Federation of Miners, which had a progressive reputation, discriminated against and excluded

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Mexican workers. The protection of foreign workers regardless of race fell almost solely on the Industrial Workers of the World, a.k.a. Wobblies. For progressives, the struggle for human rights gradually became as much a part of labor struggles as economic rights. The protection for the foreign-born movement is much larger today, and along with the third-wave feminist and the Gay and Lesbian Rights movements, it focuses the fight on human rights. The struggle for the Dream Act formally began its national campaign on April 25, 2001, when Representative Luis Gutiérrez (D-Illinois) introduced the “Immigrant Children’s Educational Advancement and Dropout Prevention Act of 2001.” But it is much older and has come a long way since that time. Ownership today belongs to the Dreamers—young undocumented immigrants. I support these three movements, although I have questions about the American Dream. When gays demanded access to ROTC, I asked why? I have the same feeling about women demanding the right to fight in combat. Currently there are some Dreamers who are asking for the right to join the armed forces. In every case, it is part of the American Dream—of being American— of trying to prove you are an American. I wonder if this should be so, especially if the American Dream includes an imperialist foreign policy. It is baffling that these targets of discrimination believe in the American Dream when so many of us who are citizens are disillusioned with it. Someone would say we are pessimistic or that we have suffered a loss of nationalism— maybe so! Some people exist on dreams. It is natural for human beings to want a better life—that is why we have revolutions. Everyone, whether they are Brown or white, wants a better life. Fashion magazines, the media, and motion pictures have constructed the American Dream. The United States has the material trappings that most of the rest of the world lack. It is similar to what Carey McWilliams (1948) calls the “Fantasy heritage”— the mystique surrounding California (41–53). John Steven McGroarty in Mission Memories (1929) wrote, “California was the happiest land the world had ever known. There was peace and plenty, and hospitality became a religion. Song and laughter filled the sunny mornings” (7). Magazines and the movies popularized this “American apotheosis.” According to geographer Don Mitchell (1996), the myth created a disconnect between image and reality. Mitchell used a scene from The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck to demonstrate his point: “The Joads traveling from Oklahoma through inhospitable land reach the crest of the Tehachapi Pass and looked down at the San Joaquin Valley—the California Eden. Pa Joad: ‘I never knowed there was anything like her.’ Ma Joad: ‘Thank God! The family’s here.’ They drive on down into the valley. As they get closer they see the suffering families of all races: Starving children; suffering of the workers; discrimination” (9, 13).

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The “Fantasy heritage” that McWilliams talks about is the selective appropriation of historical fact. Instruments of oppression such as the missions and ranchos are romanticized. It is as if Hollywood were writing history. When I was a child my father would tell me about life. He would grow solemn and say, “I don’t want you to make the same mistakes that I did.” He thought that if he told me his experiences I would not get hurt. Of course, I made the same mistakes; I pursued the dreams of my time. The best way not to make mistakes is to live life, look behind the landscape, and, to do that, you have to get close to it. My greatest criticism of Chicana/o scholars is that like their white counterparts, they are creating impressionistic landscapes—never separating the dream from reality. They are learning history in translation. Thus, they recycle their chismes, never living or waking up, never seeing life in the original. Not long ago a group of graduate students wanted a course on anarchism. I told them to go to anarchist meetings; you can never know an environment without knowing what is behind the landscape. It is not that you acquire knowledge solely by doing. Literature, history, and the arts all add to your appreciation of what you see. Reading the works of Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) informed me. His dramatical work, La vida es sueño (1635) told me a lot about life (dreams). “La vida es sueño” is about Segismundo, a Polish prince who is banished to a prison and when he is born a prophecy tells the king that his son, Segismundo, will be a cruel king. He sends the infant to prison. When he reaches adulthood, the king relents. He brings him to the court and tells him the truth. Drunk with power and anger, Segismundo acts out the prophecy. The horrified king drugs the prince and returns him to the prison. When he awakens he does not know whether he is dreaming or awake: o sueño que estoy aquí de estas prisiones cargado, y soñé que en otro estado más lisonjero me vi. ¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión, una sombra, una ficción y el mayor bien es pequeño: que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son1 I dream that I am here by these goals burdened, and I dreamed that in another condition

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happier I saw myself. What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction, and the greatest good puny is; for life entire is a dream, and the dreams, nothing but dreams are. Segismundo is freed by his father’s enemies and he defeats his father in battle. As he is about to kill the king, he relents, What if it is all a dream: “if a dream taught me this wisdom, and if I still fear I may wake up and find myself once more confined in prison? And even if this should not happen, merely to dream it is enough. For this I have come to know, that all human happiness finally ceases, like a dream.”2 But, if we don’t wake up, how can we tell if it is a dream or real? Our dreams may very well turn out to be nightmares for others.

HOW HISTORY IS SOCIALLY CONTROLLED IN K–12: SETTING STANDARDS Serfs and Lords People ask me if the banning of books is actually a blessing in disguise because it calls attention to the authors and targets of the censorship. I respond, “Hell no!” Censorship threatens our freedom of speech and it is the final step toward a totalitarian state. In the guise of security, our emails and our phones are tapped. Anyone using Wi-Fi can be spied on at will. What is happening today pales in comparison to George Orwell’s 1984; it is as insidious as the methods used by the Nazis, the Stasi [Moderator’s note: East German state police], and the Soviet KGB. The fallout of the banning of books affects all of us. In the future, unless we resist, it will negatively affect the publication of Latina/o books. What makes it so dangerous is that most of us are oblivious to this threat to our liberties. We are like the serfs in the Middle Ages who willingly surrendered their freedoms and their properties to the feudal lords in return for protection. The first fatality of censorship is the truth. In the case of the censorship of books by the Tucson Unified School District, it was not just the books that were banned; this censorship will affect what gets published in the future. The banning of books did not affect the sales of Occupied America or the other banned books—the banning certainly did not hurt Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

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The big losers are the new authors. Mexican Americans and Latina/os do not have a defined market share to start off. Will publishers take a chance or will they fear the banning of future works? As it stands, many publishers look at us as foreigners and constantly fabricate excuses to refuse to print or reprint books on U.S. Latina/os. The book ban in Arizona may have a chilling effect on less established authors of Chicana/o children’s books whose previous works showed promise; their publishers will now take a wait-and-see stance to see which way the wind blows. This hits close to home—I have been here before. My first works were children and young adult books. Publishers accepted them because there was a slight opening in the marketplace. They saw an emerging market for my books in California and Texas. In the latter sixties, California’s social studies standards integrated Mexican Americans into the textbook guidelines; this represented a huge breakthrough. California purchased all the books for its school districts so, even as supplemental reading material, there was a niche for our work. The other major market was Texas. Publishers could have cared less whether Nebraska expressed an interest in Chicana/o K–12 children’s books. Publishers cared and care more about profit than need and the massive Texas market has long defined what publishers accept. I originally had planned on writing a children’s book at least once every other year. At the time, the children’s books of Nephtali De Leon and Ernesto Galarza, which went beyond entertainment to ill historical and cultural vacuums, inspired me. At first, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was enthusiastic about the books. However, things quickly changed. The first rebuke involved a teacher backlash such as when San Joaquin Valley teachers threw the canonical Cultures in Conflict into the wastebasket and refused to teach it. Meanwhile, my activism was making waves, and Chicanos in the TEA told me that they were getting complaints about me from various districts. I was told in confidence that Texas would not be buying my books; the American Book Company and Charter Books confirmed this; both had planned to publish more books on Mexican Americans. These were not isolated cases. The truth be told, thought control exists throughout American education. It is subtle and is much less transparent than the blatant banning of books. In Tucson, the books were removed from the classrooms in full view of students and teachers. The only thing that was missing was the inquisitor’s bonfire. Also, most districts are not as stupid as Tucson to outlaw Shakespeare. In California, and the rest of the country, commissions are appointed by the state boards of education to determine what can be taught at K–12

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grade levels. The commissions are comprised of small groups of educators— generally white. Special interest groups, who want their version of the Apostles’ Creed taught in the schools, follow their actions closely. Political appointees and not educators per se now dominate the boards. Standards may seem innocuous. Indeed, the word standard seems progressive, and we think of it as some kind of measurement. The mindset is that standards are necessary to further safety. They are necessary to improve our lives. But the word is not as innocent as it seems. Today, the setting of standards in education has reached ridiculous proportions. It dictates what students can and cannot learn. Who is and who is not important to know about. In every sense of the word it amounts to censorship. Without the knowledge about the diversity of people comprising our country’s population, the fight over standards has become part of the nation’s culture wars. The problem is not so much about setting benchmarks in math and science—that is, unless the teaching of Creationism muddies those standards. The major battlefields are in the field of history and the social sciences where right-wing conservative groups are focusing their attacks. Even liberals, such as the late historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., often join the nativist ranks. In the 1990s, Schlesinger wrote The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society to attack the perceived threats of multiculturalism and Afro-centrism. His position was so jingoistic that Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor of English and Afro-American Studies at Harvard, called Schlesinger’s arguments a “demand [for a] cultural white-face.” Schlesinger and his gaggle of supporters wanted U.S. standards to focus more on what the United States has done right than wrong on topics such as slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. According to Schlesinger, the American identity was in jeopardy because multiculturalism and Afro-centrism placed race and ethnicity over national affiliation. Identity politics, according to Schlesinger, promoted separatist ideas of history. Today, well-funded right-wing foundations such as the National Association of Scholars have openly entered the culture wars. Their tactics are to purchase right-wing scholars and fund their research. In reality, Schlesinger’s position was not out of character. In a January 23, 2008, editorial by Barry Gwen in the New York Times titled “The C.I.A. and the Culture War,” he wrote that Schlesinger’s early career was funded by the agency.3 The practice was part of the Cold War strategy. In recent years Texas has been in the eye of the storm. Recent iterations of its fifteen-member board of education has seemed intent on promoting curricula that cultivates suspicion of the principle of separation of church and

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state and indoctrinates students on the alleged contributions of the National Rifle Association (NRA) to American history. Texas is important because in 2011 it had 4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren. The board that selects standards will thus largely determine what our nation’s children will read. Special interests control the board because of a light turnout of voters and because the contributions of wealthy donors are supporting the election of culture warriors. This is not new. Since the 1960s, the selection of schoolbooks in Texas has been the target of the religious right. Why do publishers tolerate these standards and demands to censor books? They are in it for the money. The State of Texas pays for the textbooks and the loss of this market could be a financial disaster. In Arizona and Texas, the Mexican has replaced the communist as the boogeyman. Witness the idiocy of Arizona attorney general Tom Horne, who justifies the censorship of books and the attack on Mexican American Studies by making absurd accusations alleging that Mexican American Studies (MAS) promotes separatism and intends the reconquest of Aztlán. In conclusion, the banning of books and allowing right-wing extremists to tell us what students should learn or not learn is a banal form of thought control. It is undemocratic and we should fight back.

IS A VICTORY REALLY A VICTORY? Obama’s Immigration Order and Ethnic Studies People want to believe; they want to have hope. Everyone loves a happy person, and that’s great but it makes critical thinking all the more difficult. It is like having a gas attack at a party. No one appreciates Mr. Doom in their midst. Most people are just making a living and surviving, and no one wants that Chicano bullshit messing up a good time. I am very mindful of stepping on shit and getting those sniffing stares. So when I heard President Barack Obama’s announcement about signing an executive order staying the deportation of about 4.5 million undocumented parents of children born in the United States, my reaction was cautious. Watching the White House playing out the immigration scenario has been like watching a schoolyard toughie tell someone repeatedly, “I am going to beat you up.” About the twentieth time he sings the same old song you want to say to him, well just do it! A lot of us were hopeful when Obama first said that he was going to fix the immigration mess. Indeed, there have been partial actions, such as that for the Dreamers; however, at almost every step of the way he seems afraid

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to alienate Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats—afraid they will not love him. ICE data show the Obama administration deported 357,422 (2013); 409,849 (2012); 396,906 (2011); 392,862 (2010); 389,834 (2009); and 369,331 (2008)—totaling 2,316,204 deportations between 2008 and 2013. Also, according to ICE statistics for the fiscal year 2013, of the 357,422 deportations, 67.6% were from Mexico; Guatemala 13.4%; Honduras 10.3%; El Salvador 6%; and Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Jamaica 2.7%. The deportees were almost all Latino/a or of Caribbean origin. Contrary to popular belief over 40% had no criminal record. The truth be told, even before Obama gave the speech, many Latino/a immigration advocates were praising the president for “a monumental and historic undertaking.” Obama’s plan limited it to undocumented parents who had children who were born in the United States—the parents of the Dreamers would not be protected, and the order will only be in effect for as long as Obama is in the presidency. When some critics mentioned this, the cheerleaders started lighting matches, hoping that the “sulphur smell from the match masks the fart smell from the dog.” In this context, the recent Los Angeles Unified School Board of Education’s vote to make an Ethnic Studies course a graduation requirement, beginning with the class of 2019, produced a similar euphoria among many Latina/o activists. Student Cindy Reyes told ABC7 in Los Angeles, “We want to learn our side of the story as well.” The board’s motion calls for a phasing in of the requirement, beginning with a handful of schools in 2015–16. It will become a one-semester course by 2019. This one is difficult to criticize because the Ethnic Studies Now Campaign and other supporters have invested an awful lot of emotional capital. Activists such as Jose Lara (aka Jose del Barrio) have worked tirelessly. Ibarra, a board member of El Rancho Board of Education got the Pico Rivera School District to adopt an Ethnic Studies requirement for all students starting in 2016, and there have also been rumblings in Santa Monica and other districts. In the summer, the hopes of the activists were raised when California assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Salinas) introduced a bill that requires the state’s Department of Education to develop a model for implementing a standardized, statewide Ethnic Studies curriculum for high schools. It met with opposition and the bill was never taken to the floor. Latinos are the largest ethnic group in California schools, comprising 53% of the California student body (whites are 26%, and Asians, 9%). Despite this, as a rule, a student learns very little about the Mexican/Latino heritage of the state.

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More important and fundamental to Ethnic Studies, it leaves out critical thinking. The California thrust for Ethnic Studies comes from the “Save Ethnic Studies Campaign” around the outlawing of the Tucson Unified School District’s tremendously successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) program that almost eliminated the dropout problem and significantly improved the attendance in higher education. They forget it was based on a pedagogy of critical thinking. The MAS model was never intended to be merely cultural experience or courses on race theory. It was based on the research of educators such as Paulo Freire and Edwin Fenton. The goal was to produce critical thinkers. Nevertheless, the devil is in the detail and there are a lot of pitfalls—as we witnessed in the Alejo Bill. Chicana/o legislators similar to Obama are with you for as long as it is not inconvenient for them. Moreover, as we learned in the Tucson campaign just calling it “Save Ethnic Studies” does not unify people and in fact builds in contradictions. So take out the matches while I air some of my concerns: • This could prove to be atole con el dedo—2019 is a long way away, and there is no funding as of yet. Will conservative members and the internal bureaucracy use the budget to kill it? • We were further down the path with bicultural-bilingual education; what have we learned from that experience? • One of the biggest obstacles to Mexican American Studies at the university level was our fellow teachers who would ask, “Well, if we give you this, how about the Asians, the Native Americans, Russian Jews, and later Armenians? You are asking for special treatment. • That leads to the question, what is a minority? • What is an ethnic minority? Or, for that matter, a Latino, and should they all be given equal time? • Who is going to determine the curriculum and the pedagogy? My own opinion is that Mexican American Studies deals with identity, skill development, and critical thinking. Its development has to have internal checks and benchmarks in order for it not to become one more senior problems class. Our community deserves more. Up until now education has been exclusively the study of white America; it must be expanded to reflect the nation’s diversity but at the same time attack the dropout problem. The truth be told, few educators know much about Mexican Americans and they only think that they know about Black Americans. We have the opportunity to educate the majority society, which will not be easy. It is also educators who control our universities, and it is the universities who have contributed to this ignorance and kept us in this state.

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Is a Victory Really a Victory? We are supposed to have diversity in academe; however, we are more segregated than the community at large. Only 3–5% of the faculties are of Mexican origin. The cheerleaders say that Obama’s immigration order shows he is pro-­ immigrant. Does it? If questions are not asked, we’d better get a supply of matches and light them—in case we are not able to stand the smell.

NOTES This chapter is a collection of three essays that appeared in Dr. Acuña’s weekly blog post, which he distributes through email (also see rudyacuna.net). They were written over the last three years. “Arizona: The American Dream” was posted on February 2, 2013; “How History Is Socially Constructed in K–12: Setting Standards” was posted on May 28, 2013; and “Is Victory Really a Victory?” was posted on November 28, 2014. His essays are an important contribution in critiquing and understanding the contexts to the Ethnic Studies culture wars. 1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts /barca/barca.html. 2. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, LA VIDA ES SUEÑO, http://www.comedias.org /calderon/vidsue.pdf. 3. Barry Gewen, “The C.I.A. and the Culture War,” New York Times, January 23, 2008. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/the-cia-and-the-culture-war/?_r=0.

REFERENCES McGroarty, John Steven. 1929. Mission Memories. Los Angeles, CA: Neuner Cor­ ­po­­ration. McWilliams, Carey. 1948/1961. North from Mexico. New York: Monthly Review Press. Mitchell, Don. 1996. The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape. St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press.

Part II

Counter-Narratives: Teaching Ethnic Studies at White Institutions

5

The Battle to Decolonize Knowledge: Theories, Experiences, and Perspectives Teaching Ethnic Studies in Arizona Xamuel Bañales and Mary Roaf

ARIZONA AND ETHNIC STUDIES: A COMBAT ZONE OF EPISTEMIC STRUGGLE Arizona politics have sparked heated discussions and controversies due to their conservative agendas, particularly those that have racist, xenophobic, sexist, or homophobic implications. For example, Proposition 203, which was approved in 2000, banned bilingual education for English-language learners. Passed in 2006, Proposition 300 prohibited undocumented students from receiving state financial aid or paying in-state tuition. The most notorious is Senate Bill 1070, which was signed in 2010 by Governor Janice Brewer. Informally known as the “show me your papers” provision, which many believed was a disguised version of racial profiling, SB 1070 was the strictest anti-immigrant measure in recent U.S. history. Also in 2010, the Arizona Department of Education ordered school districts to remove teachers with English “accents” from classrooms. In the same year, Arizona lawmakers introduced a bill that would block the children of undocumented immigrants from attaining citizenship if they were born in the United States. In 2014, the Arizona state legislature passed Senate Bill 1062, the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Critics argued that it served as a disguise to refuse service to and discriminate against LGBT people. Finally, Senate Bill 1318 was approved in Arizona in 2015; it authorized abortion restrictions. Along with these examples of draconian measures, Arizona has a contentious history and negative tradition of state/police violence, racial and gender profiling, surveillance and deportations, and hostile university environments.1 For such reasons, Arizona has the undesirable reputation of being the “ground zero” of contemporary hate. Specifically, the approval of SB 1070 unleashed

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intense news reporting that created national and international outrage. The media coverage primarily focused more on political conflict and less on dedicating time to the pressing subject of immigration in Arizona or elsewhere. Artists, activists, and critics called for a boycott of Arizona, and many called the state a variety of antagonistic names, including the “Hate State” and “Nazi zona.”2 Fortunately, many organizations and people within Arizona work to challenge the vilification of the state.3 For the purposes of this chapter, the most relevant controversial Arizona legislation was House Bill 2281—commonly known as the ban of Ethnic Studies—which was signed by Governor Janice Brewer on May 11, 2010. The bill was authored by the former state superintendent of education Tom Horne (now Arizona’s attorney general) who was determined to terminate the Ethnic Studies program—particularly the Mexican American Studies component—in the K–12 Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). According to the measure, HB 2281 “declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.”4 To summarize the bill, it prohibits any classes that endorse the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote the resentment toward a class or race of people, is intended for students of a particular ethnic group, and/or encourage ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals. By December 2011, an administrative judge declared that the Ethnic Studies program in the TUSD violated Arizona state law. Despite this, as well as considerable research evidence that Ethnic Studies programs and courses have positive social and academic outcomes for students, the TUSD board voted to eliminate the program on January 10, 2012. The Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in Tucson, Arizona, was dismantled and over fifty books were banned for being in violation of the law.5 As a result, a social movement emerged that included the “librotraficantes” (book smugglers) and the student-activist organization UNIDOS.6 Supporters of Ethnic Studies and Mexican American Studies not only perceived HB 2281 as another attack on the Latin@/immigrant population but also as a form of criminalizing decolonial epistemology and methodology. Lisa Cacho (2010) argues that, “HB 2281 is less about the knowledge that Ethnic Studies curricula impart than it is about how that knowledge is taught and might be applied. The law does not make teaching about race illegal; it prohibits teaching about race through an Ethnic Studies perspective” (32). The banning of Ethnic Studies in Arizona was not the first or last time the field was under attack. To provide some examples: in the 1990s—when multiculturalism was undermined in the United States—two teachers in New Mexico were ordered to stop using Chicano studies materials in their classrooms (Santillanes 1997). In 1999, shortly after affirmative action and bilingual education were prohibited in the state of California, UC Berkeley’s

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Ethnic Studies department was threatened with stark budget cuts and with being dismantled, among other things.7 In 2013, a few years after Ethnic Studies was banned in Arizona, conservative legislators in Texas introduced senate bills that would disqualify Ethnic Studies courses from counting toward core history requirements at universities throughout the states.8 These examples demonstrate that, despite time and place, the subject of Ethnic Studies is highly contentious. What makes Ethnic Studies so controversial? Ethnic Studies emerged as an academic discipline during an intensified sociopolitical context in the United States and abroad that included police brutality and urban violence, anti–Vietnam War protests, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and the black, brown, red, yellow, feminist, and gay power protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It has a unique origin that was instituted as a demand from students, professors, and communities in struggle who were influenced by radical activism, revolutionary art and music, anticolonial movements, and antiracist scholarship. During this period, many were inspired by ideas from anti-imperialist leaders and thinkers throughout the world, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Frantz Fanon. In particular, between 1968 and 1969, Black students organized demonstrations on almost two hundred college campuses across the United States. Chicano/a, Puerto Rican, and other marginalized students—along with educators, families, and activists—also fought against institutional racism and social inequality during this time. As a result, new academic departments, like Black Studies, Chicano/a Studies, and Puerto Rican Studies, were established throughout the United States.9 The formal creation of Ethnic Studies is traced to the San Francisco Bay Area during 1968–69. After years of administrative battles and failed attempts from San Francisco State University (then known as San Francisco State College) to implement Black Studies, a majority of students from African American, Mexican American, Asian American, and Native American backgrounds organized campus coalitions known as the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF). As part of their purpose, the TWLF—along with the support of white students, particularly those involved in the activist group Students for a Democratic Society—challenged Eurocentric curriculum and epistemic racism. They fought to establish Third World Colleges that would be comprised of academic departments of Black, Chicano, Asian American and Native American Studies. Along with wanting an education that was relevant, significant, and affirming of their identities and realties, the TWLF alliance demanded an increase in the enrollment and retention of underrepresented students and faculty. To do so, the TWLF led the longest student strike in the United States, referred to as the Third World Strike—which first began at San Francisco State University, followed by UC Berkeley. The prolonged five-month battle included rigid government repression, the

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temporary closing of San Francisco State University, harsh police violence, teargas, arrests, and bloodshed. After negotiations and compromises, San Francisco State University instituted a College of Ethnic Studies and UC Berkeley a Department of Ethnic Studies—the very first of their kind in the nation (see Asian Community Center Archive Group 2009; Biondi 2012; Bloom & Martin 2013). Ethnic Studies is particularly significant because the field is a major contribution to the U.S. academy in particular and to the modern Western research university and educational institutions in general. Since its inception, the field has made a remarkable impact on people, the university, and society at large. Hundreds of Ethnic Studies programs and departments have been established at different times, places, and with varying purposes across the country, many directly linked to activist demands. In addition, research suggests that students academically and personally benefit from Ethnic Studies–based curricula, and diverse student populations in higher education increasingly rely on Ethnic Studies courses, programming, and diverse faculty and administrative support (Lee, 2009; Sleeter 2011). The field is also important for transforming traditional understanding of knowledge as it simultaneously challenges the European imperial culture’s hegemony in academia and beyond. It is one important example of epistemic decolonization that diversified knowledge production and educational institutions across the country and elsewhere. Ethnic Studies is part of a larger humanist revolution with a decolonizing intent that works to “subvert the multiple structures and interlocked chains of oppression while uncovering new ways of thinking about our collective humanity” (MaldonadoTorres 2011, 201). Therefore, the field is necessary for providing the epistemic decolonizing framework that serves to critique the limits and contradictions of our modern/colonial context while helping us to personally and collectively transcend the negative characteristics of Western thought and culture. As Michelle Téllez (2014) makes clear, we need critical Ethnic Studies in Arizona and everywhere else. Given the rich origin, history, and impact of Ethnic Studies, why is it incommensurable to Arizona, where those in legislative power are invested in banning and criminalizing the field and related curriculum? One explanation is that the abysmal conflict is constitutive of a much larger “culture war.” On the one hand, Ethnic Studies promotes critical thinking, political empowerment, and social change, among other things. On the other, because Ethnic Studies contests various forms of colonization, violence, and oppression on multiple levels, the field challenges the traditionalist and conservative values of white heteropatriarchy settler colonialism of the United States and other Western societies. In other words, Ethnic Studies—like other forms of decolonial thought and practice—in Arizona (and elsewhere) represents a “battle for minds” (Butler 2001) and a combat zone of epistemic struggle.

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Interrelated to this contemporary culture war is the overall demographic shift in Arizona and across the United States, pointing to the increasing numbers of racialized people and a significant decline in the white population. Such demographic changes can signal a potential destabilization of neocolonial forms of institutional, political, economic, and racial control as a governing logic. Outlawing Ethnic Studies (in conjunction with passing draconian laws that target marginalized communities), then, becomes a way that racialized populations, their knowledge, identities, and perspectives are further delegitimized, while racial hierarchies and other structures of power— including conservative traditions, Eurocentrism, and those who benefit from this—increase or remain intact. This politic becomes apparent across universities where both the demographics and culture of academia is noticeably white, heterosexual/normative, and middle and upper-middle class. While student populations and general demographics in the country become increasingly diverse, the majority of full-time faculty positions overwhelmingly continue to be occupied by white men and women. Unfortunately, the violence and challenges of neoliberalism that Ethnic Studies faces in the contemporary culture war also affect the field internally. Many of the traditionalist and conservative values of white heteropatriarchy settler colonialism of Western societies manifest within the practice and attitudes of Ethnic Studies scholars. For instance, several Ethnic Studies units have succumbed to institutional pressures of conformity, competition, and individualism. It is not uncommon for Ethnic Studies scholars to be divisive, engage in power struggles over limited resources, or enact a politic of “hierarchy of oppressions” (Lorde 1984). Internal struggles relating to tenuretrack positions, funding, or programming often pit scholars against one another in marginalizing and silencing ways. Patriarchal privilege and political/ educational agendas that benefit heteronormative men may be hidden under the guise of promoting “equity” in the university. In many cases, uncritical— often tokenizing—scholarship and pedagogy is what is the most rewarded in Ethnic Studies units. Wittingly or unwittingly, whether by choice or survival, Ethnic Studies scholars can be seduced to participate in the very oppressive systems that the field was created and charged to contest. Taking into account such conundrums, this chapter is about the battle to decolonize knowledge in modern neoliberal university during a time of significant demographic changes and political shifts. We incorporate and analyze student feedback, as well as share personal narratives of common barriers and positive aspects we experienced as faculty teaching Ethnic Studies courses at Northern Arizona University. Moreover, the chapter calls attention to how culture wars manifest within and without Ethnic Studies, and how students and faculty, regardless of sociopolitical standing, are implicated in the process. We advocate for the development, relevance, and growth of the discipline of

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(critical) Ethnic Studies and offer pedagogical strategies that have helped us with some of the difficulties of teaching the subject of race/racism in Arizona. Although teaching Ethnic Studies comes with many battles, we argue that the field is necessary for providing the epistemic decolonizing framework that helps to transcend the negative characteristics of Western thought.

THE ETHNIC STUDIES PROGRAM AT NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY The northern part of Arizona, particularly the city of Flagstaff, differs substantially from the rest of the state, which is characterized by its desert landscape and weather, large metropolitan areas (Tucson and Phoenix), and conservative politics, such as those that were outlined previously in this chapter. Located at almost 7,000 feet above sea level near the edge of the Colorado Plateau, along the largest connecting pine forest in the continental United States, and next to the volcanic mountain range of the San Francisco Peaks, Flagstaff has a general climate of high precipitation where temperatures can drop to freezing. Flagstaff is uniquely located in relative close proximity to several Native American reservations, including the Navajo and Hopi, and the city has a considerable amount of Mexican/Latin@ inhabitants. African American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander populations are relatively small while the majority of the residents of the city is roughly 70% white.10 Flagstaff has an early economic history that includes ranching, railroad, and lumber industries, and the city is often considered a small college town with liberal politics. In sum, Flagstaff differs in geography, climate, and politics to the rest of Arizona. Located in Flagstaff, Northern Arizona University (NAU) is currently the only college in Arizona with a formal Ethnic Studies program. Decades after the creation and proliferation of the discipline during the 1960s and early 1970s—NAU’s Ethnic Studies program was established after a prolonged battle between student-activists and resistant university administration. In 2001, a group of primarily Black students who were involved in various levels of university affairs—including student government, sports, and academic clubs—raised several concerns about the racism they faced in the classroom and on campus.11 As a solution, campus activists proposed implementing diversity in the curriculum, such as creating new African American and Chicano Studies majors, and they wanted an increase in the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students and faculty, including women professors and administrators (see Turf 2001). Facing increasing resistance from university authorities, a group of students created a multiethnic alliance and led an antiracist campaign on campus and in Flagstaff. Examples of their protests included a twenty-two-student sit-in in the office of the NAU president and

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hanging provocative posters throughout the city that depicted the campus as racist. Since there was already an Ethnic Studies steering committee on campus that consisted of faculty and staff committed to the project, the Ethnic Studies program at NAU was eventually created, currently instituted under the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and alongside the Applied Indigenous Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs. Since the inception of an Ethnic Studies program at NAU, the university offers an Ethnic Studies minor for undergraduates and a certificate for graduate students. In 2014, the roster included twenty-eight undergraduate courses and six graduate courses. Moreover, the initial Ethnic Studies Steering Committee of five members evolved into a program that includes some tenuredtrack professors, several affiliated faculty, full-time lecturers, and administrative representatives. The program has created an Ethnic Studies Ambassadors project that consists of undergraduate students who are minoring in Ethnic Studies. These students are leaders in various capacities at NAU, such as promoting the Ethnic Studies minor, coordinating and hosting guest speakers and events that focus on themes related to Ethnic Studies, as well as serving as a bridge between the university and the local community. After the launching of the Ethnic Studies program, in conjunction with increasing demographic shifts and pressures for colleges to promote diversity, NAU made significant policy changes at the institutional level. In order to graduate with a baccalaureate degree from NAU, students are now required to take two general requirement courses: one that focuses on underrepresented ethnic groups in the United States and another on global diversity in non-Western regions. The “Ethnic Diversity” institutional requirement is one of the reasons Ethnic Studies courses at NAU are generally impacted but also why students from disparate academic majors and interest enroll in the classes (the majority of students take Ethnic Studies courses to fulfill the university’s liberal studies or diversity requirements). On the one hand, teaching Ethnic Studies courses to students who would otherwise most likely never be exposed to the discipline is a great and unusual opportunity to challenge normative ways of thinking. On the other hand, teaching about topics that many find to be “controversial” and “partisan” presents several problems, especially when students feel that they are taking a class against their will. That is, not “preaching to the choir”—in this case, to students who already understand Ethnic Studies—comes with advantages as well as several pitfalls, which we will describe further in this chapter. While significant strides have been made to establish a strong Ethnic Studies program at NAU, the field faces many challenges, including reduced budget allocations and lack of autonomy. Other obstacles are related to reactionary public policy measures, laws, and politics, and dominant racist ideologies—such as the passing of HB 2281 that we previously mentioned,

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regardless if it targeted K–12 education in Tucson, Arizona. To provide an example particular to NAU, over a decade after its implementation, the Ethnic Studies program operates with volunteer directors (instead of chairs), has struggled in securing full-time tenure-track faculty lines, has been threatened with being dismantled at various times, and must regularly show existing demand for the classes to rationalize funding (as opposed to being viewed as an automatic/necessary component for a liberal arts education). Another example is that, despite over a decade of multiple attempts to expand into an academic department that offers a major, Ethnic Studies at NAU is a program that only offers a minor. Lastly, NAU is characterized by a majority white student population who often come from the conservative parts of southern and central Arizona, tend to be from right-wing, Christian, and/or military backgrounds, and are usually unaware of critical social topics.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF TEACHING ETHNIC STUDIES AT NAU There has been an increasing awareness of the politics of ability, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexuality in the classroom and university, and more attention has been given to the challenges of diversity in higher educational courses and institutional contexts (Muhs et al. 2012; Fryberg & Martínez 2014; Chatterjee & Maria 2014). One of the prevalent tenets of this research is that white faculty, wittingly or unwittingly, benefit from racial privilege and institutional racism. As Mark A. Chesler (2013) notes, white faculty generally “receive many benefits that include the treatment of some kind of cultural stances and priorities as legitimate and others not, some faculty scholarly pursuits as normative and others not, and some ways of teaching and relating with students appropriate and rewarded and some not” (2). In contrast, faculty of color—especially those who are queer/women—independent of the courses they teach, have to deal with the burden of ontological politics that come with their standing in universities that are historically dominated by white heteronormative men. For instance, regardless of the competency in their teaching, faculty of color experience many challenges, including having expertise challenged, receiving lower teaching evaluations from white students, feeling like one has to work harder to establish their credentials and maintain “authority” as an instructor and scholar, being stereotyped in relation to ethnic/identity background or cultural styles, having to prove competency and credibility, being accused of having biased curriculum or perspectives, or being the direct or indirect target of insults. Moreover, women in general, and women of color in particular, experience obstacles that include being partially judged on the basis of how students perceive their warmth and

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accessibility or are more pressured to manage their selves and bodies in the classroom. In this chapter, we focus on our overlapping and interrelated perspectives and experiences teaching (critical) Ethnic Studies at NAU. Despite the increasingly precarious state of (public) higher education and employment— which includes the cutting of programs and services, possible dilution of shared governance and tenure, and overall culture of fear and surveillance— having academic degrees generally means that (tenure-track) faculty can enjoy varying levels of autonomy, economic reward, prestige, and privilege. At the same time, faculty of color often must closely manage and monitor their emotions, behavior, and thoughts at the university and in classrooms in order to survive intense academic settings, especially under the pressure of promotion or tenure. Taking these considerations into account, and based on student feedback, course work and evaluations, and collective years as educators, we provide and analyze several examples that we believe elucidate key problems that are relevant to being faculty of color at NAU specifically and in the academy in general. By drawing upon particular reactions and criticisms, the point isn’t to vilify students or colleagues but, rather, to call attention to systemic social forces, institutional difficulties, and processes of power that negatively impact faculty of color and to some of the productive ways that education can improve overall. One challenge we faced teaching Ethnic Studies at NAU was dealing with students who often exhibited a sense of entitlement or indifference. They may admit that racism is real but generally did not care to engage seriously with the topic. Many of these students viewed the subject of racism as irrelevant and only took Ethnic Studies courses to fulfill some type of institutional requirement. To offer an example, one student provided the following feedback: The professor needs to realize that 95% of the students in the class are only taking it in order to meet their liberal studies requirements. For the entire semester, the professor has been working on the assumption that we are all stimulated by this topic, when in fact many of the students, including me[,] are bored to death over these topics. The truth is that I dreaded this two and a half hour class every week, because it was one of the least interesting and least stimulating classes I have ever been forced to take. It appears that the student exhibits a sense of arrogance about their class experience and expectations, and there is a patronizing tone that assumes the professor is naïve about classroom dynamics. The statement also indicates that the student does not necessarily deny the topic of race/racism but finds the subject matter and course to be boring and dreadful. Similar comments

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include the following: “The course could improve by not having to take it as a requirement. It should be the students’ choice”; “This course has absolutely no relevance to my area of study. I would not take this course if it were not required.” Students do have a choice with the classes they must take to fulfill particular university requirements, and they are obligated to take several courses outside of their primary field at some point. Yet, these responses illustrate how the subject of race/ethnicity/racism is perceived to be an inconvenience to their learning and how students have impassable expressions and apathetic reactions to Ethnic Studies content and courses. There were students who acknowledged that racism exists in everyday life and engaged with the subject. However, several of these students repeatedly felt culprits of social inequities and took a remorseful approach. For instance, for many semesters Roaf facilitated small-group discussions in an introductory class in which white male students expressed concerns that they are the only individuals capable of being racist. To provide another example, there were many times when students cried privately to us after class once they “recognize all the bad things their people have done.” For many students, an Ethnic Studies course is the first time they dealt with critical topics, like racism and white privilege, seriously and directly. Although learning about socially constructed systems of unearned privileges or recognizing how racism and oppression are perpetuated is generally difficult for many to understand, such apologetic examples illustrate a simplistic rendering of structural racism and power that alludes to an underlying foundation of white guilt. Such an attitude often paralyzes people emotionally and debilitates their ability to take in or absorb critical content or classroom discussions, failing to confront how one benefits from privilege or analyze relations of power and marginalization. A common challenge we experienced when teaching Ethnic Studies courses at NAU is that countless students dismissed racism from being a serious concern, believing that we live in a “postracial” society. Having been “educated in whiteness” (Castagno 2014), many of these students failed to think critically about social inequalities and, wittingly or unwittingly, advocated for, or demonstrated, a post–civil rights colorblind ideology. In class discussion about race and racism, for example, typical comments that students made included: “we no longer live in the past”; “I don’t see color or race”; “we should all just get along.” Despite the fact that racial inequalities are longstanding and pervasive, teaching Ethnic Studies courses to these students was difficult because, even though they may have had “good intentions,” many believed that race is irrelevant and a problem of individuals, not of systemic conditions. The impression is that contemporary society is beyond racism, colorism, and other forms of discrimination, often referring to President Barack Obama as evidence. One could argue that the Obama elections indicate “racial progress” and that new generations of people are more

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“open-minded” and “colorblind” than before. Yet, recent political and scholarly analyses on racism and mass incarceration, and various forms of social activism, like those that address police brutality and violence, immigrant deportations and detention centers, fracking and other forms of land exploitation, highlight the contrary: that white privilege, racism, and neocolonialism are very much alive. As Tim Wise (2011) argues, “Obama’s victory was evidence of white privilege, rather than a refutation of it,” in light of how he remained relatively silent about race matters during his first political campaign (vi–vii). Some “colorblind” students even felt compelled to defend racist actions. To offer an example, in a lecture about contemporary racism across university campuses, Bañales used the 2010 example of the “Compton Cookout” party that mocked Black history month, organized by students affiliated with the University of California at San Diego. In class, Bañales showed news footage of the controversial party and about half of the students reacted negatively to the material. However, they were not outraged by the racist content or intentions of the party. Instead, these students were upset because they felt the organizers of the party had the right to conduct such an event. As one white student vehemently expressed out loud in class, “racism is a part of freedom of speech!” Although the student may have meant to state that racial comments are constitutionally protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights, the statement did not present a concern with racial discrimination being perpetuated at the university level but with maintaining a possessive investment in protecting whiteness (Lipsitz 1998). Another barrier we experienced teaching Ethnic Studies at NAU was working with students who not only resisted the course and materials but also the faculty. This is common because race and gender shape the ways in which educators are viewed in the classroom. Consciously or unconsciously, stereotypes, assumptions, and bias about “role appropriateness” influence how students perceive underrepresented faculty. Koritha Mitchell (2015), who is a Black woman tenured professor, discusses how her presence makes some of her students uncomfortable: “I do not fit any picture society has given [my students] of an expert. My students, after all, have grown up bombarded with the message that people who belong in authority—especially authority based on intellectual accomplishments and expertise—are men, usually white men. I challenge my students simply by existing.” In addition, it is common to have students perceive faculty of color as being politically biased or academically incompetent, usually for not fitting the protocol of a white, male, and hetero­ normative professor who allegedly teaches about “apolitical” subjects. Elab­ orating on this, Mark A. Chesler (2013) underscores that “many white men faculty can automatically expect to be treated with respect and deference— and are surprised when they are not. Many faculty of color cannot make that assumption; they often experience substantial hostility, or at least distance

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and caution, from white students—and sometimes from students of color as well” (9–10). Unfortunately, student behavior toward faculty of color often manifests in micro-aggressions, passive-aggressive, disrespectful and harassing behavior, and subtle or direct confrontations. For instance, Roaf, who is an African American woman, has been blamed for liberal preaching or failing to consider a wide range of viewpoints. One student expressed that “sometimes it felt as though this instructor was not receptive to the views of students. As this is a literature course, one would expect that different people will have different viewpoints, but at times it seemed like this instructor was unwilling to admit this.” Another student stated, I just dropped your class because you clearly have a liberal agenda. I am fine learning about other cultures however I will not witness your attempt to brain wash young minds into the liberal way of thinking by distorting the facts. . . . Your job as an educator is to teach the facts and create dialogue. I have a 19 year old son who will no longer be enrolling in NAU because I have zero confidence in the quality of education he will receive because of folks like you. I will be sure to share my experience with NAU leadership to include the dean. Extremely disappointing. The statements highlight how professors—competence, knowledge, and teaching ability—are disapproved or accused of being ideologically partisan. These types of criticisms against professors are widespread, and many women of color have written about these struggles (see Chatterjee & Maira 2014; Gutiérrez & Muhs et al. 2012; hooks 1994). To elucidate an example, Koritha Mitchell (2015), who we alluded to previously, taught an honors writing course that included two reading assignments by nonwhite authors. The end of the term evaluation revealed that a significant percentage of students “complained that the class was skewed because it unjustifiably prioritized African-American authors.” Rather than grapple with the anxieties that may ensue when dominant viewpoints or general norms are challenged from a critical perspective, it seems that blaming teachers for allegedly being biased is a convenient way for students to deal with unpleasant classroom experiences. Along with revealing a sense of superiority and narrow assumptions about education, coursework, and the professor, such comments demonstrate the multilayered resistance to, and dismissal of, both Ethnic Studies material and the underrepresented faculty who teach the subject. Although some students accept the validity of racism in contemporary times, teaching Ethnic Studies through a critical perspective is also taxing when students fail to understand how the subject matter interrelates to other social political components, like gender and sexuality. In general, our course

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syllabi from the beginning of the semester indicated dedicating several weeks to exploring intersectionality, and lectures include explanations or the significance of Third World women of color feminism and queer of color critique. Regardless, some students disregarded or expressed disdain of the material, felt uncomfortable about the subject, or failed to understand an intersectional approach. The following comment from a student particularly demonstrates aspects of the previous point: “I don’t know what [the topic of transgender people] had to do with ethnic studies. . . . I don’t think that the sexuality/gay section of the course should be incorporated because I don’t know what it has to do with [the class].” This claim seems to suggest a simplistic understanding of Ethnic Studies specifically, and also perhaps the idea of “racial progress” generally, where the politics of gender and sexuality are thought to exist outside these realms. To some degree, the statement reflects a common misguided belief that Ethnic Studies, at best, is primarily a project of liberal multiculturalism that is based on outdated nationalistic identity frameworks that are apart from feminist, queer, and other social politics. Last, but not least, challenges of teaching Ethnic Studies at NAU also came from within the field. This happens, in part, because Ethnic Studies operates in a university where the range of negative institutionalized practices, behaviors, and attitudes—from patronizing to openly antagonistic— shape the context. This should not be surprising since the university is contradictory in nature. On the one hand, the university values and encourages meritocracy and the search for truth, free expression, and knowledge that can “advance” society; the university can also be a place where transformative thinking and social change takes place. On the other hand, the university is also intertwined with undermining faculty of color and legitimizing or supporting settler colonialism, oppressive state policies, and warfare (Chatterjee & Maria 2014). Thus, in addition to encountering resistance from students in the university, it is not uncommon for faculty of color to also face obstacles associated with hiring, promotion, perceptions from colleagues, workload, and overall position within a hierarchical social order. It is unfortunate that some of the difficulties of being an Ethnic Studies scholar are often because of faculty and administration, and there are a number of examples that demonstrate institutional obstacles that the authors faced at NAU. Bañales, for instance, was part of the Ethnic Studies program’s curriculum committee that would approve a new Asian American Studies course. Even though the syllabus was substantial, it was predominantly orga­ nized on the basis of ethnicity on the Asian continent (e.g., sections devoted to the Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, etc.). Bañales, who was the only person on the committee with formal academic training in Ethnic Studies, raised several concerns about the organization of the course, including: (1) it followed an outdated identitarian framework and a limited nationalist analytic where

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race and ethnicity serve as simple descriptive classifications; (2) rather than centralizing the racializing processes, marginalized experiences, and interrelated histories of Asian Americans in the United States and beyond, the course was based on a problematic model of Area Studies; and (3) there was a lack of critical theorization of race in relation to other constitutive forms of power, like gender and sexuality. In addition, Bañales highlighted how the recent creation of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association (see Márquez & Rana 2015) had relatively emerged to avoid, unsettle, and expand on some of the critiques that were raised about the format of the proposed syllabus. Despite this feedback, the course was approved by the majority without implementing any considerable changes. Another problem that Bañales faced at NAU included a hip-hop cultural event that was organized by the Ethnic Studies program in 2014. The weeklong event was generative for raising awareness on hip-hop as a cultural art form that emerged from marginalized People of Color giving a voice to multiple urban experiences. Unfortunately, many of the invited guests, including panelists and artists, were overwhelmingly comprised of (cisgender) men of color who— like the overall content of the programming—lacked a serious engagement with critical themes, specifically feminist and queer of color critiques within and about hip-hop culture. After raising concerns about this dilemma, rather than engaging seriously with the issues at stake, Bañales was accused of being disrespectful and experienced hostile reactions. Such examples underscore the problematic heteronormative practices and heteromasculinist theoretical underpinnings that often go unchecked or are normalized within the field of Ethnic Studies. This problem is not particular to NAU but elsewhere too, where, in the process of working to dismantle racism, other relational forms of power, like sexism and heterosexism, are reproduced (see Durazo 2014). Similarly, Roaf has encountered many difficulties as an Ethnic Studies faculty at NAU. For instance, Roaf once articulated to colleagues the importance of teaching introductory Ethnic Studies courses through an intersectional approach. One faculty member claimed that this theoretical framework was “too difficult” for students (and even some faculty) to grasp. Also, during a recent faculty hire search committee, Roaf faced antagonism when she called attention to internal gender and labor hierarchies within the Ethnic Studies at NAU, including the fact that all the tenure-track professors in the program are men, while the women of color are dual appointment contingent lecturers. The response to Roaf’s concerns ranged from minimizing her critiques to claiming that focusing on hiring a woman of color could be considered “reserve sexism.” Roaf also experienced some challenges with hip-hop awareness week that was mentioned earlier. After—and most likely in spite of—the apprehensions that Bañales had raised with the 2014 programming, the 2015 hip-hop awareness week designated a panel that would explore the subject of sexism. The

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panel was designed to focus on hip-hop’s relationship with misogyny, and Roaf was invited (then felt pressured by some of the organizers) to participate. Although the attempt to bring attention to the politics of gender and sexism in hip-hop was considered, Roaf hesitated, and eventually declined, to serve on the panel for a variety of reasons. In addition to not being an expert in the study of hip-hop, Roaf felt targeted and tokenized for being one of the few women of color faculty at NAU. Furthermore, she did not agree with how the panel was framed from the onset, which emphatically stated that misogyny and materialism does not exist in hip-hop. The informal panel description included the following text: Many believe that the rap videos they see on TV which appear to glorify material acquisition and misogyny are representative of Hip Hop. They are mistaken. Hip Hop comes from a tradition of marginalized Black and brown poets from the inner city environs of New York and has maintained its tradition of speaking out for those who are disaffected by shortcomings in our larger social systems.12 Roaf felt that the preliminary panel explanation precluded a generative examination of the complexity of gender-, race-, and class-based marginalization within the political economy of the (partially) co-opted genre and culture. Instead, the panel description provided an opinionated position that foreclosed the possibility of fostering a productive dialogue and a space for critical thinking. These examples of challenges that Roaf and Bañales experienced as Ethnic Studies scholars at NAU illustrate how culture wars not only take place outside the field but also within. Audre Lore (1984) once argued that the “master’s tools can never dismantle the master’s house,” and it seems that it is not uncommon for those within Ethnic Studies to, wittingly or unwittingly, use “the master’s tools” to maintain “the master’s house” unfortunately. Such conundrums serve as a reminder that the academic field of Ethnic Studies is instituted in a neoliberal university that is inherently contradictory. At a time that university management models and corporate funding are increasingly conjoined, “romanticized” notions of what Ethnic Studies represents in the university seem to be at odds. As state funding significantly decreases at public universities, many academic units are pressured to adopt a language of “profit” and “success” to suit corporate interests. As Michael Hames-García (2014) believes, “it is important to admit that we in ethnic studies have jobs because rich people who often do not share about politics have been convinced to pay our salaries” (93). Regardless of internal/external constraints and obstacles, however, there were many rewarding aspects of teaching Ethnic Studies at NAU. There were

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students, faculty, and others who became interested in Ethnic Studies through courses and programming, who were often encouraged to pursue other relevant classes or become involved in changing the conditions of their communities. Some were transformed through the classes and became involved in social change, at the university and/or beyond, articulating the relevance of Ethnic Studies courses and how they could apply the knowledge to and in their lives. For example, one student reflected, “I appreciate everything that this [Ethnic Studies] class has done for me this semester. This is definitely a space that changed my life and I think this was a huge milestone for me.” Another expressed, “This course really challenged me to be more creative and open in my ways of thinking. I’m beyond happy to say that, because of this course, my eyes are opened to social problems and Western ways of thinking. I am now a better person.” Other students stated, “I certainly felt my eyes opened to stereotypes I never realized before”; “This class made me very aware of a lot of history I was not aware of”; “[The class] was very relevant because I will be working with a number of people that I may personally unintentionally categorize or judge.” Such comments highlight the essential role that Ethnic Studies plays in myriad forms inside and outside of the classroom, indepen­ dent of students’ ethnic/racial/class/gender/sexual orientation background. The formation of generative partnerships and alliances was another valuable aspect of teaching Ethnic Studies at NAU. One example is the collaboration between the authors of this chapter. Whether through research, conferences, teaching, or providing one another emotional and moral support, working together is productive and necessary in light of the several obstacles that faculty of color generally face in the university. Our collaborations also extended to working with students, campus organizations, and local community. For instance, in 2014 we participated in a public event at NAU that brought attention to critical topics in Arizona. A campus activist who helped to organize this event and was also a student in one of Roaf’s classes expressed the following words of gratitude: I wanted to thank you [Dr. Roaf] for helping me get back into college as a whole. You are a great teacher and a very inspirational figure to me. . . . I wanted to thank you for putting on the Ethnic Studies Ban presentation in May. . . . We all appreciate what you and Dr. Bañales were able to put together. . . . Going into the next school year, it has given us a little bit of confidence as a [student] club about what we can provide for the students and Flagstaff population as a whole. The collaborative event had a positive impact on this student, and the example demonstrates that Ethnic Studies is not only important to the social sciences and humanities but for the common good (Butler 2001). Partnerships,

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alliances, and coalitions were central to the formation of Ethnic Studies in the late 1960s, and they are just as necessary now. In other words, Ethnic Studies not only represents a place for scholarly inquiry but also a space for social change and transformation where collaborations with students, faculty, and communities are fundamental.

ETHNIC STUDIES AND EPISTEMIC DECOLONIZATION Ethnic Studies partly emerged to challenge not only traditional forms of education and pedagogy but also standard research and professional practices in higher education. Fortunately, decolonizing traditional forms of instruction and research is already common in the field of Ethnic Studies and in the academy. In addition to engaging with colonialism and imperialism on several levels, the subject itself requires that Ethnic Studies scholars have a more critical understanding of the motivation, assumptions, and fundamental research/teaching practices that we may take for granted. Moreover, focusing on community engagement and humanistic transformation from within and without is another common decolonial pedagogical strategy that many Ethnic Studies scholars practice. Therefore, a generative way to understand the decolonization of knowledge is not as an inversion of previous forms of abuse of power, but a vision that seeks to transcend the negative aspects of Western thought. In order to transform ourselves and current social conditions, so that multiple conceptions of people, knowledge, and the world are possible, epistemic decolonization is necessary. One way to engage in the decolonization of knowledge in the classroom is at the conceptual level when shaping the syllabus and choosing curriculum, regardless if it is an Ethnic Studies class proper. The following three imperatives that Ramón Grosfoguel (2007) offers for epistemic decolonization are valuable. First, a broader canon of thought is required than solely knowledge from the West. Second, a decolonial perspective cannot be based on an abstract universal but would be the result of the critical dialogue between diverse critical epistemic/ethical/political projects. Finally, decolonizing knowledge requires that one take the epistemic perspective, cosmologies, and/or insights of marginalized thinkers that think from and with others who are marginalized or coming from marginalized spaces. These guiding points for decolonizing knowledge are important because they signal an epistemic shift that challenges the universal pretension of an epistemology founded during the sixteenth century in Eurocentric thought and experience, in the practice of imperialism, and to the continuing implementation in the twenty-first century. For broad audiences who are most likely skeptical or unaware of Ethnic Studies or decolonizing knowledge, we found it important to use a variety of materials that are accessible. Although dense work has value, we consider how

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it may be alienating to many, especially to a group of people that is most likely entering the classroom with resistance and bias toward the subject matter. Fortunately, one of the benefits of Ethnic Studies’ unique contribution of interdisciplinarity is that the range of scholarship and creative possibilities is wide (see Fong 2008). The kinds of material we use comprises historical, sociological, and anthropological accounts, essays that are creative, literary, or personalized, and different multimedia approaches, like audio/music, images/slides, and video/films/new media. We also integrate feminist methodologies—which include scholarship, poetry, prose, political analysis, autobiography, storytelling, fiction, testimony, and other forms of personal or creative writing—in our courses. Personalized and creative accounts can help to decolonize knowledge since they reject the idea that disclosing the personal is something substan­ dard. Furthermore, incorporating such materials can provide significant ways for students to connect to and understand the subject of Ethnic Studies, oppression, intersectionality, and social change. To enact epistemic decolonization in the classroom, we consider several strategies grounded in critical pedagogy where democratic, participatory, and active teaching and learning approaches are used to transform oppressive conditions in society. We have found that an effective way of engaging students unfamiliar with the subject of race/racism, ethnicity, and their intersections with other forms of hierarchical power is by teaching through a studentcentered approach (see Delgado 2006). Because we aim to engage students in multiple forms, especially those who require varied learning styles and needs, we advocate for critical active learning methods that are based on a popular education methodology where participation and discussions are used as a way to balance the “authoritative” nature of lectures. We incorporate student-centered interactive activities in the classes we teach that focus on creating community, environments of accountability, and democratic discussions. One example of this is creating collective group agreements—familiar in many activist community meetings—at the beginning of class whenever appropriate. Challenging competition and individualism, group agreements establish positive values and intentions of the way people want to be treated and the type of learning environment that requires the accountability of those participating to create.13 Another example is to use “check-in” or “check-out” activities in the classroom. To do this, in small groups or with the whole class (depending on time and amount of students), the instructor or a student poses a general question(s) that relates to the course material and/or to their lives whereby each person answers the question by sharing their thoughts and opinions. When students participate in their education, in an environment where they feel more or less comfortable, the process can provide an opportunity to connect to the material and course in generative ways.

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We consider that moving beyond ego-based attachments in the classroom is also central to epistemic decolonization. We reflect, for example, how some of the classroom dynamics or interpretation of negative student reactions and behavior may be connected to entrapments with our own ego-related attitudes as faculty. Rather than always interpreting negative students’ reactions to the course, material, discussions, or ourselves as personal attacks, we explore how such opposition may be partially related to how we intentionally or inadvertently exhibit a sense of ideological or intellectual superiority in the classroom. Recognizing the possible negative workings of ego is not easy because it requires that one is willing to face our deep complicity with the power dynamics that many Ethnic Studies scholars, like ourselves, want to change. Leela Fernandes (2003) explains that the process of letting go of our attachments to ego “is difficult because it necessitates a move away from romanticized self-images that we may hold as writers or activists committed to social justice to a more painful and honest confrontation with our own investments in and attachments to power” (35). Despite the challenges of confronting how one may play a part in student opposition, letting go of rigid attachments to ourselves and what we represent is important in order to not reproduce the same hierarchies and power dynamics that we hope to transcend through Ethnic Studies in the first place. Instead of operating through a sense of ego, we tried to meet students where they were with their understanding of the topics by enacting a “critically compassionate” methodological approach (see Cammarota & Romero 2014). Part of this included viewing the classroom as a gift, an invitation to communicate, regardless of whether students are problematic or have many unwarranted predispositions. As Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2007) underscores, decolonization “is a gift itself, an invitation to engage in dialogue. For decolonization, concepts need to be conceived as invitations to dialogue and not as impositions. They are expressions of the availability of the subject to engage in dialogue and the desire for exchange. Decolonization in this respect aspires to break with monologic modernity” (261). In other words, having respectful dialogue and conversations was central to creating a reality where one is free to engage in receptive generosity and mutuality. Promoting respect for the students’ different learning styles and life experiences independent of our egos, then, was important in order to create an atmosphere where the free exchange of knowledge, conversation, and reflection was welcomed in the classroom. Through an approach where students—regardless of how they perceive Ethnic Studies classes or faculty of color—and their opinions are acknowledged and respected, allowed for the possibility of collaboration and to consider other perspectives. That is, rather than dismissing students who may be considered as disruptive or dismissive, being “critically compassionate” led to creating a generative space where conflicting ideas could intersect and bring common value.

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Incorporating “the community” and “local politics” into the classroom and students into “the community” and “local politics” whenever possible was another useful epistemic decolonial strategy. This was a great way to include multiple voices in respective courses, as well as have students participate and contribute to their surrounding environments through praxis. As an example of the former, Bañales integrated the local Capoeira Brazilian martial arts group in the section of the “Chican@-Latin@ Cinema” course that focuses on African diasporas in Latin America and Latin@ communities. As an example of the latter, for the course “Race, Identity, and Film” during the spring semester of 2013, students had the option to organize a mini film festival on campus as part of their final project. Those that chose this option collaborated with campus staff from NAU’s Native American Cultural Center to organize an event titled “Racism and the Power of Film,” where students, faculty, staff from NAU, and members of the larger Flagstaff community were invited to participate and attend. In particular, Deidra Peaches of Paper Rocket Productions in Flagstaff was the featured speaker who showcased her films that dealt with important themes relevant to the Navajo nation, including identity, sovereignty, and land rights (see Bañales 2014). Such pedagogical approaches and events facilitated substantive dialogue that not only brought attention to crucial issues in Ethnic Studies but also challenged the prevailing rhetoric that demonizes the field. Finally, an important decolonizing approach in Ethnic Studies was to create and organize programming based on student, faculty, and community collaborations that complements the classroom and beyond. The Ethnic Studies Ambassadors project discussed earlier is one example of this. Along with faculty participation, this project is geared toward students who want to promote the Ethnic Studies program and be involved in multiple ways, such as through orga­ nizing a speaker series. Through this series, relevant speakers in the field are invited to visit campus and participate in classrooms and other pedagogical public events.14 Another example of a generative group effort occurred in the spring of 2014 when the authors collaborated with one of NAU’s student clubs to organize a sociopolitical event as part of a universitywide “Immigration Awareness Month.” This public event brought awareness to the banning of Ethnic Studies and its relationship to the current anti-immigrant context of Arizona and elsewhere. Furthermore, the Ethnic Studies program at NAU was part of the Arizona Critical Ethnic Studies (AZCES) collective, which is a statewide network of educators and concerned individuals who are participating in regional groups to educate the public about Ethnic Studies and its relevance. Having active alliances between students, university, and larger community is not only central to the inception of the field of Ethnic Studies but is also one of the ways to move beyond the negative aspects of Western culture, which includes a focus on individualism, competitiveness, and social dichotomies.

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ETHNIC STUDIES AS EPISTEMIC NECESSITY This chapter raises important questions about contemporary culture wars within and without the Ethnic Studies program at NAU. The battle is indicative of a larger, long-standing tense relationship between decolonial forms of knowledge and Western thought and culture. In particular, we highlighted how teaching (critical) Ethnic Studies courses at NAU to a majority white demographic came with many challenges but also presented many opportunities for transformative learning. We provided theories, experiences, and perspectives relevant to how we view and teach Ethnic Studies, which includes being student-centered, critical of power dynamics, aware of privileges, and attentive to critical topics that are central dimensions to the study of race/ racism/ethnicity. These components have been essential to how we taught Ethnic Studies at NAU and not an afterthought or additive. Ethnic Studies clearly does not end with a law that bans it at the high school level in Tucson, Arizona, and it is not “anti-American” or “ethnically dividing” as legislators and others have claimed. Rather, the field of Ethnic Studies, which was born out of activist struggle and demands from below, is part of an epistemic decolonizing movement that, among many things, is a critical intervention into modern thought and Western culture in general. That is, Ethnic Studies is a decolonizing epistemic necessity that serves as a bridge to transcend the violence, colonialism, and other wars—including those considered cultural—that are relics of a decadent European imperialism. So long as we live within the colonizing entrenchments of Western thought and culture, Ethnic Studies—which helps to provide tools to think critically about oppression and privilege, personal and community empowerment, and activism and social change, among other things—will always be considered suspect, illegitimate, or threatening to a small group of people. However, it also means that decolonial forms of knowledge will always be crucial, indispensable, and very necessary by and for everyone else. Despite epistemological battles and recurring culture wars of knowledge, the possibilities of promoting Ethnic Studies are endless in the twenty-first century. Early in 2013, California assemblyman Luis Alejo introduced a bill that would require the state to adopt Ethnic Studies curriculum for high schools in the state. In California—one of the most diverse states where changing demographics means that whites are no longer the majority— school districts in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento have adopted Ethnic Studies requirements in 2014 and 2015. The Academic Senate at the California State University at Los Angeles in 2014 mandated a graduation prerequisite where students are required to take two diversity courses, one which focuses on race and ethnicity. These examples—along with the fact that Ethnic Studies courses, programs, and departments continue to exist and

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flourish despite multiple attacks—demonstrate that the field is an epistemic necessity.

NOTES 1. This includes, “Minutemen” border vigilante groups, an Arizona State fraternity mocking African Americans at an MLK-themed party, the criminalization of a transgender woman of color (Monica Jones), and an Arizona State University professor being slammed to the ground by police. 2. For anti-SB 1070/Arizona posters, see http://www.altoarizona.com/creative -resistance.html, accessed November 30, 2015. 3. One example of an activist organization is Puente Movement in Phoenix, Arizona: see www.puenteaz.org, accessed July 19, 2016. 4. For the complete description of House Bill 2281, see http://www.azleg.gov /legtext/491eg/2r/bills/hb2281s.pdf, accessed July 19, 2016. 5. This link provides an annotated bibliography of the banned books: http://www .librotraficante.com/annotatedBibliography.pdf, accessed July 19, 2016. 6. For more on the “librotraficante” movement, see http://www.librotraficante .com, accessed July 19, 2016. 7. See On Strike! Ethnic Studies, 1969–1999, produced by Irum Shiekh (California: Center for Asian American Media, 1999). 8. Unlike in Arizona, anti–Ethnic Studies legislation in Texas did not pass. For more on this, see Roque Planas, “Texas Ethnic Studies Bill Protested by Latino Activists,” The Huffington Post, March 18, 2013. 9. Examples of Black and Latino/a Studies programs and departments that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s include the Departments of Chicano/a Studies at the California State Universities at Los Angeles, Northridge, and San Diego; the Department of Puerto Rican Studies (now called Latino and Caribbean Studies) at Rutgers University; the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies at Hunter College; and the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 10. For more information, see the city of Flagstaff webpage at http://www.flagstaff .az.gov/index.aspx?NID=1095, accessed July 19, 2016. 11. On December 3, 2013, Northern Arizona University alumni Ki’Jev King, Angela Johnson, and Michael Johnson reflected on the establishment of the Ethnic Studies program in a public lecture on campus. 12. This explanation was originally used to secure NAU student activity council funding for the 2015 hip-hop awareness event. The wording served as a preliminary description of the panel that informally circulated via email. The final and formal description of the panel was altered. 13. For examples of group agreements, as well as on the process of establishing them, see Spade (2012). 14. Some of the speakers who were invited to NAU included Lisa Cacho, Angela Y. Davis, Sean Arce, and alumni who helped establish NAU’s Ethnic Studies program, among others. In addition, the Ethnic Studies program, faculty, and student

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ambassadors participate in organizing relevant cultural, educational, or film screening events that are open to the public, and which are sometimes held off campus.

REFERENCES Alexandre, Michelle. 2012. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alim, H. Samy. 2006. Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture. New York: Routledge. Asian Community Center Archive Group. 2009. Stand Up: An Archive Collection of the Bay Area Asian American Movement, 1968–1974. Berkeley: East Wind Books. Bañales, Xamuel. 2014. “Paper Rocket Productions: A Decolonizing Epistemology of Young Indigenous Filmmakers.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 3(2): 152–66. Biondi, Martha. 2012. The Black Revolution on Campus. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bloom, Joshua, and Waldo E. Martin Jr. 2013. Blacks Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2014. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Butler, Johnnella E. 2001. “Ethnic Studies as a Matrix for the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Common Good.” In Color-Line to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies, edited by Johnnella Butler, 18–41. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Cabrera, Nolan L., Jeffrey F. Milem, and Ronald W. Marx. 2012, June 20. An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Mexican American Studies Participation on Student Achievement within Tucson Unified School District. Tucson, AZ: Report to Special Master Dr. Willis D. Hawley on the Tucson Unified School District Desegregation Case. https://www.coe.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/MAS_report_2012_0.pdf. Cabrera, Nolan L., Elisa L. Meza, Andrea J. Romero, and Roberto Cintli Rodríguez. 2013. “ ‘If there Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress’: Transformative Youth Activism and the School of Ethnic Studies.” The Urban Review 45: 7–22. Cacho, Lisa Marie. 2010. “But Some of Us Are Wise: Academic Illegitimacy and the Affective Value of Ethnic Studies.” The Black Scholar 40(4): 28–36. Cammarota, Julio, Augustine Romero, eds. 2014. Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Campbell, Kristina M. 2011. “The Road to S.B. 1070: How Arizona Became Ground Zero for the Immigrants’ Rights Movement and the Continuing Struggle for Latino Civil Rights in America.” Harvard Latino Law Review 14: 1–21. Castagno, Angelina E. 2014. Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chatterjee, Piya, and Sunaina Maira, eds. 2014. The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chesler, Mark A. 2013. “The State of Research with Faculty Identities in Higher Educational Classrooms and Institutional Contexts.” In Faculty Identities and the

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Challenge of Diversity: Reflections on Teaching in Higher Education, edited by Mark A. Chesler and Alford A. Young Jr., 117–34. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Clay, Andreana. 2012. The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism, and Post–Civil Rights Politics. New York: New York University Press. Davis, Angela Y. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press. Delgado, Melvin. 2006. Designs and Methods for Youth-Led Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Durazo, Ana Clarissa Rojas. 2011. “In Our Hand: Community Accountability as Pedagogical Strategy.” Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, and World Order 37(4): 76–100. Durazo, Ana Clarissa Rojas. 2014. “Decolonizing Chicano Studies in the Shadows of the University’s ‘Heteropatriracial’ Order.” In The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent, edited by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira, 187–214. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ferguson, Roderick A. 2004. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Fong, Timothy P., ed. 2008. Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives. New York: Altamira Press. Forman, Murray, and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. 2011. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Freire, Paulo. 1997. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum. Fryberg, Stephanie A., and Ernesto Javier Martínez. 2014. The Truly Diverse Faculty: New Dialogues in American Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Grosfoguel, Ramón. 2007. “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-­ Economy Paradigms.” Cultural Studies 21(2–3): 211–23. Hames-García, Michael. 2014. “Which Way Forward? The Corporate University as a Site of Contradiction.” In The Truly Diverse Faculty: New Dialogues in American Higher Education, edited by Stephanie A. Fryberg and Ernesto Javier Martínez, 89–96. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. hooks, bell. 2003. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge. Jackson, Carlos Francisco. 2009. Chicana and Chicano Art: Protest Arte. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Lazos, Sylvia R. 2012. “Are Student Teaching Evaluations Holding Back Women and Minorities? The Perils of ‘Doing’ Gender and Race in the Classroom.” In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 164–85. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Lee, Matthew R. 2009. “The Effects of Asian American Studies on Asian American College Students’ Psychological Functioning.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Leonardo, Zeus. 2009. Race, Whiteness, and Education. New York: Routledge. Lipsitz, George. 1998. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Lorde, Audre. 1984. “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.” Bulletin: Homophobia and Education 14 (3/4): 9. Lorde, Audre. 2007. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. 2007. “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept.” Cultural Studies 21(2–3): 240–70. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. 2011. “Epistemology, Ethics, and the Time/Space of Decolonization: Perspectives from the Caribbean and the Latina/o Americas.” In Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy, edited by Ada María Isasi-Días and Eduardo Mendieta, 193–206. New York: Fordham University Press. Márquez, John D., and Junaid Rana. 2015. “Editors’ Introduction: On Our Genesis and Future.” Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association 1: 1–8. Mignolo, Walter D. 2007. “Introduction: Coloniality of Power and De-colonial Thinking.” Cultural Studies 21(2/3): 240–70. Mihesuah, Devon A., and Angela C. Wilson, eds. 2004. Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Mitchell, Koritha. 2015, June. “I’m a Professor. My Colleagues Who Let Their Students Dictate What They Teach Are Cowards.” Vox Media. http://www.vox .com/2015/6/10/8753721/college-professor-fear. Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table Press. Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, eds. 2012. Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Ordona, Trinity A. 2000. “Coming Out Together: An Ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women’s and Transgendered People’s Movement of San Francisco.” PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz. Pérez, Laura E. 2010. “Enrique Dussel’s Etica de la liberación, U.S. Women of Color Decolonizing Practices, and Coalitionary Politics amidst Difference.” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. Peter Skafish, 18(2): 121–46. Planas, Roque. 2013, March 18. “Texas Ethnic Studies Bill Protested by Latino Activists.” The Huffington Post. Pough, Gwendolyn D., Elaine Richardson, Aisha Durham, and Rachel Raimist, eds. 2007. Home Girls Make Some Noise. Parker Publishing. Pulido, Laura. 2006. Black, Brown, Yellow & Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rose, Tricia. 2008. Hip-Hop Wars: What We Talk about When We Talk about HipHop—and Why It Matters. New York: Basic Civitas. Sáenz, Rogelio. 2010, September. “Latinos, Whites, and the Shifting Demography of Arizona.” Population Reference Bureau, Washington. http://www.prb.org/Publica tions/Articles/2010/usarizonalatinos.aspx. Sáenz, Rogelio, and María Cristina Morales. 2015. Latinos in the United States: Diversity and Change. Boston: Polity Press.

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Santa Anna, Otto, and Celeste González de Bustamante, eds. 2012. Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realties, National Media, and Provincial Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Santillanes, Valerie. 1997, February 15. “Chicano Studies Out in Vaughn.” The Albuquerque Journal. Shaw, William. 2000. West Side: Young Men and Hip Hop Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster. Shiekh, Irum. 1999. On Strike! Ethnic Studies, 1969–1999. San Francisco, CA: Center for Asian American Media. Sleeter, Christine E. 2011. The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review. The National Education Association. http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/NBI -2010–3-value-of-ethnic-studies.pdf. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People. New York: Zed Books. Spade, Dean. 2012. “Notes Toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Academia.” In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, et al., 189–190. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Téllez, Michelle. 2014, August 7. “Why We Need Critical Ethnic Studies in Arizona (and Everywhere Else).” FeministWire. http://thefeministwire.com/2014/08/op-ed -need-critical—ethnics-studies-arizona-everywhere-else/. Turf, Luke B. 2001. “Students Protest for a ‘Multiethnic Academic Environment.’ ” The Lumberjack 102(13): 13–24. Villanueva, Silvia Toscano. 2013. “Teaching as a Healing Craft: Decolonizing the Classroom and Creating Spaces of Hopeful Resistance through Chicano-Indigenous Pedagogical Praxis.” The Urban Review 45: 23–40. Wise, Time. 2011. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Berkeley: Soft Skull Press.

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On Building Latino Studies in the White, Liberal Arts, Corporatized University: An Autoethnography Oriel María Siu

In the spirit of openly contributing to our discussion on the current culture wars endured by Ethnic Studies throughout the nation, I here reflect on my own positionalities within academia as well as those of the discipline that I practice, Latino Studies. The first section of this chapter deals with my own road traveled: from departing Honduras in 1997 to the student-led struggles at California State University, Northridge where many of us fought for the first Central American Studies program in the nation. That program and the efforts of scholars who had already begun opening up Central American academic spaces since the early 1990s in the United States have largely contributed to the reconfiguration of the field of U.S. Latino Studies. Since this Central American insertion into the field, U.S. Latino Studies has had to rethink national boundaries and limitations, the very concept of the “borderlands” coined by Gloria Anzaldúa in the 1980s and segmented nationalistic approaches to teaching, researching, and thinking the U.S. Latina/o experience. By working toward the integration of Central American Studies into the larger field of Latino and Ethnic Studies, we centroamericanistas have worked to further expand the field’s original tenets by considering the complexities brought about by the newer waves of Latina/o migrations to the United States. Since the 1990s, the field of Latino Studies has come a long way, opening up new research avenues, incorporating the whole of the Latina/o experience in the United States, building accessible archives, and creating self-sustained spaces for sharing our scholarly work. But this very field is today at a crossroads; one which comprises the other focus of this chapter and one that directly relates to the paradigm currently dictating the rules in U.S. higher education: the corporatization of universities. As I now (2015) undertake the task of creating a Latino Studies program at a private liberal arts institution in the Northwest and engage with my mostly

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white students in the Latino Studies classroom, many challenges and questions come to the fore. In the second section of this chapter I explore how these challenges play out both at the personal and institutional levels. Based on my experiences locally and observations at the national level I contend that newer Latino Studies programs within private liberal arts institutions are today signifying not valid academic disciplines but rather that which superficially saves the university from seeming “too white” or “behind” rapidly changing demographics. A result of political pressures to diversify curriculum, I argue that Latino Studies programs are becoming ever more co-opted; incorporated so that the educational institution may portray itself an inclusive and “diverse” space yet disciplined when not in line with the pretty multicultural picture the institution needs to display of itself. In this manner both my body of color and the academic discipline that I practice become poster children used in representation of the university’s diversity mission. Structurally, however, Latino Studies programs resulting from these political pressures remain powerless when it comes to rupturing the exclusionary cementations of academia, its cultures of racism, and the white-centric “traditional” disciplines that still dictate university curricula. This calls for much-needed conversation and reflection, both on our role as scholars as well as on the future of Latino Studies if the field is to uphold its original tenets: the fight for social justice, student empowerment, and critical consciousness building. I here then pose the following questions: What does it mean to practice critical pedagogy within learning institutions invested in the process of corporatization? How can Latino Studies programs avoid the inevitable process of whitewashing that comes with universities’ invested interests in marketing our programs for the benefit of the corporate university and its sudden institutional urge to “diversify” both the curriculum and the campus? What does teaching Latino Studies in the white, privileged, now corporate university, mean? As I engage with these and other questions throughout this chapter, my hope is that we as a collective entity of scholars can use this volume to share and effectively articulate these challenges so that we may, also collectively, find ways of confronting and contesting them not just in theory but in the practice of the everyday inside and outside the classroom. In engaging these questions, I also hope that the institutions in which we work can take note of our shared experiences here and join us in meaningful conversation about diversity, inclusion, and the multiple repercussions of whiteness in college campuses.

FROM HONDURAS TO THE CREATION OF THE FIRST CENTRAL AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM IN THE UNITED STATES Part of the exodus that began during the U.S.-funded Central American wars of the 1980s, I am a first-generation immigrant from San Pedro Sula,

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Honduras, who came north in the late 1990s because as we centroamericanos know it all too well, la vida allá simple y sensillamente ya era y sigue siendo invivible. We Central Americans fled and continue to flee—as the recent and appalling images of thousands of Central American, mostly Honduran unaccompanied child migrants detained at the U.S./Mexico border attest—an ever-increasing social violence. This violence is the direct result of years of war, dilapidated economies, centuries-old entrenched social inequalities originated with the European conquest of the Americas, a lack of educational and upward mobility opportunities for the majority of the Central American population, and continued neoliberal economic warfare mostly dictated by U.S. foreign policy in the region and perpetuated, sustained, and made possible by the local ruling national elites. The Central American Civil Wars, in other words, never ended in the 1990s; se transformaron. They just look different now even though they are no less violent, no less deadly, and no less traumatic. On the contrary, more social, political, and economic violence is experienced today than during the period of the Civil Wars. Death rates are at their all-time highest, giving the Northern Triangle region (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) the infamous title of deadliest and most “dangerous” region in the world. Government officials and the ruling elite too, particularly those of Guatemala and Honduras, have become ever-more corrupt and cynical, during the last ten years, escalating the killing and disappearance of human rights advocates, journalists, campesinos, LGBTQ community members, indigenous communities, and environmentalists right under our very noses. The remilitarization of the region by the United States has been a key contributor to this heightened violence. Under the justification of furthering its “war on drugs” in the region (and Latin America) the U.S. government has increased funding to the region’s security forces to levels unseen since its backing of the “dirty wars” in the 1980s. This has ultimately resulted in stronger, more ruthless police and military forces in Central America, which human rights organizations are denouncing as injurious to civil society. Ultimately, the social and political violence engendered by this intensified militarization, corruption, and the ongoing drug war in the region has further triggered the exodus of Central Americans to the United States. Such are the lasting impacts of more than thirty years of Civil Wars; war becoming not the exception in this Central American postwar period but the everyday inescapable reality; the permanent social, economic, and political order yielding very real and disastrous consequences for the majority of Central Americans. Given the social and political backdrops of my youth, I never dreamt of one day becoming a college professor, much less of Ethnic and Cultural Studies. My biggest goal, I remember thinking throughout my adolescence, was to be able to stay alive. After enduring several violent incidents that involved the very likely possibility of a bloody death, I wanted nothing but for my

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family to remain alive for as long as we could. Thus my motives for leaving Honduras at the age of sixteen and arriving to Los Angeles, California, because in the late 1990s that is a donde todo centroamericano iba, where everyone went. No questions asked. Indeed, fue en Los Angeles que encontré a esa greater Central America; a esa Centroamérica del exilio; a la Centroamérica de la diáspora unificada aunque fuese por la experiencia de las Guerras, los traumas y nuestra forzada emigración a esa inmensa ciudad de cemento. Los Angeles soon became the place where I would learn of the larger Central American experience; the one kept away from me in school textbooks while I grew up literally in between countries submerged in Civil Wars; the one hidden from us by a Central American educational system dictated by U.S. interests in the region and the legacies of colonialities in the Honduran classrooms. The reality of a Centroamérica outside of Central America hit me when I started exploring Los Angeles and encountered a politically and culturally active Central American community in the late 1990s. It was there that I learned of the Afro-Honduran struggle for the preservation of the Garinagu cultural heritage, and the exiled Maya community’s efforts to organize around refuge, transnational Maya solidarities, and the right to asylum. It was in Los Angeles that I also met countless ex-guerrilleros salvadoreños eager to tell and share their stories of war with whomever would listen, people whom to this day have continued in the task of preserving the historical memories of the Salvadoran Civil War in the larger fight against impunity. When I arrived in Los Angeles I found so many pupuserías in that city that for a minute anyone could think themselves in San Salvador. I also met there so many Guatemalan veteranos of the armed conflict, many of whom had been tortured by U.S. military forces in clandestine U.S.-funded cells for speaking against U.S. intervention in the region during the 1980s. It was in L.A. that I met painters, poets, and writers of all Central American nationalities in the process of digesting and through their art depicting the many scars of wars still too fresh in their minds and bodies. I also met Nicaraguans from all ends of the political spectrum voicing their opinion on the future of that country, Panamanians staying connected to their various cultural practices while birthing new ones, and the youth of all these countries eager to know more of our shared histories while trying to dismantle the myriads of silences in many of the new L.A.-centroamericano homes. Despite the difficulties involved in the creation of these new communities, the undocumented experience of many, and the rising racism in the United States against Central Americans, the late 1990s in many ways symbolized the point of no return for us: it was clear by then that we were in the United States to stay. Central Americans no longer spoke about returning “home”; the conversation being had was centered on the new ones being created.

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Our parents’ silences brought about by the post-traumatic stresses of war had provoked so many questions among the Central American youth that many of us freshmen students at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in the late 1990s started advocating for safe academic spaces where we could interrogate, process, and educate ourselves on our own experiences as youth of the Central American diaspora. In 1999, there were at least 1,200 of us Central American students among a student body of roughly 35,000 at CSUN, by far the largest Central American student population of any other university in the nation.1 Upon beginning my undergraduate education, I remember many of us at CSUN wandering between Chicana/o Studies courses and Latin American Studies courses attempting to make sense of our reality. None of those spaces, however, were then capable of addressing the particularities of the U.S.–Central American experience. None of them either were prepared to examine and discuss the larger Central American story. Although Rigoberta Menchú was being read and discussed in some of these Chicana/o and Latin American Studies classes, Central America as an area of research, or rather Central American Studies, was still in the womb. At that time (the late ’90s), there were very few scholars in the United States producing research on Central America and there were even fewer writing and examining the diaspora.2 As I have elsewhere written, Central America stopped being sexy to U.S. academics when the last of the Central American Civil Wars ended in 1996.3 In the perspective of U.S. academia, by the late 1990s Central America as a space for cultural productions was no longer fabricating the sensuous eye-catching narratives of war that had, during the 1980s and early 1990s, inspired so many doctoral dissertations and large bodies of literature on the subject both in the United States and in Europe. The Central American postwar directly meant a renewed Central American invisibility within first-world academia. Unlike today, moreover, Chicana/o Studies and Latin American Studies programs in the late 1990s still worked within traditional segmented nationalist paradigms. The idea of a Latina/o Studies that encompassed the whole of the Latina/o experience in the United States was still in pañales. For reasons that mirrored the historical establishment of Latina/o communities in the United States, the Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Chicana/o experiences dominated the conversations in the Latino Studies classroom back then. Added to the scarcity of Central American scholars invested in opening up U.S.– Central American spaces during that period, by the late 1990s the complexities of the Central American experience had not yet a space within U.S. higher education. Furthermore, the utilitarian co-optation of multiculturalism by universities was still not fully in vogue in the late 1990s and securing a space for the study of the Central American experience was no easy task at California

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State University, Northridge in 1999. It took the energy and dedication of some of the fiercest and most beautiful centroamericanas and centroamericanos I know to create the first (and still only) Central American Studies program in the nation.4 These people were Rossana Pérez, Roberto Lovato, Aquiles Magaña, Alberto García, Joaquín Chávez, Siris Barrios, Mónica Novoa, Scherly Virgill, Xochitl Flores, and Julie Monroy. Together we solidified CAUSA,5 the Central American United Student Association, and by way of this organization lobbied statewide, organized educational forums around the Central American exodus underway, fundraised, brought speakers engaged in human rights work in Central America, sought university and community allies, put constant political pressure on the university administration, and organized the growing Central American student body on campus around our right to study and examine our Central American stories and histories. The CSUN Chicana/o Studies department was particularly instrumental in aiding our struggle for inclusion. People like Dr. Rudy Acuña and Dr. Jorge García (“el Dean” we called him) fully supported the need for our own Central American spaces of knowledge production. CSUN mechistas too showed their support after many long conversations were had between Central American and Chicana/o students on the topics of identity, the meaning of solidarity among the communities we came from, and our particular political histories in the United States, Mexico, and Central America. As a newly arrived community in the United States we were, after all, making some of the same demands Chicanas and Chicanos had made forty years earlier. I remember all those conversations as particularly enriching and empowering; they allowed us to understand both our individual and collective experiences in the United States; the commonalities and differences between us but most importantly, the power of allyship among Central American and Chicana/o student organizations. Many of the Central American students involved in founding this first Central American Studies program (CASP back then) sacrificed their own studies to make the program a reality. When the program was finally inaugurated in the year 2000, however, all of us felt it had been worth the sacrifice, time, and effort. I still remember all the tears that inaugural day; the powerful testimonio given by la compañera Siris Barrios as a child of war belonging to the “1.5 generation,” her crossings of the border, the many traumas she endured, the struggles of her family to escape war and its aftermaths. Her personal story led us all into that very historical moment in which we celebrated the birth of the first Central American Studies program in the United States, ironically, the very country that had contributed to the Central American exodus underway. For those of us involved in the arduous process of the program’s establishment, the moment was particularly significant. It represented an acknowledgment of our existence and our histories as well as our insertion

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within U.S. academia. For our families and the Central American community of Los Angeles the inauguration of the program signified legitimation, visibility, and a step forward as we established a Central American presence in Los Angeles and in this country. From the beginning CASP sought to create and strengthen ties with the larger Central American community of Los Angeles. We never once saw ourselves as separate from the community where we came from, or distanced from the struggles of the larger Central American community both nationally and transnationally. The Central American Studies program has since its inception taken on a life of its own. The original founders all left CSUN, different people now manage the program (it achieved “major” status in 2007), and all of us causistas involved in the program’s foundation graduated around 2004–05. The people initially involved in making CASP a reality and the realized importance of creating these Central American spaces, however, inspired me to further my education. As a few other Central Americans of my generation in the United States also did, I eventually went on to obtain a PhD. Not without a series of challenges pertaining to the elitist, white, and exclusionary cultures of graduate school, years later I entered the corporatized matrix of higher education as an assistant professor. The climate of higher education has changed drastically since the late 1990s given the increased corporatization of U.S. universities and a risen institutional interest in multiculturalism. The following section is a reflection of my current experiences at a liberal arts university in the Northwest where I now teach and am creating a new Latino Studies program.

THE LIBERAL ARTS INSTITUTION WHERE I NOW TEACH: OR THE PRIVATE, WHITE UNIVERSITY Costing students more than $54,000 a year, the University of Puget Sound was founded in 1888 by the Methodist Episcopal Church on what was then recently occupied Native land in Tacoma, Washington. Now nondenominational, the private liberal arts institution of 2,600 students and 220 faculty sits in the “nice” part of town. “Nice” here meaning affluent and white, of course. Interestingly, the university also lies less than 4.5 miles away from one of the largest immigrant detention prisons in the nation—the Northwest Immigrant Detention Center, a privately owned business that imprisons more than 1,500 mostly Latino immigrants on any given day earning the GEO corporation billion dollar revenues annually. But the prison, like the impoverished Black, Indigenous Oaxacan, Latino, Vietnamese, Native American, and Chinese communities, many with per-capita incomes of under $23,000 (below $16,000 in some cases) inhabiting the outskirts of the university’s radius, are made invisible to the university’s mostly white students. First- and second-year students

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are required to live within the university’s ninty-seven-acre campus while third- and fourth-year students unanimously decide to live walking distance from campus for reasons related to their comfort and some will even say, “safety.” To this day, I have met a very small number of students who actually commute to campus. The university serves all their social and physical needs, hosting more than one hundred campus clubs and student organizations while making sure to provide weekly nighttime and weekend activities for their socialization. For the more sympathetic souls—and in line with the liberal arts philosophy—the university also provides countless service and volunteer opportunities through which in fact—the university’s website proudly reminds us—“75%” of the student body participate. Despite this fact, the majority of students at the institution graduate without knowing of or having come into contact with the active Native communities in the area, or, for that matter, without significantly engaging with any of the communities of color surrounding the campus. The university’s cafeteria, as we can imagine, also stays busy year-round, providing students, or rather their “customers” as the university website calls them, “the best local products” and a “seamless, sustainable dining experience so that students can focus on academics.” To make it easier on students, the university has even converted student IDs into prepaid debit cards that students can use “as early as 6:45 a.m. and as late as 1 a.m. to ensure students have accessibility to food regardless of their diverse agendas.” And in case students crave more “unique cultural explorations” of food, the university also makes sure to provide daily options that fit a “wide variety of different cultural backgrounds.” With all these diversity-sensitive food options available to the student-“customer” and weekly activities, there really is no need for students to go explore the larger area in which the university is located, much less those peripheries populated by bodies of color. Unless of course, students wish to embark on the exotizised idea of studying abroad for a semester, for which there are also multiple (and quite expensive) options available to them. After all—also in accordance with a good liberal arts education as the university website also reminds us—an “international education” will surely “foster an appreciation for cultural diversity.” Such is the culture of diversity espoused by this private institution; one grounded on a surface-level idea of the “experience” of “diversity” that allows for students to momentarily go live diversity “over there” in that foreign land abroad, while as I will now argue, evading the hard work required to diversify our very campus over here. Since the university’s foundation and despite recent institutional interest in the subject of “diversity,” the campus has been kept exceedingly white.6 Bodies of color on campus are few and can be disproportionately found in the lower ranks of the institutions’ cafeteria staff. Both the faculty and student

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body are not reflective of Washington State’s population, much less of the local community that surrounds the campus. While the university’s diversity mission is continuously boasted publicly, hostile acts against people of color on campus, moreover, are continually seen as separate, exceptional incidents rather than as the norm, and systemic institutionalized practices of marginalization against bodies of color on campus too often go unexamined. Documented experiences of campus racism are few, but they do exist.7 Even though the university conducts campus climate surveys where a large number of racially insensitive incidents have been numbered, for the most part it is the students of color themselves who are courageously writing in depth about the daily lived experiences of racism on campus.8 While the institution has allowed for students to express their experiences related to race and racism on campus through some of its official media outlets, honest dialogue on the topic is happening within the spaces created by the students themselves, whether it be using the institution’s outlets or creating entirely new ones. Most incidents and cases related to racism on campus, however, are usually kept within the confines of an administrator’s or staff’s office and too often my own. It is in the privacy of my office that I mostly witness student tears and listen to testimonies of their depressions, feelings of isolation, and their dailylived experiences as students of color on campus. What I have learned from my students is that they are afraid to publicly speak about their marginalization on campus. They feel as though they must deal with issues pertaining to racism on campus on their own because to them, a safe environment for openly speaking about these realities simply does not exist. Despite wellmeant efforts by key staff on campus hired specifically to handle issues related to campus diversity, it is clear to students of color that the campus as a whole is not ready or prepared to engage in meaningful conversations about racism. This leaves students having to individually select the people with whom they feel they can talk to about their experiences. The ongoing result is a generalized silencing on the part of those who experience the campus’s cultures of racism. As a faculty of color on campus I can attest to this reality and silencing. My own fear of institutional and/or personal retaliation impedes me from going into details here about my own experiences confronting racism on campus.

LATINO STUDIES AS “EMERGENCY RESPONSE” OR DIVERSITY AS ANOTHER OBJECT OF CONSUMPTION IN THE CORPORATIZED UNIVERSITY Only two decades after students of color gained access into U.S. institutions of higher learning, public financial support for education began to dwindle,

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college fees began to rise, and higher education began its unstoppable road toward corporatization. Acting under the idea that the free market could do nearly everything better than government, the Reagan administration (1981–89) brought back Milton Friedman’s claims that public schools are “an island of socialism in a free-market sea” (Herndon 1981). Thought of as such, Reaganomics began to cut federal funding for public education, placing more financial burden on the individual states and ultimately opening up the doors for the privatization of education in the United States. The result: postsecondary public education has since become ever more inaccessible, fees have skyrocketed by 1120% from 1980 to 2014, and student loan debt now surpasses the country’s total credit card debt ($1.1 trillion)—the highest per-capita student loan debt in the world (Lorin 2015). Students of color in particular, within this new corporate framework, are being thrown to the bottom of the debt-trap as they disproportionately graduate with higher college debt than their white counterparts (Huelsman 2015). Despite now entering college at higher rates than before, students of color are nonetheless exiting into continued positions of disadvantage under this corporatized model of education. The very concept of education has drastically changed in the past three decades. If higher education was once seen as a means to a more socially conscious, intellectually prepared, critical, and engaged citizenry, in today’s neoliberal economy higher learning has been converted into a means for safeguarding economic returns in the future. As such, universities are now places were degrees are purchased; the higher the price paid for the degree, the better probability of more profitable gains for the student-customer in our competitive work force. To this end, universities are racing to the top of the ratings war made possible by companies such as U.S. News and World Report, which publish annual print and e-book versions of its authoritative rankings of “Best Colleges,” “Top 20 National Universities,” and “Best Graduate Schools.” U.S. News’ “Best College Guide,” as Nicolaus Mills in “The Corporatization of Higher Education” promptly noted, has become so vital to the economic success of universities that it impacts the internal policies of academic establishments. As he writes in “The corporatization of Higher Education”: It is now a standard practice for many schools to solicit applications from students who have done well on their SAT tests, even though they know there is no room for most of these students. Admissions officers don’t mind this waste of their time. The more students a college or university gets to reject, the higher it is ranked on the all-important U.S. News selectivity scale. Having a student body with impressive SAT scores is great; having a student body with impressive SATs and rejecting more applicants than a rival is better still. The closer a college or

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university comes to Harvard’s nationwide low of taking just 5.9 percent of its applicants, the happier parents are. (Mills 2012) Students who succeed in making it into the highest-ranked colleges, furthermore (and numbers show these admissions are disproportionately white despite an equally qualified pool of students of color), are later on in their careers “far wealthier than the population as a whole” (Mills 2012). For practitioners of critical race pedagogies, the corporatization of universities is proving a threat, a challenge, and an interesting irony. More than fifty years ago, during Ethnic Studies’ initial stages, students of color had to fight with their life and blood for our disciplines to exist within university campuses nationwide; today Ethnic Studies has become a desirable, we can even say sexy, discipline made permissible by the corporate university’s invested interest in the subject of diversity. Frances Aparicio in 1999 was already talking about this invested interest as an “emergency response to political pressures” (Poblete 2003, 11). Indeed, there are more Latino Studies programs today than ever before. Latino Studies programs are particularly thriving in private universities located in regions previously not bound to direct Latino histories while many public state universities are cutting these programs’ budgets and condensing faculty, thus negatively impacting the programs’ selfgovernance within various academic institutions.9 Programs such as Latino Studies help make private universities more attractive by creating the illusion that these establishments are devoted to helping build a more “inclusive” and diverse country; that they are past the dark period in U.S. history when universities systemically marginalized and excluded bodies of color and their knowledge productions from entering and equally contributing to the intellectual body-politic of the nation; and that these universities are helping create a more culturally aware citizenry who will be best fit to graduate into an ever more multicultural United States. By housing at least one Ethnic Studies program among its disciplines, private universities legitimize their fictitious distancing from the time in history when race as a subject for critical scholarly inquiry was not fit for entering the academic classroom. Not offering Ethnic Studies programs on the menu of academic disciplines in an era of indisputable and institutionally celebrated multiculturalism today will deem any institution regressive, backward, and even racist. Interestingly as well, it will also place the university at a lower rank in the U.S. News and World Report Guide of Best Colleges and Universities. Historically a site of pedagogical, cultural, and political contestation, it is clear that Latino Studies has now been moved to the center of the institution it once questioned, fought against, and sought inclusion in. Once a space for collective social justice action against an oppressive regime of higher learning and

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a racialized system of knowledge productions, in the corporatized educational setting Latino Studies has now become a space for the consumption of those histories of oppression and struggles; a place where students can consume the old and new complexities conforming U.S. latinidades for the purpose of checking off their multicultural awareness box in their academic CV and list of course requirements. In the process, both the field and its practitioners become service providers for academic institutions offering this “multicultural service” while students and universities both gain from the “transaction.” As scholars needing to provide this “service,” we directly and indirectly become instrumentalized by the corporation invested is acquiring, retaining, and pleasing its student customers; “the customer is always right” becoming ever more appropriate a phrase under this corporate educational model. For the corporation to be successful, the service department does not even have to be a complete service department. As in my case (and this is more of a national trend within private liberal arts colleges instituting new Latino Studies programs), it can be a one-person office. Indeed, the institution where I work hired me right out of graduate school when the university received a generous grant from a well-known foundation to specifically contribute to diversifying the institution’s academic curriculum in 2012.10 My responsibilities during my first year as an assistant professor—I later realized—were unprecedented for recently hired junior members of the institution. I was to do the work of an entire department. These tasks included conceptualize a Latino Studies minor, design and write the curriculum for the five new courses that would comprise the program, handle time-consuming administrative tasks necessary to run the minor, arrange Latino Studies programming outside the classroom for the university (events, speakers, symposiums), report to the foundation, teach all these new Latino Studies courses during the program’s initial years, create an advisory board, actively recruit and advise students interested or enrolling in the minor, and actively participate in university committees related to “diversity.” All of that while jointly teaching new courses on Latin and Central American literatures for the Hispanic Studies department and fulfilling my duties as an assistant professor there as well (advising, recruiting, teaching, meetings, etc.). My workload during that first year alone definitely spoke to the experiences being documented by more and more junior faculty throughout the nation as budgetary restraints and the increased corporatization of universities are loading more administrative work on the fewer tenured-track faculty hired (and larger teaching loads without job security to nontenured hires), a process also being called “the adjunctification of higher education.”11 Under a great deal of stress, I was able to fulfill my first-year responsibilities by arriving to campus at 6 a.m. every day of the week and leaving late into the night, including during weekends and university holidays.

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The Latino Studies program I direct has no possibility of becoming a major, much less of adding any more faculty to its ranks. In the eyes of the institution and unlike the more officialized academic disciplines housed by the university, Latino Studies is not seen as an academic area deserving of departmental status despite its solid interdisciplinary character, a guiding principle of the liberal arts education. In fact, the idea of even hiring one more tenure-track scholar for the Latino Studies program was laughable when I proposed it to the institution, making it clear to me that the faculty quota established for this entire academic discipline had already been met with my hire. The growth and development of the Latino Studies program, I soon learned, is not truly in the university’s interest. Adding Latino Studies to its list of academic programs offered was. To this purpose, one recently graduated female profesora of color was enough to fill the curricular gap and more than enough to speak for and teach the extensive and heterogeneous field of Latino Studies—a field containing wide-ranging areas of research and concentrations. Such is the trivialization of the field of Latino Studies amid the current corporatized institutional performances of “diversity” and “diversification.” The case of my institution is nowhere close to being an exception. More evidence of this trivialization is the national trend and institutional practice of asking new hires with no formation in the field of Latino Studies to teach Latino Studies courses.12 In the past three years I have been asked by numerous scholar-colleagues who have found work throughout the United States, including scholars trained as Peninsularist and “Southern Cone” cultural critics, to share my syllabi with them in preparation for new Latino Studies courses they are to soon teach at the institution that recently hired them.13 This diminishing of the field is both troubling and ultimately detrimental not only to the students but to the field itself. As Frances Aparicio also stated in 1999, allowing for nonspecialists to teach the field further propagates the idea that Latino Studies is not a “serious” academic discipline; that it is teachable by anyone who can read a few canonical books in preparation; and that it does not possess its own and exhaustive theoretical corpus or broad body of primary and secondary texts, its own history and its own disciplinary complexities. This trivializing practice is placing Latino Studies at a very clear position of subordination vis-à-vis other academic fields within institutions. Being considered flexible, controllable, easy, not scholarly enough, universities regulate and display the field of Latino Studies for the sole purpose of increasing the institution’s multicultural marketability. My own experience teaching in the privatized Latino Studies classroom constantly takes me to the abyss that distances my mostly white middle-toupper-class students from the ever more pressing issues in the Latino communities surrounding us. Physically separated from these othered communities of color by the white spacial localities of the private university, the classroom

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has come to signify a space where students can easily become sheltered; a site where we as instructors are asked to “hold their hand” for them to successfully graduate (and not retrieve their moneys from the university!); a place where we are asked to not make our students feel the discomforts of the ugly visceral truths of the communities that we as Latino Studies scholars study, research, and engage with. Student evaluations of our courses after all ultimately dictate our survival inside these institutions. Indeed, as I gave the initial informational talks about the newly created Latino Studies minor on campus, I was specifically asked to “tone the subject matter of Latino Studies down” in these sessions. I was to not overtly talk about the ugly imbrications of U.S. imperial histories in provoking Latino waves of migration to the north because I was to keep these info-talks “as friendly as possible.” “We did not want to scare anyone away” from possibly taking my Latino Studies courses and enrolling in the minor. In the same fashion, the Facebook page I created for the Latino Studies program was also subject to control by the university. Thought of as a space for keeping my students and the campus community informed on the most recent news items related to Latino Studies matters, soon after Obama’s second reelection I posted a link to an article that made a direct, visual correlation between the 2012 Republican voting states and the slave-owning states before the Civil War. As soon as the link went up and started getting hits from page subscribers, I received a call from our university administration asking that I bring the link down because a university donor had threatened to pull her money away from the university if the university allowed programs such as Latino Studies to teach and disseminate such “incendiary” positions. Prioritizing the donor’s threat, the university chose to “punish” Latino Studies’ virtual space (and me). As a new assistant professor only two months into my new job I quickly brought the link down, not wanting any problems with the administration. Incidents like these, however, point to the various ways in which universities can control the scope of Latino Studies pedagogies and instruction within a corporatized university setting.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS Increased political pressures to diversify white college campuses and university curricula are quickly turning Latino Studies into an object of use and consumption by and for the corporatized university. Programs that were born out of the student and social struggles of the 1960s in the fight to transgress racialized knowledge productions and white academic spaces are now being created by the very institutions these programs once fought against and sought inclusion in. Wherever Latino Studies programs have been unable to create autonomous sites of instruction and research, the corporatized university is

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making sure to maintain Ethnic Studies critical pedagogies powerless and restrained all the while publicly displaying these for the purpose of creating the illusion of inclusion in this period of must-have multicultural cognizance. Our very bodies as faculty of color, particularly in the smaller (and whiter) private college campuses, are being incorporated in the body-politic of educational institutions in great part to serve the pretense of inclusive and diversified spaces all the while longstanding racialized internal structures are going unchallenged. The corporate university’s demand that we whitewash our programs by watering down our critical pedagogies or allowing for nonspecialists to teach the field reaffirms Latino Studies’ subordinate positionality within academia. But the regulation of transgressive, critical, deviant positionalities within higher education is nothing new. Since the birth of universities in the Americas (a process begun with the European occupation of the continent), the white elite classes have profited from maintaining and constructing higher learning as a site for explicit social, economic, and political exclusionary control. I have here contended that the corporatization of universities begun in the 1980s has served to further solidify those initial goals. Demystifying universities as places for democratic freedoms, individual and collective social attainment, and as localities for critical social engagement in today’s neoliberal economy is therefore a necessary first step if we are to confront and transgress these spaces with critical pedagogies. As the corporatization of universities continues to create more spaces for Latino Studies, it is to remain our duty to make clear the inherent contradictions, ironies, and implications involved in this process. Most important, I believe it is also our duty to take ownership of the moments and places were critical transgressions within the corporatized university can occur, however reduced these spaces may be. In my case, this place of transgression is to remain my classroom. As I teach my introductory courses to Latina/o Studies, courses on U.S. Latina/o literatures, Central American literatures, and seminars on key aspects of the U.S. Latina/o experience, I persistently refuse to water down—or whitewash—the material I use in my courses. On the contrary, I insist on including “difficult” material and on having conversations deemed “uncomfortable” with my students; this means I do not depoliticize classroom discussions or sugarcoat historical processes and their ongoing lasting effects. Instead I urge my students to see the power of discomfort and engage them in conversation about where their discomfort comes from, my goal being to convert the very sense of discomfort into a site of critical engagement and pedagogy. Establishing the needed vocabulary, creating a sense of community and respect in the classroom, and setting the rules of engagement at the beginning of every academic semester is crucial for this task.

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The results are for the most part very enriching, both for my students and myself, who come to understand the space of the classroom as a place where we can do away with the superficiality of “diversity”; a place where we can have open and honest conversations about our own institution’s whiteness, the cultures of racism at play on campus, the whitening of traditional academic disciplines, histories, and present realities. To do away with the fictitious distance created by the white space of the university against communities of color, I’ve learned to connect Latino Studies material to my students’ lived realities at our very institution; to directly connect the material to the white spaces in which we converge. Looking deeply into our very own institutionalization can serve as an exercise of critical reflection; one that can force us to look at ourselves in the mirror and think about our positionalities within academia and society. My own personal trajectory and experience contributing to the field of Latino Studies has led me to reflect on what it means to practice critical pedagogy as a woman of color within an ever more corporatized educational setting. This setting is of course much more complex; it is inscribed within a larger climate of whiteness, heterosexist normativities, and racisms in U.S. social and political spaces. We are, after all, talking about a moment in history where the ongoing war against immigrants (of color) has become normalized, heightened police brutality in communities of color ever more constant, the disproportionate and continued recruitment of youth of color into the military relentless, the school to prison pipelines in minoritized communities more solidified, the growing force of the privatized prison-industrial complex more cynical, the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the United States ever more widened, and ongoing cultural wars at all levels of society rampant. It is clear that our struggles and experiences as scholars of color engaged in pedagogies of resistance and awareness-raising inside the corporatized university do not stand alone. Rather, they are part of a larger climate of war against people of color in the United States because education is and has always been but another war zone. While I alone cannot offer complete answers to the questions I posed at the beginning of this chapter, I do believe it is important to not keep silent about our experiences inside our respective institutions. Fear will only lead us into further marginalization. Institutions too need not silence our voices but take our shared experiences here as an opportunity to more critically engage with the issues of diversity, multiculturalism, and racism on college campuses. Creating the very spaces where we can transgress the silencing of our disciplines and bodies of color within the artificial framework of multiculturalism posed by the corporatized university is critical if we are to truly and meaningfully engage these challenges. As a Central American who has since my arrival to the United States found strength in the stories and experiences of others,

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I cannot but urge us all to continue sharing and reflecting on our experiences inside academia. Dismantling the myth of inclusion in higher education under today’s corporatized climate takes—and will continue to take—the effort and participation of all.

NOTES 1. Since the early 1980s, Los Angeles has been the city with the highest Central American population in the United States. It was no coincidence that California State University, Northridge (CSUN), a public state university located in the San Fernando Valley, would host more Central American students than any other university in the country by the late 1990s. The San Fernando Valley along with the Pico Union area of Los Angeles held and continue to hold the largest concentrations of Central Americans within the city of Los Angeles and the United States. 2. Among the few Central American academics in the U.S. publishing scholarship on Central America in the 1990s were Arturo Arias, Ileana Rodríguez, Cecilia Menjívar, and Quetzil Castañeda. North American sociologists and anthropologists, however, were also contributing key works in solidarity with the Central American social movements of the 1980s and 1990s. Among them were Norma Chinchilla, Charlie Hale, Nora England, Carol Smith, Kay Warren, and James Loucky. 3. Guatemala was the last country to sign the peace accords. Lasting from 1960 to 1996, Guatemala’s civil war was the longest one of the Central American civil wars. 4. I do not foresee any other Central American Studies program being created in the United States in the future. For reasons directly tied to the corporatization of universities and their invested interest in espousing a shallow view of multiculturalism through the incorporation of new Latino Studies programs, which are serving as the “one-stop” store for all things Latino, I see Central American Studies spaces being incorporated in the larger field of Latino Studies programs. Nonetheless, as more young centroamericanos obtain their PhDs in different regions of the United States, we join the preceding generation of scholars who began opening up these spaces in the early 1990s and thus more of us contribute scholarship on Central America and its diaspora to the larger field of Latino and Ethnic Studies. 5. CAUSA had been in existence at CSUN since 1994 yet had not developed a strategy for demanding a Central American Studies program. It was with the arrival of Roberto Lovato and later Rossana Perez and Aquiles Magaña in 1999 that the idea of the first Central American Studies program in the nation began to be made concrete. 6. A University of Puget Sound student on campus in 2012 wrote a poem on this very topic titled “Look at the Calendar.” The poem was published by the Black Student Union magazine, Black Ice 1: 40. 7. Among these documented experiences, see Mariana Molina’s Letter, “A Public Letter to the Faculty and Administration of the University of Puget Sound” (2014) found on the web and published by Wetlands Magazine. See also Christina Pineda’s Guest Editorial, published also by Wetlands Magazine on the web: “To the ‘Liberal Arts’ Institution of the University of Puget Sound” (May 2014). In 2012, student

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Sandra Rosa Bryant wrote this other beautiful piece: “Voices: Studying Abroad on My Own Campus.” A good review of some of these student letters may be found on The Puget Sound Trail, “A Continuing Conversation: Students Voice Concerns about Diversity” posted by Paul Goudarzi-Fry in March 2014. 8. The Black Student Union on campus has created an incredible space for the discussion of race and racism on campus. The magazine Black Ice is now on its third volume and all volumes may be found online. There are two pieces I can particularly recommend in the first volume: “Look at the Calendar,” by Crispus Attucks and “Shit People Say to Black People at UPS.” 9. The case of Ethnic Studies programs in the California State University system is particularly telling. In the past years these programs have endured deep budget cuts, class reductions, and less faculty hires. 10. Previous to Latino Studies, the institution housed only one other Ethnic Studies program, a ten-year-old African American Studies program. 11. The New York Times, Slate, and Al Jazeera have been drawing attention to the adjunctification of the professoriate in the United States in the past few years. Only 24% of university and college faculty are now tenured or tenure track. 12. The opposite is also happening where scholars not trained in Latino Studies are proposing themselves as candidates fit to teach Latino Studies courses in order to make themselves more marketable when looking for jobs. 13. I point this out merely so that we are aware of the larger forces at play and not as an offense against scholars in this situation. I am a firm believer in sharing syllabi with other colleagues and will always invite more of us to do so. I particularly have found other colleagues’ syllabi useful for helping me develop and strengthen my own courses.

REFERENCES Black Ice Volume 1: Studying Abroad On My Own College Campus 2012. 2012. http:// soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=black _ice. Accessed July 5, 2015. Bryant, Sandra Rosa. 2012. “Studying Abroad on my Own Campus.” Arches (Autumn): 16. Goudarzi-Fry, Paul. 2014, March 28. “A Continuing Conversation: Students Voice Concerns about Diversity.” The Puget Sound Trail. http://trail.pugetsound.edu /?p=9806. Accessed July 3, 2015. Herndon, Terry. 1981, November 15. “Is Public Education a Casualty of Reaganomics.” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/15/education/is-public -education-a-casualty-of-reaganomics.html. Accessed July 1, 2015. Huelsman, Mark. 2015. “The Debt Divide: The Racial and Class Bias Behind the ‘New Normal’ of Student Borrowing.” Demos.org 2015. http://www.demos.org/sites /default/files/publications/The%20Debt%20Divide.pdf. Accessed June 20, 2015. Lorin, Janet. 2012, March 22. “Student-Loan Debt Reaches Record $1 Trillion, Report Says.” Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012–03–22/student -loan-debt-reaches-record-1-trillion-u-s-report-says. Accessed July 1, 2015.

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Mills, Nicolaus. 2012. “The Corporatization of Higher Education.” Dissent (Fall). https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-corporatization-of-higher-education. Accessed July 2, 2015. Molina, Mariana. 2014, March. “A Public Letter to the Faculty and Administration of the University of Puget Sound.” Wetlands Magazine. http://wetlandsmagazine .com/2014/03/14/a-public-letter-to-the-faculty-and-administration-of-the-univer sity-of-puget-sound/. Accessed July 3, 2015. Pineda, Christina. 2014, March. “To the ‘Liberal Arts’ Institution of the University of Puget Sound,” Wetlands Magazine. http://wetlandsmagazine.com/2014/05/14 /guest-editorial-to-the-liberal-arts-institution-of-the-university-of-puget-sound/. Accessed July 3, 2015. Poblete, Juan. 2003. Critical Latin American and Latino Studies: Cultural Studies of the Americas, Vol. 12. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Why Ethnic Studies Matters: A Personal Narrative from a Community College Educator Monica G. Killen

I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles County in the 1980s at a time when we were the only Mexican Americans on the block. We were middle class and lived in a middle-class neighborhood. Students in the school district I attended were of Mexican or Central American background and the Asian students I befriended had parents who emigrated from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, consistent with Third Wave immigration patterns in the United States. We were students of color who integrated well with the predominately white student body. We didn’t have racial epithets appear at school or encounters with racial tensions as it is currently reported on the evening news. The divisions and problems that existed were more along the lines of what you would see in a 1980s or early 1990s John Hughes film. Students segregated themselves based on interests and involvement on campus not racial lines. Yes, my high school was predominately white, but there were enough students of color to be represented at all levels of the social ladder. We didn’t have cliques or bullies who terrorized less powerful students. Students were respected by their peers for their skills and abilities and not judged by the color of their skin. I am not going to suggest our school was perfect; there were issues of underage drinking, sex, and drug use, but my world was not filled with lockdowns or fear of being shot at school. In this semi-blissful environment, I received a Eurocentric education. Like other students of color who have gone through the U.S. educational system, we have been systemically denied our cultural histories, tragedies, and achievements for far too long. I didn’t start recognizing the omission of Mexican American history in courses and textbooks until my father brought it to my attention when I was a sophomore in high school. I recall the time he proudly told me the story of the Mexican American War and the ratification

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of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. He even went as far as to share with me copies of the complete treaty he made at the library. Shortly after he told me the story, I cross referenced my social studies textbook and found a short and very brief mention of those two events. Indoctrinated with a Eurocentric education, I disregarded my father’s elaborate history lesson and regarded them as insignificant events of American history. As a student of color, the very educational system I was educated in had colonized me to believe my own ethnic history was inferior. As a college student, I began to immerse myself in the discipline of Chi­ cano/a Studies and I have not stopped since. Not only has Chicano/a Studies allowed me to learn about my cultural history and complete my own personal identity, I also became aware of different ethnic groups whose stories and histories were also subjugated to marginal status. It was not until I was in college I learned about the Japanese American Internment and relocation camps and the federal court case of Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County, which paved the way for the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. How could these critical points of U.S. history be omitted from K–12 classrooms? Who makes decisions to include or not include these chapters of U.S. history?

THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION The political manipulation by Arizona lawmakers to question the presence of an Ethnic Studies program in public schools and higher education institutions is reflective of an agenda to silence students of color at a time when demographics are changing to reflect a nation with a shrinking white population and growing ethnic diversity. Yet, the majority of political leaders at the state and federal level are predominately white and enter politics with no teaching or research experience (Manning 2014, 1–13). This becomes a double-edged sword for school districts and public higher education institutions that must comply with state and federal mandates that dictate what and how students must learn. With a shift toward extreme right-wing ideologies, progressive education reform is held hostage by a small group of political extremists whose agenda is driven by special interests that feed on exaggerated fallacies and fear of change. This may be why some Ethnic Studies programs in states like Arizona are perceived as a threat by white dominant lawmakers because Ethnic Studies aims to challenge the status quo. Ethnic Studies provides the tools for People of Color to uncover hidden histories to expose racism, marginalization, and injustice. Arizona lawmakers consider the revelations made by Ethnic Studies to be “un-American” and thus they engage in a crusade to politicize knowledge by creating laws and policies to dehumanize the histories of People of Color.

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Social rights movements can be traced back to activist and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois who supported engaging in public protest to address issues of racism and discrimination. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s embodied the philosophy of Du Bois and influenced the activism of Martin Luther King, Dolores Huerta, and groups like the American Indian movement, which publicly mobilized to highlight social inequalities. In liberal states like California where diverse populations exist, the California State University and University of California systems have provided the foundations for the first Ethnic Studies programs in the United States. Both of these programs emerged at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley in 1969 as a result of students of color demanding scholarly inquiry into the understudied histories of People of Color be taught.

ETHNIC STUDIES AND LEARNING COMMUNITIES At the community college level, Ethnic Studies has struggled to be recognized as its own discipline. Not all community colleges have well-structured Ethnic Studies programs. Typically, courses are offered under a mainstream discipline such as sociology or history. At Citrus College in Glendora, California, where I taught for four years, there are only two Ethnic Studies courses available to students. Prior to the fall of 2011, Ethnic Studies courses were housed in the sociology department. Through another faculty member, I learned that Ethnic Studies courses were not taught every semester and assignments to teach the sections bounced around the full-time faculty like a hot potato. Access to these classes was not consistent because none of the sociology instructors had expertise in Ethnic Studies. The courses would only be offered if a faculty member had an interest to teach an Ethnic Studies class. Ultimately, the dean of the department decided an adjunct faculty member needed to be brought in to teach Ethnic Studies. The Ethnic Studies program started under the Learning Communities Program as one-quarter of a grant called the Title V Bridges to Success Program. Bridges to Success was a five-year federal grant Citrus College received to address new associate degree competencies in math and English. A Title V Project Planning Team comprised of faculty, staff, students, and a grant writer were involved in developing the Bridges to Success Program. The initial idea of the program was to develop a Learning Community with a career major focus. This strategy included academic and student support services such as tutoring, career mentoring, and supplemental instruction in fundamental courses. The initial Bridges to Success concept also included using a cohort model to increase completion among students. The Title V Project Planning Team identified Ethnic Studies as an area for job growth based on regional employment needs for professionals and transferability of course work. The

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grant committee decided to pair Ethnic Studies with English as the faculty and staff deemed it would be a good fit to blend writing assignments with content from Ethnic Studies. Although the Bridges to Success grant program ended in the fall of 2014, it provided the college the opportunity to give two Ethnic Studies courses its own section.

THE IMPACT OF ETHNIC STUDIES ON STUDENTS College educators typically do not always know how their course impacts students. At many college campuses in the United States, adjunct faculty typically outnumber full-time faculty. Since adjunct faculty spend a limited amount of time on campus, not all adjuncts have the luxury to remain onsite for extended periods of time to fully interact with students. However, chance meetings happen to allow for such exchanges to occur. One day when I went to campus to grade, I ran into one of my former students. He was from the first Learning Communities course I taught when I arrived at the college. This student, an African American male, shared how much he loved my class and because of my Ethnic Studies course he switched his major to anthropology. He proceeded to share with me how much he learned in my class and how he became fascinated by different cultures. He told me the class opened his eyes to learn about people from diverse cultural groups. I had a huge smile on my face when I heard him speak with such enthusiasm and confidence about where he was heading on his educational journey. Our conversation completely validated the hard work I invested to teach one Ethnic Studies course each semester despite my busy schedule. Imagine if he had the opportunity to take enough courses to major in Ethnic Studies? I stood there proudly listening to him and excited he had found his “a-ha” moment. Here was a young African American student having the clarity and persistence to move forward and finish his education. I was confident he was going to transfer to a four-year university so he could pursue his new career goals. The second semester I taught in the Learning Communities program, the English instructor and I agreed to develop one joint assignment since it was one of the objectives of the grant. Working with another faculty member not only benefited my students, it also benefited me as an adjunct faculty member to establish a connection with at least one full-time faculty member who helped me feel supported in a new environment. Being an adjunct faculty member can be a lonely world especially if you are in a small program. Adjuncts come to campus to teach and hold office hours for a brief period of time before it’s time to rush off to another job or campus to teach another course. It’s been four years since I started at Citrus College and the Ethnic Studies program has not grown as quickly as I had hoped. There are a total of two adjunct faculty (including myself) who are qualified to teach Ethnic Studies.

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I have inquired about the future of the Ethnic Studies program at the college and there are rumblings a Cultural Studies program may be developed in the near future. I am not sure how quickly this may come to fruition but the momentum is growing for Ethnic Studies in California. The largest public school district in the State of California, Los Angeles Unified School District, recently approved to offer one Ethnic Studies course each semester. There have been several attempts at the state level to incorporate Ethnic Studies into California curriculum, which is a direct contrast to Arizona; however, none of the California bills have survived. At a time when demographics are rapidly changing, we have an obligation to educate our future workforce to be globally competitive. Ethnic Studies has a valuable role to play to increase ethnic consciousness in order to confront issues of racism and oppression and to counter a seemingly less democratic society where neoliberal ideologies aim to take hold of our future.

REFERENCES Citrus College. “Title V Bridge to Success Grant Application.” http://www.citruscol lege.edu/academics/bridges/research/Documents/Grant%20Application%20 and%20Abstract/narrative.pdf. Manning, Jennifer E. 2014. Membership of the 113th Congress: A Profile. Congressional Research Service. NAACP. “NAACP History: W. E. B. Du Bois.” http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp -history-w.e.b.-dubois. University of California, Berkeley. “Department of Ethnic Studies History.” http:// ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/history.php.

8

We Are Not “the Help”: A Composite Autoethnography of Service and Struggle in Ethnic Studies womyn of color collective

In this chapter, we use an autoethnographic composite counter-narrative to highlight how race/ethnic and gender bias and microaggressions shape our experiences as women of color faculty within Ethnic Studies units. We contend that this “multiple marginality” (Sotello Viernes Turner 2002) limits our ability to advocate for our students, provide authentic mentorship, resource-build, develop programs and curricula, and contribute to overall growth within our Ethnic Studies units. Further, we assert that this double “minority” status places us in an overburdened and overtaxed position that is inconsistent with institutional reward structures (i.e., tenure and promotion) and overall wellbeing. To be specific, research indicates that women of color make up 9.9%, 6.6%, and 3.4% of assistant, associate, and full professors, respectively (Harris & González 2012, 2–3). Thus, this chapter highlights how institutions may contribute to the “wars” against Ethnic Studies by not supporting women of color generally and women faculty of color in particular in these units. The chapter concludes with individual and institutional policy recommendations. A contemporary analysis of women of color faculty experiences within Ethnic Studies units provides a unique contribution absent from the broader literature examining the experiences of faculty of color in the classroom, in the academy, and the general scholarship on women of color faculty (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012). According to John Dividio (2012), “While there is a large amount of scholarly literature about bias against white women and members of disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups, the unique intersectional experience of women of color is less well-understood” (114). Dividio partially attributes this bias to the tendency for scholarship to group all experiences of women, irrespective of background, as the same.

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Further, this chapter is significant because it examines the challenges for Ethnic Studies scholars and practitioners from a critical perspective. Specifically, we use critical race theory (CRT) and autoethnography (described in more detail in the next section) as our guiding theoretical framework. CRT scholars acknowledge the strength of “ethnic studies, women’s studies, sociology, history, law, and other fields to guide research that better understands the effects of racism, sexism, and classism” because they attend to “intersecting social realities” of People of Color (Solórzano & Yosso 2002, 27). As a result, our field is particularly suited to guide the examination of the “multiple marginality” we address in this chapter (Viernes Turner 2008). Finally, as educator-scholar-activists and the first women tenured in our respective departments, we draw from our experiences and other faculty women of color experiences within Ethnic Studies units to provide a voice “from the trenches.”

METHODOLOGY In “Autoethnography, a Chicana’s Methodological Research Tool,” Minerva S. Chávez (2012) explains the significance of doing authoethnographic research: The actions and behaviors of our everyday lives—the instances that serve to inform theory—are set aside as researchers prioritize measures to maintain objectivity. What is needed is a break from this restrictive pattern too often found in academic texts and discourses. It is important to emphasize that to disrupt forms of knowledge that render the author’s identity inconsequential, I deliberately chose to situate myself at the margins of this academic sphere. Here, in the margins, is a space where my stories, intertwined with the experiences of my community(ies), are read alongside academic settings and serious texts. Producing autoethnographic research acknowledges and validates my Chicana presence as well as draws attention to my marginal position inside dominant structures of education. (335) Informed by critical race and feminist theories, as alluded to above, we employ autoethnographic methods to highlight the themes throughout this chapter. According to Carolyn Ellis (2004), autoethnography is “research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political” (xix). From a feminist perspective, autoethnography permits an examination of personal experience through a political lens, and, vice versa, how political structures are experienced personally. Therefore, consonant with other feminist scholars of color, we share our

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composite narratives and draw from other women faculty of color in Ethnic Studies units to share our lived experiences and bring visibility to our truths. From a CRT perspective, autoethnography is more than just autobiographical; it is a “genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness” (Ellis 2004, 38). This approach is informed by five tenets of CRT: “(1) the centrality of race/racism and intersectionality with other forms of subordination; (2) the challenge to dominant ideology; (3) the commitment to social justice; (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge; and (5) the interdisciplinary perspective” (Yosso et al. 2001, 91). These tenets also underlie the values and mission of our Ethnic Studies units. Underscoring our commitment to social justice through our work and bringing light to our experiential knowledge, we use an autobiographical and biographical perspective to represent our “autoethnography.” Moreover, the multiplicity of the “back and forth autoethnographer’s gaze” between objective “social and cultural aspects” and subjective “personal experience” exposes a self that may “resist cultural interpretations” (Ellis 2004, 38 [emphasis added]). With a view from the margins, autoethnography represents a valuable counter-narrative tool against master narratives for critical race scholars. Along this vein, we examine autoethnographic counter-stories as a means of excavating sites of resistance within our institution. Finally, our analysis is guided by critical race and feminist theories of intersectionality. Angela P. Harris and Carmen G. González (2012) assert, “As feminist scholars and those in the critical race theory tradition have established, personal stories may bridge the epistemological gap that frequently appears between the lives of people with a particular privilege and those who lack privilege” (3). As women of color in academia, we write along this privilege continuum, that is, as “insiders” because we hold doctorates from prestigious universities and academic positions within the institution, and as “outsiders” because we are among the limited number of women of color tenured within academia. Additionally, we are situated within Ethnic Studies units that must constantly grapple with defending our disciplinary field, pedagogy, and space. Following theories of intersectionality, our autoethnographic counter-­ narratives attempt to examine how multiple marginalities and multiple privileges might be shared among Ethnic Studies women of color faculty, as well as to tease out their differences. Importantly, these narratives aim to represent not just “inward” reflections on social identities, but also a theory of intersectionality that identifies institutional and societal power dynamics, which shape these marginalizations. Toward this end, our narratives take the form of composite autoethnographic narratives that underscore each of the themes in our chapter. Drawing from the work of Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, among others, CRT scholars outline: “Such counter-stories may offer biographical and autobiographical

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analyses because the authors create composite characters and place them in social, historical, and political situations to discuss racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of subordination” (Solórzano & Yosso 2002, 33). The distinct composite narrative approach within CRT as a form of counter storytelling is not only useful for affirming the experiences of the marginalized or silenced or for disrupting master discourses within academia, it is indispensable for women of color faculty who face the real threat of retaliation or backlash for speaking up within their institutions. As we write this chapter, we realize the difficulty of achieving a productive balance between disclosure and anonymity. Therefore, for the sake of preserving anonymity, we have chosen not to disclose details that could identify specific individuals. Additionally, this composite narrative uses the pronoun “I” not necessarily to speak for any individual experience, but to convey the collective autobiographical and biographical data we have collected through discussions with each other and with other faculty women of color in Ethnic Studies at our home institution and elsewhere. The “we” within the “I,” represented by our composite character, is comprised of the experiences, observations, and perspectives accumulated over a decade of working within Ethnic Studies units, including our own institution, where we have observed the mobility of both administrators and academics: the tenure of more than one university president, numerous vice presidents, associate vice presidents, college deans, and Ethnic Studies department chairs, over twenty Ethnic Studies tenured or tenure-track faculty members (including those who were not retained), and many more adjunct faculty members. We believe the scope of our combined experiences in Ethnic Studies at our institution, as well as other institutions, has provided reliable observations on the general state of Ethnic Studies for women of color faculty. Given the challenge of objectivity in autoethnographic research, it is important to address our positionality. That is, it is important to acknowledge who we are and from where we speak. As mothers, partners, sisters, daughters, critical educators, scholars, department administrators, campus leaders, and community servants, we wear multiple hats in many spaces. Therefore, while we present composite counter-narratives, by no means are these narratives intended to be uniform, seamless, or monolithic; the “we” within each “I” draws from a collective of heterogeneous subjectivities that have crystallized around nodes of experience where race, gender, class, and/or sexual orientation variably intersect. In these multiple, “consciousness-raising space[s]” (Solórzano & Yosso 2002, 335), we are committed to bringing attention to critical issues relevant to our communities through critical methodologies and lenses. As feminists of color, we seek a just and equitable manner in which to address and improve these conditions. We believe that calling attention to struggles within Ethnic Studies, whether created from outside or within, is part of this feminist work of realizing social justice for all.

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THEMES This chapter is titled, “We Are Not ‘the Help,’ ” in order to illustrate how racialized and gendered bias is experienced through the multiple layers of service and responsibility that women of color faculty must take on as a result of being doubly (sometimes triply) marginalized within the university. As women of color, we already contend with stereotypes of being servants, nannies, maids, or housekeepers. The servant stereotype can carry over into the university setting through the inordinate amount and nature of service work women of color are expected to do. As Michelle A. Massé states, “Women and minority faculty also bring service practices and cultures, fostered in their homes and communities, into the workplace to benefit academic cultures. Yet service work is routinely characterized as plodding and unthinking or treated as an extension of women’s housework” (quoted in Jaschik 2010; see also Massé & Hogan 2010). However, if we are to take seriously a theory of intersectionality that identifies institutional and societal power dynamics that shape marginalized identities, then it is arguably insufficient to point to the social stereotyping of women of color as servants or the service cultures of minority faculty alone as the reasons why they are disproportionately burdened with service responsibilities. According to a “multi-level model of intersectionality” (Núñez 2014, 87), the cultures and discursive processes around women of color Ethnic Studies faculty intersect with another organizational level, which is the situation of Ethnic Studies as a “service/servant” unit within the hierarchy of the university. Therefore, as women of color faculty in Ethnic Studies, we examine how service work impacts us not only as women of color, but also as Ethnic Studies faculty, whose labor is both racialized and feminized within the academy. We argue that service is presumptively taken for servitude in at least three ways: free labor, invisibility, subservience or inferiority. We use our collective consciousness and experience to analyze our autoethnographic counter-narratives of service, grouping them into the following five themes: (1) essentialized committee representation; (2) challenges to the validity and rigor of Ethnic Studies; (3) co-curricular service expectations; (4) curricular service expectations; and (5) women leaders versus womanist leadership.

Essentialized Committee Representation Due to the problem of tokenist inclusion in university-shared governance, women of color faculty constantly have to question why they are selected to serve on some committees. Whenever I am asked to serve on a university committee, I have to ask myself: Am I supposed to represent the voice—or, in some cases, the face—of “diversity,” because I am a woman, a person of

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color, or an Ethnic Studies faculty member? White, heterosexual, male faculty probably rarely second-guess invitations for them to serve on committees; they probably think they are invited for their individual ideas, and they would probably be right. Through tokenism, my service is rendered both invisible and inferior. For example, when inclusion is used as a tool to leverage or legitimize other’s agendas, committee work becomes a time sink for women of color faculty, because our talents, knowledge, and skills are not being genuinely recognized, valued, or used. Therefore, besides having to question motivations for committee invitations, I often have to weigh the time and energy needed to expend on committee work, especially when there are not enough women of color faculty to go around to represent “diversity.” Ironically, women of color faculty may find it difficult to say “no” to committee work, because there are so few opportunities in the larger picture to make a difference. As an administrator told me, if I wanted to have my voice heard regarding policy decisions, I had to join a committee. The problem with this suggestion is that committees more often than not represent selfinterested decision making, which means that university policy is arbitrarily determined by whoever is serving at any given time. This places women of color faculty in Ethnic Studies in a bind; on the one hand, I am pressured to reproduce the self-interested, tokenistic dynamic of committee work through my participation, and, on the other hand, I am often left out because there are simply not enough of “us” to attend all the committee meetings. If diverse inclusion were genuine and embedded at policy and practical levels in shared governance, women of color faculty would not feel that they have to be physically present at every relevant decision-making meeting in order to make their voices heard. While universities may have the capacity to extend resources in order to relieve some of the time being expended to serve on various committees, it still may not be carried out in the best interest of faculty. For example, I was asked to chair a universitywide committee just as I was about to take a leave of absence. I clarified to the administrator that I did not plan to be on campus or to participate in any committee work, whether at the department or university level, during my leave. I also explained that the committee meetings would disrupt my research and writing schedule. Realizing that chairing this committee was out of reach, the administrator asked if I would be willing to telecommute as a long-distance committee member and, whenever my schedule allowed, in person. The administrator further added that they were confident they could “find some money in the budget” to compensate me for my travel expenses and participation. This was the first (and only) time that I had ever been offered these types of resources to participate in any committee on campus. I did not even realize it was possible to be compensated for university service work.

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It was clear to me that they were trying to buy my “buy-in” and the sacred research leave that I had been looking forward to for several years was not important. Less important to the administration was the writing project I had planned for my leave in order to make progress toward promotion. The university needed representatives from the Ethnic Studies units for committee work serving “diverse” students, and I was to provide one of these voices. My face and position in Ethnic Studies provided “legitimacy” and “authenticity” to the project. As a woman of color faculty member, I was a “twofer” (Dividio 114). As a woman of color faculty member in Ethnic Studies, I was a “threefer” within this essentialized context of committee service.

Challenges to the Validity and Rigor of Ethnic Studies When I informed family, peers, and colleagues that I was to begin a tenuretrack position in Ethnic Studies at a comprehensive teaching institution, the reactions were mixed. My family was excited because I had secured a job even before filing my dissertation. Questions such as “What’s Ethnic Studies?” were quickly clarified. Reactions from my close friends who also examined issues of equity and inequality for People of Color were also positive. Comments, awkward looks, and forced smiles from some peers, colleagues, and professors were not as enthusiastic. Their reactions informed me that there were many assumptions about how coming from a doctoral program at a top-tier researchintensive institution related to what my future employment prospects should be. First, I was being trained for a faculty position at another research-intensive institution. Second, I was to seek a tenure-track position in a traditional, mainstream discipline (not an interdisciplinary department born out of traditional disciplines and dialogues). After all, my position would be a reflection of what my doctoral program could produce. Third, and finally, research is primary and teaching is secondary; therefore, the goal is to teach as little as possible so as to focus on your research. These assumptions were underscored when a former professor commented that the tenure-track position in Ethnic Studies that I was about to embark upon was “a great stepping-stone.” Undoubtedly, from their perspective, a tenure-track position in Ethnic Studies was not a good enough end unto itself. A faculty position in Ethnic Studies at a teaching institution was even less desirable. The idea was that I would use this position as a springboard for something better. How could I possibly want to seek out or stay in an Ethnic Studies unit at a comprehensive university? The implications of this comment speak to larger structures at work on the legitimacy and rigor of Ethnic Studies. It is important to highlight that within public, postsecondary institutions, larger departments with larger enrollments typically translate into bigger bud­ gets with more resources, influence, and institutional power. Within institutions,

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there is a college hierarchy typically ranked by operating budgets, endowments, space, grants, and research centers. Within colleges, departments and programs are also judged based on their number of faculty members, course selections, enrolled students, and majors. As a result, by default, smaller departments such as Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, and similar interdisciplinary units, have fewer resources and less influence and power. To exemplify, in May 2015, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors voted to discontinue fortyfive degrees, among them Africana Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Hispanic Studies Education, due to low enrollments (Ovaska 2015). As noted previously, our resources are largely determined by the number of students we serve. This hierarchy also exists outside our university and is reflective of the public, three-tier postsecondary system outlined in the California Master Plan for Higher Education. The California Master Plan for Higher Education distinguishes the mission and functions of each tier. Specifically, the University of California system is a research-focused institution that serves among the top 12.5% of the graduating high school class. The California State University system promotes teacher and professional education and serves the top 33.3%. Meanwhile, the California Community College system is an open access institution. While all faculty members within each respective institutional system are more than competent, the three-tier system is used as a proxy for the caliber of the faculty members, with a stigma attached to each tier. Returning to the comment by my former professor, anything but the top tier in a three-tier public system within an interdisciplinary department was only a starting point for serious scholars who wanted to end up at Research I institutions. Unfortunately, these larger hierarchical structures sometimes force groups to compete for legitimacy as resources earmarked for “minorities” dwindle. In one instance, my campus became eligible to apply for two separate federal grants: a science and technology grant focusing on one minority group and a student success grant, put forth by some Ethnic Studies faculty members, focusing on another minority group. Without providing room for debate, an administrator made it clear to the proposers that if both were to be awarded, the university would accept the science and technology grant offering the higher dollar figure, which it in fact did. The factors that really mattered to the university were the “bottom line” and the prestige of obtaining such a grant, when the alternative was a smaller, though significant, grant whose goal was to improve academic programs and student success for the entire campus. Besides potentially pitting “minoritized” groups on campus against each other, by not providing a clear and academically aligned rationale for strategic priorities, the university message for Ethnic Studies units was that they only matter if they can attract big external grants. The decision was consistent with institutional priorities fueled by neoliberalism, pushing

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universities not only to rely more and more on external sources of funding, but also to seek science grants. As Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira (2014) state, “The alliance between military research and science, which is well known, builds the deepest strata of connection and complicity between imperial statecraft and the knowledge complex of the US academy” (13). As a consolation, another administrator encouraged the Ethnic Studies faculty who wrote the student success grant proposal to apply next time for a science foundation grant, even though none of the faculty were scientists. Not coincidentally, given that Ethnic Studies traditionally challenges capitalism and imperialism in the academy, they will tend to lose in these types of neoliberal funding priorities. Along this vein, within a university culture that emphasizes business and technological fields, students learn to value some disciplines over others, which influence their perceptions of academic rigor. End-of-term student evaluations underscore these beliefs. Over several years, “knowledgeable,” coupled with “intelligent” and “knows her stuff,” began to surface repeatedly in my evaluations. It was difficult to tease out whether the fact that students were surprised enough to remark how knowledgeable I was in course evaluations every term was due to my ethnic background, gender, age, some combination, or some other factor. In spite of students’ positive feedback, there was always at least one student every term who insisted on calling me “Mrs.,” “Ms.,” “Miss,” or by my first name. Apparently, people that looked like me were not in faculty positions, and they were not expected to be smart. This spoke to the stereotypes my students had bought into, as well as the lack of access that my students had to women faculty of color role models. It also exemplified a kind of racialized gendered microaggression that helps to fix women of color faculty in a subservient and inferior status compared to presumably more authoritative faculty colleagues, whom students readily defer to as “Dr.” or “Professor.” My students’ perspectives on what faculty members should and should not look like were consonant with what one administrator remarked in my first semester: “You don’t look like a faculty member.” Besides “positive” feedback, I also received negative comments questioning my intellectual ability. Students remarked that I was “too political,” “combative,” and “racist,” suggesting that I was unable to offer fair and intellectual analyses. I believe that women of color in Ethnic Studies are particularly vulnerable to receiving these kinds of evaluations because of a similar reputation of our field within academia. Additionally, some students criticized me personally, using descriptors such as “cold,” “intimidating,” and “unprofessional.” My experience confirms the fact that women compared to men are more likely to receive performance feedback that attacks them personally. Meanwhile, my students’ biggest complaint has remained consistent. Too much reading because “it was only a GE (General Education)” course. Too

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much reading because “this was supposed to be an easy ‘A.’ ” Too much reading because “I thought this was supposed to boost my GPA (grade point average).” Too much reading because “this was supposed to be an Ethnic Studies class.” My students’ comments reflect perceptions attached to the purpose and difficulty of Ethnic Studies courses. To engage in the critical analysis of the history and contributions of People of Color using critical lenses and methods is stigmatized as rudimentary and invalid. Consistent with the ser­ vant stereotype, which constructs Ethnic Studies as an inferior field of study, what has been communicated to me by students is that Ethnic Studies courses are meant to supplement and buffer difficult, “challenging” classes and are not meant to be stand-alone courses. If students believed in the rigor, difficulty, and strength of Ethnic Studies, they would not challenge each other with regard to the decision to major in Ethnic Studies with the enduring question: “What are you supposed to do with that?” The perception of some students that Ethnic Studies lacks academic rigor comes from somewhere. Incoming students may not have heard of Ethnic Studies prior to college or know what to do with an Ethnic Studies major, having never taken such courses in high school, but the perception that Ethnic Studies is “easy” is not a natural response. Students intuitively absorb it from the institutional culture. In end-of-term instructional evaluations and in faculty performance reviews, grade distribution reports are required. While not officially stated, the expectation is for faculty to assign grades that conform to the college or university GPA; grade distributions that are too high are seen as indicative of a lack of rigor. In Ethnic Studies, the grade distributions have been higher compared to the college and university averages. My colleagues and I, including some faculty members trained in higher education assessment, see higher grade distributions as indications of good teaching: we are achieving our stated learning goals and providing students clear paths to achieve success through the courses we teach. However, within the cultural logic of maintaining average grade distributions, there will always be under-achieving students, which is not seen as a failure of the university, but a sign of rigorous teaching. This logic was underscored when an administrator asked our department to entertain stipulating an acceptable grade range for our grade distributions without taking into consideration the pedagogical methods and/or assignments. Unfortunately, students pick up on the belief that if Ethnic Studies courses lie higher on the grade curve, then students must not have had to earn their grades. In fact, one administrator confirmed the existence of this institutional misperception by stating, “Ethnic Studies is a haven [for students of color].” The inference was that low-achieving students of color seek out Ethnic Studies with the expectation that it will be less academically challenging instead of attempting to integrate into presumably more rigorous mainstream departments.

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The perceived lack of rigor extends to faculty scholarship and pedagogy such that I constantly have to justify Ethnic Studies to “traditional” disciplines. As a result of being in a small, interdisciplinary unit with few faculty who are tenured, faculty members are forced to search outside the department to secure personnel committee members who will review and evaluate our tenure and promotion portfolios. This presents several challenges. First, while I have limited space (i.e., word count) to address my teaching, scholarship, and service, I must spend extra space (and time) justifying why my scholarship and pedagogical (and andragogical) methods are valid and important. Second, I must dedicate precious space to explaining the core of Ethnic Studies scholarship and principles, as well as its methodologies, and justify why I engage in the research design and high-impact learning strategies that I do. Third, and finally, I must address the impact of my scholarship when I publish in peer-reviewed Ethnic Studies journals instead of more “conventional” disciplinary journals.

Co-Curricular Service Expectations Keeping to the mission and values of Ethnic Studies, my colleagues and I are committed to serving our students and communities, and the university capitalized on that. Historically, it has been a given that the Ethnic Studies academic units would work closely with particular identity-based resource centers,1 which makes sense since they share some goals, such as providing a well-rounded, supportive, and engaged learning environment for students of color so that they can achieve success. However, the external perception toward Ethnic Studies as “service” departments is another reason for the blurring of boundaries between curricular and co-curricular responsibilities. As a result, collaborations between Ethnic Studies and resource centers have relied on the free labor of Ethnic Studies faculty, who were expected to staff, develop, create programming for, and essentially build the centers from the ground up. While one faculty member might receive some release time to serve as a faculty liaison, she in practice served as a center coordinator. Most of the faculty labor for the centers has been uncompensated; our reward is being a “good citizen” of the university and, “naturally,” serving our community. While faculty of color provided free work to build the centers for many years, my university’s commitment to fund fully operational centers has been less than five years old. Much of the free labor to build the resource centers was also invisible in the eyes of the university. In the case of one of the centers, students and faculty of color had been lobbying for its creation for twenty years. My colleagues and I worked collaboratively to achieve a tremendous amount of work for the center: petitioning, organizing a resource center conference, consulting stakeholders,

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drafting proposals and budgets, finding space, furniture, and donations, volunteering staffing time, mentoring student volunteers, creating programming, marketing, and lobbying the administration. In spite of all the time and effort invested into it by a group of faculty, our efforts were invisible to the administration. In fact, this opened the door for others to attempt to take credit for developing the center; one administrator claimed to have drafted the proposal for the center when in fact the proposal information was compiled by the Ethnic Studies faculty. Coupled with the fact of invisibility was the expectation that Ethnic Studies faculty were subservient and submissive, that is, the opposite of being recognized campus leaders. Again, using the resource centers as an example, one of the centers was 100% volunteer run and donor funded for several years as a result of the university’s refusal to allocate funding for it, until one day, a faculty ally from outside our unit, who possessed some level of influence on the campus, made a request for funding. This single request from a lone faculty member got the attention of the administration and the center’s first institutional commitment of funding. The university’s decision finally to provide an operational budget for the center was instructive: you may be credited as someone who achieves great things for the university if you are already recognized as a campus leader, but you will do most of the most important work in obscurity if you are seen as “the help.”

Curricular Service Expectations The burden of labor for women of color Ethnic Studies faculty is amplified through the curricular service expectations laid on Ethnic Studies units. The majority of the students enrolled in Ethnic Studies courses are attempting to satisfy various types of General Education (GE) categories, among them a diversity requirement, while less than 5% of the students enrolled in our courses at any given time are actually Ethnic Studies majors. As a department, there is a specific number of students that each unit must attempt to serve regardless of major. This figure varies from college to college and department to department. Unfortunately, none of our units have enough majors (or minors) to hit our target number through major enrollments alone. As a result, Ethnic Studies must meet our quota through GE courses. While this is a great op­ portunity to recruit potential majors and minors (and we do), it also presents a major challenge. We do not have the resources in my small department to concentrate on recruitment, outreach, and program development, which would result in additional majors and minors, when our budgets are enrollment-driven and I am expected to serve such a large number of students. This also limits our unit in our ability to offer courses in our specialties when we are compelled to teach GE courses. Despite the challenges that result from a

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large student load, our majors have some of the highest retention rates in our college. However, our department is not rewarded for our retention or graduation rates or the students who go on to graduate school. We are not rewarded for the number of students that participate in graduate preparation programs, mentoring programs, research programs, internships, learning communities, and other high-impact learning practices. Instead, department resources, most notably the budget, are determined by the number of students we “service” or are enrolled in our courses. Consequently, the curricular service burden is disproportionately “paid for” by Ethnic Studies units; that is, other departments and majors benefit from the labor of GE-heavy service departments such as Ethnic Studies—additional labor that otherwise could have been reinvested into developing Ethnic Studies’ own majors. While the implied devaluation of Ethnic Studies as a GE service unit in comparison to departments that are supported primarily through major and minor enrollments results from a performance yardstick based more on quantity served than on quality of learning, the devaluation of Ethnic Studies, and of cultural diversity in general, continues within the implementation of GE. That is to say, a diversity requirement is included in GE, yet taking courses in Ethnic Studies is not a requirement. For example, at our institution, approximately two-thirds of cultural diversity courses can be taken outside of Ethnic Studies. Instead of valuing Ethnic Studies’ leadership in the scholarship and pedagogy on these matters, in what amounts to a lip-service commitment to cultural diversity, the GE diversity requirement becomes another way for departments to expand their enrollments through offering auxiliary diversity courses without necessarily focusing on teaching about structural factors shaping diversity. That is, unlike the mission of Ethnic Studies, this GE requirement does not require students to learn about societal power dynamics or social justice–related issues of cultural diversity. Now, the inferiorization of Ethnic Studies is being compounded by the diminishment of GE in general, which is being disproportionately felt by Ethnic Studies units that rely heavily on GE enrollments. This is consistent with the neoliberal direction of California universities, which will have to implement corporate-style performance-based funding models, using metrics such as graduation rates in order to obtain a portion of state funding (Liefner 2003). Reducing GE requirements is seen as one way to turn over graduates at a higher rate. Ostensibly, in an effort to make GE more desirable (or more marketable) to students, our campus is implementing GE thematic pathways, which devalue Ethnic Studies further. Notwithstanding the obvious contradiction of creating specialized tracks within GE, which seems to go against the principle of general education, the GE pathways as proposed seem to be geared to benefit larger departments that do not depend so much on GE enrollments. For those departments, the pathways seem to be a great way to

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enrich their major and minor courses. However, for smaller, GE-heavy academic units like those in Ethnic Studies, some of the proposed pathways— based on themes such as power, social justice, and globalization—duplicate the content of existing Ethnic Studies programs. The majority of the Ethnic Studies courses fit within these pathways, yet there is no current strategy to advise students interested in these themes to major or minor in Ethnic Studies or to require Ethnic Studies courses within GE. The proposed pathways are not about the learning goals themselves, but a “grab” for enrollments. The status of Ethnic Studies as service departments may be revealed in the logic of this hypothetical question: Why do we not propose GE pathway themes that are more generally reflective of the learning goals of the “core” disciplines and fields? If the situation were reversed, and pathways were modeled on the learning goals of the more visible and larger departments, such a proposal would never be considered, and would probably seem ridiculous to most. The differential impact of GE is also evident in the fact that the proposed pathways do not cater to Ethnic Studies majors. Typically, the purpose of GE is for students to learn about areas beyond those learned in their majors. However, since the proposed pathways significantly duplicate the learning goals of Ethnic Studies, they do not provide Ethnic Studies majors learning areas beyond their own degree, as GE was intended.

Women Leaders versus Womanist Leadership In an Ethnic Studies unit, the issue of racial/ethnic faculty diversity is typically a nonissue, since the vast majority of members, if not all, are People of Color. However, among tenure-track faculty outside Ethnic Studies, the faculty are not as racially/ethnically diverse. The lack of women faculty of color representation is not necessarily unique to California Ethnic Studies units (Santos & Acevedo-Gil 2013), but it does stem from a long history of discrimination against women and gay/lesbian People of Color. As a result, it should not be a surprise that at my university, the majority of women of color tenured in Ethnic Studies were promoted in the last five years. Part of this is due to lack of mentorship/guidance; lack of funding for tenure-track positions; patriarchal, paternalistic attitudes from within the department, college, and university; narrow hiring/faculty search committee practices and policy; lack of support from the university (so that faculty may engage in research); and changing tenure standards (which are becoming more in line with a research institution than a teaching-focused institution). In my academic unit, there has been a gendered pattern in the nonretention of tenure-track faculty, which points to the gendered and racialized pressures that women of color faculty in particular face: male faculty have left to find positions at other institutions, whereas female faculty have left after losing

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tenure battles. Part of the reasons for this gender difference has to do with the disproportionate amount of service expected of women faculty, coupled with a lack of support and mentorship on what is required for tenure and promotion, specifically as it pertains to research and publications. This disparity is supported by studies that demonstrate similar reasons—such as research and teaching productivity, value of and support for research, and the review and promotion process—for why women and faculty of color leave their institutions (Jayakumar et al. 2009; Xu 2008). As a result, there is a general underrepresentation of women of color faculty achieving tenure (Viernes Turner 2002, 78–79). However, a more recent study indicates that gender discrimination, not research productivity, may play a role in women not being advanced to tenure. The Chronicle of Education Almanac reports that the underrepresentation of women of color faculty worsens with each professoriate rank (Viernes Turner 2002, 78), which has significant implications not only for faculty seeking to move up the career ladder, but also for leadership and mentorship among women of color in the academic pipeline. Tenured faculty on my campus often find themselves in associate professor “limbo,” either delaying their application for promotion to full professor or never applying at all. While many of the factors impacting faculty retention, tenure and promotion pertain to limited financial support and resources generally, they are also part of a larger struggle that has resulted in a shift from a state-supported to state-assisted postsecondary public education system across the United States.2 Such strain forces Ethnic Studies units to make difficult sacrifices in ways that are not mutually supportive of all faculty. For example, whenever there are (real or perceived) threats to Ethnic Studies academic programs, such as during lean budgetary years, departments adopt the model used by the college: supporting the untenured faculty members by pushing the FTES and service burden onto more senior faculty, whether they are tenured or not. Unfortunately, among associate professors, the bulk of the work tends to fall on women faculty. A study by Joya Misra et al. (2011) suggests that women associate professors are less likely than men to be promoted and take longer to attain promotions due to their higher number of hours doing teaching, mentoring, and service work compared to their male counterparts. This points to one factor in the “ivory ceiling,” blocking women’s advancement into higher leadership roles in academia. While increasing the number of women of color academic leaders is important, I argue that creating a culture of womanist leadership is just as important, not just for the benefit of women of color faculty, but for the whole campus community. Womanist leadership centers the perspectives and wisdom “from below” and authentically integrates the leadership of women of color and LGBTIQ and working people. Recently at my university, there has been a growth of both white women and women of color leaders, from lower

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levels of administration to the highest. However, as Harris and González (2012) observe, “the culture of academia is distinctly white, heterosexual, and middle- and upper-middle class” (3). To this, I would add that the de facto university culture is also androcentric. Within this culture, women of color remain either invisible or tokenistically visible: Beyond the biases and obstacles that women of color face for being both women and people of color, they confront an additional challenge: being invisible. Members of minority groups are perceived primarily through standards exemplified by the men of their group, and women of color are typically judged by standards that are tailored to white women. It is thus more difficult to understand what a woman of color means psychologically; she often “falls between the cracks.” As a consequence, what she says and does is more easily overlooked or forgotten. When women of color are visible—often because of their distinctive token status—the consequences are largely negative. Women of color may compensate by asserting their difference and demanding recognition. Unfortunately, respect cannot be demanded, and complainers are punished. (Dividio 2012, 115) On more than one occasion, white women leaders have tokenistically pulled the “gender card” in attempts to get me to go along with their ideas; in a superficially feminist way, they said I should work more collaboratively with them because we were women and not like typical men interested in staking out bigger territories. Conveniently, women’s collaboration meant letting go of my complaints about real threats encroaching on Ethnic Studies. As long as I went along, I was seen as “polite,” but when I refused to stay invisible or silent, I was labeled as a “pushy” woman of color. It was almost cliché the way the white women relied on dualistic gendered and racialized stereotypes of women of color as a means of managing me. Evidently, women leaders are not immune to internalizing and reproducing gender discrimination through labeling other women as “abrasive” (versus assertive) when it comes to judging their actions or performance. What is needed in higher education is womanist leadership. As Audre Lorde (2012) asserts, “Now we must recognize differences among women who are our equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways to use each other’s difference to enrich our visions and our joint struggles. . . . The future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference” (122–23). When the racist, sexist, homophobic, and classist culture of the university is challenged, the traditional hierarchy of the university is dismantled, benefitting all communities. However, the administration tends to limit itself by

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mainstream models of leadership. For example, in its attempt to comply with Title IX of the Higher Education Amendments of 1972, by not discriminating on the basis of sex, gender, or sexual orientation in educational programs or activities, it enforces a code of conduct that ends up denying the existence of women or lesbian/gay People of Color. I am warned not to speak about family, pregnancy, or personal relationships, and, in doing so, the assumption is that I do not have a life outside of the university. Consequently, the ideal faculty member becomes, by default, a relatively privileged subject in terms of disposable income and time, gendered labor, familial roles, and ability (i.e., white, male, heterosexual, and middle class). Instead of treating faculty as interchangeable and expendable faculty lines and operating from a top-down model of administration, a truly womanist leadership would recognize faculty as whole persons and implement genuine collaboration.

RECOMMENDATIONS In the spirit of CRT and feminist theory, we offer individual and institutional recommendations for practice and policy that may lead to a re-visioning of the way women faculty of color generally, and women faculty of color within Ethnic Studies units specifically, are structurally supported. Our recommendations are based on what we consider to be effective practices that are already in place at our institution, as well as what we observe to be absent, but needed, to support women of color faculty. Although not exhaustive, they provide a starting point to begin to transform the ways in which we employ womanist leadership to authentically embed these support systems in our institutions.

Support Ethnic Studies Coalitions and Collaborations In order to address problems of essentialized committee representation, whereby representation is dependent upon participation, Ethnic Studies faculty should build coalitions with other academic units with compatible missions, such as Women and Gender Studies and LGBTIQ Studies, especially in institutional environments where marginalized academic units are forced to compete for the same resources. On our campus, we have only just begun to build a formal coalition among the Ethnic Studies units. However, collaborations should occur not only at the departmental level; the university should foster and establish structures for collaboration at every institutional level. These might include allocating funding for collaborative projects and the administrative leadership vocalizing support of a culture of collaboration instead of competition, as they are beginning to occur at my university. In order to dismantle the traditional hierarchy within universities, collective work needs to be more purposeful instead of accidental.

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Address Ethnic Studies Climate Concerns Attacks on the validity and rigor of Ethnic Studies are critically tied to how universities combat stigmas attached to Ethnic Studies curricula, pedagogy, programs, and faculty. In response to external pressures in regard to the state of Ethnic Studies in California and the conditions for students of color on college campuses, my university recently participated in a climate survey, which included questions on diversity and inclusion. It has also increased campus discussions about these issues through formal forums and workshops. However, as Jennifer Lisa Vest astutely observes, “Talk of diversity welcomes an avoidance of discussions on racism, sexism, power and justice, oppression, domination, colonialism, slavery, homophobia, or hate crimes. It does not require institutional change” (Vest 2013, 486). Therefore, a key to the effectiveness of these inclusion efforts is recognition of the differences between individual and institutional racism and sexism. Creating a positive Ethnic Studies climate hinges fundamentally on changing oppressive systemic policies and practices, beyond individual attitudes. Included in these institutional changes should be a practice of regularly assessing the Ethnic Studies climate without the threat of institutional retaliation or censorship and authentically responding to those concerns.

Recognize and Use Ethnic Studies Models Ethnic Studies are often on the forefront of pedagogy, research, and service, which universities should promote as models of practice for the entire campus. This would recognize and value the curricular and co-curricular service that Ethnic Studies faculty have often provided “for free.” For example, my Ethnic Studies unit has demonstrated leadership in integrating high-impact practices (HIPs) into its curriculum, obtaining multimillion dollar funding for innovative research, and engaging in mutually beneficial community partnerships. The university has recognized our department leadership through supporting HIP projects, publicizing faculty research, and using Ethnic Studies servicelearning as models of community-university partnerships. Being careful not to appropriate Ethnic Studies models, universities should tap into the progressive models and leadership offered by Ethnic Studies and provide consistent support for their continuation or expansion, such as funding Ethnic Studies research centers and community resource centers.

Foster Womanist Leadership Moving beyond the use of token women leaders within masculinist models of leadership requires several supportive elements: (1) Women of color networks

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and associations; universities would do well to provide funding opportunities for the creation of women of color faculty and staff associations geared toward supporting overall health, well-being, career advancement, and professional development of its members. (2) A progressive leadership reward structure; in understanding how leadership roles are carried out, any overburdened entity could be provided additional support through reallocating resources in the name of fairness. This would entail examining the epistemology of “womanist leadership” and being open to rewarding varying and fluid definitions of the term. (3) Women of color leadership; this would not be limited simply to hiring more women of color, but providing mentorship and professional development along the academic pipeline to support various transitions (i.e., assistant, associate, full, associate dean, dean, etc.). (4) Faculty cluster hires; hiring multiple faculty of color simultaneously has been shown to increase the retention, advancement, and promotion of faculty members (Guenter-Schlesinger & Ojikutu 2009). (5) Treatment of faculty as whole persons, and as Vest (2013) succinctly states, “The Academy is killing women of color” (485). She explains, “Women of Color professors experience macroaggressions as serious assaults on their physical safety while also enduring microassaults in the profession. The end result is that women of color often leave the university or are forced out. They experience chronic or life-threatening illnesses, become disabled, and sometimes they die” (Vest 2013, 485). Therefore, universities should work to address the institutionalized microaggressions that hurt women of color faculty, which necessitates treating faculty as whole persons instead of as interchangeable faculty lines, constantly multitasking and on-call. Universities should understand and support what faculty need to foster sustainable engagement: renewal, value, focus, and purpose. Using a CRT and feminist lens, this chapter used a composite autoethnographic counter-narrative to highlight some of the challenges faced by faculty women of color in Ethnic Studies units. Further, we shared existing and potential recommendations for policy and practice. Through the university addressing the “multiple marginality” of women of color faculty, we can better advocate for our students, resource-build, develop programs and curricula, and contribute to the overall growth of Ethnic Studies. We hope that this chapter serves as a springboard for universities and their respective Ethnic Studies units and women faculty of color to engage in direct and authentic dialogues about how they can best support one another toward achieving their shared academic mission.

NOTES 1. “Identity-based center” is a term used by my institution to describe student resource centers organized around social identities.

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2. According to SHEEO, “Educational appropriations per FTE (defined to include state and local support for general higher education operations) fell to $5,896 in 2012, a 25-year low in inflation-adjusted terms” (State Higher Education 2013, 9).

REFERENCES Chatterjee, Piya, and Sunaina Maira. 2014. “The Imperial University: Race, War, and the Nation-State.” In The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent, edited by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira, 1–50. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chávez, Minerva. 2012. “Autoethnography, a Chicana’s Methodological Research Tool: The Role of Storytelling for Those Who Have No Choice but to Do Critical Race Theory.” Equity & Excellence in Education 45(2): 334–48. Dividio, John F. 2012. “Part II: Introduction.” In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, 113–15. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Ellis, Carolyn. 2004. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Ethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Flores Niemann, Yolanda. 2012. “The Making of a Token: A Case Study of Stereotype Threat, Stigma, Racism, and Tokenism in Academe.” In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, 336–55. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. González, Roberto J. 2014. “Militarizing Education: The Intelligence Community’s Spy Camps.” In The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent, edited by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira, 79–98. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Guenter-Schlesinger, Sue, and Kunle Ojikutu. 2009. “Best Practices: Recruiting & Retaining Faculty and Staff of Color.” Western Washington University. http:// www.wwu.edu/eoo/docs/Best%20Practices_Recruiting%20and%20Retaining%20 Staff%200f%20Color.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2015. Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, eds. 2012. Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Harris, Angela P., and Carmen G. González. 2012. “Introduction.” In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, 1–14. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Jaschik, Scott. 2010, August 13. “’Over 10 Million Served.’ ” Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/13/service. Accessed September 1, 2014. Jayakumar, Uma M., Tyrone C. Howard, Walter R. Allen, and June C. Han. 2009. “Racial Privilege in the Professoriate: An Exploration of Campus Climate, Retention, and Satisfaction.” The Journal of Higher Education 80(5): 538–63.

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Liefner, Ingo. 2003. “Funding, Resource Allocation, and Performance in Higher Education Systems.” Higher Education 46(4): 469–89. Lorde, Audre. 2012. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press. Massé, Michelle A., and Katie J. Hogan, eds. 2010. Over Ten Million Served: Gendered Service in Language and Literature Workplaces. Albany: State University of New York Press. Misra, Joya, Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, Elissa Holmes, and Stephanie Agiomavritis. 2011. “The Ivory Ceiling of Service Work.” Academe 97(1): 22–26. Núñez, Anne-Marie. 2014. “Employing Multilevel Intersectionality in Educational Research: Latino Identities, Contexts, and College Access.” Educational Researcher 43(2): 85–92. Ovaska, Sarah. 2015, May 26. “UNC Board of Governors Moves to Discontinue, Consolidate 46 Degree Programs.” The Progressive Pulse: A Blog from NC Policy Watch. http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/05/26/unc-board-of-governors-moves -to-discontinue-46-degree-programs-list-included/. Accessed July 17, 2015. Santos, José L., and Nancy Acevedo-Gil. 2013. “A Report Card on Latina/o Leadership in California’s Public Universities.” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education 12(2): 174–200. Solórzano, Daniel G., and Tara J. Yosso. 2002. “Critical Race Methodology: CounterStorytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 8(1): 23–44. State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO). 2013. “State Higher Education Finance FY 2012.” Boulder: State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Sue, Derald W. 2010. Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation Hoboken: Wiley Press. Sue, Derald W., David P. Rivera, Nicole L. Watkins, Rachel H. Kim, Suah Kim, and Chantea D. Williams. 2011. “Racial Dialogues: Challenges Faculty of Color Face in the Classroom.” Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology 17(3): 331–40. Vest, Jennifer Lisa. 2013. “What Doesn’t Kill You: Existential Luck, Postracial Racism, and the Subtle and Not So Subtle Ways the Academy Keeps Women of Color Out.” Seattle Journal for Social Justice 12(2): 471–518. Viernes Turner, Caroline S. 2002. “Women of Color in Academe: Living with Multiple Marginality.” Journal of Higher Education 71(1): 74–92. Viernes Turner, Caroline S., Juan Carlos González, and J. Luke Wood. 2008. “Faculty of Color in Academe: What 20 Years of Literature Tells Us.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 1(3): 139–68. Xu, Jade Yonghong. 2008. “Gender Disparity in STEM Disciplines: A Study of Faculty Attrition and Turnover Intentions.” Research in Higher Education 49(7): 607–24. Yosso, Tara, Octavio Villalpando, Dolores Delgado Bernal, and Daniel G. Solórzano. 2001. “Critical Race Theory in Chicana/o Education.” Paper presented at the annual conference of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Tuscon, Arizona, April 4–8.

9

Where Are All of the Latina/os?: Teaching Latina/o Studies in the Midwest Luis H. Moreno

The role of Chicana/o Studies is to organize and systemize the knowledge of people of Mexican descent, as well as to serve as a pedagogical tool to educate and motivate. —Rodolfo F. Acuña, The Making of Chicana/o Studies I remember my first day of teaching in the Midwest, as I entered the classroom, I thought to myself, “Where are all of the Latina/os?” I was hired to teach Latina/o Studies at Bowling Green State University, but the majority of my students were white.1 I was not shocked about this situation due to the reality that the majority of Chicana/o and Latina/o scholars are currently facing similar situations when teaching within the academic-industrial complex (see Duarte 2009; Katzew 2009; Lugo-Lugo 2012). Like other critical educators, I came to the understanding that those institutions used our intellectual capital as a way to bring diversity into the academy. Those institutions of higher learning have become the battleground for the culture war against Ethnic Studies as politicians, educators, and pundits focus their energy on controlling the narrative of history by denying that racism and white supremacy continued to exist in the United States (see Ruiz & Cantú 2013). At the same time, those struggles become teachable moments as critical educators develop spaces where “students are encouraged to think critically about issues, it opens the space in which to raise the critical consciousness of all students, regardless of whether they are students of color or white students” (Katzew, 2009, 259). In this personal narrative, I reflect on my own experience teaching Latina/o Studies at a predominantly white institution of higher learning in the Midwest. Those experiences have led me to observe many teaching and pedagogy challenges within the classroom. First, this chapter focuses on my challenges in developing a framework to teach Latina/o

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Studies to white students. This is followed by my experiences of teaching Latina/o Studies by addressing the intersectionality of race, class, and gender within the culture war. And finally, I reflect on how this experience affected my teaching and pedagogy within the academic-industrial complex. Before I reflect on my challenges, it’s important to briefly highlight my own connection to Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies.2

SEARCHING FOR MY OWN PEDAGOGY The first time I heard about critical pedagogy was not in the classroom but in a political dialogue among friends.3 They kept telling me over and over to read the work of Paulo Freire on critical pedagogy. They wanted me to develop a better understanding of the issues Chicana/o students faced within the educational pipeline. When I picked up a copy of Friere’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed I was amazed and shocked. Why shocked? I never read anything in my life that inspired me to rethink my path in life and organizing. The pedagogy of Paulo Freire has influenced the writing of several critical educators and theorists, such as bell hooks, Antonia Darder, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and countless others (see hooks 1994; Darder 1991; Giroux 2014; McLaren 2000). As defined by Peter McLaren (1998), “Critical pedagogy is a way of thinking about, negotiating, and transforming the relationship among classrooms, the production of knowledge, the institutional structures of the school, and the social and material relations of the wider community society, and nations state” (45). Critical pedagogy was key for me in transforming the classroom into a location to develop praxis through dialogue. Without theory there is no action and without action there is no theory. As noted by Antonia Darder (2002), “praxis as mean by which the ‘minds and hands’ of both teachers and students could enter into coherent relationship in efforts to construct knowledge together” (84). There are many different types of critical pedagogy tools that Chicana/os and Latina/os can use inside and outside the classroom. No matter what is used the overall mission is to liberate the voices of our students, especially Chicana/os and Latina/os in the classroom, at homes, and in the community. I used the basic concepts of critical pedagogy within my own organizing and education. In my own education, I found a home in Chicana/o Studies were I would advance my pedagogy tools. I strongly believe that my personal experience has played a unique part in my political and educational development within Chicana/o Studies and history. I was born in a working-class neighborhood in southern California and raised by parents who taught their children to believe in social justice. Prior to becoming a professor, those experiences led me first down the pathway of organizing. I took my passion of social justice and learning into the barrios of southern California.

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By organizing my community, I saw the importance of developing a critical consciousness and to do this would be through political education. As a cofounder and organizer of numerous community organizations, I came to the understanding that to fight for any type of social justice, you needed a strategy or framework.4 And for me, Chicana/o Studies would become the space for this dialogue. The location of this education would take place in classes, hallways, and offices of Chicana/o Studies departments and faculty throughout the United States. In retrospect, those events pushed me in the direction of searching for my own pedagogy to expand my knowledge of history, politics, and social justice, as I organized my community.

TEACHING LATINA/O STUDIES I used my experiences of organizing throughout the Southwest United States as I confronted my challenges in developing a framework to teach Latina/o Studies in the Midwest. As critical pedagogy is my foundation, I chose to use counter-narratives with an emphasis on community in developing this framework. As noted by Tara Yosso (2006), counter-narratives “challenge mainstream society’s denial of ongoing significance of race and racism, they do so by offering a critical reflection on lived experiences and histories of People of Color” (10). For many of my students, they have had minimal interaction with Chicana/os and Latina/os. Not to generalize, but the majority of them are from rural areas of the Midwest were the majority of the population is white.5 By using a counter-narrative, I wanted to expand their knowledge of Latina/os, especially providing a space to discuss the stereotypes within U.S. history.6 I thought to myself, why counter-narratives? For many Chicana/os and Latina/os the formation of community has shaped our history, identity, and culture. The majority of the time, this history is erased or whitewashed from U.S. history. I used my own family history in this discussion by sharing with my students my counter-story. My goal of sharing my family’s story was to counter the myth that Chicana/os and Latina/os had just arrived today to the United States! Just like other Latina/o families, my family shares a connection to an intergenerational history of migration, which has played an important role in defining U.S. history. Likewise, I wanted to highlight the history of Latina/os in the Midwest. Within this culture war, Chicana/os and Latina/os continued to be labeled as outsiders, criminals, “illegals,” and so on by politicians, pundits, and educators. But, the facts are that Latina/os in the Midwest have contributed to the economy, history, and culture for generations. The counter-narratives of history challenged many of my students to reexamine their understanding of their own history. For myself, I chose to use the classroom as a location or

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space to challenge and discuss the rhetoric of the culture war. As Darder (2002) pointed out, “teachers must not only accept responsibility for the power they hold with their classroom, schools, and communities but also make wise decisions about how they will use their power in the interest of constructing a revolutionary practice” (71). As I used counter-narratives as the key framework of teaching Latina/o Studies, I felt it was key to use intersectionality in examining the Latina/o experience. By using intersectionality, “it exposed how single-axis thinking undermines legal thinking, disciplinary knowledge production, and struggle for social justice” (Cho, Crenshaw & McCall 2013, 789). Likewise, it gave my students the opportunity to examine how systems of oppression (i.e., racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression) are interconnected and their role in shaping the Latina/o experience in the United States. In every class, I focused on race, class, and gender as the key intersections in examining the Latina/o experience. But, as the class moved into the topics of culture, education, politics, and history, I challenged my students to address other intersections. I cannot say there was no resistance to the discussion of counter-narratives and intersectionality but when introducing any new subject to students, some would resist new ideas. Now, the real question is, how did this experience affect my teaching and pedagogy? In every course, I ask my students, what are the most important things they take away from this course? The majority of the students responded that some of their opinions on Chicana/os and Latina/os had changed. But, a handful of students said this course really changed their viewpoint on Lati­na/os and pushed them toward social justice issues.7 For me, teaching Latina/o Studies to white students has been a challenge but it has helped me redefine my teaching and pedagogy within the culture war against Ethnic Studies. Just like some of my students, the discourse within the classroom has reenergized my commitment to social justice.

CONCLUSION I started this reflective chapter with a quote by historian Rodolfo Acuña that highlights the importance of Chicana/o Studies as a location to organize. In addition, it provides the tools to educate and motivate our students, families, and communities. With the frameworks of counter-narratives and intersectionality, my task was to educate my students to a broader understanding of the Latina/o experiences in the United States. But, within the academicindustrial complex, I have read, heard, and seen how students, faculty, and administrators disrespect faculty of color concepts of community, history, and knowledge (see Chatterjee & Maira 2014; Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, González & Harris 2012). In order to empower our community and students,

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Chicana/o and Latina/o scholars must challenge the notions of white supremacy and white privilege within the classroom. But, Chicana/os and Latina/os continue to face students, faculty, and administrators who refuse to deal with their own privileges but instead they question our fields and credentials! In the end, no matter the locations of the culture war against Ethnic Studies, from the battleground in Arizona to save Mexican American Studies in K–12 to the frontline of the struggles to stop the eliminating of Ethnic Studies departments and programs in California and elsewhere; the time is now to FIGHT BACK!

NOTES 1. Bowling Green State University is composed of 17,286 students; White (77%), Black or African-American (11%), Hispanic/Latino (4%), Race/Ethnicity Unknown (3%), Two or more races (2%), Non-Resident Alien (2%), and Asian/Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander (1%); see Forbes America’s Top Colleges, http://www.forbes.com/colleges /bowling-green-state-university-main-campus/. Accessed August 20, 2015. 2. Throughout the chapter, I use the term Chicana/o and Latina/os or both to identify the Spanish-speaking population in the United States. 3. My comrades-in-struggle were involved with critical pedagogy through the student organization, Student for Cultural and Linguistic Democracy (SCLD) at Channel Island High School in Oxnard, California. 4. I cofounded the Committee on Raza Rights in Oxnard, California, in 1995. And I have organized with the Raza Press and Media Association and Union del Barrio. 5. Latina/os comprise 3.3% (383,113) of Ohio’s total population, of which 50% have Mexican ancestry. Bowling Green, Ohio, is located in Wood County, with Latina/os comprising 5.1% (6,605) of the total county’s population; see Ohio Hispanic Americans. http://development.ohio.gov/files/research/P7002.pdf. Accessed August 20, 2015. 6. One of the key texts I use in teaching about counter-narratives is Yosso (2006). 7. I wish to thank my following students for feedback on teaching Latina/o Studies in the Midwest: Christon Hernandez, AlicaKae Honsberger, Mayra Lopez, Evelia Mendoza, and Sara Tobe.

REFERENCES Acuña, Rodolfo F. 2011. The Making of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Cantú Ruiz, Elsa, and Norma E. Cantú. 2013. “Teaching the Teachers: Dismantling Racism and Teaching for Social Change.” The Urban Review 45(1): 74–88. Chatterjee, Piya, and Sunaina Maira, eds. 2014. The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cho, Sumi, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall. 2013. “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis.” Signs 38(4): 789.

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Darder, Antonia. 1991. Culture and Power in the Classroom: A Critical Foundation for Bicultural Education. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Darder, Antonia. 2002. Paulo Friere: A Pedagogy of Love. Boulder: Westview Press. Duarte, Cynthia. 2009. “When There Are No Chicanos in a Chicano Studies Class: How the Intersection of Race, Class and Gender for the Chicano/Latino Community Is Taught and Revealed in a Majority White Classroom.” Latino Studies 7(2): 262–68. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Giroux, Henry A. 2014. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabrielle, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, eds. 2012. Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Utah: Utah State University Press. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. Katzew, Adriana. 2009. “Hello Professa: Teaching as Chicana at a Predominantly White University.” Latino Studies 7(2): 252–61. Lugo-Lugo, Carmen R. 2012. “A Prostitute, a Servant, and a Customer Service Representative: A Latina in Academia.” In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris, 40–49. Salt Lake City: Utah State University Press. McLaren, Peter. 2000. Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. McLaren, Peter. 1998. “Che: The Pedagogy of Che Guevara, Critical Pedagogy and Globalization Thirty Years after Che.” Cultural Circles 3(Summer): 29–103. Yosso, Tara J. 2006. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. New York: Routledge.

10

Presumed Biased: The Challenge and Rewards of Teaching “Post-Racial” Students to See Racism Barbara Harris Combs

I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then . . . —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass As a country, America has come a long way in wrestling with its racial demons, but it also has a long way to go. This struggle can be seen in the continuing debate over the place of Ethnic Studies in the instructional curriculum. Since its origins in the 1960s, the Ethnic Studies movement has been contentious, and, as Wetschler (2011) writes, “After 50 years, Ethnic Studies [is] still controversial” (46–53). Some of the backlash the diverse disciplines, which collectively make up Ethnic Studies, face is perhaps predictable. Briefly, I outline two disputes—one internal and the other external—that currently beleaguer the field. First, despite long-standing predictions about the changing demographics of the U.S. population, Ethnic Studies departments and those who teach the varied disciplines that comprise them seemed ill-prepared to deal with an increasing Latino population. Mary Phillips (2010) argues that Black Studies/African American Studies (sometimes called AFAM) were beleaguered and weary from long-standing attacks questioning their legitimacy, rigor, and worth. Some feared the rise in Latino Studies programs may signal the concomitant demise of AFAM. Speaking about the tensions and bonds between Latino Studies and Black Studies, Ilan Stavans (2003) writes, The unspoken but implicit assumption seemed to be that lower-class status in American society is a privilege: When it comes to money in

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academe, the lower the social position of a minority group, the wider the chances of finding the funds for research on it, and the greater the likelihood of seeing material pertaining to the group reflected in the curriculum.1 As a result, two departments that should have been allies were set up as competitors. Second, Ethnic Studies emerged as a response to students of color’s feelings of isolation and inferiority at having their cultural, historical, and social experiences excluded from textbooks, or in the event such experiences were not excluded, they were often trivialized or stereotyped (see Hughes 2007). Today, led by states like Arizona and Texas, opponents of Ethnic Studies assert that the addition of identity studies teaches hate and makes white students feel inferior.2 Such claims infer that an express focus on the perspective(s) of People of Color in predominantly white classrooms or university settings is a zero sum game where gains by students of color necessarily mean losses for white students, society, and/or the dominant culture. The attendant benefits for students of color, white students, and society are often ignored. This chapter argues that Ethnic Studies provides a vital lens through which to see and critically reflect on American society, and if American society is to persevere and prosper, Ethnic Studies must be rigorously defended. A National Education Association report states, “Research finds that the overwhelming dominance of Euro-American perspectives leads many students of color to disengage from academic learning.” The same report goes on to say “Ethnic Studies curricula are supported by research documenting a positive relationship between the racial/ethnic identity of students of color and academic achievement, as well as research on their impact” (Sleeter 2010, viii). That impact extends to white students as well, but with persistent achievement gaps despite a rise in graduation rates, the benefits to students of color are undeniable. These benefits make attacks against Ethnic Studies such as those occurring in Arizona and Texas not only unfathomable but also unconscionable. By now, many are familiar with Arizona HB 2281, which prohibits teaching “resent[ment]” and promoting “ethnic solidarity” in the classroom.3 The bill targeted a Mexican American Studies class offered through the Tucson Unified School District to its population. In Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority, Tim Wise (2012) writes, the program “has dramatically boosted Latino graduation rates and the rate at which the students go to college” (98). Under attack, the program was discontinued in January 2012, but efforts are underway to revive elements of it (Grijalva 2014). Sleeter (2010) warns us, “White adults generally do not recognize the extent to which traditional mainstream curricula marginalize perspectives of communities of color and

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teach students of color to distrust or not to take school knowledge seriously” (4). Whether intentional or not, this marginalization has deleterious effects on the educational outcomes of some students of color.4 There are elements of social reality we do not discuss and take for granted. Today’s students often view social ills, such as racism and sexism, as historical constructs, but racism and sexism still exist in American society, and the halls of academia are not exempt from their reach. Viewing matters through the lens of the oppressed can illuminate such matters for students. Ethnic Studies forces such a shift. Too few other courses in the college curriculum do so. Sadly, when mainstream courses take such an approach, students often falsely perceive that any focus on social ills has more to do with the positionality/bias of the instructor than the subject material under discussion. As academics, our goal is the production of knowledge, but this knowledge can inform (and perhaps advance) social justice. Teaching race requires the use of a critical pedagogy, but I argue that teaching any subject well requires a critical pedagogy. Joan Wink (2005) elaborates, critical pedagogy “sheds light on the hidden subtleties that might have escaped our views previously. The prism has a tendency to focus on shades of social, cultural, political, and even economic conditions, and it does all of this under the broad view of history” (26). She continues and claims that critical pedagogy matters because it challenges our long-held assumptions and leads us to ask new questions, and the questions we ask will determine the answers we get. Critical pedagogy gives voice to the voiceless; gives power to the powerless. Change is often difficult, and critical pedagogy is all about change from coercive to collaborative; from transmission to transformative; from inert to catalytic; from passive to active. Critical pedagogy leads us to advocacy and activism on behalf of those who are the most vulnerable in classrooms and in society. (165) Such material may prove uncomfortable for some students, but students’ comfort should not be our aim. This chapter explores the challenges and rewards of teaching Ethnic Studies in a purportedly “post-racial” society.

METHODS This study employs aspects of ethnography and aspects of critical race theory (CRT). It is part autoethnography and part counter-narrative. CRT postulates that our own personal counter-narratives can offer a more differentiated appreciation of the experiences of outsiders (Solórzano 1998). Further, it “recognizes that the experiential knowledge of people of color is legitimate,

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appropriate, and critical to understanding, analyzing, and teaching about racial subordination in the field of education” (Smith, Yosso & Solórzano 2006, 303), including narratives or personal stories. For these reasons, CRT provides a helpful analytical framework to aid the author in organizing and collecting data for analysis. The basic tenets of CRT include the belief that race is a significant factor underpinning inequity in the United States; U.S. society is based on property rights; and the intersection of race and property can provide a helpful analytical frame through which to understand social inequality. CRT also helps to define key questions. In this case, it is useful to make the hidden visible (in terms of race relations in and out of the classroom). In sum, it is a form of oppositional scholarship, which “challenges the universality of White experience/judgment” (Ladson-Billings & Tate 1995, 47–68, 48). Storytelling, particularly counter-storytelling, is one of the principal tools CRT scholars employ. In addition to counter-storytelling, I use autoethnography, a form of self-narrative that places the individual firmly within the social context. Autoethnography uses elements of both biography and ethnography. Thick description of the social context is important, too. This autoethnography is in the vein of CRT, which is used to explicate my narrative. While this is my counter-narrative, I rely also upon the stories and retellings by a number of my “sistah” scholars.5 The presumed bias to which I refer relates to student perceptions that professors of color (and in this context that usually means Black professors) are predisposed to have certain negative attitudes toward European American students. This false presumption on the part of white students leads many of them to develop a preemptive defensive or combative posture. The self-protective posture comes in many forms. My sister scholars and I have encountered irrational hostility, including anger and eye rolling. On evaluations, whispers, and private spaces, cowardly students have written that various Black professors “have an ax to grind.” This manifests itself in a number of perspectives including the belief by white students that my sistah scholars (other Black female professors) and I unfairly grade them down or that we unnaturally see and interject race and gender into the discussion when it does not exist or is irrelevant. Such attitudes are not limited to students, either. Even compliments from students and colleagues that are meant to flatter are somehow insults. This variety usually takes the form of “you’re so articulate,” or “you’re a credit to your race.” One of the most painful things is the way in which Affirmative Action, intended to remedy injustices against minorities and level the playing field, is used as a weapon to stigmatize minority populations. These include overt and direct references to Affirmative Action hires, which masks as insinuations that you are inherently less qualified than your European American colleagues. Additionally we catalogued numerous other affronts, including the unnatural

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predilection to believe that: (1) all you can talk about is race, (2) you can speak for all people of your race, and/or (3) everything you talk about has racial/ethnic insinuations and/or overtones. I taught Southern Studies, a subset of American Studies with a specific focus on the American South at the University of Mississippi, a flagship institution in the Deep South. Enrollment facts for the 2012–13 academic year show 14,620 undergraduates enrolled on the Oxford campus; 76.2% identified as white, and 15.8% identified as African American.6 According to the U.S. Census, 37.4% of the state of Mississippi self-reported as Black.7 While the university boasts a total minority enrollment of 25.1%,8 enrollment in Southern Studies classes, particularly at the entry level, is overwhelmingly European American.9 The University of Mississippi has a deep legacy of racial discrimination, from which it has worked deliberately to separate itself. Progress has been made in the state and university; however, much of the nation holds tight to the memory of U.S. marshals having to protect James Meredith in order to enforce his right to attend. Bruce Watson (2010) writes, The nation’s poorest state was when 14-year-old Emmett Till, accused of wolf whistling at a White woman, was tied to a cotton gin and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. A Black student’s enrollment at the state university had caused armed Whites to pour into Oxford; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had sent in federal marshals in troop trucks, sparking an all-night riot that left two dead and dozens wounded. Mississippi was also where a sniper’s bullet had felled NAACP leader Medgar Evers, where not quite 7% of all Blacks could vote, and where shotguns blasted the shacks of those who dare to register. (43) All of this is important personal context for my story. The narrative is strengthened by its juxtaposition against the social, political, and historical background. At the Oxford campus, 15.35% of full-time faculty classify as African American.10 At the national level, women of color hold only 7.5% of U.S. full-time faculty positions, and they are over-concentrated in the lowest ranks.11 The “presumed incompetence” other researchers discuss and the “presumed bias” I outline occurs on the basis of your difference (Gutiérrez y Muhs 2012). White faculty are the normative expectation, and students seem ill-equipped to view those who are not white and male as equal. The fall of 2012 was a significant year for both the University of Mississippi and the nation. It was also a particularly contentious time to be a woman of color teaching Southern Studies to an overwhelming white student population. On the national level, the first election of President Barack Obama, spurred by a significant minority voting-block, seemed to incite widespread,

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prolific voter ID legislation instituted by thirty-seven states and a number of localities. In nearby Memphis, the headline of a nationally syndicated African American news station cried Injustice! when a ninety-six-year-old Black woman was denied the right to vote because she could not produce the additional confirmatory identification required by new legislation purportedly aimed to prevent fraud in voting. The report opined voting was now more difficult than during Jim Crow. The year 2012 was also a significant one for the University of Mississippi. It marked the fiftieth anniversary of the integration of the institution. The institution welcomed its first Black female president of the Associated Student Body (ASB), and it elected its first African American homecoming queen, who, coincidentally, was also the first student not in a white Greek sorority elected to the honor. Both inside and outside the state, Mississippi occupies a particular place in public memory, and the university plays a central role in that collective public memory. The University of Mississippi is affectionately known as “Ole Miss” by some and lambasted by others.12 Founded in 1848, the university temporarily closed during the Civil War when 135 out of 139 students enlisted in the Confederate Army. All were wounded or killed. The students’ general defense of the South persisted during the enrollment of James Meredith. Home of William Faulkner, Mississippi is a place where “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (Faulkner 2012, 73).

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS The Presumed Bias The Thomas Theorem, a principle prominent in micro-level sociological exchanges, suggests that things are real not because of some objective reality but because they are real in their consequences (Merton 1995). As a result, students’ (and instructors’) subjective beliefs matter. We live in an increasingly complex social world where students are subject to multiple stimuli at any given time. It is amid the backdrop of this cacophony that students strive to make sense of the world around them. Miscalculations about individuals’ character or intent can have real consequences, so many people develop their rudimentary assessments of others through reliance on stereotypes. These stereotypes suggest Blacks are lazy and less intelligent than whites and additionally that Black women are loud and angry. As first impressions matter (on both sides of the social equation), and people see what they expect to see, little social change occurs. Unwittingly, students struggle with something Charles Taylor (1992) terms “the politics of recognition.” Taylor emphasizes direct connections between identity and recognition arguing, “Identity is partly shaped by recognition or its

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absence, often by the misrecognition of others” (25). My largely white student population has seldom been forced to deal with a Black woman in a position of authority over them, and they struggle with both how to do so and suffer discomfort over being made to do so. Some writhe with even the most rudimentary acts of respect—my name. Far more often than my white colleagues encounter (especially white men), I am referred to as Mrs./Ms.—not Doctor. This occurs in spite of the fact that I am decidedly middle-aged and hold not only a Juris Doctorate degree but a Doctor of Philosophy as well. Again, Taylor’s politics of recognition is instructive. Highlighting the connection between identity and recognition unearths the dialogical nature of student/teacher relationships—and, arguably, all relationships—where one’s identity depends on his/her relations with others. The potential for misrecognition lurks—sometimes in the foreground and sometimes in the background—but it is ever present in People of Color/white teacher/student relations. Through often passive means, many students have been taught: “You don’t have to pay attention to them—they are less than/ not as smart as you.” My presence marks a change in their established social order. I am perceived as a symbol, not a person, and some of them don’t like what I am a symbol of—a changing U.S. demographic and perhaps a changing racial order. Ford (2011) says body misrecognition happens because one is outside of the norm. People fall outside of the norm due to their failure to comply with the hegemonic expectations about where people “belong.” Students need to fit people into categories. Those categories are socially learned and reinforced. In this manner, students are socialized to expect their professors to “do” (i.e., perform) both race and gender.13 Ethnic Studies offers a unique prism through which our students can unlearn and identify those behaviors. Tracey Patton (2004) writes, “Bodies become the site of gender and race struggle[s] in the Academy.” Thus, “The politics of domination and representation become played out on the body in favor of retaining the current hegemonic order” (193, 197). The following example is illustrative of the struggle to be recognized as a legitimate and equal authority. The introductory Southern Studies classes in my department are team-taught. While team teaching a class with a white male colleague about my age, I noticed an exchange of nods between my colleague and a white, male student in the class during my lecture time. At the end of class, my co-instructor told me that the student came to talk to him after a previous class because I made a misstatement in class. I am not infallible; none of us are, so I inquired further. My co-instructor said that several times (during a previous class and the class in question) I stated that Medgar Evers was the first Black applicant to the University of Mississippi when it was James Meredith. During that day’s lecture, each time I “misspoke,” the student

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would look at the co-instructor who would nod sympathetically to the student. I gently told my co-instructor that I had not misspoken. Medgar Evers was the first applicant. He applied to the law school. The award-winning PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize episode I assigned chronicled that. However, neither the co-instructor nor the white student in question viewed it, and each made the assumption that my statement was in error, when, in fact, they were both mistaken. Presumed incompetent and or biased, faculty women of color often have to wear what poet Paul Laurence Dunbar calls “the mask that grins and lies.” In setting the record straight, I was gracious to my colleague and careful to show no ire, but I never forgot the exchange either. I am reminded of something Howard Winant writes in his 1994 book, Racial Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparisons. In a discussion of the theoretical status of the concept of race, Winant advises readers that the study of race has displayed “an insufficient appreciation for the performative aspect of race” (16). To some extent, many people in society engage in performance as a central part of their job. In her book The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling, Arlie Hochschild introduces readers to the concept of “emotional labor.” Like other symbolic interactionist perspectives (see Goffman 1959), Hochschild (1993) focuses on how meaning is constructed in microlevel exchanges. She defines “emotional labor” as “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; emotional labor is sold for a wage and therefore has exchange value.” While there is an exchange value for the act, emotional dissonance may also result (90). I, too, engage in emotional labor. I do so for a myriad of reasons: for the sake of my job, my sanity, and my relations with others. Society falsely perceives the pleasantries that accompany conversations between racial/ethnic outsiders and those in the dominant culture as racial progress. This is not always the case.

Post-racial Students The term post-racial has wide use. It is often employed to suggest that in contemporary American society, race no longer matters. Some take the assertion even further and argue that American society is now devoid of race-based prejudices and ideologies. CRT accurately argues that race matters, but other facts do as well. Sociologist William Julius Wilson (1980, 1990, 1997) reminds us of the over-arching significance of class in U.S. society, but race and class do not exist in a vacuum. A disproportionate number of People of Color live below the poverty line. Most students are quick to attribute individual reasons for these patterns, but they often do not see the structural issues that impact these patterns.14 There has been a silencing and rejection of the epistemologies of People of Color in U.S. society. This silencing makes it possible for many students (and

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others) in the academy to hold tight to their belief in not only their own colorblindness but also that of others in society. Many of these so-called post­ racial students proudly espouse that they are colorblind. However, sociologist Eduardo Bonilla Silva clearly establishes that colorblind racism is still racism and contributes to problems in society. Counter-narratives can provide a more nuanced understanding of others’ experiences.

Seeing Racism (Why Students Can’t) We live in an increasingly complex world where racism is both inherently visible through structural markers and data and yet invisible among the individual actors who maintain and support it. Yet my “post-racial” students find it difficult to see racism, even when they are the perpetrators. Students’ inability to see racism and other social ills in society is related to their accep­ tance of colorblind ideological frames, but that is not the only factor. To see racism is to recognize your own part and place in the racist structure, and many white students seem ill-prepared to do either. Partially, this is because society embraces a visual and verbal colorblind mantra, and students have come to believe such discourse.15 Further, they have come of age in an era where you are rewarded/praised for effort, so they do not have to overcome racism later that year, and they might not even need to challenge/confront it in order to feel deserving of merit. In addition to introductory Southern Studies, I taught an upper-level Race, Place, and Space class, cross-listed with African American Studies, sociology, Gender Studies, and Southern Studies. In this 400-level class, I ask the students to keep a journal of racialized and/or gendered speak they hear. Initially, my students (of all races) could not hear race talk. They asked if I would allow them to use posts on social media. I conceded, and they learned to hear it everywhere (in spoken and written form). Speech on social media is often unfiltered. Prior to my concession, the students thought “race talk” required the use of terms like “nigga,” “nigger,” “niggah,” or “bitch.” The old racial language still existed, but new discourse emerged too. Soon, they learned a variety of invaluable lessons: people speak differently in private than they do in public, communication is 95% nonverbal, and that some people use a discourse that conveys coded racial language. The coded racial language can demean, debase, and/or praise; often, this occurs through reliance on established stereotypes. Following are some examples from my students’ journals. All names used are pseudonyms. A young, white woman chronicled this conversation: Tiffany and Brittany [white girls] were drunk one night and decided to walk to a friend’s fraternity house from College Grounds. Their [white]

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friends later found out that they walked through College Grounds Trail to get there. Mary Frances looked at her friends and said, “You are lucky you didn’t get raped. You know what people live at College Grounds?!” She was referring to mostly African American students living there. Later in her journal the same student outlined other insights that Mary Frances offers freely about Black men: I was chatting with Mary Frances about a video we saw in class about the Central Park Five.16 I told her about the Black woman who was beaten and raped [around the same time] but received little to no [media] attention compared to the White woman who was beaten and raped in Central Park. I explained how the 5 boys of a minority race were wrongfully accused of the rape of the White woman and were still fighting for justice today. After doing my best to explain the whole situation, Mary Frances began to speak. She said, “Well, I mean most Black men do rape other [white] women, so it’s understandable.” I looked at her in shock & tried to explain to her how that was not true. She continued to say, “No. It is. They will even rape their girlfriends or even children. My mom tells me . . . [all] about [it].” A Black female student writes about this conversation with her advisor, whom she describes as an “old, White lady”: “Your G.P.A. is a 3.3? You’ve got to pull it up, but since you’re a minority, it won’t be as difficult [for you] to get into medical school. Plus, you are a woman. So you have an advantage.” In this last exchange, it is apparent that not only do white students at the institution perceive that students of color have an unfair benefit in matters such as campus admissions, but this attitude is shared by support staff as well. These spoken ideas about the aptitude, criminal propensity, and sexual appetites of People of Color (especially Blacks) are only paled by the knowledge that the unspoken feelings whites possess about People of Color are often worse. Student after student chronicled such tales. All these occurred in their “colorblind” society. Sometimes, they even outed their own racist and/sexist speech. A Black male student writes this about a private conversation to which he was privy: “19 year-old Black male speaking in private to a 20 yearold Black female [says,] ‘See these White B’s don’t talk about each other like y’all do.’ ” The speaker’s comments seem to both suggest and accept a view of Black women as morally inferior to white women. This comment is made more insidious by the speaker’s membership in the disparaged racial group. It also illustrates that while race is still a salient variable in U.S. society, it is not

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the only variable that matters. As such, an intersectional analysis may often be useful. White students reported that while they had heard such encounters before, they had not been sensitized to the insidiousness nature of the language. Students of color shared how the subtle, mini-assaults (microaggressions) that are woven into the fabric of everyday encounters produce what Smith, Yosso, and Solórzano (2006) have called “racial battle fatigue” (301). Exposing such discourse can be wearying. On more than one occasion my sistah scholars and I have gathered to decompress from all the microaggressions and the weight of students who come to share their burdens. Many of us have talked of leaving the university. Many have left. For those of us who remain (and those who leave but carry the battle scars with them), we are encouraged by each other and by the hope a few of our students (those of color and white students alike) inspire.

THE FLIP SIDE OF CHALLENGES IS REWARDS Teaching Ethnic Studies has its challenges, but it also has rewards, and while I do not wish to suggest that the rewards come at little or no personal cost (especially to the psyche of those who teach such material), it is, nevertheless, a worthy pursuit. The academy can be an oppressive place, but it can also be a revolutionary space that incites, promotes, and helps sustain social change (Ford 2011, 474). Whether teaching introductory courses, 400-level offerings, or graduate courses, I have found some tools to assist me in facilitating an environment most conducive for learning. My first recommendation may seem obvious, but it is still worth saying. I expect my students to listen to me, and I have learned that it is also important for me to listen to them. I am a technophobe. I do not use social media or Skype a conversation. Still, my students do. They are image conscious, and my knowledge of this has caused me to inject more images and popular culture references into my lectures. As I stated earlier, this revelation about the way students lived their lives caused me to modify my “racetalk” assignment to include social media posts. That simple act unlocked something for the students and enabled them to hear the kind of traditional speech to which I initially referred. My second recommendation is to continue to speak truth to power knowing that some students will perceive your discourse as false and even antagonistic. The forms of privilege operate silently. White privilege is no different. Despite a large presence of People of Color, whiteness is normative in the state of Mississippi, especially in positions of authority over other whites. I force my students—of all races—to confront the reality that straightness and Christianity are normative, too. Addressing these realities is my way of

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planting seeds. These seeds can be perceived as poisonous by some, which leads to my third recommendation. My third recommendation is to provide a safe space for students to be honest about their feelings without the fear of attack. I encourage dialogue, and I try to provide a safe space for it to occur, but I also try to respect people’s right to be anonymous. Here is one such example: On numerous occasions I have conducted an anonymous survey with my classes to find out about their experiences with interracial dating. While the survey results are anonymous, I present broad (unidentifiable) demographic data. In general, my white students have far less interracial dating experience than students of color. They offer several reasons for this. First, a number of the white students say that they are not attracted to People of Color. The second most common rationale offered for this exclusionary pattern of dating is that various members of their family would disapprove if they were to date a person of color, especially a Black person. The final leading reason white students proffer for why they would not date outside their race is that they would not want people to stare at them, point, or treat them differently. Ironically, while large percentages of white students suggest that such pressures would be too much to handle, a number of them fail to see that those are the very pressures that People of Color face every day. This examination suggests that many whites still place great significance on race, a variable students claim they “do not see.”

CONCLUSION Despite a changing U.S. demographic, inside and outside of the academy whiteness is still considered normative in U.S. society. The master narrative of colorblindness does not serve the interests of People of Color, and it serves to silence and reject their epistemologies. Equipping my students to: (1) see racism, and (2) move beyond my “presumed bias” is no easy task. I try to plant seeds and/or water the seeds that have already been planted in the hope that students will connect the dots. Some do. While it is by no means all students who make these connections or even most, it has also never been the case that no one has done so. One white female wrote this in her final essay: The idea that the United States operates according to a “meritocracy” is far from valid. . . . Everyone is not granted the same opportunities; some are more privileged than others simply because of the color of their skin or their biological sex. To think that we are all created equal is a socially constructed lie to label deviance, create and enforce social norms, and sanction those who do not conform to the norms.

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A white male student writes: It is a natural phenomenon that the human mind organizes people, places, and other objects into categories, but is it possible that we value some categories more than others? While I might debate the student’s conclusion that the process of categorization is “natural,” there is no debate in my mind that Ethnic Studies afforded the student the critical lens through which to ask the important starting question that led him to the conclusion: “The way our minds process information [relies on] . . . attribution error [and] . . . reinforces the differences we see between White and Black.” We must continue to defend Ethnic Studies (see Winkler-Morey 2010). In a world that never forgets history yet ignores its present place, microaggressions often seem too menial to be referenced, and so they do not get reported or investigated. Instead, People of Color are left to bear the weight of this accumulated onslaught—often in silence. I will continue to tell my story, and I hope others will do the same. “Oppressed groups have known instinctively that [their] stories are an essential tool for their own survival and liberation” (Delgado 1989). I have let go of the expectation (or even hope) that my students will reach “full enlightenment” in the course of a semester with me. However, I hold fast to the belief that by calling attention to things such as white privilege, students may someday understand how it and the many other advantages for which they did not labor privilege and benefit them at the expense of others.

NOTES 1. Stavans points out that while tensions exist between Black Studies and Latino Studies, tensions also exist within Latino Studies (and Black Studies) as independent groups. 2. Vilna Treitler (2014) argues that ethnic thinking is not dangerous per se, but it is dangerous in a society that has not let go of racial thinking. 3. Public Broadcasting Service, “AZ House Bill 2281,” Need to Know, February 13, 2013. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/politics-3/az-house-bill-2281/16320/. Accessed August 30, 2014. 4. The author does not suggest that all minority students will perform at lower levels because of this exclusion or that leveled performance is a foregone conclusion; rather, the lack of inclusion of minority perspectives and experiences may cause some students to disengage from school. Consider Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s findings in the doll experiment that prompted Chief Justice Earl Warren to write in the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, “To separate them [Black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of

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inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.” There has been much criticism of the methodology and conclusions of the doll experiment; however, even the staunchest critics find some (if not universal) merit in the findings. 5. These “sistah scholars” include a circle of women of color in academia within and outside of my institution. 6. UM 2012–2013 Quick Facts, Institutional Research & Assessment, University of Mississippi, http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/university_planning/quick_facts/fall_2012 _2.html. 7. See http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28000.html. 8. UM 2012–2013 Quick Facts, African American (16.6%), American Indian (0.3%), Asian (3.5%), Hispanic or Latino (2.7%), Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (0.1%), Two or More Races (1.6%), Unknown (0.1%). 9. There are typically about seventy students enrolled in SST 101, and in the four years I have taught the class, I have never had more than five total minorities in the class. Typically, I average about two per class. 10. This includes men and women. Available university statistics do not delineate the number of African American male and female faculty, nor does it provide information on the percentage of such faculty who are tenured. 11. “Social Value of Ethnic Studies: Research Review,” Washington, DC: National Education Association, 2011. Downloaded August 20, 2014. Files.eric.ed.gov /fulltext/ED521869.pdf. 12. In reference to the University of Mississippi, the term “Ole Miss” was first used in 1897, when the student body selected the term as the name for its yearbook. Ole Miss is the title many slaves used to refer to the mistress of the planation. The author never refers to the institution by this name; however, it is used in official university materials such as emails. Recently, then Chancellor Dan Jones announced a comprehensive action plan for fostering a more inclusive and welcoming environment on campus, which included recommendations to phase out usage of the name. His plan was met with cheers by some and boos by others. 13. Similarly, as faculty, our academic preparation teaches us to perform the role of professor. 14. I do not wish to suggest that this pattern only exists in relations with faculty of color and white students. Instead, I find that all students who do not come from the social location under examination are generally willing to ignore the role of structural factors in many of the social ills that exist. For example, students are likely to believe that most people are poor because they are lazy. While some poor people are lazy, laziness (an agentic factor) does not explain why all people are poor and it ignores the structural factors that contribute to poverty. 15. Observe the website of almost any college or university and you will be assaulted by images that present a diverse student body where everyone not only “gets along” but spends substantive time together inside and outside the classroom. 16. Central Park Five chronicles the stories of five minority (Latino and African American) youth falsely accused and convicted of the rape of a young, white woman in Central Park. The incident occurred in 1989. Four of the young men confessed to the crime, but they each later recanted claiming coercion by the police. Their

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convictions were vacated in 2002 after a convicted rapist confessed to the act. DNA evidence corroborated his confession. No DNA evidence existed to link any of the Central Park Five to the act.

REFERENCES Bonilla Silva, Eduardo. 2013. Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Per­ sistence of Racial Inequality in America, 4th ed. Latham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Combs, Barbara H. 2013. From Selma to Montgomery: The Long March to Freedom. New York: Routledge. Delgado, Richard. 1989. “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative. Michigan Law Review 87(8): 2411–41. Dunbar, Paul L. 1913. “We Wear the Mask.” From The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co. Faulkner, William. 2012. Requiem of a Nun. Reprint. New York: Vintage Books. Ford, Kristie A. 2011. “Race, Gender, and Bodily (Mis)recognition: Women of Color Faculty Experiences with White Students in the College Classroom.” Journal of Higher Education 82(4): 444–78. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Grijalva, Barbara. 2013, May 28. “Dismantled TUSD Mexican American Studies Program Getting New Life.” Tucson News Now. Gutierrez y Muhs, Gabriella, Yolanda Flores Niemmann, Carmen Gia Gonzales, and Angela P. Harris, eds. Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder: Colorado State University Press. Hochschild, Arlie. 1993. The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hughes, Richard L. 2007. “A Hint of Whiteness: History Textbooks and Social Construction of Race in the Wake of the Sixties.” Social Studies (September/October): 2001–207. Jones, Stephanie J., Collette M. Taylor, and Fannie Coward. 2013. “Through the Looking Glass: An Auto Ethnographic View of the Perceptions of Race and Institutional Support in the Tenure Process.” Qualitative Report 18(29): 1–16. Ladson-Billings, Gloria, and William F. Tate IV. 1995. “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education.” Teachers College Record 97: 47–68, 48. Merton, Robert K. 1995. “The Thomas Theorem and the Matthew Effect.” Social Forces 74(2): 379–424. News One Staff. 2011, October 10. “Shame!: 96-Year-Old Woman: Voting Now More Difficult Than During Jim Crow.” NewsOne. Patton, Tracey O. 2004. “Reflections of a Black Woman Prof.: Racism and Sexism in Academia.” The Howard Journal of Communication 15(3): 185–200. Phillips, Mary. 2010. “Black Studies: Challenges and Critical Debates.” Western Journal of Black Studies 34(2): 273–77. Sleeter, Christine E. 2010. “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review.” National Education Association: Washington, DC. Available at http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/NBI-2010–3-value-of-ethnic-studies.pdf.

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Smith, William A., Tara J. Yosso, and Daniel G. Solórzano. 2006. “Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses: A Critical Race Examination of Race—Related Stress.” In Faculty of Color: Teaching in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities, edited by C. A. Stanley, 299–327. Bolton, MA: Anker Pub­­­lishing.  Solórzano, Daniel G. 1998. “Critical Race Theory, Racial and Gender Microaggressions, and the Experiences of Chicano and Chicana Scholars.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 11: 121–36. Stavans, Ilan. 2003, August 8. “Latino Studies and Black Studies: Bonds and Di­ vergent Paths.” Chronicle of Higher Education 49(48): B7. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost. Accessed April 20, 2015. Taylor, Charles. 1992. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, edited by A. Gutmann, 25–74. Princeton: Princeton Uni­­­­­ ver­­­sity Press. Treitler, Vilna B. 2014. The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Watson, Bruce. 2010. “The Summer of Our Discontent.” American Heritage 60(2): 43. Wetschler, Ed. 2011. “After 50 Years, Ethnic Studies Still Controversial.” District Administration 4(7): 46–53. Wilson, William Julius. 1980. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William Julius. 1990. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William Julius. 1997. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage Press. Winant, Howard. 1994. Racial Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparisons. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wink, Joan. 2005. Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World. Boston: Pearson. Winkler-Morey, Anne. 2010. “The War on History: Defending Ethnic Studies.” Black Scholar 40(4): 51–56. Wise, Tim J. 2012. Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority. In City Lights Open Media. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers; ebook.

Part III

Sharing Our Stories: Ethnic Studies Research and Community Engagement

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Militant Humility: The Essential Role of Community Engagement in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy Glenn Omatsu

Community engagement is the foundation of Ethnic Studies. This chapter will explore how faculty and students can respond to the two central demands from the founding mission of Ethnic Studies. First is the demand for “relevant education”—that is, the importance of redefining education to meet the needs of our communities. Second is the demand to open admissions in universities to all who want it from our communities, especially for those sectors that have been historically excluded. During the past two decades, I have given many presentations on the responsibility of students and faculty to bring Ethnic Studies to our communities. This chapter focuses on the other side of this responsibility: the necessity to bring our communities into Ethnic Studies and into our universities. Let me begin by sharing a story. When I was a kid in elementary school, I was fascinated by stories from Greek and Roman mythology. Now when I look back, I always wonder how my life would be different if I had read instead stories from Indigenous peoples of the Americas or from the early civilizations of Africa and Asia. But I went to school at a time when a Eurocentric curriculum was the only curriculum. One Greek myth I read when I was a child was about a man with superhuman strength who was able to win all fights. Whenever he was fighting an equally powerful opponent, he would reach down and touch the earth to gain new strength. He was the son of the goddess of the earth, and he grew stronger from his contact with the earth. He finally met an opponent who through careful observation understood the source of his strength and defeated him by lifting him off the ground and not allowing him to touch the earth. As a kid, I thought that the main lesson of the story was that intelligence could overcome physical strength. Probably

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like most kids, I identified with the victors of the stories rather than the vanquished. Many years later I encountered this same Greek myth during a political study group when I was involved in grassroots community organizing against evictions of low-income residents. I learned that the lesson of the story was for activists to stay grounded in the communities that we serve. Staying grounded meant gaining political power to create social change. I also learned that staying grounded was not easy because as activists we tend to see power as vested within ourselves and can easily forget about the real source of our strength. Several years later when I began teaching classes in Asian American Studies, I discovered that what I thought was only a Greek myth was actually a story found in many world cultures. I also discovered that the lesson of the story was not about strength or power but about recognizing the fundamental values and principles that define us as human and understanding where they come from. We grow or we die based on whether we are able to remain connected to these values. In other words, staying grounded is really about learning how to nurture our souls through engagement in our communities.

EPISTEMOLOGY AND ETHNIC STUDIES: COMMUNITY VERSUS MAINSTREAM I believe that staying grounded in our communities is absolutely essential for those of us who teach Ethnic Studies. However, the challenges of staying grounded today are different from those facing students and faculty four de­ cades ago because of the changes that have occurred in our communities and also within Ethnic Studies. The starting point for staying grounded today is reflecting on a basic question that we have been asked many times, “What is Ethnic Studies?” In universities, departments and programs generally are defined in terms of what is studied. Thus, for those outside Ethnic Studies, it is common to define it as focusing on People of Color and issues of race and ethnicity. However, if we reflect on this definition promoted by outsiders, we can see that it is narrow, inaccurate, and also dangerous. It is narrow and inaccurate because departments other than Ethnic Studies can offer classes focusing on People of Color and on issues of race and ethnicity. For example, history departments can have classes on African American history, English departments can have classes on American Indian literature, and International Studies departments can have classes on Latino and Asian Pacific migration. At institutions where other departments offer these classes, campus officials eventually question why Ethnic Studies programs are needed. This is why accepting a narrow definition of what we do is dangerous.

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But if Ethnic Studies is not defined as focusing on People of Color and on issues of race and ethnicity, then how is it defined? I believe that Ethnic Studies occupies a unique space in universities. We are unique because our field was founded by student and community activists in direct opposition to university officials. But we are also unique because unlike other academic programs, our field is not defined by its subject matter. Instead, Ethnic Studies is distinguished by its methodology and its approach to knowledge. More precisely, Ethnic Studies is defined by its epistemology. The term epistemology is usually only heard in philosophy classes, but it is a concept that needs to be more deeply understood in Ethnic Studies. Epistemology refers to the study of knowledge, or more basically understanding how we know, what we know, and how we use what we know. I believe that Ethnic Studies is defined by its distinct epistemology—its special approach to knowing about the world and changing it while simultaneously changing ourselves. I want to focus on understanding this epistemology because it is central to how we view teaching and learning, how we conceptualize social change, how we interact with the world, and how we understand ourselves. In a few minutes, I will describe some of the key elements of the Ethnic Studies epistemology, trace its origins back to community-based struggles, and also talk about why it represents the very soul of Ethnic Studies. But I want to quickly explain why I regard our epistemology as unique in the university. The approach to knowledge of Ethnic Studies, I believe, is fundamentally different from that of the mainstream university. Our approach to knowledge exists as a challenge to mainstream epistemology and all university practices stemming from it. And even more important, the epistemology of Ethnic Studies enables us to envision what our universities can become if we are able to organize others based on grounding in our communities. Let me use three examples to show how the epistemology of Ethnic Studies exists as a challenge to the mainstream university and also an alternative vision. We know that all universities have within their mission statements a commitment to community involvement and an emphasis on the transformative power of knowledge. However, we also know that universities put limits on these activities. For example, if we as faculty and students in Ethnic Studies set up a scholarship for students from low-income communities, campus officials would congratulate and honor us. Students in Ethnic Studies would also be congratulated for creating tutorial projects to help children in poor neighborhoods, or if with the help of faculty they launched research studies on corporate investments in low-income areas. However, we as faculty and students would be denounced by university officials if instead of sponsoring scholarships we demanded the right of higher education for all people from our communities,

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especially for those who do not meet standard admissions criteria, and created a university-based program to implement our demand. Our students would be attacked as dangerous radicals if through their tutorial projects children and their parents used reading, writing, and thinking skills to not only put demands on people in power for quality schools, housing, health care, and other basic needs but took the additional step of taking over existing institutions or creating their own alternative institutions. We as faculty and students would be labeled as troublemakers if instead of simply researching corporate investments in low-income communities we joined with residents of communities and redirected resources from the university to stop evictions and oppose corporate-driven developments, including those of investors closely tied to the institution. I mention these three examples because student founders of Ethnic Studies organized exactly these kinds of community projects and built the first departments and classes around them. Specifically, in the struggles to win the first programs—and through the very first classes themselves—students joined in the grassroots campaigns of the most oppressed sectors of our communities to not only confront power and authority but to create new institutions to meet basic needs. These initiatives included youth community centers, prison outreach projects, garment co-ops run by immigrant workers, legal aid clinics, women’s rights organizations, health education projects, arts and literature collectives, senior citizen projects, worker centers, and tenant rights groups. These kinds of community projects grounded the mission of Ethnic Studies in a vision of education emphasizing social justice, social change, and community empowerment. This vision of education, in turn, developed from an epistemology deeply ingrained in our communities that student activists gained from their work with community activists. I describe this epistemology as community-based, anticolonial and liberatory. It is community-based because it is rooted in the history of grassroots struggles in our communities. It is anticolonial because it stands in opposition to the mainstream epistemology of domination and oppression. And it is liberatory because it provides the vision and tools for activists and people in our communities to achieve social justice and collective empowerment. For the past three decades, I have consciously applied this epistemology to classes I teach and to work in community campaigns. Significantly, I started to do this only when I realized that after working in a university setting for a few years that I had begun to unconsciously adopt elements of the mainstream epistemology into how I viewed teaching, activism, and social change. The mainstream epistemology is the dominant framework for understanding the world and is largely invisible to those of us who live within it. I only began to analyze this framework when I self-reflected on changes I had made

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in my classes due to suggestions to fit into institutional guidelines. I noticed, for example, that I had begun to regard thinking and doing as separate things. I created classes filled with interesting political content but would not have students act on an understanding of these issues. I also believed that awareness always preceded action. More specifically, I saw awareness of community issues and social change as linear stages where people first became aware through education and then took action. I also had organized my classes around the concept of the individual learner. I saw my classroom as an assembly of individual learners, and this framework shaped my assignments. I also regarded teaching as mainly about changing minds but not necessarily hearts and souls. Like others in the university, I regarded human reason as the highest of all qualities that distinguished us from other species, and I defined my role as one of helping my students critically analyze issues but to avoid factors that could contaminate the process. Finally, I realized that I regarded social change and personal transformation as largely separate processes, and I believed that people, including myself, could not become better human beings until the material conditions in society were changed.

Community-based Epistemology Putting all these self-observations together, I realized that I had moved away from a community-based epistemology and adopted a mainstream understanding of teaching, activism, social change, and my own role in the world. This mainstream epistemology clashed with what mentors in my life, namely immigrant workers and community residents, had patiently taught me. I realized I needed to consciously apply a community-based and anticolonial epistemology to my daily work. Here are five things I focused on, which I believe are also key elements in the epistemology of Ethnic Studies. First, with the help of my mentors, I realized that thinking and doing are not separate things but are intricately connected. Under colonialism, we learned to intellectually separate thinking from doing. However, in real life there is a constant interaction. Also we need to remind ourselves that most of our Indigenous philosophical traditions teach us that knowing is not complete until we apply knowledge. Second, I realized that awareness does not always precede action, and the relationship between promoting awareness and taking action is not linear. In real life, taking action often promotes greater awareness. We limit ourselves in our activism if we adopt the colonized mindset that we must carry out education before we can act. We need to understand action and awareness as part of the same process. Third, I realized that learning occurs not within the individual person but for a person within a web of social relationships. Thus, if I want to increase

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learning outcomes for each student in a classroom, I need to enhance human relationships. My mentors taught me that a major responsibility of teachers, whether in schools or in community settings, is to promote healthy group dynamics—essentially, community building. Fourth, I realized that education needs to emphasize not only minds but also hearts and souls. I finally understood Gandhi’s critique of colonialism when he stated that Western education focused only on the head while ignoring the hand and the heart. I also learned that by emphasizing a holistic concept of education involving minds, hearts, and souls, we as students and teachers better understand why we need to give back to the communities that nurture us. We must give back not only with our heads but also with our hands and our hearts. Fifth and finally, I realized that there can be no social change without simultaneously changing ourselves. One struggle does not precede the other, and both must occur at the same time. For example, when we build alternative institutions in our communities as a response to oppression, we need to simultaneously struggle against racism, sexism, homophobia, or class exploitation present in our own lives. Emphasizing these five points helps me stay grounded in a communitybased epistemology. Staying grounded enables me to appreciate the founding mission of Ethnic Studies and also connect the challenges I face today to those of earlier activists. At the same time, I remember the advice of one of my mentors. Activist Grace Lee Boggs in her political authobiography reminds us to always think dialectically and to realize that social conditions change, especially due to our activism and the power of grassroots movements. She states, “new situations bring new conditions, requiring new visions.”

CHALLENGING THE UNIVERSITY I believe that some of the most important challenges of staying grounded today for students and faculty in Ethnic Studies are different from those of four decades ago because of changes that have occurred in Ethnic Studies and in our communities. These changes are the result of grassroots mobilizations. I will focus on two of these changes and how they have led to new challenges. Within universities, including this one, where faculty and students have successfully implemented Ethnic Studies, the challenge now is working within an institution that did not initially want us and constantly pressures us to shift away from our epistemology. This is why I describe being a teacher or student in Ethnic Studies as living within a dialectic. On the one hand, we work in an institution that attempts to assimilate us into mainstream

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practices, but on the other, we need to continuously challenge the institution and, even more important, create projects that concretely show others what our alternative vision stands for. Our communities have also changed since the birth of Ethnic Studies. At one time, our communities consisted overwhelmingly of low-income, working-class people with only a small stratum of professionals. Due to the achievements from the civil rights movement, our communities now have larger relatively privileged sectors. This new development challenges us in Ethnic Studies to choose which sectors of our communities we ground ourselves in and which sectors we serve. I believe that we in Ethnic Studies should always ground ourselves in the least privileged sectors of our communities, such as immigrant workers and young people who are not in college, but I also know that oftentimes these are the sectors that are most distant from our universities—both physically and psychologically. This is why for the last part of my presentation I want to return to the main point that I raised in the beginning: the necessity to bring our communities into Ethnic Studies and into our universities. To do this, we as faculty and students need to reassert the two central demands from the founding mission of Ethnic Studies. First, we need to create “relevant education”—i.e., education that meets the most pressing needs of our communities. Second, we need to create initiatives to open admissions in universities to all who want it from our communities, especially those sectors that have been historically excluded. Tragically, for the past thirty years, the right of all people in California to go to college has been stripped away by a combination of rising student fees and lack of public investment in higher education. Today, discussion of admissions policies in four-year universities no longer centers on the right of all people to go to college or even about who is qualified to attend but about who is most qualified. We in Ethnic Studies need to help reframe this discussion to reassert the right to college education for all people, especially those from our communities who have been historically excluded. Historically, the demand for opening admissions in universities to people from our communities was coupled to the demand for Ethnic Studies. Thus, at colleges where student activists won Ethnic Studies programs, they also won changes in admissions policies and even the right to recruit and enroll their own students. Student activists argued that low-income students from historically disadvantaged communities also attended historically disadvantaged K–12 schools. Student activists argued that these students had a right to attend a university due to their strong motivation to overcome obstacles that more advantaged students did not face. However, during the past thirty years, people in power have taken away these admissions programs.

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EQUAL OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM AND ETHNIC STUDIES: RELEVANT EDUCATION I have had the privilege for the past twenty years to teach at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and I work for two programs originally founded by student activists. I teach in an Ethnic Studies department, and I teach students who are in the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). EOP at CSUN exists as one of the few programs in California with what are now called “special admission” slots. EOP students as a whole are the first from their low-income families to go to college, and EOP “special-admit” students are those who did not meet standard university admission requirements. Each year, EOP enrolls about 125 “special-admit” freshmen, and all are required to participate in one of our Bridge Programs. Researchers in higher education identify these students as “high-risk” for failure, and some at CSUN outside of EOP routinely describe them as “at-risk” students. In contrast, we in EOP define them as “high potential” students due to their strong motivation, their capacity to deal with obstacles in their lives, and their willingness to use support services to develop their academic potential. To get into EOP and the university, these students went through a rigorous admissions process that included a one-to-one interview with an EOP leader. If selected for EOP, these high-potential students participate in a long-term Bridge learning community consisting of one class in the summer plus additional classes for their first three semesters. Right now in the fall 2014 semester, I am teaching eighty-four “specialadmit” students through three Bridge classes. Fifty are freshmen in my two University Writing classes, and thirty-four are third-semester students in my Race and Critical Thinking class. Many of my students came into EOP with a high school grade point below a C, but now several are honors students. EOP leaders set high expectations for these students, but they also provide support to meet these expectations, especially the help of mentors who are past “special-admit” EOP students themselves. EOP is the only academic program on our campus built on a foundation of mentoring. As head of the mentoring program, I help to train these mentors in what I call “anticolonial mentoring.” I distinguish it from mainstream mentoring, which involves formal matching of one mentor to one mentee, with mentoring occurring during specific meetings or mentoring times. The “anticolonial mentoring” approach that I use emphasizes a “community of mentors” who practice the art of transforming all interactions with students, no matter how brief, into mentoring moments. I learned “anticolonial mentoring” from my involvement in community struggles. I don’t think that my students or the mentors that I work with fully understand it, but they constantly inspire me. They educate me daily about the

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most pressing needs facing our communities, and they provide me with new ideas about how to become a better teacher and a better activist. Certainly, I learn much more from my students than I can ever teach them. Some of the most important lessons I learn are their insights into two questions that perplex many activists and educators. These perplexing questions are, How do people transform oppressive conditions in their lives into strength and motivation? And how do people transform the ideas they are learning into a material force to not only change their lives but the lives of those around them? The life experiences of my students provide insights into answering these questions, and their experiences mirror the most pressing needs of people in our communities. All of these challenges are associated with poverty. Here is a general profile of the eighty-four students in my three classes.1 • Half of my students come from families that are financially unstable due to unemployment, health issues, and other problems. About a fifth of my students give part of their financial aid to their families to help them cope with severe money needs, such as preventing evictions or dealing with hunger of younger family members. At least six of my students are from families that have been homeless at some point in their lives. Obviously, these severe family financial problems continue to affect students while they are in college, and it is not unusual for me to have a student who has little or nothing to eat or is unable to buy textbooks for classes. • About a third of my students grew up in single-parent households, usually with their mothers. About a dozen were abandoned by their fathers when they were young children, and several have never met their biological fathers. A few were raised during part of their lives by a grandparent or another relative due to biological parents not being around to take care of them. • At least five of my students went through severe depression in middle school or high school, and a few attempted suicide. Several female students cut themselves in middle school or high school, and others resorted to other forms of self-harm. • About a fifth of my students are either current gang members or ex-gang members or have close family members in gangs. At least four of my students have been arrested, and a few have done time in jail. A few of my students have been shot or shot at, usually due to gang violence in their neighborhoods. At least ten of my students have had a family member or close friend killed due to neighborhood violence, usually gang-related. • About a fifth of my students have either experienced or are still experiencing domestic violence. At least five were the targets of the violence, usually by their father, male relative, or by a boyfriend.

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• At least four women in my classes were sexually assaulted as children or teenagers, usually by a family member. At least two men in my classes also were victims of sexual assault. • About twenty of my students come from drug-addicted households. Some students were once addicted to alcohol or other drugs, and others have parents or siblings who are addicts or recovering from addictions. • Five students come from households where a family member has severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia. About ten students come from households where a family member has “mild” mental illness, usually bipolar disorders. At least three of my students are dealing with severe mental illnesses that immobilized them at earlier points of their lives. Through being in the EOP community, they have found ways to cope with their illnesses and attend college. Because EOP students are the first in their low-income families to go to college, their parents and relatives may not know how to support the students in their college journey. Many of the “high-potential” students in my classes state that family members told them they were failures in high school, reinforcing negative remarks made by their teachers and school officials. Even though these students are now in college, they still do not receive encouragement from their families. One of my freshmen felt alone and devastated when her parents nearly disowned her this past summer for choosing to attend college instead of trying to pursue a career in professional sports. To help students deal with these family challenges, EOP leaders recently initiated a Parents and Guardians Project to help family members understand the college experience of first-general students. This project is run by students and experienced parents of Bridge students. I know about all of these issues because I have enough of a bond with my students that they are able to write about their life challenges. In fact, I teach them how to use writing as a tool to understand their challenges. I also teach them how to use their first college research papers to analyze their life challenges and explore ways of better dealing with them. My students have become skilled social scientists because they are able to analyze how oppressive conditions in their communities affected their academic performance in high school. They are also revolutionary thinkers because they now want to change these conditions not only for themselves and their families but for others. In my classes due to the high academic standards that EOP leaders set, not all of my students succeed. Some do not make it past their first year of college even after doing well in the summer phase of our Bridge Program. However, I have learned that when Bridge students fail my classes, it is not due to academic reasons. I have actually never failed a Bridge student due to poor academic skills. I have failed students due to having poor attendance, not doing

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assignments, and not using support services on campus. At the root of these problems are family and personal hardships that overwhelmed the student’s motivation to do well in college. While some students fail, a great many succeed and graduate from college. A few also go on to graduate school, and at least one of my former students gained her doctorate and is now a colleague teaching with me in Ethnic Studies and EOP. I sometimes hear faculty colleagues who have my students in their classes during their freshman year talk about their poor academic skills. Sometimes I even hear that it is “not the job of faculty to teach these students basic skills.” These colleagues focus on what the students lack and not the qualities that the students have, such as high motivation and the capacity to deal with numerous life challenges. These are the qualities that make them high-potential students. For me, these students concretely represent what I mean by bringing our communities into Ethnic Studies and into our universities. By interacting with my students daily, I find myself grounded in the most basic community issues, and my students never allow me to forget the community-based epistemology that I need to practice to respond to these issues. As I stated earlier, I feel privileged to be able to have these students in my classrooms because most other universities have taken away their right to be in college. This is why I think that we in Ethnic Studies must re-assert the right to go to college for all people, especially those from our communities who have been historically excluded.

MILITANT HUMILITY IN PRAXIS Finally, to close this presentation tonight, I want to explain one concept that my own community mentors have asked me to emphasize whenever there are students in the audience. This is the concept of militant humility, and it connects to grounding ourselves in a community-based epistemology. In the broader U.S. society, the quality of being humble is regarded as being weak, and humility is not associated with movements for social change. Instead, most young activists focus on militancy, and they are trained—both consciously and unconsciously—to see political power and social change in terms of militant struggle. In contrast, in the long history of grassroots struggles in our communities, people integrally linked militancy with humility. This tradition of militant humility enabled them to fiercely fight for equality and justice while also developing patience for the challenging process involved in grassroots organizing. Elders from our communities also caution us to understand that practicing militant humility requires ideological clarity. We must be humble toward those we serve but be militant toward those who oppress our communities.

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However, on college campuses, we oftentimes see students who express humble respect for faculty and administrators, even for those who do not deserve respect. In contrast, these same students ignore or abuse immigrant workers on campus. Similarly, in our communities, we oftentimes see people give humble respect to politicians and other powerful people while ignoring the poor and the powerless. This is why our elders caution us to understand that practicing militant humility requires ideological clarity. Even when we think we understand, we should always reflect on whom we are humble toward and whom we militantly defy. In other words, practicing militant humility relates back to grounding ourselves in a community-based epistemology that connects social change to personal transformation. Through militant humility, we can serve the people and at the same time remold ourselves.

NOTES This speech was given by Glenn Omatsu on October 8, 2014, as part of the Labovitz-Perez annual lecture series at the University of San Diego. The lecture series honors Dr. Eugene Labovitz’s and Dr. Gail Perez’s contributions to the USD campus by inviting prominent Ethnic Studies practitioners, theorists, and social action researchers to present their work to “the campus community on the importance of teaching and research on Ethnic Studies in higher education.” Given these parameters, “Militant Humility: The Essential Role of Community Engagement in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy” raises questions regarding community engagement and Ethnic Studies epistemology within the university. Omatsu critiques the mainstream academy by arguing that historically students and activists helped create Ethnic Studies and therefore must continue to be engaged in the communities that it serves. He also outlines five key elements of Ethnic Studies epistemology culled from his twenty years of being a professor and mentor at the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at California State University, Northridge. EOP was established in the late 1960s in the University of California and California State University systems to address the lack of access to higher education for students of color and low-income students. Today, it has evolved to improve the access and retention rates of students who are historically low-income, educationally disadvantaged, and first-generation college students. His praxis of militant humility challenges us to continually rethink our role within the university in order to “be militant toward those who oppress our communities” in the struggles toward social justice and social change. 1. The method I used to gather demographic information from students was for them to share their life experiences through their essays, research papers, reflection papers, and so forth. Also, during the EOP Bridge Summer Phase, I invite students to voluntarily submit their first two college essays to me to be published in a small booklet for the class only. Of course, not all students are willing to share their personal writings, but quite a few do because they feel power and pride in telling their stories and inspiring others.

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Exploring the Intersections between Scholarship and Activism: Our Journey from Community Concerns to Scholarly Work Yarma Velázquez-Vargas, Marta López-Garza, and Mary Pardo

In this chapter we reflect upon the methodological approaches to communitybased field research and we examine our role within Ethnic Studies scholarship wherein the mission is to ground academic research based on community concerns and needs. Our intent is to share stories from the field that focus on our experiences as researchers in Feminist and Ethnic Studies and to engage in dialogue about reflexivity when transitioning our projects from community concerns to advancing the scholarship. We ask ourselves, if Ethnic Studies is established on the epistemology of a “different way of knowing, a different way of thinking” from Western/colonized academic precepts, then how do we as scholars, as the “knowers,” conduct research, how do we “collect data” and interpret what we documented? While our research topics differed from one another, the manner by which we approached conducting research in the field is comparable. As succinctly stated by Glenn Omatsu, a key foundation of ethnic studies scholarship is the conceptualization, collection, and interpretation of information/data is that “unlike other academic programs, our field is not defined by its subject matter. Instead, Ethnic Studies is distinguished by its methodology and its approach to knowledge” (Omatsu 2014). What we present in this chapter is an examination of our positionality at three notable levels: first our connection to community; second our positionality when conducting research, and, finally, transitioning our projects on community concerns to advancing scholarship. The goals of this chapter are to share stories from the field that focus on our experiences as Latina researchers with these three levels of positionality. The overall objective is to

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engage in a dialogue about the various ways Ethnic Studies research engages with different populations in our communities; in our cases with sex workers, formerly incarcerated women, and transgendered Latina immigrants.

OUR CONNECTION TO COMMUNITY As researchers in the field of Ethnic Studies, applying a critical feminist methodological precept, we interrogate power dynamics within society, including our own positionalities or how our own power, privileges, and perspectives influence our research. D. Soyini Madison (2012) argues, “A concern for positionality is a reflexive ethnography; it is a turning back on ourselves. When we turn back on ourselves, we examine our intentions, our methods, and our possible effects” (14). It is this practice of reflectivity introduced into the academic world by feminists and Ethnic Studies scholars that informs an engaged, accountable, and responsible researcher. In her study of sex workers, Mary Pardo grapples with the debate among feminists over the exploitative nature of sex work, on one hand and on the other hand, the perspective of a sex worker who sees herself as a Latina feminist artist earning a living wage. Marta López-Garza discusses the ethical considerations of interviewing and filming formerly incarcerated women as they struggle to rebuild their lives, recover from trauma and/or addictions, and work under the confines of institutional miasma. Volunteering at an organization that serves LGBTQ Latino/a immigrants, Yarma Velázquez-Vargas explores the research process of working with a group of transgender Latinas, their relationship with education, the process of identity formation, and access to information about public services. In the following narratives we reflect on our positionality as we introduce the topics and purpose of our respective research: Mary: My research project focuses on the way feminist scholars and activists during the 1970s and 1980s addressed the issue of pornography—in highly polarized binaries. During this time period, feminist analysis split on the divisive topic of pornography into “censorship” or “anti-censorship” camps (Doyle & Lacombe 1996). Radical feminists argued for censorship of all pornography because it reinforced patriarchy and constituted violence against women vs. liberal feminists who opposed censorship because it infringed on the First Amendment. However, missing from this early literature were the sex workers’ voices. Recent scholarship argues that exotic dancers and sex workers may offer alternative insights regarding the women’s lives and the cultural construction of sexuality (Barton 2006). I conducted in-depth interviews with Isis Rodriguez, a Latina feminist artist who was among the women who filed a class action lawsuit

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against the infamous Mitchell Brothers who owned a string of establishments in San Francisco. Isis Rodriguez’s narrative captures the convergence of a sex worker’s lived experiences during a turning point in the industry and the creative expressions of a Chicana artist critical of patriarchy. Marta: At the heart of my research are formerly incarcerated women of diverse ethnicities (African American, European American, and Latina) released from prison and attempting to recover their lives. I examine the entities that support their efforts to reunite with family and reintegrate back into society, as well as the barriers that impede their efforts to attain education, employment, social services, and housing. The purpose of this research is to present the stories directly from the women themselves and what they encounter as they endeavor to rebuild their lives upon release from prison. Yarma: My research evolved from my work at a local organization that serves queer Latino/a immigrants where I taught public speaking skills to a group of transgender Latinas. Our time together resulted in conversations about their relationship with the education system, the process of identity formation, and access to information about public services. Our time together eventually evolved into a critical reflection of the power structures that surround the community. While our subject matters appear dissimilar from one another, parallel issues and concerns cut across all three of our research topics. In terms of subject matter, we all focus on people who have “transgressed,” those who have been marginalized by society at large, and, at times, by members of their own communities and families. Also, in all three cases, issues of sex work comes into play. The third similarity among our respective research areas is our commitment to critical Ethnic Studies’ methodological approaches to “data collecting,” and our desire to examine our positionality vis-à-vis the women in our respective studies.

METHODOLOGICAL CONCERNS: OUR POSITIONALITY WHEN CONDUCTING RESEARCH Alison Jagger (2008) asserts that “Reflexivity is often recommended as a methodological practice for feminist researchers who are advised to consider how their questions, methods, and conclusion are affected by their own positionality” (459). As critical researchers we assume the responsibility of transforming the personal and meaningful stories we witnessed into research narratives that accurately represent the concerns and viewpoints of our participants. Toward that end, we each were conscious of how we approached and interacted with the women in our respective studies.

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Mary: The origins of my research project, sparked in 2000, bear on my choice to interview a stripper who self-identified as a Latina/Chicana feminist artist. Exploring the issue raised many controversial questions; it challenged my understanding of feminist activists, given the previous work that I had conducted years ago. It also compelled me to closely examine my views on sex work and women’s subjugation, which is easy to condemn in the abstract theoretical debates. However, compared to theoretical debates, reality is much more complex as expressed through the lived experiences of a woman doing the work. Reviewing the debate noted earlier led to a number of questions, Was sex work the ultimate degradation of women that furthers the subjugation of women and reinforces sexism and patriarchy? Was sex work a rational choice because it pays better than minimum wage jobs? Or, were all women who enter sex work coerced directly or indirectly by the dire economic options they faced? While the mid-1990s marked more nuanced feminist views of sex work, some continued to create binaries—women “forced” versus those who “choose.” Others explored the globalization of sex work recognizing the voices of Third World women who emphasized that sex work was simply an income-generating activity rather than the outcome of some social or psychological problem (Jagger 2008, 459). What became clear to me after reviewing the literature is that simple binaries of victim/agent failed to capture the complexity of primarily poor and women of color not merely in the United States, but in countries throughout the world. At the onset of my research, I conducted content analysis research on pornographic Internet sites that featured Latinas. However, the voices of Latina sex workers were nonexistent in these sites. So when my colleague, artist Yreina Cervantez, referred me to a Latina feminist artist working as a stripper in San Francisco, I immediately followed the lead. As I did so, I was acutely aware of the impetus for the research project—contesting sexualized images of Latinas and the protracted feminist debates around sex work. My original project interrogated the producers of Internet pornography as fostering the exploitation and degradation of Latinas. The project condemned the pornography producers, not the women workers. The underlying assumption was that the women were young, naïve, without options, and connived by ruthless producers into doing highly stigmatized work. The women on the Internet had no voice or agency. Deciding to speak to a sex worker changed my research method and opened a dialogue that allowed me to hear a woman doing highly stigmatized work and reconsider the underlying assumptions of the initial research project.

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Marta: Early in this research project on formerly incarcerated women, during a conversation with one of the woman, Lorraine D., she asked me what my plans were for this study. My response was that it was my intent to interview then write about her and the other women in the study and publish my findings. Upon hearing myself, I realize how inconsequential this was for the women themselves, and indeed, that is exactly how Lorraine reacted. I recall her words clearly, “Why not make a documentary. You can reach a lot more people that way.” What she said made sense. However, I did not know the first thing about making a documentary. Nonetheless, with the assistance of several young filmmakers,1 and the support of the women themselves, I created a feature-length documentary titled When Will the Punishment End? which is now available free for viewing at www.whenwillpunishmen tend.net. To collect the data and information for my research on formerly incarcerated women, I applied a feminist epistemological approach (i.e., personal oral narratives and life histories), along with filmmaking as forms of data-collecting techniques. Participants for my research were selected largely from three sets of sober living homes for women (Harbour Area Halfway Houses in Long Beach; New Way of Life in Watts; and Time for Change in San Bernardino) as well as among the young women working at Homeboy Industries/Homegirl Café located initially in Boyle Heights (east of downtown Los Angeles) and since relocated to the Chinatown area of the central city. The first year of my research with the women at the three recovery homes and at Homeboy Industries/Homegirl Café, was a time for us to become acquainted with one another. During this year, I visited each location numerous times, initially merely conversing with the women at meetings, social events, classes, and over meals. In 2006, we began filming, following the women in their daily lives, at their homes, during their outings with their children, as they searched for employment, and when they attended meetings. I also documented the women in their activist mode, at public hearings, conferences, demonstrations, and meetings with elected officials. We filmed approximately fifty-five hours of digital film footage and transcribed every film taping. We created a script, a story line to follow when editing, and spent an additional two years editing and revising the script to finally produce the sixty-minute documentary. Methodologically, following the edicts of feminist scholars in Ethnic Studies, I created avenues by which the women became the storytellers, speaking directly to the readers (and in the case of my documentary, the viewers) (Collins 1990). Below is a small excerpt from M. Bermudez.

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Charismatic and natural in front of a camera, she featured prominently in the documentary: In and out of jail since I was eighteen, I been in and out . . . Civil Brand, Twin Towers, done that kind of time . . . here I was twenty-five years a drug addict, homeless, prostitution. . . . Being in enough pain and fear because prison was . . . not where I would want to live the rest of my life. It’s funny but with the disease, the addiction, when you are in there you are like, “I don’t want this. There is more for me.” But the minute you get out into the streets, if you do not get into a program if you don’t get into something to get educated on the problem or work with a therapist then the cycle just keeps going. . . . I did not want to go back out there and hurt my family and my children. But when you do not have enough knowledge about yourself, because you are so lost, especially if you are on drugs you do not know who you really are and if you have this disease of addiction then you are really lost. So it’s just a cycle. (Marta López-Garza interview with M. Bermudez, May 20, 2007) This passage by Maribel is an example of what we attempt to convey by applying feminist ethnographic methods. Here Maribel tells her story, her experiences and traumas, as well as her hopes. There is a direct link/connection existing between the women and the readers/viewers. Yarma: The first summer after my academic appointment in a tenure-track position I decided to volunteer at a community organization that serves the local LGBTQ community. The organization provides education about immigration, civil rights, LGBT equality, and healthcare to the queer Latino/a community. I spent several months that summer volunteering and teaching public speaking classes to some of the support groups at the organization. The first support group to take the public speaking course was a group of male-to-female transgender Latinas. The goal of the classes was to improve their public speaking skills and job prospects. However, it also became an exercise on understanding and performing femininity. This ten-week course on public speaking to the group of transgender women became the basis of my research. Additionally, I conducted a focus group with them during our last meeting. The participants in this research project were immigrants from different towns and provinces in Mexico, Guatemala, and Cuba. All of the women in the group consider themselves long-term immigrants; their lengths of stay have ranged from twenty-eight years to eight years, and although there are some occasional new arrivals in the support group, they were not part of our study.

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The focus group with the participants revolved around issues of health and migration. The conversations during the public speaking lessons were very informal and included some formal exercises of instruction as well as community-building socializing. The moderator of the group, a staff member at the organization, made occasional interventions to manage our lessons more efficiently or to clarify our dialects in Spanish. In addition to the formal focus group, I participated in several social events inside and outside of the organization. As I started transcribing my notes, I quickly realized the difficulties of writing the piece. The writing process reflected the tension between the style and tone required in an academic journal in my field and a format that allowed me to be more descriptive. After several drafts I abandoned my attempts for a more empirical style and moved toward a more descriptive outlet. I felt a descriptive writing style would be more appropriate for the stories of the women and my experience as a researcher. Choosing the right publication venue requires the researcher to consider the impact readership could have on the community, as meaningful data about the Latina/o queer community becomes accessible to the greatest number of readers.

TRANSITIONING OUR PROJECTS ON COMMUNITY CONCERNS TO ADVANCING SCHOLARSHIP As Latina researchers steeped in Feminist and Ethnic Studies theories and methodologies, our priority became choosing the methodological approach and methods tools that would allow us to relate our participants’ stories with the same intimacy and emotional complexity with which they were originally shared. Unlike traditional researchers, feminist scholars—particularly those whose gender intersect with race, class, sexual preference, and immigrant status—reflect upon the prerogative we supposedly hold to speak on behalf of those we study. Alison Jagger (2008) ponders upon this dilemma, “How can feminist researchers learn to listen, hear, read and represent the experience of other women and even of men without distorting or misrepresenting it? What criteria can researchers use to determine whether they have succeeded? If experience is socially constructed, is there any sense in which each of us is an authority on her own experiences? If power is inherent in the construction of experience how can feminist researchers struggle against dominant categories of interpretation or decide whose account is authoritative?” (271). Our position as professors has given us privileges not provided to the majority of Latinas. Along with these privileges, add the ethical responsibility of all critical ethnographers to critique power structures and expose injustice while considering the possible ways our research may be received. Our

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publications have consequences for the people that we interview and observe as well as for others who read and reflect on our analysis. As Ethnic Studies scholars, we also feel the responsibility to our working-class students negotiating worlds of difference—cultural/ethnic differences, class differences, and changing gender expectations. This privileged position within which we as women of color academics and scholars find ourselves, even as we remain “marginal” within the academic world, allows us the luxury of delving into the methodological and the epistemological dimensions of our research, to reflect on our positionality. We have the opportunity to write about those topics of importance to our respective communities and to share them with our colleagues, students, and hopefully with those who can help change the conditions within which our participants find themselves, be they sex workers unprotected by labor laws, formerly incarcerated women who are constantly discriminated against even after serving their time, or economically and socially marginalized transgendered Latina immigrants. In the following section we delve into the interpretation and dissemination of what we learned in the field. Mary: Cognizant that researchers face a moral responsibility to be respectful to the people that they write about as well as aware of the message conveyed by their interpretations, I felt vaguely uneasy about the way to address key questions. Was being a Chicana feminist artist and a sex worker a contradiction in terms? How would I tell this story? What was my position as a professor in Chicana/o Studies who teaches courses on Chicanas and Third World women from a Chicana feminist perspective, including the sexualization and racialization of women of color in the media? Would telling the story of a talented Chicana artist with a college education who “freely chose” to strip for over a dozen years endorse a risky occupation? But, who decides who is entitled to be a feminist and what is antithetical to a feminist project? Isis was far from being a Third World woman with a family to feed and few options for other work, but she found stripping to be more lucrative than working as a waitress or sales clerk, typical low-paid “pink collar” jobs. The hours also allowed her to continue producing art. As I listened to Isis explain her work, the notion that sex work reinforced patriarchy flashed before me. When I asked Isis to describe her stage act, she explained, “I saw that when I did play the sexy Latina that I could compete with the white girls and hold my own ground . . . the stereotype of the Latina is positive in that situation because men view Latinas as being more humble, more motherly, more caretaking. I go up to a guy really nice; he is going to interpret that because that is what he wants. He is looking

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to be comforted; he is looking to be nurtured. I will play mommie if I have to.” However, she followed the description of strip club work by reflecting on her artwork with images of women on a large chessboard, “That’s why I put women on the chess board . . . all the different roles women have to play . . . truth is there is a lot of sexual harassment in the workforce, regardless of whether you work in a strip club or elsewhere. And it creates a lot of anxiety, unnecessary anxiety. Women think, well if I wear my skirt this high, will I sell this car to this guy? But if I wear the skirt thigh high, and try to take a cab, every guy who passes will be hassling me. The strip club is the most honest place to work because it is what it is. In other workplaces, sexual harassment gets done on the sly. If you complain, they treat you like an idiot.” Her frank responses hit the mark. The response may seem to illustrate how a woman who does sex work caters to men’s sexual fantasies often including submission, but it also reminds us how many other workplaces parallel the strip club, albeit more subtly. All women are expected to conform in varying degrees to gender norms. Strippers demand pay for playing the roles. Isis is well aware of what she does and her reflections deepened my understanding of sex work from the point of view of the actor. When I asked if she found the work liberating or exploitative, she quickly responded, “Sex work is only liberating when the women have control over services and earnings and their environment is safe and comfortable. Sex work is exploitative when women are coerced into prostitution by giving up half of every dance and their environment is dirty and unsafe.” (Mary Pardo interview with Isis Rodriguez, August 5, 2005) Socially conscious and artistically talented, Isis joined in the San Francisco–based movement to unionize sex workers. She also exhibited a one-woman show in the Galeria de la Raza in the Mission District during that time. Isis’s firsthand knowledge of sex work and her political awareness are clearly reflected in her artistic endeavors. In the art exhibit, she placed an assortment of children’s toys—a Selena doll, a Hot Wheels kit of surfer guys and girls, a “Saloon Girl” Halloween costume that allows a female child to dress up like a prostitute to highlight the pervasiveness of sexism our children endure. Reflecting on Isis Rodriguez’s work as a stripper and her work as a Chicana artist offered valuable insights into the material world with all of its contradictions—her experiences as a stripper amazingly parallel the experiences of other Latina workers; home care workers who care for the elderly, garment workers who take bundles of work home, and

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domestic workers who are often labeled “independent contractors” so they are not entitled to job security, unemployment benefits, or health insurance. They are exploited similarly, unprotected by labor law and benefits. If feminists want to make life safer for women, sex work should be regulated the way other hazardous work is regulated (Alexander 1997, 93). Isis’s story also problematizes the image of sex workers as victims and compelled me to reconsider who I think deserves protection under labor laws, who becomes “the other” in feminist discourse, and how the daily onslaught of sexualized images dramatizes the need for liberating images that speak to women of color. Regarding sex workers, Cherrie Moraga’s (1983) commentary on radical feminist positions on pornography aptly captures how I came to terms with my initial uneasiness with the research, “pornography is an issue, but the antimaterialist approach is problematic and makes little sense in the lives of 3rd world women. Plainly put, it is our sisters working in the sex industry” (119). Marta: I knew I was working with a population and community which had been dissected and “over studied” by scholars, government agencies, and journalists. Yet little has taken place to better the conditions within which these individuals and communities find themselves. All this leads to understandable mistrust and wariness on the part of the community. Therefore, in many respects I believe I have no authority but only concern for the issue, and for the East and South Los Angeles communities within which I have been working for decades. I initially entered this field of study with only the cursory knowledge that most sociologists possess on the subject, that being a passing understanding of the prison-industrial complex and an awareness of the increase in the numbers of incarcerated women and men for nonviolent, drug-related transgressions. Prior to 2005, when I began this study, it had not been my area of “interest” or research, but I was drawn to the topic as a result of my involvement with Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment. A community-based organization, Community Coalition staff meet regularly with South Los Angeles’s service providers who work directly with community members returning from prison to assist them in their search for employment, housing, drug treatment programs, and to regain custody of their children. So while I felt I needed to tread carefully and respectfully within the various Los Angeles areas within which I conducted my research (Long Beach, San Bernardino, the Watts in South Los Angeles, and the Boyle Height area of East Los Angeles), I was not exactly coming to these communities entirely from the outside, inasmuch as I have been working within South Los Angeles for approximately eighteen

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years and previously with Proyecto Pastoral affiliated with Father Greg Boyle’s parish at Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights, for six years. I should add that I was born and raised in South Los Angeles. So, from a standpoint theory perspective, the intersection of my reality as a Chicana raised in a working-class South Los Angeles neighborhood created the marginality within the academic world, where I remain the “outsider within.” Yet, as Patricia Hill Collins (2008) discusses, this very positionality allows me to enter the communities from the standpoint of someone with a particular socio-personal understanding of the complexities of working class, People of Color communities along with the interlocking nature of their oppressions. Nevertheless, despite my origins, the reality of my current position within the academic world comes with the accompanying socioeconomic class privilege and power and thus creates the unequal dynamics between the women in my study and me. I must be cognizant of this reality otherwise I step into the misguided thinking afflicting a number of academics, that I am objective and unbiased and thus my positionality will have no effect on my research, or that because I am Chicana from with a working-class background I can speak for others of the same gender, ethnicity, and class. How to best represent their work and lives? This is indeed the quagmire upon which I reflected throughout the process as I was “collecting data,” filming, editing, and even now as I write this chapter. The question arises as to how best to share the stories and the struggles the women revealed to me. I originally thought that by turning the cameras on the women and having them look into the lens, and tell their own stories directly to the viewers, that would be a step in the right direction, and it was. But then, after editing fifty-five hours of footage down to 1 hour, so many wonderful, moving, enlightening scenes with the women were left on the proverbial “cutting room floor.” Therefore, in the final analysis, my editors and I made the ultimate decisions as to what the viewers would hear from and see of the women, hence interfering with the pure story lines. This was, however, somewhat mitigated by the fact that I screened the documentary several times to at least five of the women and service providers during the editing stages and incorporated their comments, observations, and criticisms in the re-editing. The women offered constructive and encouraging feedback, asking to see more of a particular segment or for technical changes, such as with the music and sound. Juanita Diaz-Cotto (2008) explains that the most comprehensive and accurate results are obtained when researcher and participants are engaged together in the research project. She further explains that because

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of the challenges of multicultural communities, an active collaboration between community members and researcher is an important part of avoiding the misrepresentation of understudied communities (137–59). I believe that if we remain conscious of the unequal relationship of power and our privileged position, our methods of research will continue to progress. Yarma: In my role as a researcher I always have two important areas of consideration: to acknowledge my position of privilege (a middle-class, heterosexual woman) and avoiding the academic voyeurism that leads many researchers to visit and exploit the communities they study. Thus my “authority” as an Ethnic Studies researcher resides in my role as a cultural coyote or as Foley and Valenzuela call it, “cultural broker,” a facilitator between the community and my readers.2 On the first day of class the participants asked me if I was a social worker or psychiatrist, because those are the professionals they are most in contact with. By the end of the course, I established a strong connection with the women in the group particularly the Cubans, because I am Puerto Rican and there is a shared history between the two islands. Even though I was aware of the social gap between us, I made an effort to address the risk of any representational betrayal. I also acknowledge that my interpretations of the women’s experiences are limited to my conceptual framework (i.e., by my understanding of oppression and transgender studies acquired from academic literature). In the process of writing I had to first acknowledge my many positions of privilege (gender, sexuality, class, education) while embracing my role as a facilitator into a world unfamiliar to most readers. Second, I wanted to represent the stories and work in collaboration with the participants. All while achieving a balance in the writing so that my presence in the text would not take a protagonist role vis-à-vis the stories of my participants. Writing also highlights the challenge of interpreting their lives from our lens and our particular positions. While certain aspects of their stories affected and bothered me, I had to write them from their perspective. I had to represent their life challenges without presenting them as martyrs. However, the research process was so intense that I had also to struggle with achieving a balance between my voice as a narrator, scholar, and activist without becoming the protagonist of the story. Cultural homophobia and sex work are inevitably linked. The social pressures to leave home at an early age affect their possibilities for attaining an education and any chances of social mobility. Lack of training and family support at an early age forces most transgender Latinas to sex work. In order to save their families from any public embarrassment,

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many transgender Latinas leave home in their teens. Most of the participants noted that by age fifteen they had already left their homes; thus leaving them with little training or schooling. In the process of interpretation it was hard to detach myself emotionally from the work because while at points I grew very resentful of the social conditions and family situations that led to their migration; my participants do not resent their families. I had to respect the participants’ negotiations of their social environment and represent them honestly and fairly. Alison Jagger (2008) discusses the methodological dilemmas associated with when conflict arises when researchers interpret experiences differently from the individuals taking part in their study. The question of which account to take as authoritative has political and ethical as well as epistemic dimensions. Does proffering an alternative account mean disrespecting our research subjects? How can researchers recognize and give accounts of their own roles in the construction of other people’s experiences? What are the ethical responsibilities of feminists of color toward their informants? (271) These negotiations are at the core of Ethnic Studies research and achieving a balance requires a constant effort for fairness and representation.

CONCLUSION In this chapter we share stories from the field in order to engage in a dialogue about research grounded by community needs and concerns. We did so, as Díaz-Cotto (2008) suggests, by presenting our respective research studies and examining our positionality as Latina feminist scholars and the challenges faced when conducting research that is inclusive, ethical, and representative (137–59). Much like Díaz-Cotto we believe that researchers must develop collaborative methods to achieve comprehensive and fair results. Toward that end we have developed a list of recommendation for other researchers: 1. Begin research with the understanding that the traditional epistemology of “objectivity,” of research from the “empire,” “the colonizer” viewpoint, is in fact fallacious and unethical. An Ethnic Studies feminist approach is to acknowledge one’s bias, one’s standpoint (as the researcher, the “knower”) and, by doing so, not play into it. 2. To help mitigate one’s bias, let the community—the participants in one’s study—speak for themselves. Hear what they are saying, not what one expects, wants to hear, or assumes they will say. It is insufficient to

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simply give “voice” to those who are marginalized and oppressed. It is imperative to reveal the structures and power dynamics that produce oppression and it is, in fact, one’s moral responsibility within the context of the discipline and the current war on Ethnic Studies to do so. 3. Start with this raw data, then apply theory. Do not begin with theory and attempt to fit reality into an abstract theoretical framework (idea). Instead, begin with raw data and see what theory, etc. best explains (fits with) that reality. 4. As growing numbers of feminist and Ethnic Studies scholars propose, researchers must approach the community—the participants—from a nonexploitative position (despite an unequal power relationship between oneself, the researcher, and participants), with compassion and with a commitment to inclusion. In other words, apply the concept of “connecting knowing” by collaborating, being nonjudgmental, and honoring the participants’ wisdom through lived experiences. (Collins 1990; Belenky et al. 1986) 5. Understand your positionality. Be careful not to essentialize. A researcher’s race, class, sexuality, gender may not make a person better equipped than others to study “her people.” We are not really insiders ever if we are doing the research. While a researcher may share a common race, class, gender, and/or sexual orientation with the community an aware researcher must also incorporate important skills and humanistic values. Our intent was to not only share stories from the field that focus on our experiences as researchers in Feminist and Ethnic Studies but also to engage in dialogue about reflexivity. We are acutely aware that reflexivity and the ensuing dialogue have helped us through the mire, through our individual struggles to do justice to the communities where we conducted our research, and for whom we are grateful. When we document women’s lives, when we interpret what they share with us, and when we compare it to what has been previously published, we are in a conversation with different worldviews. We understand that our positionality and our political allegiances shape what we study, how we study it, and how we interpret our findings. As we face the new cultural struggles in Ethnic Studies it is important to continue to chart the space where different ways of thinking and knowing prevail by transforming our understandings, using the lived experiences as our guide.

NOTES 1. I am grateful to Brandon Lopez, Maritza Alvarez, Miguel Duran, Luis Colina, and Arturo Torres.

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2. “Cultural broker,” according to Foley and Valenzuela (2005), is one who plays the role of a democratic facilitator and consciousness raiser between institutions and disenfranchised citizens (220).

REFERENCES Alexander, P. 1997. “Feminism, Sex Workers and Human Rights.” In Whores and Other Feminists, edited by Jill Nagle, 83–97. New York: Routledge. Barton, B. 2006. Stripped, Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers. New York: New York University Press. Belenky, M. F., et al. 1986. Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic Books. Collins, P. H. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Collins, P. H. 2008. “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Social Significance of Black Feminist Thought.” In Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader, edited by A. M Jagger, 308–20. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Díaz-Cotto, J. 2008. “Chicana(O)/Latina(O) Prisoners: Ethical and Methodological Considerations, Collaborative Research Methods and Case Studies.” Latino Studies 6 (1–2): 137–59. Doyle, K., and D. Lacombe. 1996. “Porn Power: Sex, Violence, and the Meaning of Images in 1980s Feminism.” In Bad Girls, Good Girls, Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties, edited by Nan B. Maglin and D. Perry, 188–204. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Foley D., and A. Valenzuela. 2005. “Critical Ethnography: The Politics of Collaboration.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed., edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvoona S. Lincoln, 217–34. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Jagger, A. 2008. Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Kempadoo, K., and J. Doezema, eds. 1998. Global Sex Workers, Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition. New York: Routledge Press. Madison, D. Soyini. 2012. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Moraga, C. 1983. Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca paso por sus labios. Boston: South End Press. Thorne, B. 2008. “You Still Takin’ Notes?: Fieldwork and Problems of Informed Consent.” Social Problems 27(3): 284–97. Tuana, N. 1996. “Revaluing Science: Starting from the Practice of Women.” In Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, edited by Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson, 17–35. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. White, R. T. 1997. “Talking about Sex and HIV: Conceptualizing a New Sociology of Experience.” In Oral Narrative Research with Black Women, edited by Kim Marie Vaz, 267–83. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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¡La Lucha Continua!: Why Community History[-ies] Matters—Ethnic Studies Research, Art Activism, and the Struggle for Space and Place in the Northeast San Fernando Valley Denise M. Sandoval

It is in learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. —Audre Lorde I believe that we in Ethnic Studies should always ground ourselves in the least privileged sectors of our communities, such as immigrant workers and young people who are not in college, but I also know that oftentimes these are the sectors that are most distant from our universities—both physically and psychologically. —Glenn Omatsu The arts have consistently proven to be the most effective means to lift the most desolate areas, bring together fractured communities, and transform lives, especially those in the grips of violence. Through dance, theater, media, writing, and music, whole communities, in particular youth, connect to the inexhaustible possibilities that exist in their immense capacity to be creative. —Luis J. Rodriguez

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RUSHING WATERS, RISING DREAMS “La Lucha Continua/The Struggle Continues” was a chant heard often during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the chant is still heard in our communities today. It has become a battle cry, a reminder of the work we have left to accomplish around issues of social justice. “The Struggle Continues” encompasses much more than three words, it is a continuum that unites the history of civil rights movements of the past to the present, such as the right to vote, police brutality, the unjustness of “wars of intervention,” educational and work equity and access, lack of resources for marginalized communities, to name just a few. Many of these same issues are ones that our communities are still struggling for and fighting against today, so how do we create transformative social change? Audre Lorde challenged us in 1984 by writing these prolific words: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” So, what does liberation and social justice look like for our communities? Lorde (1984) cautioned in her essay against the creation of a world by People of Color that reproduces structures of inequality, and she further asserted that we need to create new visions of liberation for marginalized peoples: “In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action” (112). The question is how do we create these new visions without using the “master’s tools”? It is our task as Ethnic Studies practitioners/researchers to answer this question, and oftentimes these visions are found outside the university walls. Ethnic Studies at its core is a pedagogy of community engagement, as Glenn Omatsu reminds us in his essay in this volume, and this is what grounds our work as Ethnic Studies practitioners. The link to the community should always be at the center of the work we do as teachers, researchers, and/or cultural workers committed to the pedagogy and praxis of Ethnic Studies. Historically, the Ethnic Studies culture wars were not only battled on university campuses, but many times they originated in the community, particularly when dealing with issues like, for example, educational equity, police brutality, lack of resources in lowincome communities, or political representation. Therefore, it is important that the relationships between Ethnic Studies and the community are strengthened, and research projects are one tool to reach that goal. This chapter examines the pedagogy of Ethnic Studies research through my collaboration with Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore in Sylmar, California, and our book project Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community (Sandoval & Rodriguez, 2012). The goal of the book was to document more than twenty years of art activism in the Northeast San Fernando Valley (NESFV) of Los Angeles, primarily focusing on the years 1990 to 2012, and to place the stories of activists and the community members in the NESFV front and center in the narrative. My research stresses the

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importance of community engagement and community histories to the work of Ethnic Studies researchers by continuing to build and strengthen the bridges between the university and surrounding communities, particularly communities of color and marginalized communities. Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams provides an excellent case study to explore the research of Ethnic Studies. Chicano/Latino communities—that is, community members and activists—in the Northeast San Fernando Valley are using their neighborhoods (barrios) as cultural resources to fight for social justice and equality by using the arts as their tools for transformation. In the process, they are building on the work of past generations, such as the leaders and organizations of the Chicana/o movement in the 1960s and 1970s, but they are also creating new cultural resources and spaces for community empowerment unique to their own regional experience. Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore is the nexus of this cultural revival of the arts in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. The arts, as Luis Rodriguez reminds us, are an effective means of uplift and have the power to transform when we “connect to the inexhaustible possibilities” of creativity. Even though this book project focuses on the Northeast San Fernando Valley, the issues and strategies can be applied to many communities throughout the United States. Communities across the United States, particularly ones comprised of poor people of color, are struggling due to the lack of community spaces and other cultural resources. These spaces and resources can assist in not only their survival, but also can allow these communities to thrive. One of the most powerful tools against various culture wars and attacks on communities of color is using our voices to tell our stories, our truths.

COMMUNITY HISTORY[-IES] AND THE NORTHEAST SAN FERNANDO VALLEY The Northeast San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles is the second largest community of Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States with some 500,000 people. According the 2010 census, three areas are also majority Hispanic or Latino: Sylmar (74.6%), Pacoima (87.8%), and San Fernando (92.5%). At the heart of the Northeast San Fernando Valley is Pacoima, a Native American word for “rushing waters.” If one were to rely on popular images of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, Pacoima was put on the map by the movie La Bamba (1987), the story of native son and young rock ’n’ roll singer Ritchie Valens, who died tragically in a plane crash in 1959 at the age of seventeen as his star was rising. Ritchie Valens is the Guardian Angel of “Pacas”—the locals’ name for this barrio. His image is immortalized in Pacoima and can be found in various murals; he even has a park and recreation center named after him. San Fernando is known as the “First City of the Valley” because in 1874 it became the valley’s first organized community. It is

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also known as “The Mission City” because of its close proximity to the San Fernando Mission (established in 1797), which is located in Mission Hills. Finally, Sylmar, lying at the base of the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains, became part of Los Angeles earthquake history when in February 9, 1971, this community was the center of a 6.6 magnitude earthquake. These popular images and notable facts often obscure the voices and stories of the people who live in these communities, which speaks to the history of struggle for “space” and “place” in regard to not only cultural identity[-ies], but community survival. As Rodolfo Acuña writes in Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles (1996), “Without a sense of community, a sense of history as a community, people become vulnerable to the plans and whims of dominant groups, which can not only displace them, but control them in other ways as well” (20). Community histories explore individuals and communities as the focus of history and allow for different voices to be heard across generations, regions, race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Community histories are important tools in writing history because they challenge dominant methods in the discipline of history where the historian is an “objective” storyteller, usually an “outsider” of that community, and uses documents and events to tell their version of a “community’s story.” A community-centered research focus aims to unmask the power relationships embedded in research, where the researcher has the power to construct the narrative and oftentimes is not focused on working with and for the community they are researching. Ethnic Studies pedagogy is one that, as previously mentioned, not only should stress “community engagement,” but also requires rethinking the role of the researcher, primarily who decides “the story” we tell. In collecting the essays, poems, interviews, and photos for the book, my co-editor Luis J. Rodriguez and myself had many conversations about encouraging these communities to tell their stories about growing up in the Northeast San Fernando Valley in their own words, as well as creating space for them to reflect on the transformative power of the arts in sustaining these communities over the last twenty years. Luis and I allowed the contributors to tell their stories without editorial intervention, so that they would be authentic reflections of this community(-ies). Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2012) examines this idea further and also links the telling of stories to “resistance.” She relates, Telling our stories from the past, reclaiming the past, giving testimony to the injustices of the past, are all strategies which are commonly employed by indigenous peoples struggling for justice.  .  .  . And yet, the need to tell our stories remains the powerful imperative of a powerful form of resistance. (36)

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Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams is the first book on the role of cultural arts that places the focus on the Northeast San Fernando Valley and allows the people, primarily Chicano/Latino, of those communities to speak their stories—their truths. There is not much academic research on the history of the San Fernando Valley; there are, however, some books, heavily pictorial, that document the history of the San Fernando Valley (see Klein 2003; Roderick 2001; Wanamaker 2011). A recent academic history book examines “white privilege” and the history of the San Fernando Valley, but there are no academic or community history books on the Chicano/Latino community in the San Fernando Valley (Barraclough 2011). There are, however, books on Chicano/Latino history and culture in Los Angeles that are heavily focused on East Los Angeles/Boyle Heights or on downtown Los Angeles, which is understandable given the early roots of the city (see Alvarez 2008; Avila 2014; Chávez 2002; Haney-López 2003; Mazón 1984; Pagán 2003; Ramírez 2009; Romo 1983; Sanchez 1993; Vigil 1988). But, what is missing are the histories of the Chicano/Latino/Mexican community(ies) found in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, a place about a thirty-minute drive, barring traffic, from downtown Los Angeles. Our book is not the definitive work on those missing histories, but it is an attempt to contribute a more holistic and complex picture of the histories of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, as well as a multicultural history of the United States using “the people’s voices.” More important, by focusing on art and activism, it is an avenue to open up dialogue about community engagement and Ethnic Studies research, and it emphasizes the myriad ways this particular community in the Northeast San Fernando Valley is dismantling “the master’s house” using art and Ethnic Studies pedagogy (“their tools”) to re-create and revision their world. These artists and activists are using their neighborhoods/barrios as a cultural resource/resistance, transforming space and place into community empowerment and transformation by telling their stories. In the process, the cultural resistance created is a challenge to the Ethnic Studies culture wars that often attempt to silence our stories and make our community needs invisible.

MY Journey I came to this project as a cultural historian. I am a professor of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) since 2002, and it was my friendship and admiration of the work of Luis Rodriguez, his wife Trini, and the people I met at Tia Chucha’s that brought me to this book project. CSUN is the main four-year university that services the entire San Fernando Valley, and the majority of our students are from this area. In particular, many of the Chicano/Latino students in my classes are from the communities of Pacoima, Sylmar, and San Fernando. Yet, in the process of

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organizing the book, I was reminded of my deeper connection to the Northeast San Fernando Valley and my deep commitment to Chicana/o Studies and Ethnic Studies as a discipline and as a tool for social justice. When I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1990s, I decided to major in Ethnic Studies after I experienced my first Chicano Studies class. There was a hunger growing inside of me to fill in the gaps of my education, gaps where I never learned about Mexican American history and culture, the histories of people of color, and feminist/queer perspectives to understand our world. For the first time, I began to understand my personal history as a second-generation Mexican American young woman in Los Angeles in a critical and self-reflective manner. I chose Ethnic Studies/ Chicana/o Studies because it was a discipline that was born out of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and it was committed to linking its scholarship to “the community”(-ies), especially those that were economically and politically disempowered. I absorbed all the teachings at UC Berkeley—“Be the Change You Want in the World,” “Power to the People,” and “The Personal as Political”—and I realized at the age of twenty-two that I wanted to write books about Chicana/o history. I also wanted to teach in the area of Ethnic Studies/Chicana/o Studies. More important, I wanted to connect my work at the university level to the community. When I graduated from Berkeley, I defined myself as “Chicana.” In 1993, I arrived on the CSUN campus to pursue a Master of Arts in Chicana and Chicano Studies and my relationship to the San Fernando Valley began. It was at CSUN that I was exposed to the world of research and teaching, and the professors here encouraged me to continue graduate work for my PhD. Two of my main goals for attaining my doctorate were to return to CSUN one day to teach and to continue research projects that were engaged in the Chicana/o community and ones that were filling the gaps regarding research on and within Mexican American communities. Consequently, all of the research projects I have chosen have been anchored in the Chicana/o community and also engaged “the barrio” as a site of struggle and cultural resistance for Chicanas/os.

BARRIOLOGY There is a theoretical framework for understanding the history of struggle and the role of cultural movements in the Northeast San Fernando Valley that is anchored in barrio life—a “barriology.” In Barrio Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture (2000), Raúl Villa examines how within Los Angeles, working-class struggles and cultural movements of Mexican Americans can be mapped. He labels these cultural moments and struggles “barriology,” which is the documentation of the tensions based in “the

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practice of everyday life” for barrio residents of Los Angeles. Villa further explains the importance of barrio life to cultural space and identity: Manifesting alternative needs and interests of those of the dominant public sphere, the expressive practices of barrio social and cultural reproduction—from the mundane exercises of daily round and leisure activities to the formal articulation of community defensive goals in organizational forums and discursive media—reveal multiple possibilities for re-creating and re-imagining dominant urban space as community enabling place. Thus they contribute to a cumulative anti-discipline that subverts the totalizing impulse of the dominant social space containing the barrios. Collectively, these community-sustaining practices constitute a tactical ethos (and aesthetic) of barriology ever engaged in counterpoint to external barrioization. (6) Villa’s definition of barriology is relevant to the documentation of the cultural, artistic, and activist history in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. There are two points made by Villa in the above definition of barriology that are central: (1) the way in which expressive practices of barrio social and cultural reproduction reveal multiple possibilities for “re-creating and re-imagining dominant urban space as community enabling place”; and (2) how these collective moments operate as attempts by barrio residents to create communitysustaining practices as “a tactical ethos (and aesthetic) of barriology ever engaged in counterpoint to external barrioization.” A beginning point to this barriology history lesson must start with the legacy of the Chicana/o movement and how it shifted definitions of cultural identity, created a new generation of leaders and activists, transformed the barrio into “community enabling place,” and used art as a weapon for education, empowerment, and social justice as both a tactical ethos and aesthetic.

THE BARRIOLOGY LEGACY: THE CHICANA/O MOVEMENT The Chicana/o movement (1962–1975) was the political arena in which Chicanos engaged in activism in regard to civil rights. They also developed a collective identity that challenged the status quo of oppression and inequality that many Chicanos experienced in the United States (see Acuña 2000; Chávez 2002; Garcia 1997; Marin 1991; Muñoz 1989). The term Chicano was a political label adopted by some Mexican Americans. They named themselves on their own terms (instead of having a label placed on them by the dominant culture) and also connected their lives to their Indigenous heritage. Chicanos fought in their communities for social change, while embracing the philosophies of self-determination and empowerment. There were a

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variety of movements occurring throughout the Southwest—many with different leaders and political agendas—yet all were defined under the umbrella label: “The Chicano Movement.”1 The Chicana/o movement directly influenced much of the work of Chicano artists and community members throughout the barrios of the Southwest. The most well-known movement was led by César E. Chávez and Dolores Huerta and sought to organize a labor union for farm workers in California. In 1962, the National Farm Worker Association (NFWA) (later named the United Farm Workers of America [UFW]) led a struggle to end the pervasive poverty and castelike status of Mexican Americans in the fields. The NFWA advocated for labor contracts between the growers and the workers, demanding an end to the Bracero Program, which was a labor contract system with Mexico between the years of 1942 and 1964. Chávez believed in nonviolent tactics and advocated for passive resistance, which included grassroots organizing, labor strikes, protests, marches, boycotts, and hunger strikes. The UFW took the national stage in 1965 when it called for a California grape boycott that eventually exerted far-reaching economic pressure from the East Coast to Europe when labor unions joined in support of the UFW. The UFW and the leadership of both Chávez and Huerta inspired Chicanos across the country to become active participants in the fight for social justice and they both became icons of Chicanismo (Pawel 2014, 2009; Garcia 2012; Bruns 2011; Jensen & Hammerback 2002; Ferris & Sandoval 1997). César Chávez is now acknowledged with an official state holiday in California, Colorado, and Texas. His image was placed on a U.S. postal stamp and even Apple computers used his image to sell their products. Dolores Huerta’s legacy is also very important and she continues to play a very active role in the UFW and speaks to the central role that women have historically played in Chicana/o history, though their stories are not often integrated into the historical narratives (Garcia 2008; Worth 2007). In 2012, the UFW celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. They are a testament to not only the legacy of the Chicano movement, but to the power of social justice in our everyday lives. The UFW has a long-standing relationship with the Northeast San Fernando Valley because of its agricultural past, but also because the Mexican/ Chicano communities historically supported their organizing efforts. In 1994, San Fernando became the first city in the United States to declare a holiday for Chávez, according to resident Everto Ruiz, who also explained that during the grape boycott the UFW sent organizer Paul Espinoza to live and organize in San Fernando. And the new local high school (straddling San Fernando, Pacoima, and Sylmar) was named in 2011 the César E. Chávez Learning Academies. For the past nineteen years, the area has sponsored a César Chávez March and Festival in support of the UFW and the legacy of César

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Chávez. The march usually begins in Pacoima and ends in Mission Hills at Brand Park. In 2004, San Fernando dedicated the César E. Chávez Memorial Park (designed by local artist Ignacio Garcia), as a permanent celebration of the life and work of Chávez, and it ensures that future generations will learn of his legacy. It also reminds us that César Chávez was not only an important civil rights leader, but he was also someone who saw the political impact and value of art in the UFW, and he encouraged the use of art as an organizing as well as a recruitment tool. This was demonstrated by the creation of the Teatro Campesino (which translates to theater of farmworkers), a group that used agit prop theater to mobilize for the UFW, and that later evolved into a powerful theater company dedicated to the tenets of Chicanismo and social justice (Broyles-González 1994). The creation of a political art movement within the Chicana/o movement reminds us that not only is art necessary to social justice movements, but it also connects us to our ancestral roots in the Americas. The Chicano art movement was tied to the Chicano civil rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It visualized a Chicano cultural identity based on “resistance and affirmation” (Gaspar de Alba 1998). The use of “cultural space” within the barrio was one of the tools used to challenge the dominant culture, as empty walls in the community were converted to canvases for artistic expression (La Torre 2008; Sperling Cockcroft & BarnetSánchez 1993). The Chicano mural movement was “community based” and the community decided what they wanted on the walls as they reclaimed their cultural heritage through art. Murals were painted all over the barrios of the Southwest and they became both a method of social commentary and education, as well as a celebration of cultural pride. Chicano public art was political and it was able to express a cultural identity often overlooked by the dominant society. Most important, the art movement identified certain cultural symbols as sources for Chicano art; it created a visual language for the Chicano movement and Chicanismo. These murals transformed dominant perceptions of Chicanos both within and outside those communities. As Sanchez-Tranquilino (1993) explains, Chicano murals go beyond signifying artistic accomplishment, they stand as a testament to the capacity of U.S. Mexicans to organize, plan and direct themselves toward the process of social change and the production of art. . . . In particular, the prolific creation of murals represented successful collective efforts on the part of the community toward national self-definition through political and cultural activism. As they put into effect the ideals of Chicano liberation through this organizing process, artists and members of the Mexican American communities served to educate each other, while also educating non-Chicanos. (93)

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Furthermore, a new Chicano aesthetics was created during this time period that had at its center “the lived environment” or everyday reality of Chicanos as the source(s) of inspiration for the art. Tomas Ybarra-Frausto (1993) labeled the art “un nuevo arte del pueblo (a new art of the people) created from shared experience and based on communal art traditions” and as such, “cultural practices of everyday life were seen as nutrient sources for Chicano art forms” (57–59). This nuevo arte del pueblo used artistic folk forms found in our Mexican heritage, and the aesthetics of this new art movement created a visual language that linked the histories and cultures of Chicanos (pre-Columbian, Mexican, and American) to a collective consciousness that engaged in revolutionary and political struggle against the dominant culture. Many of the murals’ themes engaged important issues of the day such as the UFW and the grape boycott, educational equity, “power to the people,” Chicano Pride, and Aztec history, to give a few examples. The murals demonstrated Chicanos using cultural space to create a cultural identity on their own terms, which expressed an inherent rage filled with passion, resistance, and affirmation. Chicano artists became important activists and leaders of the Chicana/o movement and they created a canon of Chicana/o art not only within the barrio, but their artworks have been featured in major museum exhibitions as well. More important, these “artivists,” a term indicating a hybrid neologism that signifies work created by individuals who see an organic relationship between art and activism, have continued to inspire future generations of artists in the Chicana/o community (Sandoval & Latorre 2008). The legacy of artivism within the Chicana/o movement is an example of barriology through the praxis of “tactical ethos and aesthetic” and has continued in many communities across the Southwest (Villa 2000). The 1990s would prove a challenging time period for the Northeast San Fernando Valley, but it was also an opportunity for those communities to put their barrio(s) on the cultural map, both regionally and nationally.

RISING DREAMS: THE NORTHEAST SAN FERNANDO VALLEY The 1990s were an important time period for Chicanos/Latinos as well as many People of Color in Los Angeles. One seminal event that occurred on March 3, 1991, in Lakeview Terrace, a couple of miles from the present Tia Chucha’s location, was the beating of Rodney King by members of the Los Angeles Police Department. This event captured on video the tensions that had previously existed between many communities of color and the police department. When the accused police officers were acquitted one year later, riots erupted in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992. This rebellion was about more than police brutality—it revealed the historical and continued effects of racism and social inequalities on Black and Brown communities. Many

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people named this uprising “The Watts Riots” (1965) for the post–civil rights generation. The 1990s kicked off with a fiery explosion for the people of Los Angeles. As the demographics (the “browning of California” as some have called it) shifted in California, the rise in nativist and racist attacks toward the Latino community resulted. For instance, California legislation such as Proposition 187 (1994) denied health and educational services to undocumented people; Proposition 209 (1996) effectively put an end to affirmative action programs; and Proposition 227 (1998) eliminated bilingual education in public schools. These various propositions revealed the political climate in the 1990s in California and the backlash to the victories of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s where Ethnic Studies supported many of these movements. By the 2000 census, half of the nation’s Latinos lived in California or Texas. According to Rodolfo F. Acuña (2000), “The U.S. Mexican population grew by 53 percent, with registered voters increasing from 5.5 million in 1994 to 8 million in 2000” (395). This meant that throughout the 1990s, Chicanos/Latinos continued to be an important political and demographic presence. During this time period, Los Angeles also experienced a flowering of Chicano art. A new generation of Chicano activists and artists came of age in the 1990s as our communities were under attack and they staked their claim on the Los Angeles landscape as a space to inspire empowerment and create change. From East Los Angeles to South Los Angeles to the Northeast San Fernando Valley, artists and writers used art to tell their history and mobilize people to action, especially around issues of social justice. Writers in particular made an impact on both the local and national levels by documenting life in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. The year 1993, in particular, proved to be an important one for the Northeast San Fernando Valley. In 1993 Mary Helen Ponce published her autobiographical book Hoyt Street, which chronicled growing up in Pacoima in the 1940s and vividly captured the life and people of this community. Ponce herself admits her book began as an anthropological project and she views it as “community history.” Her story documents the struggles of being Mexican American during this time period and emphasizes the roles of family and neighborhood in shaping one’s cultural identity. She writes, People in Pacoima, I often thought, needed more space than did those in upwardly mobile San Fernando, where homes had sidewalks and paved streets, but sat close together, as if afraid to breathe too much of their neighbor’s air. On Hoyt Street, most residents had once lived in Mexican ranchitos and had a greater need for land. In the large double lots, they planted fruit trees, vegetable and flower gardens, and assorted hierbas that also grew in Mexico. (7)

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Ponce’s personal story touched many readers and her book is used as a foundational text of Chicana/o Studies in many classes today. Ponce’s book not only captured the everyday lived experiences in the Northeast San Fernando, but educated others outside of the NESV about the long Chicano/Mexican history there. Two other events marked the year 1993 as important and are relevant to the analysis of Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: that is, the appearance of Luis J. Rodriguez on the national literature landscape and the death of César Chávez. In 1993 Rodriguez published his award-winning memoir of gang life, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. The book was important not only to the Chicano community, but also to the literary community in general, with its honesty and humanity toward a topic that often generates fear in many across the United States. The book’s timely arrival, after the 1992 riots in L.A., provided readers with a space to dialogue and strategize over how to move forward as a city. Luis became a spokesperson to various national media outlets about the crises plaguing the inner cities, and he outlined solutions to create transformational social change. His work as a writer and activist has impacted the lives of many, even those living and dealing with similar issues in other parts of the world. Yet, the book was not without controversy when in 1999 the American Library Association called Always Running one of the hundred-most-censored books in the United States. Luis nonetheless has dedicated his life in service to the arts and building community, and as a youth he was moved to activism by the Chicana/o movement and was inspired by César Chávez. It is the power of the individual and the collective to create transformative change with their lives in service of others that was practiced by the iconic leader of the United Farmworkers of America, César E. Chávez. And on April 23, 1993, when Chávez died in his sleep at the age of sixty-six, a new generation of activists were poised to pick up the torch and carry on his legacy. “Si Se Puede/Yes You Can,” the iconic chant used by the UFW, inspired and motivated the next generation to leadership and activism. The Northeast San Fernando Valley was more than ready to answer Chávez’s call to action through their creation of community enabling space and place through their art activism in the twenty-first century.

TIA CHUCHA’S: LA LUCHA CONTINUA The creation of cultural community spaces in the Northeast San Fernando Valley dedicated to education and art resources is an important moment that realizes the legacy of artivism for the Chicano/Latino community. It is the embodiment of barriology wherein our communities use what is available to them (space) to transform our barrios into community enabling place. Until

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2001, the Northeast San Fernando Valley had no trade bookstores, movie houses, art galleries, or full-fledged cultural spaces. That year Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore (founded by author Luis J. Rodriguez, his wife Trini Rodriguez, and Enrique Sanchez) opened its doors, first as a cultural café and then a multi-arts, multimedia community space. Over fifteen years Tia Chucha’s has provided workshops in music, visual arts, Mexica (Aztec) dance, theater, writing, puppetry, healing arts, and Indigenous cosmology. Their motto “Where arts and mind meet—for change” incorporates the legacy of the Chicana/o movement and creates a space that is innovative and self-sustaining for their community. Tia Chucha’s is a perfect example of artivism, using art to engage community. Tia Chucha’s, along with being a performance space, is also an art gallery, a publishing imprint, a youth empowerment project, and they organize the only annual outdoor literacy and art festival in the area: “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed and Sung.” According to their website, by 2012 Tia Chucha’s was serving 18,000 people a year. Their mission statement articulates the incorporation of the role of the arts in the creation of new visions for community health, healing, and empowerment: We support and promote the continued growth, development and holistic learning of our community through the many powerful means of the arts. The Centro provides a positive space for people to activate what we all share as human beings: the capacity to create, to imagine and to express ourselves in an effort to improve the quality of life for our community.2 The vision and work of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural was to create a central space where artists and community members could come together to dialogue and create movements for social justice and community healing using the arts, and it was the goal of the book Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams to document this collaboration and movement(s). It is also a collaboration that connects to the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s Chicana/o movement and the companion Chicana/o art movement—and it is apparent in the themes of the artwork within the book. Many of the artists draw their inspiration from the previous one, “el nuevo arte del pueblo,” but they also explore themes such as healing, Indigenismo, cultural identity, gender, neighborhood, and Northeast San Fernando Valley history. The artists Raul Herrera, Rick Ortega, Erica Friend, and Ramiro Alejandro Hernandez contributed pieces to the book and explore in their art MesoAmerican culture and spirituality and connect these ancestral roots to the present Chicana/o reality. For example, one piece by Rick Ortega is titled “Omeyocan” (2010), and it depicts a man and woman dressed in Aztec clothing sitting on thrones facing each other. Between them

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is a smaller version of Earth, the man’s hand is holding Earth on the bottom and the woman is holding Earth from the top; below the earth, copal/sage is burning, purifying this act, and behind the couple is the universe, a dark landscape with various planets floating in the sky. Omeyocan translates into “two place” and it was the thirteenth level of the Aztec overworld and the home of Ometeotl, the Aztec diety of female/male duality. The painting by Rick Ortega portrays the female-male balance to mother earth as central to everyday life, and incorporates MesoAmerican spirituality as a broader statement on the contemporary practices of identity and community for Chicanas/os. Ortega, like many of the artists in the book, incorporates images of MesoAmerican culture and spirituality as part of a recovery process of our ancestral roots that were lost due to the conquest of Mexico. Knowledge of our ancestral heritage and practices, particularly the link between art and spirituality, has the potential to transform the Chicana/o present by reclaiming what we lost and empowering our future. Artist Erica Friend continues with this theme in her piece “Xochipilli” (2011), which means “Flower Prince” in Nahuatl. Xochipilli was the Aztec deity of agriculture, flowers, dance, and song, to name just some of his qualities. In Friend’s painting, Xochipilli is seated on the ground surrounded by flowers and there are roots seen traveling beneath him; above him are varioussized paint brushes arranged like sun rays; on top of the paint brushes are two hands reaching for the Aztec sun, which is painted to resemble a sunflower with the Aztec calendar at the center of the flower; green leaves and new sprouts can be seen underneath the flower. Friend has created a piece that speaks to the beauty and power of nature to inspire the arts, and by placing Xochipilli in the center, she is also re-covering the MesoAmerican spirituality of the past with the present. In her art piece, the arts and beauty are central to everyday life and Xochipilli is a reminder to re-center our lives in Indigenous ways of thinking and living that have been lost due to conquest and colonization. These are two examples of how artists in the Northeast San Fernando Valley are educating a new generation about the need to reconnect to Indigenous teachings and ways of living. Like many of the artists working during the Chicano movement, many of the artists in the NESFV both work as individuals and as collectives. Many of the murals included in Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams visualize how urban space and public art can be used to create community enabling place by celebrating Chicano icons, such as the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, Mexican American singer Linda Ronstadt, actor Danny Trejo, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Ritchie Valens, and Mary Helen Ponce. All of the art continues the tradition of “resistance and affirmation,” as well as articulates a barrio aesthetics that explicitly expresses the culture and history of the Northeast San Fernando Valley. As echoed in many of the essays, art allows for healing and

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balance to our psyches and is an integral part of building “empowered communities.” And, as Trini Rodriguez explains, the arts are resources that already exist in our communities, and they are just waiting to be tapped by the community: “The arts and literacy, with their blend of creativity and consciousness, could be the catalysts for enhancing the quality of life in our beleaguered communities. We just had to be willing to draw out the beauty that lay dormant under the seemingly barren Valley” (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 31). The various essays, interviews, poems, photos, and art in Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams are an attempt to tap into these resources and they reveal many themes, such as the search for cultural identity; the desire to belong and create community with others—creating place using urban space; the healing role of the arts; the power of education; the need for leadership and activism, especially among the youth; social justice; and the importance of women as leaders, artists, and activists in these communities. One of the things that all these authors share is a link to Tia Chucha’s. As mentioned in many of the essays and poems, when Tia Chucha’s opened in the Northeast San Fernando Valley in 2001 it brought many activists, artists, and community members together and it transformed lives by creating community enabling space and place within the barrio. From the beginning, Tia Chucha’s also created a space for writers and poets to share their stories through the creation of Open Mic night; various author readings/book signings; writing workshops; and for the past ten years, the annual Celebrating Words Festival. In collecting poetry submissions for the book, we relied on the community of poets connected to Tia Chucha’s through Open Mic Night and the women’s writing group organized by Jennifer “Jenuine” Alumbaugh called ITWOW/In the Words of Womyn. ITWOW meets weekly at Tia Chucha’s and is a safe space for women to share and work on their writing, individually and collectively. Jenuine also contributed an essay for Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams titled “The Evolution of a Revolutionary,” which traces her journey to Tia Chucha’s and her idea to create a writing circle for women who, before their arrival to Tia Chucha’s, would not have considered themselves “writers.” According to her, “Tia Chucha’s isn’t just about four walls. Tia Chucha’s is about a vision” (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 72). Keeping with this theme of vision, she wrote a poem titled “Without a Vision” on the occasion of Tia Chucha’s tenth anniversary in March 2011. The poem speaks to the power of a space like Tia Chucha’s to transform people’s lives: without a vision, the people perish community is the unity of art and minds

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meeting for a change community is the unity of needs and hope becoming a vision community is the unity of compassion and justice joining in revolution a change of perspective a vision of healing a revolution of the soul without a vision, the people perish (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 41) Jenuine’s last words “without a vision, the people perish” reminds us of Audre Lordes’s words and also realizes that visions are necessary for a revolution that uses the arts to heal from past injustices to create a future anchored in social justice and building community. Many of the themes of the poem speak to the power of how once a cultural space like Tia Chucha’s is created, the community thrives. In particular, themes like art, hope, justice, revolution, and healing are seen as central to a vision of creating transformative change in the Northeast San Fernando Valley—and are an important result of artivism. Many of the contributors to Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams were born and raised in the NESFV and continue to live and work there. The essays by Trini Rodriguez, Karina Ceja, and Yaotl Mazahua share personal stories of growing up in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. Their stories reveal not only the struggles of identity shaped by the forces of one’s family and community, but also how education becomes a liberating space and oftentimes leads to activism in their communities for social justice using art and education. All of the aforementioned contributors attended California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and completed classes in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and some were specifically Chicana/o Studies majors. Each one of them was able to bridge the knowledge at the university and connect it to their community through activism. Mazahua, in his personal essay titled

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“Recuerdo de Sylmar: Cholos, Punks and Xicana/o Revolutionary Consciousness,” shares how music saved his life from gang culture. He is the lead singer of the Xicano Conscious hip-hop/rock group Aztlan Underground (who celebrated their twenty-year anniversary in 2011) and he grew up in Sylmar in the 1970s when whites were the majority and Chicanos were the minority in this area. He was harassed and oftentimes beaten up for being Mexican and being in a gang as a teenager was a means to an end. His home life was not stable or nurturing and he shares in his essay, For me being a gangster or a cholo was a sense of “F-U,” a sense of empowerment. I’m not going to lie—I felt neglected at home. I mean my parents fed me, but I didn’t have the emotional support. Then I see these people with shaved heads at my school. Some of them were brown. I heard, “Oh it’s a punk band man, you should check it out.” So I went there and there was this sense of nihilism, a sense of rebellion. The lyrics and the music was like “I’m about to have a nervous breakdown,” things that were angry, and I identified with that. But the music also had a sense of consciousness. There was a critical analysis of society, of the power structure and of class. . . . Music saved my life. (San­ doval & Rodriguez 2012, 50) Mazahua continues to trace his journey from that moment when he first heard punk music to the moments when he discovered and became involved in Native American circles of healing and dancing (danzante). He eventually landed on the campus of California State University, Northridge where he had the idea to create the musical group the Aztlán Underground around 1992. Aztlán Underground incorporates hip-hop, punk, and Indigenous beats and rhythms to spoken word and rap and was part of a rebirth of Chicano activist artists during the post–L.A. riots/rebellion period in Los Angeles. Music helped him heal from past traumas and he believes “art is medicine and that it’s catalyst for change” (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 51). His story is powerful testimony to the power of the arts to not only heal his trauma but also to mark a new chapter in his life where he uses his music to help others heal. He uses his work with Aztlán Underground to build transformative change, within the NESFV and the greater Los Angeles area and beyond. He has continued to be at the forefront of this movement and continues to use his music to heal and mobilize around issues that impact the Chicano/community. Most recently he was active in Arizona around the crisis involving the banning of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson School District. The stories shared by Trini Rodriguez and Karina Ceja deal with gender role expectations from their families and the ways that sexism restricted their

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lives growing up in the Northeast San Fernando Valley; but, they also share how they were able to challenge those constructions and empower themselves through education. Rodriguez writes that her decision to leave her family home for college at twenty-one in the early 1970s resulted in her being disowned by her family. At that moment, she began her journey for self- and social discovery, but it would be a journey without her parents for almost twenty years. Education for Chicanas sometimes is met with resistance and the journey for higher education can be a painful one, but the power of finding one’s voice as a woman is an amazing gift. Ceja, in her essay “When Butterflies Soar Free: A Monarca in Resistance,” shares her journey to reclaim her Chicana identity, but unlike Rodriquez whose journey took place in the 1970s, Ceja’s took place in the 1990s. It was through her quest for more education that she found her feminist voice. She writes, I was feminist before I was able to theorize it. I challenged gender and sexuality as a tomboy fighting for space among boys. I stood up to sexism by standing up to my father’s machismo. I resisted against the statistics that hovered over me as a brown-skinned girl in the hood, growing up as an undocumented youth, among gang violence, teen pregnancy and limited resources. Witnessing my friends fall through the cracks of a broken educational system, the odds of succeeding were few. I searched for an outlet and began to explore the shelved walls of Pacoima Branch Library. (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 56) Ceja’s narrative shares many issues that other women can relate to—like sexism in our families, lack of resources and options in our communities for young children of color, and how education can be a bridge to other ways of knowing and living. A theme that runs throughout Rushing Water, Rising Dreams is the power and contributions of las mujeres/the women as elders, leaders, teachers, writers, artists, and so forth. As Felicia Montes (another graduate of Chicana/o Studies at CSUN) notes in her essay “Movement, Milpas y Mujeres: LA Artivists who Educate, Empower & Transform,” “As artivists, we are both artists and activists and our creations are mainly ‘activist based’ with an intent to educate, empower and transform” (San­­­­ doval & Rodriguez 2012, 39). Montes also believes that much of the time artivist work in Chicana/o communities is being led by women. It is significant to mention that much of the activist work in the Northeast San Fernando Valley is being led by mujeres/women and the staff of Tia Chucha’s is majority women as well. Chicana feminist writer Cherríe Moraga notes in her seminal book The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (1993) that this reality is no coincidence because women take up the roles as protectors of their communities:

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The earth is female. It is no accident then that the main grassroots activists defending the earth, along with Native peoples, are women of all races and cultures. Regardless of the so-called “advances” of Western “civilization,” women remain the chief caretakers, nurturers, and providers for our children and our elders. (172) Women often have played a central role in our communities and in movements of social justice, and they are also elders and leaders, yet their contributions are often overlooked or not documented in the history books. In Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams, women contributed the majority of the essays and poems, and this fact speaks to the important role that women play as leaders, teachers, artists, mothers, sisters, and so forth within the communities of the Northeast San Fernando Valley. As Montes writes, “We have also been fighting on various fronts the devastating battle to keep things in balance for our gente. There have been too many losses of much of what was gained from the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and our people often struggle to maintain a dignified life” (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 38). The healing role of the arts and the power it has to change people’s lives are probably two of the most important lessons of all the stories in this book, for it is a process that directly ties the individual to the collective and reaches back to the lessons of our MesoAmerican ancestors. It is knowledge and ways of living that have been denied to us through colonization, conquest, and assimilation. Yet as I have often heard Luis J. Rodriguez say, this knowledge is part of our “genetic memory code.” We just have to reconnect to it—and to our authentic selves. Art provides us with that direction, inspiration, and healing. And it is also very important to pass this knowledge to the younger generation, who will become tomorrow’s leaders through the power of the arts and activism. La Lucha Continua/The Struggle Continues.

FUTURE VISIONS: THE YOUTH An important feature in Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams is the inclusion of the voices and perspectives of youth and young adults since they will be the next generation of artists, writers, poets, leaders and activists. The book is an important community history project that allows the youth to tell their stories—their truth. The work and stories of the youth also reveal that they are using art and activism to transform the space of their barrio into com­ munity enabling space. A multicultural perspective of neighborhood can be seen in the photo essay by Violet Soto, age twenty, who uses her camera to document everyday life. Her photos capture the beauty and inspiration of urban space. She first picked up a camera at the age of thirteen to capture images of her Pacoima barrio. She prefers to shoot in black and white because

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she feels it allows the viewer to reflect on the images in the photo more than if they were in color. Many of her photos capture unique compositions of her barrio, for example, an older Mexican man who is a musician is pictured holding his violin as he walks in front of a large mural for a community organization, or the various shots of cats and dogs on the street or in people’s yards, and the angles of street signs and power lines at intersections, or a woman bending over her garden as she picks herbs to make medicine. Violet hopes to use her art to educate others to how she sees her world in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, a world that oftentimes is portrayed in negative light by the dominant media. For her, photos are a way to express her creativity, document her community, and also share her world with others. She reveals, Taking pictures makes me feel better about life. . . . A lot of my pictures are of nature and industrialization. I like both. I like living in an urban area surrounded by people, but at the same time I like nature a lot. Seeing the world through different angles and compositions . . . it’s a whole different kind of world. Sometimes people live here, but they don’t see it. So I like to document life, so people can see my point of view. (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 37) The essay by Angel F. Hernandez, “A Barrio Playground,” continues the theme of focusing on youth by documenting urban skateboard culture at P-Rod Skate Park in Pacoima where many youth find self-expression and create community. Skateboarding is a way to make themselves visible in their community using the resources available to them. Angel is also a graduate of CSUN and he majored in Chicana/o Studies and minored in Pan African Studies. He became inspired by the faculty in the Ethnic Studies departments there to engage in community-based research. He completed this essay while an undergraduate at CSUN with mentoring from the faculty in Ethnic Studies. Another significant part of Ethnic Studies research is that we train future scholars in Ethnic Studies pedagogy and link our work to the community around issues of social justice. Angel’s essay points to the pressures of gang culture in this neighborhood for young men, but also demonstrates that alternatives do exist. Urban skateboarding is a way of life, it is an artistic expression for these youth, and skate parks are a much needed resource for their cultural survival and as a way to use urban space as community enabling space. As one young skater shares, “There are neighborhoods that need [skate parks] more than others, cuz it keeps us away from doing stuff like drugs, maybe gangbanging, you know, it keeps us busy” (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 61). Youth need outlets to express their creativity and build community, and through the documenting of their stories it allows for a more complex and dynamic community history.

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Yet, it is also important to develop leadership skills in our youth, which is a theme captured in Mayra Zaragoza’s photo essay. Zaragoza’s photo essay, “Young Warriors: Every Youth Is a Warrior of Their Own Struggles,” demonstrates how some youth in the Northeast San Fernando Valley are picking up the torch and continuing the legacy of activism. With the motto, “Every Youth Is a Warrior of Their Own Struggles,” the program engages youth to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to make their own lives better, as well as their community[-ies]. Young Warriors was founded by Mayra Zaragoza when she was sixteen years old because she believed that youth in her community needed an outlet and also a space to dialogue about issues in their community. Zaragoza, who today is twenty-five years old and a student at CSUN, is majoring in Chicana/o Studies because she wants to one day open a twenty-four-hour community center for youth in Pacoima. She explains the program she has created for Young Warriors: Young Warriors is giving the youth skills they need to succeed in life such as leadership, critical thinking, communications skills, focus, and motivation. Our current project involves “Community Mapping” where we are creating a map highlighting small businesses that people should financially support, as well as mapping “unhealthy areas” in those neighborhoods, like landfills/toxic sites, liquor stores, billboards and fast food chains. We are working toward informing the community members of the cities of Pacoima and Sylmar regarding the importance of supporting small businesses and promoting community health/wellness. This project allows the youth to be engaged in the issues that their communities are facing, as well as create solutions. We believe if you give youth the knowledge and tools necessary to bring out the passion/gifts they carry within, they will become engaged and see a future for themselves. (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 88) Zaragoza’s story is an important one that demonstrates that youth respond to the call to be leaders in their communities and they also have important knowledge and skills that can be used to create transformative futures for those communities. As a student of Ethnic Studies she believes community engagement is key and she is using her education to give back to the youth in her community. In Trini Rodriguez’s words from Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams, “My time at Tia Chucha’s has shown me that having creative, healing, and welcoming artistic/literary spaces are critical to our need as humans to find new ways of being and becoming. I am the last person who would have suspected that art transforms community. Now I know that it does. The arts are not a luxury. They are a necessity. For all of us are artists of one form or another” (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 32).The essays, by and about youth,

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in Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams point to the reality that the arts and education are necessary nutrients for the youth, who are the next leaders and activists. Her husband, Luis J. Rodriguez, also believes “the first move from chaos isn’t order—it’s creativity. In murals, music, theater, cafés, and poetry. It comes from within people, within families, within community. It rises from the hunger people have for knowledge, ideas, and stories” (Sandoval & Rodriguez 2012, 13). In the stories of these youth, as well as in the other stories in the book, I connect to my own personal journey as these “artivists” are embracing the philosophies of “Be the Change You Want in the World,” “Power to the People,” and “The Personal as Political.” Most important, the youth in these communities are already contributing to the legacy of barriology by creating community enabling space and place in the Northeast San Fernando Valley through art and activism (“tactical ethos and aesthetic”). My hope is that Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams will be the beginning of a larger project that documents the history of the Northeast San Fernando Valley. There are many more voices that await to be heard, many more lessons of community survival to be learned, and many more examples of art and activism to be realized. My collaborative book project with Tia Chucha’s demonstrates the power of Ethnic Studies research when it is connects to community histories to trace our journeys as we fight for civil rights and against systems of inequality using the arts. This research project also is a perfect example of deconstructing “the master’s tools” to create a humanistic future through “arts and minds meeting for social change.” Artivism therefore is an important weapon in the fight for social justice. Ethnic Studies as a discipline must continue to bridge the gap between the university and community and engage in research projects that collaborate with community organizations, like Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, that are on the front lines of the battle to create more community enabling space(s) in the barrio. Research projects like these allow dialogue and action to be a central feature of Ethnic Studies researchers as we use our positions of privilege to document their stories through a collaborative process. Community histories are an important contribution to Ethnic Studies research actualizing those goals—and as this chapter strongly suggests—¡La Lucha Continua/The Struggle Continues! Ethnic Studies practitioners must continue to be on the frontlines with and for our communities in struggle.

NOTES 1. For a more complete examination of the Chicano movement, I suggest watching Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, episodes 1–4 (Los Angeles: Distributed by National Latino Communications Center, 1996), video recording. 2. Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore, http://www.tiachucha.com/.

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REFERENCES Acuña, Rodolfo F. 1996. Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles. London: Verso. Alvarez, Luis. 2008. The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press. Avila, Erik. 2014. The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Barraclough, Laura R. 2011. Making the San Fernando Valley: Rural Landscapes, Urban Development, and White Privilege. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Broyles-González, Yolanda. 1994. El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bruns, Roger. 2011. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Movement. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood. Chávez, Ernesto. 2002. “Mi Raza Primero!” (My People First!): Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966–1978. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ferris, Susan, and Ricardo Sandoval. 1997. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Hartcourt Brace. Garcia, Ignacio. 1997. Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos Among Mexican Americans. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Garcia, Marío, ed. 2008. A Dolores Huerta Reader. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Garcia, Matt. 2012. From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. 1998. Chicano Art Inside/Outside The Master’s House: Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Haney-López, Ian. 2003. Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Jensen, Richard J., and John C. Hammerback, eds. 2002. The Words of César Chávez. College Station: Texas A & M University Press. Klein, Jake. 2003. Then and Now: San Fernando Valley. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith. Latorre, Guisela. 2008. Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California. Austin: University of Texas Press. Lorde, Audre. 2007 [1984]. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley: Crossing Press. Marin, Marguerite V. 1991. Social Protest in an Urban Barrio: A Study of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1974. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Mazón, Mauricio. 1984. The Zoot Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Moraga Cherríe. 1993. The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry. Boston: South End Press. Muñoz Jr., Carlos. 1989. Youth, Identity, Power in the Chicano Movement. New York: Verso. Pagán, Eduardo Obregón. 2003. Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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Pawel, Miriam. 2009. The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Pawel, Miriam. 2014. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Ponce, Mary Helen. 1993. Hoyt Street: An Autobiography. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Ramírez, Catherine Sue. 2009. The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory. Durham: Duke University Press. Roderick, Kevin. 2001. The San Fernando Valley: America’s Suburb. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times Books. Rodriguez, Luis J. 1993. Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press. Romo, Ricardo. 1983. East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio. Austin: University of Texas Press. Sanchez, George J. 1993. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945. New York: Oxford University Press. Sanchez-Tranquilino, Marcos. 1993. “Chicano Murals and the Discourses of Art and Americanization.” In Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals, edited by Eva Sperling Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-Sánchez, 84–101. Venice, CA: Social and Public Art Resource Center. Sandoval, Chela, and Guisela Latorre. 2008. “Chicana/o Artivism: Judy Baca’s Digital Work with Youth of Color.” In Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media, edited by Anna Everett, 81–108. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sandoval, Denise M., and Luis J. Rodriguez. 2012. Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community. Los Angeles: Tia Chucha’s Press. Sperling Cockcroft, Eva, and Holly Barnet-Sánchez. 1993. Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals. Venice, CA: Social and Public Art Resource Center. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. New York: Zed Books. Vigil, James Diego. 1988. Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California. Austin: University of Texas Press. Villa, Raúl Homero. 2000. Barrio Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wanamaker, Marc. 2011. San Fernando Valley (Images of America). Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Worth, Richard. 2007. Dolores Huerta. New York: Chelsea House. Ybarra-Frausto, Tomás. 1993. “Arte Chicano: Images of a Community.” In Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals, edited by Eva Sperling Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-Sánchez, 54–67. Venice, CA: Social and Public Art Resource Center.

Part IV

Humanistic Visions/Transformative Change: Student Activism and Classroom Pedagogy

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What We Dream, What We Want, What We Do: CSUN Asian American Studies Students Building Bridges and Forging Movements for a Twenty-first-century Asian American Studies Clement Lai, Lawrence Lan, Alina Nguyen, with contributions from Ilaisaane Fonua, Louise Fonua, Kevin Guzman, Samantha Jones, Presley Kann, Gregory Pancho, Carolina Quintanilla, and Emilyn Vallega

This chapter explores the participation of a group of undergraduates, recent alumni, and their professor from California State University, Northridge (CSUN), a teaching-intensive, four-year public university, on two roundtables at the April 2014 Association for Asian American Studies Conference (AAAS) in San Francisco, California. While this chapter focuses primarily on how Critical Ethnic Studies can be made meaningful to working-class students of color, its analysis also comments tangentially on the professionalization of Asian American Studies (AAS)/Ethnic Studies (ES) through academic conferences and on the lack of deep experiential learning and mentoring opportunities in the neoliberal university. In other words, CSUN’s participation in AAAS was originally conceived as a mentoring and community-building opportunity in response to neoliberal pressures on its faculty and its students: at the same time, the very presence of these working-class undergraduates and recent alumni challenged AAAS as a professionalized space. Working collaboratively, these CSUN students, alumni, and faculty have written this chapter as a commentary both on these experiences and also on these larger themes of disciplinary enclosure in AAS.1

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The AAAS was founded in 1979 as the main academic organization to promote the research and teaching of Asian American Studies and to act as an interface between teachers, researchers, students, and community members who have an interest in AAS. While the AAAS was the first professional organization for the fledgling field of AAS, in the last thirty-six years the association has also been one of the key conduits for the institutionalization and professionalization of AAS such that primary attendees of the conference are now professors, lecturers, and graduate students and not community members and undergraduate students who were so central to the creation of AAS as part of Ethnic Studies. The institutionalization of AAS through AAAS is paralleled in the other ES disciplines where academic conferences have also served to professionalize (and discipline) these fields. Fully aware of this process of institutionalization, the organizers of the CSUN 2014 AAAS Conference initially sought to provide a student-centered learning opportunity for students to present at an academic conference, but the experience also became a transformative one for both the students and their professor, Clem Lai. For the students this experience underscored the worlds of possibilities open to them in the academy and in community organizations, introduced them to potential role models/mentors, and highlighted the responsibilities involved when practicing ES as a community-oriented, social justice–driven discipline-cum-political movement. At the same time, this conference emphasized the social distance these mostly working-class students felt toward the professionalized space of this conference and toward AAS/ES as academic disciplines. For the professor, this experience stressed the need to provide substantive and meaningful learning and mentoring opportunities for students even in a climate of reduced funding for higher education and of recrudescent culture wars and their assault on ES and the public university, which have discouraged and/or defunded deep, experiential learning opportunities. Despite some of the students’ discomfort in the conference space and the simultaneous staging of a separate activist (counter)conference, “Serving the People 2.0,” at the iconic International Hotel site, the experience underscored the question, Where is the space for undergraduate students and community members at the AAAS and what is the association’s responsibility toward these constituencies who helped found ES and who “owned” these fields of knowledge and counter-hegemonic action at their inception? (Omatsu 2014). Using the personal narratives of the youth participants and the lead faculty member involved in the 2014 AAAS Conference, this chapter overviews the collective and community effort it took to interest, mentor, finance, and then bring a group of ten undergraduates and recent alumni to the AAAS Conference.2 It begins with a description of our two roundtables and discussion of the motivations behind organizing them. We follow this section with

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a discussion of the impact of this experience on the participants, including an overview of the activities that we participated in both on and off the conference site over this four-day trip. We conclude with a brief analysis of this effort, including a discussion of the sustainability of this effort in a time of recession and culture wars. Taken together this chapter highlights several key issues: first, how AAS/ES have impacted the lives of these participants; second, the related issue of ES’s relevance in the lives and dreams of its practitioners (youth and faculty); and third, it provides an oblique analytical rejoinder on the proliferation and professionalization of Ethnic Studies.

DESCRIPTION OF ROUNDTABLES AND INTRODUCING THE CAST Given the size of our group, we divided into two roundtable sessions under the thematic umbrella, “What We Dream, What We Want, What We Do: CSUN AAS Students Building Bridges and Forging Movements for a Twentyfirst-century Asian American Studies.” This title matched with the overall conference theme, “Building Bridges and Forging Movements,” but more important, we designed our roundtable theme to be broad enough to incorporate the various interests of the student presenters and their reasons for participating in the conference. To this end, the first roundtable grouped students who wanted to present on their reasons for majoring in AAS and on what they had accomplished or wanted to accomplish with an AAS degree. The participants included thencurrent students Greg Pancho and Chelley Quiambao and recent alumni Kevin Guzman, Lawrence Lan, Carolina Quintanilla, and Emi Vallega, as well as Professor Clem Lai. The discussant was CSUN professor Eunai Shrake. In their presentations Pancho, Quiambao, and Vallega focused their comments on why they majored in AAS and what they hoped to do with their degrees. Thematically these three students shared stories of their almost accidental discovery of AAS/ES, as well as related how they stayed in the major because the curriculum was meaningful at a deeply personal level. For example, as Greg Pancho put it: The reason I wanted to present on this topic was because I felt like my experience with AAS was so happenstance. I wondered why I have never heard about AAS/Ethnic Studies in K–12. And also because it scared me to thinking about [what] my life would be like without having discovered the AAS community. Likewise, Emi Vallega touched on how her coursework and particularly her volunteering and internship experiences helped her transition from an interest

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in business (“a corporate job”) to majoring in AAS and subsequently to her pursuit of a career in community organizing. In contrast, Kevin Guzman examined the breadth of ethnic-specific AAS course offerings at a number of public and private universities/colleges to understand whose experiences were being marginalized within AAS, raising questions of inclusivity. Carolina Quintanilla’s presentation overviewed eco-feminist theory and its potential contributions to AAS/ES: “I chose to discuss the possibility of ecofeminism as a framework in Asian American Studies because I recognized its epistemic power that could contribute to discussions around Asian American women.” Lawrence Lan critiqued the professionalization of AAS from a youth and community organizer’s perspective. As Lan noted, I talked about the politics of Asian American Studies programs and departments at different institutions and asked questions about where Asian American Studies programs might be headed. I asked whether we have a responsibility to the communities that the discipline purports to serve. The increasing professionalization of Asian American Studies indicates that the kind of activism and community organizing that went on to found these Ethnic Studies units are not being prioritized, valued, or even recognized in many of these highly academic programs and units. That’s a shame. Finally, Professor Lai discussed his own trajectory into AAS (from student activist to community organizer to professor) and then articulated the need for working-class public university students to occupy and own AAS and the AAAS conference space. The students in the second roundtable presented on research projects they had conducted in their AAS research methods course at CSUN (AAS 311) under the guidance of Professor Tracy Lachica Buenavista. In some cases, the students had continued developing these research projects through internships, personal interest, other class projects, and/or their organizing. The presenters included current students Alina Nguyen, Presley Kann, and Samantha Jones and recent graduates sisters Ilaisaane and Louise Fonua. The discussant was Professor Lai. In their presentations Alina Nguyen discussed her research proj­­ect on Asian American ink culture: “I presented on tattoos because most of my life I heard terrible things about them. However, I never lost sight of my passion and interest for the art form. . . . I wanted to learn why people who do not identify as Asian American get Asian or Asian-inspired ink.” Presley Kann discussed his involvement in punk rock and in social justice activism, articulating an AAPIA “artivism.” Samantha Jones, a second-generation Karen American, discussed her ongoing research on Karen American (refugee and immigrant) community formation in California’s Central Valley and

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its connection to the larger Karen diaspora in the United States (see Vang & Trieu 2014). As Jones put it, I presented on my ongoing research project on the Karen community in Bakersfield, and the essay focused on the Karen Baptist Fellowship Church as our resource center and community hub. In my presentation I shared my family’s journey from Burma to the United States, and asked them questions of the issues they encountered moving to America— specifically the adjustment, the resources that were available to them before the Karen Church, and how they developed the church into a resource center, and how they picture future generations. Finally, Ilaisaane and Louise Fonua presented on how watching a documentary on a food justice struggle to save a community garden in Los Angeles, the South Central Farm, and their parents’ own involvement in a San Fernando Valley community garden led them to develop an interest in community gardening as a means to promote food justice and also cultural preservation in the Pacific Islander American community. As Louise Fonua articulated, My sister and I presented on the significance of community gardens in the Tongan community. We presented on community gardens because they are seen as a way for the Tongan community to be sustainable and preserve culture through their gardens. Seeing the importance of community gardens to the South Central farmers made me realize just how important community gardens are to the Tongan community. We presented on community gardens because they are seen as a form of food justice and having access to healthy and organic foods as well as allowing the Tongan community to share their stories through the food they plant. Like the presenters in Roundtable One, the presenters on Roundtable Two were addressing questions of meaning and belonging in AAS through their research projects. Many of these presenters not only touched on how and why their research projects became meaningful to them, but they also were willing to articulate future directions for their research whether in graduate school or outside of it. In so doing, these students and alumni exerted their claims of ownership on AAAS and on AAS even though they were not professional academics but rather organic intellectuals/imagineers/commoners. In the following section we turn to a discussion of catalysts behind organizing this trip to AAAS. We situate our analysis within a structural description of California State University, Northridge to highlight issues of mentorship for students of color within a comprehensive (versus research) public university.

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CATALYSTS AND MOTIVATIONS CSUN is a large, four-year, teaching intensive, public university in the California State University system (CSU) that enrolls more than 38,000 students. The CSU system is the largest four-year degree granting university system in California. Like its sister campuses CSUN serves a highly diverse student body: a number of the students are the first in their families to attend college, come from immigrant families, and/or are working class. Regarding Ethnic Studies at CSUN, with the exception of the Africana Studies department, which is in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the majority of the ES departments and programs are housed in the College of Humanities, including the departments of Asian American Studies and Chicana/o Studies, and programs in American Indian Studies and Central American Studies. This unique structural arrangement has resulted in a core block of ES faculty members within one college. In addition, these CSUN units have also been able to certify many of their courses as lower- and upper-division general education (GE) courses, although not without resis­ tance over the last two to four decades from mainstream disciplines on campus (Acuña 2011). Thus, unlike other ES units in the CSU system like Los An­geles, Long Beach, San José, and Stanislaus where courses have been systematically cancelled for low enrollment, budgets slashed, and faculty searches for replacement or expansion denied, those at CSUN have been partially protected from elimination because of GE certification, because of their unique structural location within one college, because of the support of some administrators, and because of the critical mass of ES faculty in one college (Giroux, 2013; Franco 2013; Okihiro, 2010; Rivera, 2013). This does not mean, however, that the culture wars are absent from CSUN; rather they may be expressed (at times subtly and at other times artlessly) in the form of lack of consultation with the ES units, the undermining of departmental autonomy, an attempted depoliticization of ES units, and general (neo)liberal expressions of colorblindness (Boñilla-Silva 2013). While GE course alignment has meant that CSUN Ethnic Studies units provide a service to the entire university through GE instruction, it has also affected the quality of education for the AAS department’s majors, minors, and double majors, reducing their access to major-specific courses for two key reasons: first, the bulk of students in AAS classes attend these classes to fulfill GE requirements and lack prior training in AAS, which affects the overall quality of class discussion and instruction, including instances where AAS students are subjected to insensitive, if not racist, remarks from their peers; and second, the AAS department must meet an overall university/college designated full-time equivalent student (FTES) enrollment each semester and, as a result, cannot offer more than two low-enrolled courses per semester—courses that might cater solely to AAS students. Enriched learning opportunities for

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our majors and minors have been further limited by the lack of a departmental AAS Honors Thesis and by the inability to offer independent studies because of union negotiated workload issues. Finally, few AAS students have participated in CSUN’s McNair Scholars Program, a graduate school training program that the U.S. Department of Education has since defunded.3 All of these factors have resulted in fewer opportunities at the departmental or university level to mentor AAS students and prepare them for graduate school or to focus in depth on the ideological, pedagogical, and theoretical core of AAS/ES (whether concerning its origins in Third World struggles or contemporary insurgent formations like Critical Ethnic Studies). While the manifestation of the contemporary culture wars may share similarities with research universities and elite colleges, these previous factors also distinguish the student experience and the “doing” of Ethnic Studies at the comprehensive, teaching intensive university/college from these elite educational institutions. One of the potential strengths of this anthology is an overview of the shared terrain and manifestations of the culture wars in different geographical locations and at different levels of educational institutions or sites, but it must be emphasized that there are important dissimilarities in how these culture wars have been manifested, particularly at institutions that have reduced resources, high enrollment targets, high teaching loads, and majority students of color. These dissimilarities affect the student experience of Ethnic Studies at the comprehensive, teaching-intensive, public university.4 From the faculty perspective this raises several questions: How do faculty mentor students under the uneven conjunctures of the culture wars? How do faculty recenter the contemporary mission of ES and focus it on the working-class students of color from non-elite, teaching-intensive public universities and on the communities from which they come? (Omatsu 2014). This chapter focuses particularly on the latter group—the students—and how they learn, embody, create, enact, and own the message and meaning of ES at this historical conjuncture/moment. These previous questions have been of particular concern for the faculty of CSUN’s AAS department—a concern exacerbated not just by the structural situation in the CSU but also by the fact that the majority of its students come to AAS late in their academic careers and the fact that a number of these majors and minors have received highly uneven instruction in ES as a community- and social justice–oriented discipline and praxis. The challenge for the faculty was how to provide a meaningful and relevant AAS education that would empower the students and develop an interest in, if not love for, community and social justice? Thus, attending AAAS became an opportunity to provide an enriched experiential learning opportunity for our department’s students that might accomplish some of these goals or at least plant the seeds for continued growth.

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The decision behind attending AAAS originated in spring 2012 when CSUN professors Gina Masequesmay (AAS department chair), Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and Clem Lai first discussed the possibility of bringing a group of AAS majors, minors, and double majors to the 2014 AAAS Conference because it would be hosted in San Francisco, a relatively nearby location. We knew that we had a cohort of graduating seniors and up-and-coming juniors who had expressed an interest in attending graduate school, so we believed the AAAS Conference would be an excellent opportunity to expose our students to the AAS world and have an opportunity to participate substantively in the conference by giving a paper or presentation. We were not content on having them merely volunteer at the conference or just attend sessions. Moreover, the conference’s theme, “Building Bridges, Forging Movements,” appeared to be one inclusive enough for our working-class students to participate in and share their voices with the larger AAS world. The department’s decision to participate in AAAS must be placed in the context of a year-and-a-half’s worth of student-faculty (and sometimes alumni) co-organized activities geared toward student learning that would empower students to find or refine their individual and collective voices, while reinforcing the community-oriented, progressive message of Ethnic Studies.5 These activities included a Critical Ethnic Studies panel to promote interracial solidarity and articulate alignment with the recent Critical Ethnic Studies initiative;6 a fall 2013 AAS student retreat and beginning of the year orientation co-organized with AAS alumni; Professor Lai’s spring 2014 Social Movements course that focused on the history of the Asian American movement and included a service-learning/internships placement with a Los Angeles–area Asian American Pacific Islander American (AAPIA) community-based organization (CBO); the May 2014 (re)dedication of a small campus building to Professor Glenn Omatsu and Professor Omatsu’s own delivering of the AAS department’s Distinguished Speaker Lecture in late April 2014 in which he articulated student and community ownership of AAS and ES; and an AAPIA activism/community engagement panel in May 2014 that included community members and organizers from various CBOs and from different spheres of social justice work. Attending the AAAS Conference, then, proved to be an important piece of a larger series of activities designed to empower our students to claim greater ownership of the department and of AAS, and to focus on the ideals and meanings of Ethnic Studies as community and social justice oriented. Many of the initiatives were also self-conscious attempts to strengthen our department’s ties with CBOs and community groups. The final reason why Professor Lai wanted to bring CSUN students to the AAAS Conference was in response to University of Wisconsin professor Timothy Yu’s (2011) provocation on the blogosphere, “Has Asian American Studies Failed?” This December 2011 blog post was made in response to a

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New York Times article that displayed ignorance of the history of Japanese American internment. The blog post primarily argued that the discipline had failed given the lack of popular knowledge of Asian American history and culture, and the inability of AAS to shape the “popular discourse” on Asian Americans (Yu 2012). The post subsequently generated a large number of online critiques from academics and activists, and prompted both a special issue of the Journal of Asian American Studies in October 2012 and also an April 2014 panel at the San Francisco AAAS conference, which focused on Timothy Yu’s question. With the exception of Angry Asian Man’s Phil Yu on the April 2014 panel, the responders in both cases were all academics. How odd that no students, activists, or community members had been asked to respond to Yu’s provocation. These groups were all central to the discipline’s founding as part of a political movement, and more important, they still do have a stake in determining whether or not the activist roots of AAS are, as Timothy Yu (2012) put it, “no longer adequate” or rather the reverse, vitally necessary, particularly in this time not just of culture wars but also of imperialism, colonialism, and genocide (328). In other words, academics are not the only stakeholders entitled to ask and answer the question: “Has Asian American Studies failed?” While the CSUN AAAS group discussed the possibility of actually centering its presentations on this question, we ultimately decided to have a broader theme for two roundtables, but it was understood that our presence was a corporeal rejoinder and answer to Yu. After initial conversations among CSUN faculty, professors Lai, Buenavista, and Fong (an adjunct) were tasked with getting the students interested in attending the AAAS conference. Graduating seniors were informed about AAAS in May 2013 and asked to keep in touch so that they could participate in the conference when the time came. Current students were informed about AAAS at the August 2013 student retreat and again in Professor Buenavista’s fall 2013 Research Methods course. In early September 2013 Professor Lai called two meetings (using e-mail, Facebook, and word of mouth) to inform current students and alumni about AAAS and about the different forms of participation at the conference. Out of this initial meeting a group of twelve current students and alumni expressed an interest in attending AAAS, albeit there was some apprehension about not only presenting papers at an academic conference but also about the cost of the trip. The students were asked to commit to attending the conference at the end of September. We met again in early October to discuss whether or not our participation would be in the form of a panel or a roundtable. It was decided that a roundtable was the best format for our students, as roundtables were more conversational and the presentations not as long. Using GoogleDocs, we collectively decided on a title for the roundtable and then pressed to get resumes and a brief description of the presentation subject matter from each student

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so that we could make the mid-October 2013 conference submission deadline. Given the size of our group, we submitted our proposals as two parts of the same roundtable. The AAAS conference organizers informed us that our proposals had been accepted in mid-December 2013. After Professor Lai submitted the two roundtable proposals, he, Professor Masequesmay, and CSUN student Pancho spent the remainder of the fall 2013 semester looking into university- and college-level financial support to cover the costs of the trip. To be brief, the AAS department largely funded the costs of the AAAS conference trip for its current students and alumni, and, in fact, prior to reimbursement much of the initial cost was charged to Professor Masequesmay’s credit card. Although we sought funding through CSUN’s College of Humanities, it was not available and the only university funding for current students was through Associated Students, whose budget is paid for out of student fees. Current students accepted for a conference presentation are eligible to apply for $500 in Associated Students money so long as these students provide evidence that they have been accepted for a conference and that their expenses total at least $1,000 per student. However, our students encountered a cumbersome and frankly hostile application process through Associated Students, one where the five students’ applications were stalled, treated with suspicion (i.e., it was somehow fraudulent), and even threatened with denial. As Pancho put it, I found that the biggest challenge was finding funding/support from my university. Even though AAAS is recognized as a legitimate academic conference, the university constantly found ways in hindering our goal in attending. Having to deal with the bureaucracy of university officials (many of whom who were predominately white) I felt like our student funds were being policed and that our department was being purposefully overlooked. The point is that the process was not easy or transparent but rather arbitrary, petty, and inefficient. From the institution’s point of view, prospective conference-attending students should foot the bill for conference attendance and get reimbursed upon return—hardly a workable solution for working-class students. In the end the five students were able to get reimbursed the full $500 after returning from the conference due in large part to the persistence of Professor Masequesmay and Pancho. It is worth belaboring these points to highlight the marked contrast between how student fees were used for progressive purposes to fund student-run classes and community-based programs in the 1960s (both important for the founding of Ethnic Studies) with the situation today where seemingly full student control of how student fees at a public university are spent is neither a transparent nor a democratic process

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(see Barlow & Shapiro 1971; Maeda, 2012; Omatsu, 2003; Umemoto, 1989). Therefore, this situation needs to be structurally addressed if the department and its students attend future conferences. It raises as well larger questions of self-determination and student voice at a comprehensive, public university. In addition to university funding we also contacted the AAAS conference committee chair and AAAS president to find out whether or not there might be reduced conference fees for a large group of students, no such reduced fees were available, but perhaps this should be considered if AAAS truly wants to encourage undergraduate student participation.7 That said, the AAS department made the commitment to cover the costs of the bulk of the AAAS conference trip because the faculty determined that this group of current students and alumni deserved this potentially life-changing experience. Make no mistake: this was an expensive activity, especially for a small department from a comprehensive, public university. The funds used to pay for the trip included the department’s own yearly budget and even some money generously donated from the department’s professors, including Glenn Omatsu and emeritus professors Kenyon Chan, Bob Suzuki, and Enrique de la Cruz, but it bears repeating: the chair paid for airfare, made the hotel reservations, and registered the participants up front on her credit card. Absent the AAS department’s financial commitment, very few of our students could have attended AAAS. Funding was, in short, a barrier to conference attendance: Vallega, Guzman, and Kann mentioned that the conference fees were prohibitively high for students. As Emi Vallega explained, “I wouldn’t have gone on this trip if it wasn’t for the funding and support from the CSUN Asian American Studies Department.” After official notification of roundtable acceptance and registration, the now ten students (two could not attend because of family responsibilities) began to prepare for their presentations with their faculty mentors. Students met with Professor Lai at least once a month between January and April 2014 in face-to-face/video-chat meetings. Professor Lai also met individually in person or online with specific students for individual coaching. Together the participants worked on refining presentation topics and eventually practicing the full five- to eight-minute-long presentations. During these coaching sessions CSUN professors Shrake, Buenavista, Masequesmay, and Fong assisted Professor Lai. By the second week of April, every conference goer had written their presentations and fully practiced them at least once in front of their peers and instructors.

TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE After months of hard work preparing for the AAAS conference, nine students8 and alumni and five CSUN professors traveled by plane or car to

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attend the conference. Professor Masequesmay and the nine students and alumni stayed at the AAAS conference site so that the students could experience the full conference atmosphere. In this section, we use the students’ voices to discuss the transformative nature of this experience. These transformations occurred at the personal level, at the interpersonal level, through networking both on and off the conference site, and through claiming the conference space as CSU undergraduates.

Finding Voice and Personal Transformation For many of the CSUN students, preparing for and presenting at the AAAS conference was initially an intimidating process. Aside from Lan and Quintanilla, who had both been McNair Scholars at CSUN, the other students had not presented their research beyond CSUN’s methods course or perhaps in other AAS classes. However, every one of these students found AAAS to be individually transformative from the initial prepping and mentoring, to the return home. In particular, the experience helped each of the students build confidence and find their voice as undergraduates at an academic conference and as practitioners of AAS/ES. Central to this voice-building process was the realization that the students’ own experiences were valid subjects on which to present. For example, Vallega, like most of her peers, articulated the initial feeling that her presentation was inadequate. At first, she did not realize that her own experiences with AAS could be the content of her roundtable presentation, in particular her discussion of her journey from happenstance major to communications and resource development staff for the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles. In fact, it was not until she spoke to Professor Lai that she fully realized that her experiences were legitimate: “It was like [Professor Lai] was bouncing my own ideas back to me and organizing it. Isa [Louise Fonua] also mentioned that these things are my life, so the very things I was talking about were my very real experiences of doing community stuff.” Vallega’s comment echoes those of many comprehensive teaching university students who have not yet realized that they are organic intellectuals. While attending conferences are not the only means of unlocking this realization, experiential learning opportunities with close interaction between students and faculty and among student peers can build confidence, develop voice, and, in the process, “do” and “claim” the Ethnic Studies project. Likewise, student Samantha Jones’s experience echoed this transformative arch in terms of finding voice and building confidence. Initially she worried about being “the youngest [student in the group] .  .  . and not [being] very confident in [her] research, academic vocabulary, and presentation skills.” With time and support from AAS faculty and students, Jones was able to address that anxiety:

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The process of preparing was regular. We met every few weeks and pitched our ideas, [and eventually] main points [and] drafts. We also helped each other mold our presentations, [distill] our themes, and come up with questions for the audience based on the presentation we [planned to give]. However, being that I had taken spring semester off and I had to be away from school and the department, working on my presentation was a little nerve-wracking. . . . When I began writing my presentation, it felt like just writing a story and for [that] reason that felt wrong, and nonacademic. Yet, my schoolmates and professors seemed satisfied with what I had done and my confidence began to boost over time. That Jones perceived her presentation idea as nonacademic is not a unique phenomenon at CSUN, where students’ unfamiliarity with the academy intensifies their self-consciousness and drives their underestimation of their own work. Regular meetings became the key mechanism for building each attendee’s academic confidence. The group met at least once a month in person or online and worked closely with supervising faculty and with each other to provide feedback and in general create a space for growth and exploration. Ilaisaane Fonua described the supportive nature of the process that led to her presentation and her realization that she and her sister could do many of the things that academics do: I was fortunate that Professor Lai saw the potential in my sister [Louise Fonua] and me to move forward and present at AAAS. I participated because [of] the inspiration and motivation of having a great support system to present at such a prestigious conference. [The faculty at CSUN] believed in the potential that my sister and I did not realize [we had] until [we were] standing at the roundtable discussion ready to present at the conference. Likewise, Carolina Quintanilla articulated the importance of Professor Fong’s mentoring in helping her frame her presentation and prepare for the conference. Recounting the preparation process for the AAAS conference, Quintanilla characterized it as “unfamiliar” and explained that regular Skype check-ins helped clarify the group’s conference goals, especially given that the majority of students were first-time conference presenters who were “especially interested in establishing [their] voices, contributions, and research . . . as legitimate and important.” At the conference itself, participating with her peers and mentors empowered Quintanilla: Presenting among my classmates at a national conference was one of the most empowering experiences. The process was a process that le-

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gitimized our voice and this was greatly facilitated by our mentors. Listening to my classmates present on issues they valued after months of preparation was an expression of our fearlessness and dedication to social justice research. This “fearlessness” will likely translate into continued involvement with AAS/ES and/or social justice work. Additionally, what helped build confidence and voice was the realization that what the students enjoyed could be a subject of study. This realization reignited their passion for AAS. For example, Alina Nguyen, a student, saw the conference as a personal reminder that “passion is the root in which makes something worthwhile.” She elaborated, “I saw and met scholars that are well respected, and set out to do what they are passionate about. I never knew that doing research on something that I am passionate about was valid enough to be presented at an actual conference.” Likewise Pancho echoed these sentiments regarding passion. In his presentation he argued that he found himself through AAS and through his original research on AAPIA cancer patients and support programs for their families. Completing this proj­ ect and presenting part of it at AAAS unlocked and strengthened a passion he never knew existed: For myself AAS is more than just academic. I very much feel that AAS/ Ethnic Studies has had a very transformative and impact up influence in my life. When I heard about AAAS, this conference that circles around the AAS community I saw it as [an opportunity] to learn and grow more in this field/community in which I already had strong passion and investment in. Many of the students came away with greater clarity about their future plans after graduating from CSUN. Ilaisaane and Louise Fonua, Alina Nguyen, Samantha Jones, and Emilyn Vallega all noted aspirations to pursue graduate school, even though they also realized what a long and uncertain road this might present. For example, Vallega, who had been worried about finding a stable job with her AAS degree, left the conference inspired to possibly pursue graduate school. “I had all these uncertainties with Ethnic Studies before AAAS. I was so concerned about how to get a corporate job with an Ethnic Studies degree, and now I actually want to continue exploring Ethnic Studies in graduate school.” Jones similarly noted, This trip gave me confidence in my future and [what] I could do for myself and my community. After this conference I went home with my head buzzing, buzzing with ideas for research, how to connect with

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other Karen communities, how to create a resource center of my own for my community in Bakersfield in the future. I was just truly and deeply inspired to gain knowledge and share knowledge. She remains dedicated to continuing her independent, qualitative research on the Karen American diaspora, and will be looking into “internships . . . community and activist projects, and leadership training programs” over the next academic year. The Fonua twins both expressed interest in obtaining master’s degrees in public health, social work, and/or Asian American Studies. Ilaisaane, in particular, stated that she wanted to “help address the health inequalities within the Tongan community and utilize the community gardens as an approach to become healthier.” Lastly, although Nguyen found the conference experience empowering, she also understood that one weekend was not enough to address deep-seated concerns about her future in the academy: I felt that I did not belong in such a space, but after thinking it over and having my professors encourage me to go through with it, I did. Most of all, I did not want to let anyone down and in the process myself. I want to go to graduate school, but I still doubt that I will be able to. I realize that this was probably my first and only chance to attend.

Community Building: Interpersonal Transformation In addition to being a personally transformative experience, the AAAS experience helped build community among the students and with their faculty mentors. The students and faculty, of course, trained together prior to the conference, attended each other’s roundtables, shared a number of meals, shopped at the AAAS bookroom together, and visited UC Berkeley’s EOP office, its Ethnic Studies department, and Eastwind Books of Berkeley. The students understood that this was, in the words of Louise Fonua, “a collaborative effort.” In this subsection we discuss some of these community-building opportunities. Community building was an important part of this learning experience for all of the participants. Prior to the conference, the presenters used meetings to communicate as well as critique everyone’s presentations. Thus, the ability to share one’s work and get feedback helped garner confidence for the actual conference. Also, this process gave the participants a chance to socialize with fellow students who were part of different cliques. Thus, in addition to being one of the first times participants worked closely outside of the classrooms with their faculty mentors, AAAS became an opportunity to network with and build community with their peers. Moreover, since some of the members

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were from different student generations, current students learned what they could do with their degree once they graduated. During the event, this community building continued at meals and outside the conference space, for example, spending hours at bookstores together.

Networking: Making Connections From the student perspective perhaps the most transformative aspect of AAAS involved making connections with non-CSUN professors, graduate students, and community elders both at the AAAS conference and off-site during the students’ visit to UC Berkeley and at the Serve the People 2.0 conference at the I-Hotel. These experiences helped the students network with potential role models and mentors in- and outside the academy, reminding them of the responsibility that Ethnic Studies students have toward serving their communities and working toward social justice, and importantly providing them greater awareness of the field beyond what they had learned at CSUN.

On Site Students made connections at the conference in a number of ways. After presenting at their own roundtables, each of the students attended other panels either by themselves or in small groups. Nguyen, given her love of graphic novels and tattoos, attended a number of panels on popular culture and in the process met Professor Todd Honma from Pitzer College, who does research on tattoos. Samantha Jones “went to panels discussing mixed race view points, the [connections between] African American Studies [and] Asian American Studies, the [plenary] on Burmese and Bhutanese refugees, and also the panel on teaching Asian American Studies in the Midwest and Southern States.” Quiambao, Pancho, Lan, and Vallega all attended the panel on Enrique de la Cruz, Abe Ignacio, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio’s book, The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons. Not only did the students attend other panels but they also participated in them. Jones, for example, raised a critical question regarding the need to recognize different waves of Karen American migrants. While the presidential plenary highlighted how the Karen were an invisible minority within the Burmese refugee community, Jones was quick to point out that there were Karen American migrants who immigrated after 1965 but prior to the current wave of refugees. She further noted the importance of churches in helping form community within the Karen American diaspora. The Fonua twins attended the Claremont Colleges panel on the Saturday Tongan Education

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Program (STEP) and Louise described the latter opportunity to meet the “talented, intelligent and empowering Tongan women [as] very inspiring and uplifting because [the STEP staff] are able to provide resources [on academic achievement] where in some communities [these resources] would not be available.” From the CSUN AAS professors’ perspective one of the most impressive and memorable aspects of the AAAS trip was how each of the students went out of her/his way to embrace the conference experience. This included not just attending other panels but also meeting non-CSUN professors at AAAS panels, at book signings, or during evening receptions on the opulent and panoramic 36th floor of the Grand Hyatt. For example, Presley Kann went out of his way to meet Professor Mimi Nguyen from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who shared Kann’s love of punk rock and scholarship. Quiambao, Vallega, and Pancho all sought out Enrique de la Cruz to have him sign their newly purchased copies of The Forbidden Book on the last morning of their stay and in the process networked with community-based journalist Prosy de la Cruz and Professor Carol Ojeda-Kimbrough. These were meaningful encounters with potential mentors, allies, and role models, which helped make the conference less intimidating, as the students were meeting scholars who were interested in their work and literal presence at the conference. As Vallega put it, At first, it was really overwhelming, but then it felt really empowering meeting all the people [Professors Buenavista and Lai] introduced us to. People like Dean [Saranillio] expressing surprise that we were even there as undergraduates was great, and it made things seem a lot less intense than we thought it would be. I ran into Carol Kimbrough, and talked to Enrique [de la Cruz] and Prosy [de la Cruz]. Louise and Ilaisaane Fonua’s meetings with NYU’s Dean Saranillio, UCLA’s Keith Camacho, and fellow Tongan American Berkeley graduate student Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu were particularly memorable and inspiring for the two of them. Louise Fonua was particularly inspired by Saranillio’s scholarship and activism around Hawaiian sovereignty and the preservation of Hawaiian narratives. She similarly noted that reconnecting with Chamorro scholar Keith Camacho, one of the few Pacific Islander Americans to have tenure in the UC system, reinforced how important it was to “have Pacific Islander representation in . . . spaces like the AAAS” as well as within the academy. Finally, meeting Fui Niumeitolu “reminded [them of] the importance of remembering our roots. Fuifuilupe reiterated that the significance of education is to remember our communities and be advocates for them by seeking social justice.”

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Off Site The AAAS conference presented the opportunity for the students to do other things in the San Francisco Bay Area. Professor Buenavista and Jordan Gonzales, an Ethnic Studies scholar, coordinated a Thursday visit to the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where the CSUN students met Professor Michael Omi and doctoral student Kim Tran. The students also visited the Educational Opportunity Program office, where they met Meng So, director of the Undocumented Student Program, and Ruben Elias Canedo Sanchez, Research and Mobilization Coordinator at the Center for Educational Equity and Excellence. After visiting UC Berkeley, the students dropped in on Eastwind Books of Berkeley, where they met Harvey and Bea Dong, two longtime activists from the Asian American movement and owners of Eastwind Books, and William Gow, another Ethnic Studies graduate student. The students’ conversation with Kim Tran highlighted some of the realities of graduate school that they had not considered. Jones specifically remembered Tran’s comments on the personal toll of the academy, saying that “[we] learned that [the road to becoming a scholar] is long and tough, and that sometimes being a scholar means sacrificing your time in the community or with family, but the payoff is great.” Kann acknowledged that Tran “told us honestly that UC Berkeley was going on a professionalization kick,” and in “[laying] it out” for the CSUN students, clearly identified the current trend of professionalization in AAS and Ethnic Studies units, while Guzman noted her “down-to-earth candor” about the “grad school hustle.” Furthermore, hearing the stories of So and Canedo resonated with the CSUN students. In particular So and Canedo shared their experiences as first-generation college students of color who stayed in school because they found Ethnic Studies and in that process developed a community of friends and mentors who kept them at UC Berkeley. In addition, So and Canedo shared how, once they graduated, their majors (and the connections they made through the undergraduate process) helped them find jobs working with undocumented students and first-generation college students at Berkeley. Their discussion of their own lives made a deep impression on Kann, who said that “Meng [So] had a similar story to what happened to my parents and my family, and that resonated with me.” More than that, their stories were transformative, as Vallega remembers: [Ruben] was the one who told us that Jordan [Gonzales] gave him Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands and just said, “Read this.” And it helped Ruben realize why he was in the academy. That [entire story] made me feel like grad school is possible for me. When Ruben talked about everything

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that he’d gone through, and then for us to see how far he’s come after graduating, really resonated with me. Explaining that she had also been grappling with her motivations for being in school, Vallega described the experiences that Canedo and So had gone through as first-generation college students as profoundly inspirational, especially for students like her who were thinking about how their social justice– oriented Ethnic Studies training could turn into social justice–oriented jobs in the community. Thus, the off-site experience broadened and contextualized the students’ understanding of their AAS training. This sense was reinforced through a visit to Eastwind Books of Berkeley, the last surviving bookstore with roots in the Asian American movement. There, Harvey and Bea Dong provided a brief history of the bookstore before students reveled in the extraordinary collection of AAS literature there. Kevin Guzman fondly remembered the visit to Eastwind Books as “a treasure trove of Asian American literature [whose] real gems are .  .  . Harvey and Bea,” whose movement insights enhanced the bookstore experience. The same eagerness and excitement of the students in the conference book room communicated an intellectual zeal not limited simply to the academic realm of AAS. Some students wanted to link up with larger Critical Ethnic Studies discussions on issues of settler colonialism or insert themselves into political conversations on the left. Remembering the enthusiasm of all the CSUN students in the book room, Lai expressed all of the admiration of a proud mentor: “Watching the students geek out at Eastwind and at the AAAS book room is something I’ll never forget. Have to admire that thirst for knowledge. The intellectual curiosity.” In addition to participating in the AAAS conference on Friday and Saturday, professors Lai, Fong, and Masequesmay and the students attended an opening reception and panels at “Serve the People 2.0,” an off-site conference at the International Hotel. Hosted by a coalition of politically left organizations, Grassroots APIs Rising, the two-day symposium brought together community activists, organizers, students, and scholars to discuss issues and events “happening locally and nationally in the Asian American community and movement.” After a day of attending conference sessions, several members of the CSUN contingent to the AAAS conference made their way to historic Manilatown to talk story with community activists, organizers, and scholars. Many of the students remarked on the contrast between the markedly academic, “bourgie” atmosphere of the AAAS conference and its more community-oriented “Serve the People 2.0” counterpart down the street. Vallega remembered that “Everyone was all serious at the AAAS conference, and then at the I-Hotel [where the “Serve the People 2.0” conference was held], everyone was like, energy level over 9000!”

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On one panel at the symposium, “We Won’t Move! Lessons from the I-Hotel,” Pam Tau Lee, Harvey Dong, Emil DeGuzman, and Estella Habal shared their takeaways from the struggle around the International Hotel in the 1970s. Lawrence Lan touted the inspirational energy of the panelists, and subsequent conversations with these longtime community activists, as one of the most powerful moments of the weekend: Hearing the OG activists talk about the I-Hotel struggle—the camaraderie, the tensions, and the fun—made me think about a lot. First, their struggles in the past were by no means happening in a vacuum. They connected the struggle for the I-Hotel in the 1970s across time and space, emphasizing the idea that we have to link our movements to keep them sustainable. The second thing is that we really could see how committed to justice they were, how vulnerable and open they were in everything they did, and how fun, funny, and imaginative they still are. During the weekend, some of the students had the opportunity to share what they were doing in their communities and hear from longtime community activists about their community work. Over lunch on Friday, Vallega and Louise and Ilaisaane Fonua talked story with Pam Tau Lee, a founding member of the Chinese Progressive Association and Asian Pacific Environmental Network, about her social justice work. Vallega remembers one key moment of connection between activists old and new: I talked about the nonprofit [organizations] I was involved with in LA. . . . I mentioned APALA [the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance], and [Pam Tau Lee] mentioned, “Oh yeah, I helped start that with Kent Wong!” And I was just like, “Oh, shit!” .  .  . she told us stories about APALA, how they decided on the name, and how they got started in general. And then we took a selfie! For Vallega, meeting people like Pam Tau Lee—who had helped found the very community organization that she later began working with after graduation—elicited a sense of immediate connection between her own AAS training and the people in the community. Meeting scholars and community people who have committed their lives and livelihoods to the mission of AAS for so long added to the students’ understanding of the discipline. Learning about their roles in the creation of key academic programs and foundational community-based organizations energized and reminded students of the importance of maintaining the community-based nature of AAS. As Lan noted, “When we talk about

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Asian American Studies, we’re not talking about either the ‘discipline’ or the community. We talk about Asian American Studies in terms of how it can serve the community.” Both the on-site and the off-site experience during the AAAS trip facilitated the students’ development of a greater awareness of AAS as a field. As Carolina Quintanilla put it, “My experience in the conference broke the CSUN AAS mold that I had limited AAS to.” What Quintanilla and the other students began to understand was AAS’s connection to a larger field beyond their university. These connections linked Asian American Studies to the larger field of Ethnic Studies, as well as linked AAS and ES to a historical past and to a contemporary politics grounded in social justice.

Transgressing Space The CSUN students and the CSUN’s AAS department both received compliments for attending the AAAS conference. The faculty heard these laudatory comments from professors at San Francisco State, Cal Poly Pomona, UC Berkeley, Pitzer College, UCLA, and NYU. A number of the San Francisco State professors noted that the CSUN students were fantastic, well trained, and also well cohorted. Another UCLA professor described our students as having “with-it-ness.” These last two observations are testaments to the students’ ability to form community with each other; to their strengths as organic intellectuals; and to the mentoring they have been receiving at CSUN. Importantly, compliments also came from community elders/OGs who met our students over lunch or at the Serve the People 2.0 conference. I-Hotel activists Pam Tau Lee and Harvey Dong beamed at the social justice orientation of the CSUN students and at the department’s effort to bring them to the conference and to the Bay Area. However, these compliments were also a recognition that our students were, in a sense, “out of place”; that is, it was atypical that undergraduates, particularly those from an under-­ resourced, public university should be attending AAAS. These students and this effort, in effect, transgressed the conference’s professionalized space and corporeally and politically transformed this space (if even for a moment) to include these AAPIA youth. The CSUN students were keenly and perceptively aware of their transgressing this academic space. Vallega related how she and her peers were “getting stares from people in general at the conference” and characterized the conference space in the Financial District luxury hotel as “a little bourgie.” Kann, in dialogue with Vallega, echoed these sentiments, describing both a sense of ambivalence with the conference’s location and also a sense of being sized up by other conference attendees: “The mindset was very, how can you benefit me? That’s how I felt in that space there. There were people who

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were genuinely nice to me, but on the other side of the spectrum, there were others.” In contrast, Quintanilla’s experience at AAAS made her seek out identifiable graduate student–only panels: I did not feel AAAS was a space that welcomed undergraduate students. I didn’t run into any and that made me think of who this conference is advertised to or who has access. As the second conference day went on I found myself making a conscious effort to attend graduate students’ presentations, where I felt the most comfortable contributing to discussions or asking questions. Pancho tellingly echoed this sense of being “out of place” and questioned for whom the conference belonged or served: Given that the group that I was with was the only one comprised of undergraduate students the impression that was left on me was that conferences such as AAAS were meant for those who are professors and/or graduate students. Actual members of the community that the conference have done research on and were trying to “serve” were little to be seen. Also, the strict policing of conference members companied with the high registration fees sent mixed messages between institutionalized AAS and the communities from which it was born. Lastly, Lan, who spent significant time at the Serve the People 2.0 conference at the International Hotel, even going so far as to help film the community elder panel, astutely remarked, Some of us went to the International Hotel to the opening reception for the Serve the People 2.0 event, and then I went back to check out the panel with Harvey Dong, Pam Tau Lee, and some other folks who were involved in the I-Hotel Struggle that started in the 1970s. It was such a marked contrast between the AAAS conference and the Serve the People conference. The event at the I-Hotel was so much more friendly and accessible and empowering, while the AAAS conference was clearly marked by a cold, academic feel. These students had, in short, a moment of Du Boisian double consciousness— of being in that conference space and owning it, enjoying the experience, and gaining confidence. However, at the same time, they had the feeling that they were not of that space and that they were outside this experience. In other words, they understood their social distance from the conference and from many of the participants. This is both a comment on the culture of the AAAS as well as a

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moment of existential reckoning: to whom does the association or the field belong? Whom is the AAAS for?

LESSONS There are a number of lessons to be drawn from CSUN’s AAAS experience, which speak particularly to the question of the relevance of Ethnic Studies/Asian American Studies in this time of culture wars. Specifically, this experience highlights how undergraduate students at this comprehensive, public university found ES/AAS to be relevant and meaningful in their lives. These lessons speak as well to the problem that practitioners and scholars of Ethnic Studies face in mentoring students at a time when the university is facing extreme challenges (Newfield 2008). First and foremost, it should be noted that replicating this effort is likely not sustainable over the long term, as it was and will be a highly expensive effort. Absent the department’s financial support, the students would not have been able to attend the conference. It is, therefore, unrealistic to expect that individual departments at a public university shoulder the burden of helping their students attend the AAAS or any ES conference on a regular basis. This begs the question of what sort of support is available at the university and/or at the association level to make it easier for undergraduates, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, and, we might add for nonacademics, to attend these conferences? Are the conference and the association fees affordable? Are the locations of these conferences accessible to working-class students? Second, CSUN AAS chair Masequesmay’s leadership and support for her faculty was critical in creating an environment where faculty work with and mentoring of students was encouraged, recognized, and rewarded. Her vision for the department included a commitment to support its students and expose them to the field and to the political mission of the field. For any department to replicate this effort, it would require a similar departmental (and perhaps university) commitment toward student well-being, mentorship, and development as well as toward the social justice praxis in AAS/ES. Third, our students themselves have suggestions for AAAS and for ES conference organizers. In reaction to the low turnout for their roundtables, the students, in an e-mail from Lawrence Lan, suggested that conference organizers have an undergraduate and/or nonacademic specific track: I think AAAS might benefit from a push to reach out to undergraduates, especially students who might be considering grad school options in Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies. Even something like a student track might be helpful for young people today to connect and talk story with academics who were students once!

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Quintanilla, in particular, argued that conference attendees could benefit from regular undergraduate attendance, noting that having students at a conference could be an innovative way to get information directly from students: Educators could gain an understanding of the values of future scholars by attending undergraduate research presentations. This could be done by [encouraging] AAS, as a field, [to] introduce[e] research methods in undergraduate courses early on with an emphasis on social justice. AAAS can contribute to achiev[ing] this by making a conscious effort to be more accessible to undergraduate students. Efforts can be as simple as doing a better job of advertising this conference to undergraduate students. I went my whole undergraduate career as an Asian American studies major not even aware of the AAAS conference. A field like Asian American Studies or Ethnic Studies is truly a field dependent on students and a student-faculty relationship. These are fields that constantly have to justify their existence and are too often under attack. The only way we can keep it alive is to keep social justice efforts alive within the student body and empower students to create new knowledge through research. In addition to having a later roundtable time, Nguyen argued that “AAAS should find ways to get the students to be more recognized because it is nearly impossible for undergrad students to even be there in the first place. Also, the professors that make this happen should be recognized for their belief in AAS students.” In this spirit, Vallega and Ilaisaane Fonua both recommended reducing fees for students and having association funding dedicated to help undergraduates attend and present at the conference. Vallega and Pancho furthermore argued that community members should be encouraged to attend. In contrast, Louise Fonua called for greater Pacific Islander representation at the conference rather than their marginalization. Kann’s suggestion harkened back to the social justice origins of Ethnic Studies: The conference location and feel seems to indicate that it is so far gone from the roots of Ethnic Studies. Maybe that was the only venue to hold that conference, I’m not sure, but I have a lot of critiques where I’m like, should we be feeding into this? Or should we be trying to deconstruct it after we see it? Phrased in the form of a question: Kann’s comment runs to the core and highlights the contradictions of Ethnic Studies’ institutionalization.

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Fourth, in addition to encouraging student (and we might add community member participation), we suggest that every effort be made to demystify the application process for nonacademics on an academic association’s web site. This includes making sure that alternative presentation formats, like dialogues, conversational roundtables, and poster sessions, be advertised and encouraged for these groups. Fifth, from the CSUN faculty members’ perspective of this experience, the AAAS trip will be remembered as one of the finest and proudest teaching moments for the participating faculty. It cannot be underscored enough how critical it is to prioritize student mentoring in this time of culture wars and to reinforce Asian American Studies’/Ethnic Studies’ past and present connections in social justice so that students can surmount the ideological and political challenges to making Ethnic Studies relevant to their lives. The personal narratives of these public university students attest to the success of this effort, but they are also an articulation of and claim on Ethnic Studies. We collectively hope that academic associations and all the stakeholders in Ethnic Studies are listening.

CONCLUSION While the experiences of CSUN students at the AAAS conference structure the motivations for this chapter, the authors do not aim to center AAAS or any other academic conference as the primary means of engaging and learning about AAS/ES. At a moment when academic conferences are facilitating the professionalization of AAS/ES from the top down, we highlight the generative capacity of Ethnic Studies to materially transform students’ lives and dreams. At a moment when deep experiential learning opportunities are being defunded and discouraged at various levels of the university, which are particularly exacerbated at the comprehensive teaching university, we encourage Asian American Studies educators to actively seek out mentorship opportunities to build student power and to combat the alienation of working-class students of color in the neoliberal university. At the same time, we call on youth and community members to make claims on their Ethnic Studies projects—to envision new spheres of Ethnic Studies not just at the university but also beyond it, so that Ethnic Studies remains meaningful and relevant to these communities.

NOTES 1. Regarding the enclosure of the commons and the resistance of commoners, see the work of Linebaugh (2003) and Harvey and Moten (2013).

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2. A quick note about voice is in order: the lead author of this chapter is Professor Clem Lai. He is the author of this introduction and the next section, “Catalysts and Motivations.” Subsequent portions of this chapter are cowritten with the CSUN students and alumni and these sections represent the collective voices of the AAAS participants and are written in the first-person plural. When quoting or drawing from the narratives and thoughts of individual participants, these sections will be attributed to the specific author. Quotes from the chapter’s contributors are attributed to them and come from e-mail correspondence between them and the chapter’s primary authors during July and August 2014. That said, it must be reiterated that this chapter is a community effort and represents the participation, aspirations, and critical engagement of all the CSUN AAAS participants—students and faculty, as it should be, particularly in this time of culture wars. 3. The Department of Education’s action in itself is an indication of the federal government’s (or at least Arne Duncan’s) assessment of the graduate school prospects of students of color from a non–Research 1 university. 4. This unevenness also underscores geographer Ruth Gilmore’s definition of racism as “the state-sanctioned and/or extra-legal production and exploitation of group differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death” (Gilmore 2002). 5. In making this statement, this does mean that our students learn to lionize the 1960s and 1970s. It does mean that our students understand that they are part of an ideological and political trajectory toward liberation—one that teaches the importance of solidarity across social and geographical fault lines and one that teaches our students to think critically about power in the past and in the present so that they can develop a sense of responsibility to change the world and in so doing enlarge the social good. This statement also recognizes that the progressive message of Ethnic Studies is no longer foregrounded in part due to the priorities of Ethnic Studies scholars, to their training (or lack thereof), to the neoliberalizing casualization of the academic workforce, and to the attenuation between campus and community. 6. “About Critical Ethnic Studies,” 2014, http://criticalethnicstudies.org/content /about. Accessed July 27, 2014. 7. The AAAS instituted a registration fee subvention for community members, artists, and students for the 2015 AAAS Conference in part because of CSUN’s attendance and participation in the 2014 conference. 8. Quintanilla was already residing in the San Francisco Bay Area to attend graduate school so she did not travel with the rest of the CSUN group.

REFERENCES “About Critical Ethnic Studies.” http://criticalethnicstudies.org/content/about. Accessed July 27, 2014. Acuña, Rodolfo. 2011. The Making of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Association for Asian American Studies. “About Us.” http://aaastudies.org/about/. Accessed July 8, 2015.

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Barlow, William, and Peter Shapiro. 1971. An End to Silence: The San Francisco State Student Movement in the 60s. New York: Pegasus. Begoray, Noreen Joan. 1992. “Ecofeminism: Tracing the Theoretical Roots.” Master’s thesis, University of Victoria. Boñilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2013. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. “California State University, Northridge College Portrait.” http://www.collegepor traits.org/CA/CSUN/characteristics. Accessed July 28, 2014. Cheng-Levine, Jia-Yi. 1997. “Neo-colonialism, Post-colonial Ecology, and Ecofeminism in the Works of Native American, Chicano/a, and International Writers.” PhD diss., Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1986. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Library of America. Franco Sr., Jimmy. 2013, October 31. “A Loss of Ethnic Studies Contributes to Historical Amnesia, LatinoPOV.com (blog). http://www.latinopov.com/blog/?p=9251. Accessed July 26, 2014. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2002. “Race and Globalization.” In Geographies of Global Change, edited by P.J. Taylor, R.L. Johnstone, and M.J. Watts, 261–74. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Giroux, Henry A. 2013, September 4. “Hope in a Time of Permanent War,” truth-out (blog). http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18578-hope-in-a-time-of-permanent-war. Accessed July 27, 2014. Harvey, Stefano, and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Brooklyn: Autonomedia. Linebaugh, Peter. 2003. The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Verso Books. Maeda, Daryl Joji. 2012. Rethinking the Asian American Movement. New York: Routledge. Newfield, Christopher. 2008. Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Okihiro, Gary Y. 2010, July 4. “The Future of Ethnic Studies: The Field Is Under Assault from Without and Within.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chroni cle.com/article/The-Future-of-Ethnic-Studies/66092/. Accessed July 26, 2014. Omatsu, Glenn. 2003. “Freedom Schooling: Reconceptualizing Asian American Studies for Our Communities.” Amerasia Journal 29(2): 9–33. Rivera, Carla. 2013, October 30. “Cal State’s Ethnic Studies Programs Falter in Chang­­ ing Times.” Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/30/local/la-me -college-ethnic-20131031. Accessed July 26, 2014. Salman, Aneel. 2007. “Ecofeminist Movements—From the North to the South.” Pakistan Development Review 46(4): 853–64. Shiva, Vandana. 1988. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. London: Zed Books. Umemoto, Karen. 1989. “ ‘On Strike!’ San Francisco State College Strike, 1968– 1969: The Role of Asian American Students.” Amerasia Journal 15(1): 3–41. Vang, Chia Youyee, and Monica Mong Trieu. 2014. Invisible Newcomers: Refugees from Burma/Myanmar and Bhutan in the United States. Washington, DC: Asian and Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund.

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Yu, Timothy. 2012. “Has Asian American Studies Failed?” Journal of Asian American Studies 15(3): 327–29. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jaas/summary/v015/15.3.yu .html. Yu, Timothy. 2011, December 20. “Has Asian American Studies Failed?” tympan (blog). http://tympan.blogspot.com/2011/12/has-asian-american-studies-failed.html. Accessed July 31, 2014.

15

¡Sí Se Pudo!: Student Activism in the Chicana/o Studies Movement at UCLA, 1990–1993 José M. Aguilar-Hernández

On April 28, 1993, the eve of the United Farm Workers’ leader César E. Chávez’s funeral, Chancellor Charles E. Young announced that there would not be a Chicana/o Studies Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In the midst of paying their respects for the late labor leader, Young’s announcement was interpreted by many students as an insensitive dismissal of their community. Prior to Chancellor Young’s announcement, specifically between 1990 and 1993, students, faculty, administrators, and members of the community, engaged in multiple conversations about the future of the Interdepartmental Program (IDP) in Chicana/o Studies. Inspired by the organizing strategies of the late César E. Chávez, the threeyear-long student-centered movement would now demand action through a sit-in and hunger strike. The fourteen-day hunger strike that followed, staged at Schoenberg Quad (recently renamed Dickson Court South), in front of Murphy Hall at the UCLA campus, helped shift the public opinion and political will, leading Chancellor Young to change his position and allow the establishment of the César E. Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction (CII) in Chicana and Chicano Studies. It was not quite a department, but a center with departmentlike characteristics. I would first learn about this hunger strike while sitting in a Chicana/o Studies class at UCLA. When I transferred to UCLA, I took many courses in Chicana/o Studies, but I specifically recall taking the History of Chicano Peoples course with Professor Juan Gómez-Quiñones, where he told us about a hunger strike that had taken place at UCLA in 1993, where the strikers demanded that Chancellor Young implement a Department for Chicana/o Studies. He showed us a brief video called Nuestros Esfuerzos that Elias Serna had produced and directed in 1998 with compiled interviews and television footage, and I remember feeling immense emotion. My initial interpretation of the hunger strike

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was that someone had been willing to die so that I could learn about my history. I was able to situate my participation in higher education as part of a broader movement exemplified by these hunger strikers. Between 1990 and 1993, I was in middle school in Moorpark, California, learning a Eurocentric curriculum. UCLA, and Chicana/o Studies for that matter, was not in my frame of reference. I did not know it existed. My familiarity with Los Angeles was limited to downtown (pre–Staples Center and L.A. Live development)1 where my extended family lived and where I spent many weekends and summers. I am a first-generation college student, son of farmworker immigrant parents from Zacatecas, Mexico, of working-poor background, the first of my entire family to go to college, and a transfer student who visited UCLA for the first time at the Academic Advancement Program’s Transfer Scholars Day2 in 2001, a few months prior to enrolling at UCLA for my undergraduate career. The first time I took a Chicana/o Studies course I was an incoming freshman at Moorpark Community College. Professor Tomas Sánchez was the instructor for that course. In retrospect, that was the first time I learned about my history inside of a classroom. Simply stated, that class changed my life. I remember learning about the Bracero Program, a World War II guest worker program that brought Mexican laborers to the United States to fill the labor shortage after the United States got involved in the war (see Cohen 2013; Jacobo 2004). Upon learning about the Bracero Program, I remember being angry with myself because before that class I had not valued my father’s experiences of being a bracero in the United States between the 1940s and 1960s. I did not believe his story was real, perhaps because I had not learned about the Bracero Program in any of my classes prior to that Chicana/o Studies course. I wondered why it took such a long time to learn about the Bracero Program. Why until college? I remember writing a paper sometime after on my family’s migration for a Chicana/o Studies course and interviewing my father about his experience as a bracero. In conducting that assignment, the biggest lesson I learned was that my family had a place in history, that they too were historical actors. Chicana/o Studies taught me to value my family’s stories. This encouraged me to seek other courses in Chicana/o Studies after Moorpark College, specifically at UCLA. In addition to my coursework in Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, I got involved with El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana y Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) de UCLA and learned about their history of activism on the UCLA campus, including their efforts to departmentalize Chicana/o Studies. Over the years, I was a student, tutor, teaching fellow, and lecturer of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, which gave me about twelve years of experiences learning from their faculty and students. I am a proud product of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. Some of the fondest memories from that time are the moments I saw

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students connect with the course material on a personal level, similar to my experience in learning about the Bracero Program. Whether it was in the hallways, in class, or in office hours, I witnessed thousands of students, inspired by Chicana/o Studies, commit to the values of social justice that Ethnic Studies teaches. My experiences with Chicana/o Studies and MEChA de UCLA frame my interest in tracing the history of Chicana/o Studies departmentalization at UCLA. Although this struggle extends before 1990 and after 1993, this chapter focuses specifically on this three-year period because it encapsulates a major part of student organizing efforts that led to the CII and that paved the way for department status in 2005. Further, I also focus on this time period because student activism was met with police force, specifically during the faculty center sit-in on May 11, 1993. In this chapter, I explore the role that transformational resistance plays in student activism and social change. Three questions guide my oral history project: What were the ways in which students maintained a student-centered movement between 1990 and 1993? Second, in which ways did women employ leadership in the movement? Lastly, what was the impact of police force on the movement? I argue that students employed multiple forms of leadership that sometimes clashed but eventually led to the establishment of the CII. I find that women were central and vital to the organizing efforts between 1990 and 1993. Further, I argue that the police force used on student activists was racially motivated, and although its purpose was to silence the students, it created consciousness among the students about how systems of power function, that in turn solidified the movement and strengthened the student’s commitment for departmentalization.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The city of Los Angeles has served as a stage where students have mobilized for Chicana/o Studies from at least 1968 through the present. Among the demands of Chicana/o students that walked out of their Eastern Los Angeles high schools during the Blowouts of 1968, was the institutionalization of Chicana/o Studies within high school curriculum (Delgado Bernal 1999, 83). In April 1969, almost a year after the East Los Angeles Blowouts, Chicanas/os gathered at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) to draft El Plan de Santa Barbara (EPSB). Although Santa Barbara is not in close proximity to East Los Angeles, the organizing efforts at UCSB are directly linked to the efforts of the high school students from eastern Los Angeles, and EPSB went on to influence future Chicana/o student activism in Los Angeles. For example, some student leaders in MEChA de UCLA used EPSP when envisioning a Chicana/o Studies Department at UCLA between 1990 and 1993.

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Delgado Bernal (1999) argues, “El Plan provided the theoretical rationale for the development of Chicano Studies, a plan for recruitment and admission of Chicano students, support programs to aid in the retention of Chicano students, and the organization of Chicano Studies curricula and departments” (84). The 150-page document “offered a vision and course of action for Chicanos in higher education, one of the first of its kind among the Chicana/o community” (Pardo 1984, 14–15). Another significant outcome of EPSB was the unification of the various Chicana/o student organizations under the name of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) (Delgado Bernal 1999, 85; Muñoz 2007, 97). EPSB outlines the two functions of MEChA: to stay connected to local Chicana/o communities and to “become a permanent, well-organized power bloc for the purpose of redirecting university attention and resources to the needs of Mexican American students and communities” (Muñoz 2007, 97). EPSB is an important document, and it provided direction for Chicanas/os in higher education to stay connected with their local communities. Chicana/o Studies was the framework that would accomplish such a goal. However, EPSB was not perfect. Mary Pardo (1984) argues, “[El Plan] was confined in its scope, reflecting a limited consciousness by not including references to women, female liberation, or Chicana Studies” (14–15). Indeed, EPSB envisioned liberation under a patriarchal frame. The writers of EPSB did not envision Chicana liberation as a substantive part of Chicano liberation; often, individuals marginalized, threatened, or pushed out Chicanas who vocalized issues relevant to them, and too often, the broader community remained silent.3 Inspired to challenge a male-dominated perspective in the historiography of Chicano student activism, Delgado Bernal revisits the East Los Angeles Blowouts of 1968 to reframe the way leadership was defined within existing writings. In her 1998 article, “Grassroots Leadership Reconceptualized: Chicana Oral Histories and the 1968 East Los Angeles School Blowouts,” Delgado Bernal finds that Chicanas played a significant role in the organizing and developments of the Blowouts. The Chicanas interviewed in her project,4 identify how education in their family and community served as training ground for them to organize the blowouts. What Delgado Bernal accomplishes in her research is an expansion of what leadership in the 1968 Blowouts means. Whereas Chicano historians had confined leadership to mean the roles that men played in the blowouts, Delgado Bernal interrupts that framework to insert Chicana leadership roles. In doing so, she argues that without women breaking the locks on gates, passing out surveys, writing in local newspapers, and distracting the school principal, the 1968 Blowouts would not have happened the way that they did. One of the outcomes of the 1968 Blowouts was that colleges mobilized to bring Chicana/o Studies to college campuses. EPSB’s vision of teaching

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Chicana/o Studies was also carried out at UCLA: The earliest time I found a Chicana/o Studies course being taught at UCLA was in 1968 during the High Potential Program.5 Within this program, selected students were assigned to take either an African American Studies or a Chicana/o Studies course. They were also enrolled in a writing course to help develop their writing skills. Shortly thereafter, Chicana/o Studies became formalized in 1973, when the IDP was established out of the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC).6 Between 1973 and 1990, the IDP struggled, as it was underfunded and there were no full-time faculty dedicated to sustaining and growing Chicana/o Studies. Being an IDP meant that faculty in existing departments (like History, Sociology, Education, and others) had to develop and teach courses in Chicana/o Studies in addition to their commitment to their home departments. This structure maintained Chicana/o Studies in unstable conditions up until 1990. The 1990s were a decade of unrest for Chicana/o education in California, because of major legislative setbacks through the passage of Propositions 187, 209, and 227 (see Acuña 2007; Delgado Bernal 1999). These propositions specifically sought a denial of social services (education included) to undocumented immigrants, the end of affirmative action in educational institutions, and the end of bilingual education instruction in K–12 public schools. Within this decade of anti-Chicana/o policy, Chicana/o Studies also experienced a threat of being shut down at UCLA. Under the excuse of a budget crisis, in 1990, the Academic Senate recommended the suspension of the Chicana/o Studies major at UCLA. There are four scholars who have written directly on the topic of the 1990–1993 Chicana/o Studies movement at UCLA. Robert Rhoads (1998a) lays out a comprehensive overview of the events leading to the UCLA hunger strike, including the leadership of Bonnie Chavez, Minnie Ferguson, Marcos Aguilar, Milo Alvarez, Vivien Bonzo, Bert Cueva, and others. Rhoads argues that the hunger strike was the culminating effort to the 1990–1993 movement where students used various strategies to departmentalize Chicana/o Studies at UCLA (Rhoads 1998a). Further, Elizabeth Martínez (1998) lays out a historical narrative of the 1993 Hunger Strike for Chicana/o Studies at UCLA (220). As someone who witnessed the activism at UCLA and a social activist herself, Martínez tells a story that identifies the role that communities and students played in achieving the establishment of the CII. Further, Rodolfo Acuña (2011) focuses on the hunger strike for Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. He specifically uses his experiences being at the UCLA campus during the hunger strike and archival and interview methods to construct his narrative. Michael Soldatenko (2005) also recalls his experiences during 1993 at UCLA by making an observation of the role that women played in leadership:

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Women like Blanca Gordo, Claudia Sotelo, and Gabby Valle were everywhere; they made everything work. If you needed information, you asked them. When the hunger strikers needed something, they got it. If the media needed directions and information, they were there. Without doubt, the success of the hunger strike was due to their work. They, unfortunately, have not been sufficiently praised for their accomplishments. (260) Here, Soldatenko activates Dolores Delgado Bernal’s reconceptualization of leadership. Whereas Martínez defines the hunger strikers as the leaders of the movement to institute Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, Soldatenko imagines the possibility of validating the work that women did (Delgado Bernal 1998; Martínez 1998; Soldatenko 2005). In many ways, the story of Chicana/o Studies departmentalization at UCLA is similar to the many efforts to maintain and build Ethnic Studies programs and departments across time and space in the United States. The fight to legitimize Ethnic Studies in higher education is indeed ongoing. UCLA is just one story in the historical struggle to legitimize and institutionalize Ethnic Studies in higher education. In the University of California system alone, there were six hunger strikes between 1990 and 1999, and three of them (1993 at UCLA for Chicana/o Studies, 1993 at UC Irvine for Asian American Studies, and 1999 at UC Berkeley for Ethnic Studies) were student-led hunger strikes to save Ethnic Studies departments or programs. This is an important reminder for those who do Ethnic Studies work, that their work is constantly questioned or threatened to be cut. It is also important to remember that threats to Ethnic Studies are also met with resistance, specifically from students. Thus, UCLA’s story is significant historically, because the activism the students (and supporters) employed worked. Their demands for a department in Chicana/o Studies were (eventually) met.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND TRANSFORMATIONAL RESISTANCE Critical race theory (CRT) has been applied to a number of academic fields including law, education, social work, and urban planning.7 For scholars, CRT provides a theoretical framework that centers a commitment to social change, specifically by centering the role of race and racism in history and social institutions. In discussing the genealogy of CRT, Yosso, Villalpando, Delgado Bernal, and Solórzano (2001) state “Questions and theories about culture and identity, about race and racism, and gender and sexism have been a part of the work and discourse of Ethnic and Woman [sic] Studies disciplines for de­ cades” (92). Hence, CRT is an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that is

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informed by the field of Ethnic Studies, along with other fields like Women’s Studies, Cultural Nationalism, U.S./Third World Feminism, Critical Legal Studies, Marxism, and Internal Colonialism (Yosso et al. 2001, 93). I argue for the need to intentionally apply CRT to historical research in education. I do not intend to argue that existing historical research lacks racial analysis; scholars have been discussing race in educational history research for many decades (see Anderson 1988, 1992, 1993, 1997; Delgado Bernal 1998, 1999; Donato 1997, 2008, 2009; MacDonald 2004; Rury & Hill 2012; San Miguel Jr. 1986, 1987, 2001a, 2001b). What I am suggesting then, is doing historical research in education through a CRT lens, or what I call critical race history (CRH).8 I argue that CRH is necessary because it centers historical research methods (in this chapter, oral history) as necessary in educational research. CRH builds upon the five tenets of CRT in education and the third tenet of CRT in law. The tenets of CRH are: 1. Challenges ahistoricism: This tenet draws from CRT in law, which directly “challenges ahistoricism and insists on a contextual/historical analysis of [education] . . . and adopts a stance that presumes that racism has contributed to all contemporary manifestations of group advantage and disadvantage” (Matsuda et al. 1993, 6). Historical methods are central to analyzing and contextualizing the role that racism has in shaping institutions, including the law, schools, the media, government, and religion. 2. The centrality and intersectionality of race and racism: This tenet and the four after this draw from the tenets of CRT in education (see LadsonBillings 1998; Solórzano 1997, 1998; Yosso 2006). This tenet values the relationships between race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, disability, and other forms of marginalization. CRH values the intersections as pivotal to understanding how race and other forms of marginalization define and reinforce each other in excluding underrepresented peoples. In other words, CRH seeks to address the dynamic interplay between and among race and racism with other forms of marginalization. 3. The challenge to the dominant ideology: CRH values the use of historical counterstories to challenge the master narrative and its omission and distortion of the historical experiences of People of Color in society. Yosso (2006) defines counterstories as reflections “on the lived experiences of People of Color to raise critical consciousness about social and racial injustice” (10). Building on Yosso’s definition, historical counterstories speak to the ways that marginalized people resist majoritarian historical narratives. Thus, a historical counterstory is an artifact (including written narratives and oral histories) that challenges historical

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inequalities and communicates the ways that People of Color resist inequality throughout history. 4. The commitment to social justice: CRH calls for historical inquiry and research that is committed to social justice for People of Color by challenging racism and other forms of subordination. Given the historical precedent of social inequality, CRH is committed to valuing historical events that expose racism and other forms of subordination and create empowerment among People of Color. 5. The centrality of experiential knowledge: CRH values the experiences of people of color as central to history making and history telling. CRH considers the perspectives, stories, and personal archives of People of Color as legitimate and as valuable data. 6. The interdisciplinary perspective: CRH draws from a variety of fields of study (law, political science, arts, Ethnic Studies, Women’s Studies, Queer Studies, public policy, social welfare, and others) to capture the complex nature of historical events in relation to people of color. Although history is central to CRH, an interdisciplinary perspective is important to capture the complex ways that racism functions and is resisted by People of Color.

Transformational Resistance One of the models that stems from CRT in education is “transformational resistance.” Using Henry Giroux’s model of resistance, Solórzano and Delgado-Bernal (2001) define transformational resistance as actions by students who (1) have a critique of social oppression and (2) are motivated by an interest in social justice. They argue that students need to possess both in order for social change to take place. What I find in analyzing the oral histories for this chapter is that the students, faculty, staff, and community members involved in supporting Chicana/o Studies departmentalization engaged in transformational resistance. Not only did they identify Chancellor Young’s denial for departmentalization as unjust, but then they also engaged in multiple forms of leadership and support to reverse his decision. CRH and transformational resistance together provide a theoretical lens to analyze the oral histories in this chapter.

METHODOLOGY In The Houses of History, Green and Troupe (1999) claim, “The revival of oral history derived from a new generation of historians steeped in the politics of the New Left, civil rights and feminism. Oral history was perceived as a means to empower women, the working class and ethnic minorities, allowing them to speak for themselves” (231). Green and Troupe place the revival

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of oral history during the civil rights era, which is also the historical birth of Chicana/o Studies as a field of study. This connection is important, because oral history plays a significant role in Chicana/o Studies and in Communities of Color. The revival of oral history as method is necessary for People of Color because their stories are often not archived. Even for events like the hunger strike and the faculty center sit-in at UCLA, which benefited from mass media documentation, significant gaps in the archives exist: “oral historians [seek] to understand the hidden, and often unconscious, structures which inform narratives about the past” (Green & Troupe 1999, 233). I argue that oral history is an important method to fill in the gaps in the archives and narratives about People of Color and social movements. Historian Vicki Ruiz (1998) argues, Though filtered through the lens of time and mediated by the interviewer, oral histories shed much light on individual stories of resistance, resilience, and creativity. It is not a question of “giving” voice but of providing the space for people to express their thoughts and feelings in their own words and on their own terms. Reclaiming, contextualizing, and interpreting their memories remain the historians’ tasks. (xiv) As Green and Troupe and Ruiz suggest, the historian’s job is to engage the stories told by participants to construct a historical narrative about a historical event, and specifically in this project, a narrative of the Chicana/o Studies movement at UCLA. Further, Barnett and Noriega (2013) see “Communities of Color as sites of knowledge production” (2). This chapter then, values the efforts and knowledges that the narrators in this project share as central to constructing a historical narrative about the 1990–1993 movement. As the oral historian, I use my background in Chicana/o Studies as well as my activism at UCLA to organize questions that capture the experiences of the narrators. As Delgado Bernal (1998) states, I use my “cultural intuition,” what she defines as “the unique viewpoints Chicana scholars bring to the research process” (556–57). Although I do not carry a unique Chicana viewpoint, I do carry a strong academic training in Chicana/o Studies as well as a student activist viewpoint. I draw analysis from thirty-nine oral histories that I conducted between January and June 2013 of people who were involved in the departmentalization efforts for Chicana/o Studies at UCLA between 1990 and 1993.9 The narrators were either directly affiliated with UCLA as students, faculty, staff, or administrators during the time period analyzed, or indirectly as community leaders and supporters. Of the thirty-nine narrators,10 twenty-three were students (eighteen undergraduates and five graduate students), six were UCLA staff, two were UCLA faculty, five were UCLA administrators, and six were

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community leaders. The average oral history interview lasted 1.5 hours and was transcribed for thematic analysis. In the next sections, I present the thematic analyses of these interviews, organized under four events: the April 24, 1990, rally, the CSC faculty center sit-in, the hunger strike, and the pilgrimage from Olvera Street to UCLA.

STUDENT-DRIVEN COMMITMENT TO CHICANA/O STUDIES DEPARTMENTALIZATION UCLA students were central to the Chicana/o Studies movement at UCLA. While maintaining a student-centered activism, students sought out and collaborated with faculty, staff, administrators, and community leaders, specifically those who allied themselves with the vision of maintaining Chicana/o Studies. MEChA de UCLA is a student organization that explicitly took on the vision of departmentalizing Chicana/o Studies. On April 24, 1990, MEChA de UCLA organized a rally outside Campbell Hall in response to the Academic Senate’s recommendation to suspend admissions to the IDP. Milo Alvarez recalled, By 1990 we actually had a protest for Chicano Studies. . . . I remember the date. I will never forget it, it was a big deal for me. . . . I remember we marched to Adolfo’s11 office to force him to sign [a document] that he supported it. . . . Then we marched to Murphy Hall. We were trying to get into the Chancellor’s office, but they closed the door on us and locked themselves inside. (Personal Interview, February 14, 2013) This rally was an important strategy because it communicated to the university that students were not going to allow the suspension of the Chicana/o Studies major to take place. It was also significant because they established an ally for Chicana/o Studies with Adolfo Bermeo, then director of the Academic Advancement Program. David Maldonado recalls, “as I remember, the way students in MEChA de UCLA interpreted it was that they were basically trying to dismantle the major and program. Obviously we had to rally and we had to demonstrate” (Personal Interview, January 17, 2013). The Academic Senate’s announcement galvanized Maldonado’s and MEChA de UCLA’s commitment to Chicana/o Studies: “I had already committed that this was what my student experience at UCLA was going to be. That particular day was just a demonstration of what students are capable of doing. There was a long road ahead of us if we were going to have any impact on this issue. We knew there had to be an immediate response . . . and there was” (Personal Interview, January 17, 2013). Another MEChistA,12 Luna, recalls how the recommendation to suspend the program enraged her, and it was that rage

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that fueled her activism as a way to challenge the Academic Senate. Luna’s and Maldonado’s reflections justify why I chose 1990 as a point of departure to study the movement for Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. This is not to say that activism began in April 1990, given that activism around Chicana/o Studies is rooted in 1960s civil rights activism and maintained at various moments between 1960 and 1990, but it signified a renewed commitment to ensure that Chicana/o Studies remain on the UCLA campus. April 1990 was the point of no return, of students committing to doing whatever it took to protect Chicana/o Studies. Milo Alvarez recalled that after the April 24, 1990, action, MEChA de UCLA committed to departmentalization as the goal: “Over the summer [of 1990] we started strategizing. . . . We [developed] our own proposal and then we organized with the community which was another step. For our planning over the summer we went to El Plan de Santa Barbara (1969). We thought we had to put it into practice. When we read the plan we realized that it never really happened” (Personal Interview, February 14, 2013). Alvarez also saw the proposal they were devising at UCLA as a way to get other MEChA chapters in California to start their own departments on their campus. He recalled that Marcos Aguilar, Minnie Ferguson, and himself were among the students that met with Professor Gómez-Quiñones and organized the United Community and Labor Alliance (UC&LA). The UC&LA was a way to create a steering committee that centered the student leadership but also simultaneously collaborated with faculty and community and labor leaders in the broader Los Angeles area. Forming the UC&LA connected students with experienced and influential leaders who could support their efforts. As additional strategies, the students also sat on university committees to determine the future of Chicana/o Studies, orga­ nized a conference to discuss a proposal for departmentalization, and ran a letter campaign encouraging influential leaders, like César E. Chávez himself, to write to Chancellor Young to support Chicana/o Studies. The students learned early on that a way to sustain Chicana/o Studies was to institutionalize it as a department within the university structure. They understood that maintaining Chicana/o Studies as an IDP meant less resources and no full-time faculty who could dedicate themselves to teaching, service, and research in the field of Chicana/o Studies. A student-centered commitment to departmentalization proved effective, however, and to sustain this focus, students had to negotiate several internal and external challenges.

THE FACULTY CENTER SIT-IN Between 1990 and May 1993, MEChA and the UC&LA had taken the lead in the fight to departmentalize Chicana/o Studies. Luna and Maldonado

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mention that in this time period, MEChA experienced a lot of internal challenges, including character clashes among the membership and an overall disillusionment with some of the leadership. Soon after this period, the Conscious Students of Color (CSC) became involved in challenging a contested decision to close the CSRC library. The discussion of whether the CSRC library was actually going to be shut down at that time is complicated. When I interviewed Chancellor Young, Claudia Mitchel-Kernan,13 Andrea Rich,14 and Scott Waugh,15 I asked if administration intended to shut down the CSRC library in 1993. All four of them communicated that the library was never going to be shut down. However, Richard Chabran, then librarian of the CSRC, and Blanca Gordo, undergraduate student staff at the CSRC, share a different perspective. Richard Chabran recalled that at one point he was told by leadership at the CSRC that their budget was going to be cut: “It wasn’t written in a memo, ‘your money is being cut,’ but [it was] said to me, ‘you’re going to lose this position’ ” (Personal Interview, May 6, 2013). In essence, the CSRC faculty and staff were aware that budget cuts were coming to the Ethnic Studies cen­ ters and they would have to decide how to survive with less funds: “So some professors said, ‘if we get rid of the library then we can have more money for our research’ ” (ibid.). Some faculty members suggested making the library only accessible to graduate students and faculty. For undergraduate Blanca Gordo, this meant that the library was being shut down. Chabran argues that the library was definitely going to be refashioned without dialogue with the campus community. Gordo and the CSC changed that. Gordo understood the potential closure of the CSRC library as an injustice and responded by organizing a group called Friends of the Library, whose purpose was to save the CSRC library from budget cuts. Cristine Soto DeBerry, roommates with Gordo, was made aware of the CSRC library closure and decided to join the group. Soto DeBerry recounted how the Friends of the Library decided to do something about the library and how César E. Chávez’s recent passing was a very influential moment and inspired them to keep the library from closing. Soto DeBerry then reached out to the CSC members to join in the cause. Here, I shift to a historical background, as told by the narrators, on the formation of the CSC. Mario Valenzuela recalled that the CSC was formed spontaneously, something that manifested itself organically: “CSC was a collective of people with similar political views, and a space for deeper consciousness, understanding, and dialogue” (Personal Interview, May 18, 2013). Aria Razfar also stated that the CSC was informal and unaffiliated with the university (Personal Interview, April 29, 2013). Razfar suggested that the CSC shifted away from existing campus organization paradigms and boundaries that strictly enforced nationalist association (ibid.). In essence, the CSC was an organization moving

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organizing and political debates toward a pan-ethnic identity, shifting away from race-specific organizations to a larger discussion with a student of color politic. The CSC narrators discussed that the faculty center sit-in was a planned form of protest that they carried out on May 11. Gordo reflects on how the purpose of the sit-in was to demand to speak with Chancellor Young regarding the budget cuts to the Ethnic Studies centers, including the CSRC. María Lara, a participant of the CSC sit-in, shared that she was part of a prior conversation where, There was very serious conversation around the legality of being arrested. I remember a lot of sensitivity around the fact that many of the students were not undocumented, but maybe legal residents and not citizens. Those individuals were encouraged to seriously consider the legal ramifications and impact that it might have on their legal status. That is the first time that the severity of the things we were doing became more a reality, certainly something that was a difficult point for me in trying to decide whether this was worth it for me or not. (Personal Interview, February 11, 2013) Members of the CSC recalled that when they arrived to the faculty center, the University of California Police Department (UCPD) was already inside the faculty center and had blocked the entryway to the students. They had turned over tables and chairs and created a barricade in the main dining area, to the right of the main entryway. At some point when the students were trying to enter the faculty center to hold their sit-in, someone who was among the protesters threw a chair or ashtray through one of the windows, shattering it, and also giving the students access to enter the faculty center. The decision to involve the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is explained by then executive vice chancellor Andrea Rich: It was a day like any other at the Faculty Center but it was Emeriti Day and the people were having lunch with their paintings up. Suddenly there was a noise outside, like a roar, and there was chanting. We were looking around and it got louder. There were rumors about the identity of the people, [that] they had weapons and hammers and were gang members from East L.A. Then there was an ashtray thrown through the glass window and we cleared out. The students came in and took over the building. We tried to get ahold of the police. We called the Los Angeles Police Department because the campus police were not giving good intelligence and there were not too many [police] on campus. (Personal Interview, February 21, 2013)

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The narrators who were a part of the CSC expressed that when the LAPD arrived, the energy in the protest changed. Further, María Lara also recalled the impact of the LAPD in the faculty center: The campus police had been involved but then I remember the LAPD was called in. Things became violent after that. We were removed by force by LAPD members. . . . I remember being yanked away . . . and being arrested by the LAPD. . . . That evening I went to jail. (Personal Interview, February 11, 2013) Blanca Gordo recalls how the officers harassed the student protestors during the arrests in the faculty center and told them they had ruined their education. Cristine Soto DeBerry also recalled, They processed us all. We’re thinking we’re getting our ticket, getting processed, and heading out the back door. Instead they put us all in zip ties and line up all the women in one room and the men in the other. We were in there for hours . . . so they chain us together like a chain gang—where you’re handcuffed at your wrists and there’s a long chain connecting all of us. (Personal Interview, May 15, 2013) The arrests were very distressing for the students, fortunately there was also a strong community support for those arrested. The narrators who were arrested remember being led toward buses that took them to the Los Angeles County Jail, and as they exited the faculty center, Soto DeBerry realized [That] all these people were out there waiting for us. I was amazed. We were all freaked out. They were lining both sides of that sidewalk and they were saying “your full name, and your date of birth.” So you had to yell it out and hope somebody was writing it out because they were going to try to figure out whom we all were and where we were going. We didn’t know why. (Ibid.) Further, Mario Valenzuela stated, It was touching because there were all kinds of people out there and people who I guess had already organized and people were designated to ask name and birthdate so we wouldn’t get lost in the system. So we wanted to get out there silent, with our fist in the air, just silent. And people were asking: “Hey, what’s your name and birth date?!” and [I was] like: “Mario. 6/72!” It was funny because we were trying to be stoic but hell no! I’m not trying to get lost in the system. (Personal Interview, May 18, 2013)

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Those arrested and sent to jail had a lot of support from fellow students, families, journalists, and a lawyer who stepped up to represent the students probono. Faculty, staff, students, and community leaders loudly critiqued the way the university administration handled the sit-in. It was evident that the protestors, although they were a diverse group of UCLA students, were collapsed to being “gang members from East L.A.,” racialized as foreigners and criminals to the UCLA campus. A few days after being released from jail, several of the CSC narrators discussed that they participated in a sweat lodge organized by Marcos Aguilar. Shortly after the sweat, several students, including Aguilar, Soto DeBerry, Gordo, Valenzuela, and others met to plan the next steps to keep the orga­ nizing momentum going at UCLA. Blanco Gordo stated, “If you find out who was in the sweat you’ll know the direct link between those who were arrested and also did the hunger strike” (Personal Interview, April 27, 2013). After much debate, the collective decided that a hunger strike was their next step and that decision was brought to a campus-wide town hall meeting. The relationship between the CSC and MEChA de UCLA was generally tense. Specifically, the established student organizations were critical about the formation of the CSC. For example, David Maldonado reflected on the CSC’s formation: They [CSC] felt that the African Student Union, MEChA [de UCLA], and the Asian Pacific Coalition did not represent them. They wanted to be activists and they did not care for what they probably understood to be the bureaucratic nature of these organizations that had elected officials and accountability to members. They were all freelance activists who just wanted to be active—for good reason—but did not want to be held accountable, as you would be if you were an elected leader. (Personal Interview, January 17, 2013) Maldonado highlighted the challenge that the CSC brought to the existing structure for student organizations at UCLA. Further, some of the narrators who were part of MEChA de UCLA shared that at that time they felt that the CSC was irresponsible for holding a sit-in given that there was no significant evidence that the CSRC library was going to be shut down. In essence, the CSC challenged what it meant to be a student group on campus, bypassing political processes to establish itself, and sought dialogue and action without student organization bureaucracy. The CSC also challenged ethnic specific organizational structure and embraced those who were not represented in existing established organizations (i.e., Japanese, Persian, Chilean, Chinese, Palestinian, and others). Maldonado’s critique of the CSC was valid from the standpoint of a student leader who was committed to an

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existing structure that had a system of accountability. There is value in ethnic-specific organizing and there is also value in the CSC and their pan-­ ethnic “student of color” identity as well. I argue here that the question of whether the library was officially going to be shut down or not is not as important as the outcome. Whether it was gossip or classified information that got leaked, it became a real threat to Gordo and the CSC, specifically because Chancellor Young’s announcement denying a department of Chicana/o Studies justified the possibility of the library being shut down. It was the perfect storm. The result was that students challenged the administration in multiple ways at the same time. On one end, MEChA de UCLA had committed to departmentalization and on the other, the CSC had committed to saving the Ethnic and Women’s Studies centers from budget cuts. Both of these causes eventually merged into the agreement signed between the hunger strikers and Chancellor Young. Shared commitment for change, however, did not preclude conflict.

THE HUNGER STRIKE The fourteen-day hunger strike took place between May 25 and June 7, 1993. I gathered the oral histories from Joaquin Ochoa, Cindy Montañez, and María Lara, three of the official hunger strikers who fasted for the entire length of the strike. All three of these narrators were first-year UCLA students during the hunger strike. Ochoa was a transfer student from Watsonville, California, Lara was a transfer student from East Los Angeles College, and Montañez was an incoming freshman from the San Fernando Valley. The three narrators expressed how during their first year at UCLA there were a series of political actions that took place on the campus that exemplified the racial tensions for Chicanas and Chicanos.16 In total, eight individuals are officially credited for being the official hunger strikers,17 however, there were many others who fasted a portion or most of the fourteen days and played essential support roles. Mario Valenzuela recalled how he, along with other CSC members, fasted the first days but were later elected to serve different roles because not everyone could be fasting.18 Students identified the need for leadership to also focus on protecting the hunger strikers and ensuring their efforts were disseminated beyond UCLA. Students from MEChA de UCLA and the CSC took on significant leadership roles during the hunger strike. Enrique Aranda, member of MEChA de Cerritos Community College was involved in supporting the strike: “During my time at Cerritos [Community College] there was a movement for MultiCultural Studies and I fought and created a committee called the Joaquin Murrieta Committee and we came up with a list of demands modeled after the UCLA Chicana/o Studies Movement, and it worked” (Personal Interview,

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May 6, 2013). Given his involvement in the regional MEChA structure, Aranda was well aware of and involved in MEChA de UCLA’s efforts. During the time of the hunger strike, he worked as a teaching assistant with Lynwood Unified School District and eventually took time off of work to be at the hunger strike camp the entire time. While at the camp, he served a security role: The primary purpose of security was not just securing the well-being of the fasters of the camp; it was to ensure the absence of infiltrators, COINTELPRO.19 . . . We definitely were afraid that there were possible or likely infiltrators during this process. . . . And whether it was real or perceived, we had a big fear of government intervening and trying to co-opt or trying to change the direction of this movement. . . . Given that it was the aftermath of the Los Angeles Uprising,20 we heard of people who disappeared . . . so there was a real, tangible sense of fear. (Personal Interview, May 6, 2013) I also argue here that the recent arrests by LAPD of the students who held the sit-in informed their decision to form a security team. Mario Valenzuela, a member of Conscious Students of Color, held several leadership roles during the hunger strike. He was elected by the hunger strikers to be a negotiator between them and the administration. His role, with Cristine Soto DeBerry and Ghassan Hasan, was to represent the hunger strikers in all official meetings with the university. MEChA de UCLA also had representatives at the negotiation table, specifically Josefina Santiago and Milo Alvarez. Due to Valenzuela’s active leadership during the strike, he was aware of safety concerns and had to strategize with other students because of death and bomb threats that were directed at the hunger strikers. They also received a lot of antagonism from members of the Greek system, who would throw tortillas at the tent where the hunger strikers were housed. Further, Jacqueline Carrasco, a MEChistA and undergraduate during that time, decided to join the security team: There was a need to protect the hunger strikers. There were threats made against them, not everyone on campus supported the cause and felt inconvenienced by all the people that were providing their support at the encampment. The security component grew as the support grew and more people wanted to get involved. I was asked what I would like to help with and chose security because there was a need for it. (Personal Interview, March 5, 2013) According to the narrators invested in security, it was clear that the organizers carried with them a historical understanding of the way that infiltration

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functions in social movements. They knew that historically, social movements were spied on and often shut down from within. The function of security then became to monitor the space so that their demands were met. They understood, based on history, that if they were not careful with potential infiltrators, the movement might also be shut down. The role of keeping people in the encampment feeling protected was a type of leadership that helped maintain the goals of the hunger strike. Another significant leadership role that developed during the hunger strike was the Media Committee, headed by undergraduate Blanca Gordo. After being arrested, Gordo developed relationships with community leaders and was able to connect with influential people that helped her get access to bringing media attention to the hunger strike. She specifically acknowledged working with Cathy Ochoa, Gilbert Cedillo, Elisa Ollos, and Eric Mann. With her team, Gordo made phone calls, passed out flyers, sent faxes, and was taught how to use the Internet and e-mail by Richard Chabran to make further connections. Her team gained access to rosters with organizations and individuals of high influence in Los Angeles who responded by writing letters of support, speaking at the hunger strike camp, and even jammed Chancellor Young’s phone lines in support of Chicana/o Studies. Gordo reflected on her leadership role: And that’s what I did. I attached myself. I was there, I happened to be there. I was informed enough, moved enough, pissed-off enough, impassioned enough to even overcome my own discomfort of being out there. I didn’t have time to think, just act. I was fortunate enough to be tied to people who were willing, sought me out or connected me to people and previous strategies to keep this going. I had really great mentors at that point. (Personal Interview, May 28, 2013) Student leadership, then, came in different forms. Some had a history of leading in established organizations and others did not. What fueled their decision to lead was their understanding of social oppression and their commitment for social change.

THE PILGRIMAGE FROM OLVERA STREET TO UCLA One of the biggest forms of community solidarity for the hunger strikers was the pilgrimage from Olvera Street to the UCLA Campus on June 3, 1993, the tenth day of the hunger strike. Lara, Montañez, and Ochoa were all deeply moved with the arrival of the pilgrimage from Olvera Street to the UCLA campus. Cindy Montañez recalled,

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Then the United Community and Labor Alliance and others did this big march from Olvera Street all the way to UCLA. My parents would always say, “we are organizing and talking to everyone and we are going to get this on the radio: Andale vamos a ir a decirle a toda la gente que tiene que venir [a la marcha], nos tienen que dar este departamento de Chicano Studies y no los vamos a dejar [solos].”21 It was awesome. It was like a marathon—Olvera Street to UCLA. It was an ultra-marathon. They gathered where the City of Los Angeles starts, a historic center for Latinas/os. They went down Wilshire Boulevard. . . . It was a beautiful expression of a whole community wanting a university to acknowledge that community is important and deserves public dollars and a place. What we wanted was a Chicana and Chicano Studies department. I’ll never forget that day. . . . There were community groups . . . immigration rights groups .  .  . high school students.  .  .  . It was just amazing. You just knew we were going to win. (Personal Interview, February 2, 2013) Despite the rain, an estimated thousand people walked across Los Angeles to show support for the hunger strikers and to demand a Chicana/o Studies department. Several narrators that participated in the pilgrimage agreed that it was a form of public protest and education; along the route, people would stop and talk to the marchers and learn about the effort for Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. The pilgrimage was a political action to raise the consciousness of Los Angeles residents about the hunger strike taking place at the UCLA campus. Undergraduate student Anabel Marquez shared how she joined the march to show support for Chicana/o Studies. She recalled that people made speeches at Olvera Street before the march began and also once they arrived to the UCLA campus. Marquez reflected that being in the march felt great but she “couldn’t believe all this had to happen for them to reach an agreement. Again, I feel like, what’s wrong with people wanting to learn about who they are?” (Personal Interview, March 30, 2013). The march symbolized the aspirations that the students and community members had for Chicana/o Studies. The decision to start a hunger strike was influenced by César E. Chávez. Given his recent death, several students commemorated him and saw a hunger strike as a strategy that could work. They also committed to honoring his legacy by naming the CII the César E. Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana/o Studies. It is important to note that Chancellor Young did not grant Chicana/o Studies with department status in 1993, instead, he devised a completely new structure, the CII, which maintained Chicana/o Studies as a center and not a department. What led the students

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to end their hunger strike was the fact that the CII would hire full-time faculty and would be allowed to petition to become a department in the future.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I was interested in finding out how students maintained a student-centered movement between 1990 and 1993. Students led the first three events I discussed in this chapter, the April 24, 1990, rally, the faculty center sit-in, and the hunger strike. The rally was the first of multiple strategies students used to protest the Academic Senate’s decision and eventually led to MEChA de UCLA’s commitment to stabilizing Chicano/a Studies via departmentalization. Students made the decision, organized, lobbied, and pushed for change, all while seeking support from faculty, staff, and community leaders. Similarly, the faculty center sit-in was a student-centered event, where students decided to use a sit-in as a strategy to call attention to the potential budget cuts to the CSRC and other Ethnic Studies centers. The hunger strike that followed continued to place student leadership at its center. Even though Professor Jorge Mancillas and a couple of members of the community joined the official hunger strike group, they supported the student’s decisions as negotiations with Chancellor Young took place. Lastly, although the pilgrimage was organized by the UC&LA, it was done to support the hunger strikers; it was a strategy that the strikers approved, and it demonstrated the number of supporters the students had throughout Los Angeles. Next, I asked in which ways women employed leadership in this movement. I found that women held influential leadership roles throughout the student-centered movement toward departmentalization of Chicano/a Studies. For example, the faculty center sit-in can be traced back to Blanca Gordo and Christine Soto DeBerry, who formed Friends of the Library, then formed a coalition with the CSC to demand that Chancellor Young secure the Ethnic Studies centers budget. As Soldatenko (2005) suggests, women leaders made the hunger strike happen. As outlined in this chapter, Cindy Montañez and María Lara were two of the official hunger strikers, both incoming students in the 1992–93 academic year at UCLA, who demonstrated their leadership and commitment by fasting for fourteen days. Gordo also employed leadership during the hunger strike by leading the media committee, where she outreached to hundreds of media sources to inform them of the hunger strike taking place. Her leadership brought television stations, including Fox, Univision, and many local, national, and international journalists, to cover the hunger strike. In return, this brought visibility to the demands of the students and allowed multitudes of supporters to voice their support through calls to Chancellor Young’s office and letters demanding that he departmentalize Chicana/o Studies. Further, Christine Soto DeBerry and Josefina Santiago

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were student representatives in the negotiating team that sat at the table with UCLA administrators to demand a department of Chicana/o Studies. In other words, women’s work was integral to the sustainability and achievements of the movement. Lastly, I asked how police force impacted the movement. I found that police were used by UCLA administration to handle (read: silence) student protestors during the faculty center sit-in. The student protestors were described to Andrea Rich (then executive vice chancellor of UCLA) as “thugs from East L.A.” This justified, in the mind of Rich, the need to call in the LAPD, assuming that the UCPD was not sufficient to handle the situation. The LAPD then arrested the student protestors and took them to Los Angeles County jail. This decision was strongly opposed by members of the community. What students learned was how to prepare and plan for police force in future organizing tactics. This lesson, and their understanding of past historical movements, led them to formalize a security team during the hunger strike, in order to ensure the safety of the hunger strikers and others. The security team, although not perfect, was a way in which students maintained control over the many people coming through Schoenberg Quad. The themes of a student-centered movement, women’s leadership, and police force also apply directly to CRH and transformational resistance. By focusing on this historical event, I was interested in analyzing how racism and other forms of marginalization informed the movement at UCLA. I found that the Academic Senate’s recommendation to cancel new majors in the Chicana/o Studies IDP along with Chancellor Young’s initial decision to deny Chicana/o Studies departmentalization, spoke to the ongoing culture war against Chicana/o Studies specifically, and Ethnic Studies broadly. This culture war was understood as racial discrimination by many of the students, faculty, staff, and community leaders. Chancellor Young was adamant about not departmentalizing Chicana/o Studies; it took students going on a fourteen-day hunger strike and the demands of thousands of people for him to reverse his decision. When I interviewed Chancellor Young for this project, he shared that he continues to believe that Chicana/o Studies should not be a department, specifically because it is not a traditional discipline like history or sociology. CRH and transformational resistance provided me with the framework to value the multiple ways in which students resisted this culture war. Ethnic Studies is important because it matters to students. In every student oral history I conducted for this project, students explained that their involvement in the movement was because they believed that Chicana/o Studies reflected their community’s history. They also related their activism to an ongoing struggle for Ethnic Studies, from 1968 to the present, from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona.22 The narrators who were students during the movement communicated that seeing themselves in the curriculum was

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important, and they understood that historically, they had to be at the center of that activism. They believed fiercely in Chicana/o Studies, not only for themselves, but also for those who come after them. In sum, Ethnic Studies is important in higher education (and beyond) because it legitimizes the histories of marginalized peoples that are ignored by the privileging of Anglo stories that are guised in traditional disciplines. Based on this historical study, I provide three recommendations stemming from the oral histories I conducted for this chapter. They are intended to serve as general suggestions to present and future Ethnic Studies movements. First, it is important to understand, nurture, and support the centrality of students in Ethnic Studies–related movements. Doing so acknowledges the genealogy of Ethnic Studies, specifically, the 1960s student movements that led to programs and departments like Chicana/o Studies. Ethnic Studies largely exists because of student activism and students’ central role in establishing and maintaining it. Second, women’s leadership needs to be central in Ethnic Studies movements. Movements need women’s leadership, specifically to ensure that while racism is challenged, patriarchy is too. Further, scholars and activists need to be aware of the centrality of women’s leadership while they archive and write about Ethnic Studies movements. Third, Ethnic Studies movements must understand the ways that external forces, like police officers, are used by institutions of higher education to silence and eradicate social protest. The use of police force is a physical manifestation of institutional power. In other words, within institutions of higher education across the United States, the battle for Ethnic Studies and the ongoing culture wars continue, meaning that students will continue to protest. At UCLA, students remain committed to Chicana/o Studies departmentalization and collaborated with faculty and administrators after 1993. Since then, Chicana/o Studies at UCLA has thrived. In the fall of 2015, the César E. Chávez Department for Chicana and Chicano Studies, comprised of 14 faculty members, welcomed its fourth doctoral student cohort. To date, the graduate program has a total of 24 graduate students. Further, the department has 177 undergraduate majors and 134 undergraduate minors. It took many sacrifices to reach these achievements at UCLA. The 1990 to 1993 time period is just a fraction of that genealogy. In 1994, the first faculty hires of the CII included Abel Valenzuela Jr., Otto Santa Ana, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Judith Baca, Aída Hurtado, and Camille Guerin-Gonzáles.23 In 2005, the CII received department status, and, in 2007, it was renamed to the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. The struggle for Chicana/o Studies departmentalization belongs to everyone, particularly the students, who believed in and supported the vision during the years it took to gain full department status. ¡Sí se pudo! (It was accomplished!)

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NOTES I would like to thank the editors of this anthology for their careful feedback on this chapter. I would also like to thank Daniel G. Solórzano, Eric Avila, Julián A. Hernández, and Juan D. Ochoa for their supportive and critical readings of this chapter. Thank you to Mañanita Paez, Laura Martínez, Miguel Gutiérrez, and Isaura Peña for their support as research assistants for this project. Finally, thanks go to the faculty and staff at the UCLA César E. Chávez Department for Chicana and Chicano Studies, who over the years have provided mentorship and support for this project. Very special thanks to Abel Valenzuela Jr. and Eleuteria Hernández. 1. The building of the Staples Center between 1998 and 1999 and of L.A. Live beginning in 2005 led to the removal of working-class and working-poor families that lived in the apartment complexes in the immediate area. 2. This program is designed as one of UCLA’s yield events to recruit underrepresented students to accept their admission to UCLA. 3. See Maylei Blackwell’s text Chicana Power!: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement for examples of how Chicanas experienced and resisted patriarchy within the Chicano movement during the 1960s and 1970s. 4. The Chicanas interviewed for Dolores Delgado Bernal’s oral history project include Celeste Baca, Vickie Castro, Paula Crisostomo, Mita Cuaron, Tanya Luna Mount, Rosalinda M. González, Rachael Ochoa Cervera, and Cassandra Zacarías. 5. MEChA de UCLA and the Black Student Union (now, the African Student Union) were integral to the establishment of the High Potential Program. The program’s vision was to recruit and increase the number of Black and Chicana/o students at UCLA. The first year, 1968, they recruited one hundred Black and Chicana/o students to engage in a one-year program that would transition them into UCLA. This program was so successful that it became the Academic Advancement Program at UCLA in 1972. 6. The Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) was first established in 1969, at a similar time when the three other Ethnic Studies centers were established: American Indian Research Center, Asian American Research Center, and the African American Research Center. 7. See Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic for an overview of the genealogy and functions of CRT in the academy. 8. This theoretical framework is informed by conversations between Lluliana Alonso, Michaela Mares-Tamayo, Ryan E. Santos, Daniel G. Solórzano, and myself between the years 2009 and 2011. We were interested in pulling from existing literature to develop a theoretical framework that used CRT and centered the importance of historical analysis in educational research. 9. The thirty-nine participants in this study are: Anabel Marquez, Andrea Rich, Anthony Ortega, Aria Razfar, Blanca Gordo, Carol Peterson, Charles E. Young, Cindy Cruz, Cindy Montañez, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Cristine Soto DeBerry, Cynthia Orozco, David Emiliano Zapata Maldonado, Enrique Aranda, Frank Villalobos, Gabriela, Ghassan Hasan, Isidro Rodríguez, Jacqueline Carrasco-Mendoza, Joaquin Ochoa, Josefina Santiago, Luna, María Lara, María Soldatenko, Mario Valenzuela, Mike Soldatenko, Milo Alvarez, Raymond Rocco, Richard Chabran,

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Richard Morales, Ruben Lizardo, Ryan Yokota, Santiago Bernal, Saul Sarabia, Scott Waugh, Terri Griffin, Tom Hayden, Vilma Ortiz, and Vivien Bonzo. Most of the narrators used their legal name, and some decided to use a pseudonym. 10. Five of the thirty-nine narrators fit into two categories. All five were students in 1990 and graduated between 1990 and 1993. They were either hired as staff at UCLA or became community leaders. 11. Here, Alvarez is referring to Adolfo Bermeo, PhD, director of the Academic Advancement Program during that time. 12. A MEChistA is defined as a member of the organization MEChA. 13. Claudia Mitchel-Kernan was the appointed vice chancellor of Graduate Studies at UCLA and held oversight of the Ethnic Studies Research Centers. 14. Andrea Rich was the executive vice chancellor at UCLA between 1991 and 1995. 15. Scott Waugh was the dean of Social Sciences (where Chicana/o Studies is housed) between 1991 and 2007. Currently, he is the executive vice chancellor at UCLA. 16. Specifically, Montañez recalled MEChA de UCLA organized to protest Alpha Gamma Rho, a fraternity on campus whose initiation ceremony involved the singing of a song titled “Lupe” that demeaned Mexican women. The song describes Lupe as a sexually deviant person who is dead and rotting by the end of the song. The “Lupe” song is discussed at length in Deena González’s chapter “ ‘Lupe’s Song’: On the Origins of Mexican-Woman-Hating in the United States,” in Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities. This event politicized Montañez and led to her involvement on campus with Chicana/o Studies. 17. The official hunger strikers were Marcos Aguilar, Balvina Collazo, Juan Arturo Díaz López, María M. Lara, Joaquín Manuel Ochoa, Cindy Montañez, Norma Montañez, and Professor Jorge R. Mancillas. 18. There are two narrators that shared that they were solidarity hunger strikers. Anthony Ortega was from East Los Angeles College and joined the hunger strikers on day three through the end of the hunger strike. Anabel Marquez was an undergraduate student at UCLA and she fasted in solidarity for a few days to show support to the strikers. 19. COINTELPRO stands for Counter-Intelligence Program, a federal program set up to secretly monitor, harass, spy on, and provoke Chicana/o student movements (as well as other social movements). The COINTELPRO used FBI agents to infiltrate social movements, including student organizations. The director of it was J. Edgar Hoover. The function and purpose of the COINTELPRO is discussed at length by Carlos Muñoz Jr. in Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (2007). 20. I specifically use “LA Uprising,” and not “Rodney King Riots” to challenge mainstream narratives that place blame onto Black, Latina/o, and other marginalized communities for their resistance strategies to a history of police brutality and lack of resources. By choosing to name it an uprising, I shift power away from the criminalization of communities of color to the power of community resistance. 21. “Come on, we are going to tell everyone that they have to come to the march. They have to give us a Chicana/o Studies Department. And we are not going to leave you alone.”

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22. A majority of the narrators who were student leaders saw a connection between their activism in the 1990s to Arizona HB 2281. This legislation made the teaching of Mexican American Studies in public schools illegal. 23. Aída Hurtado and Camille Guerin-Gonzáles left the CII before it became a department. The remaining founding faculty members remain at the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

REFERENCES Acuña, Rodolfo. 2007. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 6th ed. New York: Pearson. Acuña, Rodolfo. 2011. The Making of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Aguilar-Hernández, José M. 2013. ¡Si Se Pudo!: A Critical Race History of the Movements for Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA, 1990–1993. PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Anderson, James D. 1988. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Anderson, James D. 1992. “Black Rural Communities and the Struggle for Education During the Age of Booker T. Washington, 1877–1915.” Peabody Journal of Education 67(4): 46–62. Anderson, James D. 1993. “Race, Meritocracy, and the American Academy during the Immediate Post–World War II Era.” History of Education Quarterly 33(2): 151–75. Anderson, James D. 1997. “Philanthropy, the State and the Development of Historically Black Public Colleges: The Case of Mississippi.” Minerva, A Review of Science, Learning and Policy 35(3): 295–309. Barnett, Teresa, and Chon Noriega, eds. 2013. Oral History and Communities of Color. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Press. Blackwell, Maylei. 2011. ¡Chicana Power!: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press. Chávez, Ernesto. 2002. My People First! Mi Raza Primero!: Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966–1978. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cohen, Deborah. 2013. Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic, eds. 2000. Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 1998. “Grassroots Leadership Reconceptualized: Chicana Oral Histories and the 1968 East Los Angeles School Blowouts.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 19(2): 113–42. Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 1998. “Using a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research.” Harvard Educational Review 68(4): 555–79. Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 1999. “Chicana/o Education from the Civil Rights Era to the Present.” In The Elusive Quest for Equality: 150 Years of Chicano/Chicana

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Education, edited by José F. Moreno, 77–108. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. Donato, Rubén. 1997. The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican Americans During the Civil Rights Era. New York: State University of New York Press. Donato, Rubén. 2008. Mexicans and Hispanos in Colorado Schools and Communities, 1920–1960. New York: State University of New York Press. Donato, Rubén. 2009. “Hispano Education and the Implications of Autonomy: Four School Systems in Southern Colorado, 1920–1963.” Harvard Educational Review 69(2): 117–50. El Plan de Santa Barbara. 1969. Santa Barbara, CA: La Causa Publications. Gómez-Quiñones, Juan. 1978. Mexican Students por la raza: The Chicano Student Movement in Southern California, 1967–1977. Santa Barbara, CA: La Causa Press. Gómez-Quiñones, Juan. 1990. Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise 1940–1990. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. González, Deena. 2003. “ ‘Lupe’s Song’: On the Origins of Mexican-Woman-Hating in the United States.” In Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities, edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Tomas Ybarra Frausto, 251–64. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. González, Gilbert. 1990. Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation. Philadelphia, PA: Balch Institute Press. Green, Anna, and Kathleen Troup, eds. 1999. The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory. New York: New York University Press. Jacobo, José-Rodolfo. 2004. Los Braceros: Memories of Bracero Workers, 1942–1964. San Diego, CA: Southern Border Press. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1998. “Just What Is Critical Race Theory and What’s It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 11(1): 7–24. MacDonald, Victoria M., ed. 2004. Latino Education in the United States: A Narrated History from 1513–2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Martinez, Elizabeth. 1998. De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Matsuda, Mari, Charles R. Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. 1993. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Moreno, José F., ed. 1999. The Elusive Quest for Equality: 150 years of Chicano/Chicana Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. Muñoz Jr., Carlos. 2007. Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement. London: Verso. Pardo, Mary. 1984. “A Selective Evaluation of El Plan de Santa Barbara.” La Gente (March/April): 14–15. Rhoads, Robert. 1998a. Freedom’s Web: Student Activism in an Age of Cultural Diversity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rhoads, Robert. 1998b. “Student Protest and Multicultural Reform: Making Sense of Campus Unrest in the 1990s.” The Journal of Higher Education 69(6): 621–46.

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Ruíz, Vicki. 1998. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press. Rury, John L., and Shirley A. Hill. 2012. The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling, 1940–1980: Closing the Graduation Gap. New York: Teachers College Press. San Miguel Jr., Guadalupe. 1986. “Status of the Historiography of Chicano Education: A Preliminary Analysis.” History of Education Quarterly 26(4): 523–36. San Miguel Jr., Guadalupe. 1987. “The Status of Historical Research on Chicano Education.” Review of Educational Research 57(4): 467–80. San Miguel Jr., Guadalupe. 2001a. Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. San Miguel Jr., Guadalupe. 2001b. Let All of Them Take Heed: Mexican Americans and the Quest for Educational Equality. Houston: University of Texas Press. Soldatenko, Michael. 2005. “Constructing Chicana and Chicano Studies: 1993 UCLA Conscious Students of Color Protest.” In Latino L.A.: Transformations, Communities, and Activism, edited by Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa, 246–77. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Solórzano, Daniel G. 1997. “Images and Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Racial Stereotyping, and Teacher Education.” Teacher Education Quarterly (Summer ): 5–19. Solórzano, Daniel G. 1998. “Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 8(1): 23–44. Solórzano, Daniel, Miguel Ceja, and Tara J. Yosso. 2001. “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.” Journal of Negro Education 69(1/2): 60–73. Solórzano, Daniel, and Dolores Delgado Bernal. 2001. “Examining Transformational Resistance Through a Critical Race and LatCrit Theory Framework: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context.” Urban Education 36(3): 308–42. Solórzano, Daniel, and Tara Yosso. 2001. “From Racial Stereotyping and Deficit Discourse: Toward a Critical Race Theory in Teacher Education.” Multicultural Education 9(fall): 1–8. Yosso, Tara J. 2006. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. New York: Routledge. Yosso, Tara J., Octavio Villalpando, Dolores Delgado Bernal, and Daniel G. Solórzano. 2001. “Critical Race Theory in Chicana/o Education.” National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Annual Conference Paper Proceedings. San José, CA: San Jose State University Scholar Works, 89–104.

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Teaching Ethnic Studies through SWAPA from California to New York: The Classroom as Healing Space Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.

Being in solidarity with each other is key to being successful in academe. We are each Other’s strongest allies. We need to look into each other’s eyes, acknowledge our mutual presence, and if possible, appropriate, and heartfelt, offer and seek support. We need to know that we have white allies and that many times, actively seeking what we needs yields positive results. We need to know that sometimes it takes courage not to fight. —de la tierra (2002, 367) I wanted the classroom to become not simply a site for professionalization or theoretical mastery, but a theater wherein social actors engage in a transformational experience that enables them to make the connections between theories and their lived experiences. —Cotera (2002) Like the majority of students in the United States, I went through a K–12 education system in the 1980s and 1990s that indoctrinated me in neoliberal, white supremacist, sexist, and homophobic ideas. Fortunately for me, I was introduced to Ethnic Studies at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), when I was an undergraduate student. I started as a graphic design major and an Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) student and took most general education classes in Chicana/o Studies. Eventually I changed my major to Spanish but I continued to take Chicana/o Studies as much as I could. Most of the Spanish professors who mentored me were Latin American leftist and/or feminists. Going through a nationalist phase initially, as can happen

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when you first become politicized, I was angry, proud, passionate, and wanted to make a difference in my community. I remember Professor Rudy Acuña telling us that once we graduated, it was our duty to give back to our communities. That message is marked indelibly in my mind. Once I became a school teacher I made it a point to introduce my students to the fundamentals of social justice—teaching them about César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and the farmworkers, about artists like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and to be critical of European explorers who were highly celebrated in California fifth grade curriculum, which I taught. I also learned from Sharon Donnan who became my mentor and friend. I was giving back to my community, as prompted by Acuña, and introducing Ethnic Studies concepts to my young students. In college, I also learned about feminisms through my Spanish professors. After completing my bachelor’s degree, I went back to CSUN to do a master’s degree, also in Spanish. The critical race, queer, and feminist components came together. I took courses at CSUN with Chicana and Latina professors such as Lara Medina, Edith Dimo, and Sirena Pellarolo. Between the two programs, Spanish and Chicana/o Studies, I was introduced to Gloria Anzal­ dúa, Cherríe Moraga, Latin American feminism, and leftist literature. Both in undergraduate and graduate school, what most resonated with me pedagogically, from a student perspective, were the courses where we could make connections to our own lives, where my queer and Chicano/Cubano identities were validated through readings and class discussions. For example, Pellarolo’s course on global activism was a turning point as we were able to connect what we were learning in the classroom with the communities in Los Angeles. We had been studying women in Bolivia, the Zapatistas, and South Central Farm. I knew then what a different kind of classroom looked like, similar to the classroom Chicana feminist María Cotera describes in the epigraph above. Pellarolo’s Latin American Theatre course was also instrumental as she took us to Plaza, a Latina lesbian club with one of the best drag shows in town. We had been studying drag as performance and the relevance of transgender Latinas and performance in Los Angeles. I share part of my own educational biography here because it paved the way for me to pursue a PhD in Chicana and Chicano Studies, understand the value of a decolonial education different from the one I received growing up, and see the connection between theory and praxis. My intent in this chapter is to contribute to the conversation about Ethnic Studies in the twenty-first century, particularly in regard to pedagogical strategies. I offer both a reflection on pedagogy and a personal narrative that highlights the impact of Ethnic Studies on my students and on myself as an educator who is often seen as Other due to my intersectional identities. As the late poet and educator, tatiana de la tierra (2002) argued, “Instructors who identify themselves and are identified as Other wear neon signs in

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academic settings” (364). As an openly queer, femme, Chicano professor of size who teaches and does research in Latina/o Studies and Jotería Studies, my neon sign is never off.1 This is the same for students who feel like they carry neon signs. This chapter is also a continuation of a previous article I published in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicana/o Studies where I discuss the value of SpokenWord-Art-Performance-As-Activism (SWAPA) to Jotería Studies, a hybrid, developing field of studies that stands at the intersection of Chicana/o Studies and LGBTQ Studies.2 Reflecting on the genealogy of Jotería Studies, Michael Hames-García suggests that the field is both “an emergent formation” and “not something new” (2014, 136–37). As I argued in that text, SWAPA is also Jotería Studies because it is an intersectional, decolonial pedagogical strategy based on the writings and teachings of women of color feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Chela Sandoval, Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, and Chrystos, among others (Alvarez 2014). These readings provide a platform to discuss sexuality and queer identity in relation to other identities we may embody. In the following pages, first, I provide the meaning of SWAPA and its usefulness for teaching Ethnic Studies and cite students’ samples of SWAPA. Second, I focus on my experience teaching Latina/o Studies in upstate New York, which, while I was initially hesitant about, proved to be effective, transformative, and healing. To borrow from Irene Lara (2002), these are my “healing sueños for academia” (433). To illustrate my point I describe two of the classes where I taught SWAPA: “Race, Gender, Class and Culture” and “Hip-Hop Culture.”3 In my discussion of the hip-hop class, I compare the SWAPA process to the idea of “one mic,” a physical or metaphorical microphone within rap and hiphop culture where everyone can find a voice, be heard, and be witnessed. By describing my experience with these two courses, I show the effectiveness of SWAPA in a predominately white institution and how the classroom can be a space of healing. tatiana de la tierra (2002) wrote, “Being one of few Others in academe can be a difficult and alienating experience. Racism, classism, and homophobia are present every step of the way. It takes grit to endure the isolation. It takes strength of character to proceed even when you are treated as a trespasser. It takes shape-shifting ability and wizardry to be able to walk and run with a nail in your shoe” (367). This chapter is about the role of SWAPA in the classroom and the ability to heal despite, as de la tierra described, walking and running “with a nail in your shoe.”

DEFINING SWAPA: A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL FOR ETHNIC STUDIES As I’ve written elsewhere “SWAPA is a rigorous pedagogical practice that teaches content, critical thinking, writing and oral communication skills

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while also fostering creativity and personal transformation” (Alvarez 2014, 222). I learned about SWAPA, a life-altering pedagogical strategy, in graduate school through the teachings of Chicana feminist and liberation philosopher Chela Sandoval. SWAPA is a pedagogical tool she developed and coined and is based on women of color’s writings, for example, Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Paula Gun Allen, and Trin Min Ha, to name a few. SWAPA is a manifestation of theories and “modes of consciousness,” such as Anzaldúa’s “mestiza consciousness,” Alice Walker’s “womanism,” “alter-nativity” by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Emma Pérez’s “third space feminism,” and Sandoval’s own “methodology of emancipation” or “differential consciousness.” A crucial piece is Anzaldúa’s “inner works, public acts” (Anzaldúa 2002, 540) and the concept of “I change myself, I change the world” (Anzaldúa 1999, 92). This means that in order to achieve transformation in the classroom, the streets, the world, we must do it within ourselves, first. In one of her syllabi, Sandoval asks, “How can studying these thinkers advance the understanding and practice of our own lives?” What does the SWAPA process actually look like in the classroom? How do you do it? As I describe in my 2014 article, after reading the assigned text for the day or the week, each student picks a quote that had an impact on her and writes a one- or two-page response. Students are encouraged to explain why the quote mattered to them—not in a mechanical, academic way, but by saying how they felt it in their body; this is the biggest challenge for students. This is where they have the most questions because they are not accustomed to “think” using their whole bodies, not just their brains. Once they have edited their responses, students take turns reading or performing them in front of the class. Before they begin the performance they do not contextualize or apologize for any shortcomings they anticipate; they simply begin. This is also challenging for them, as many have not yet learned to take ownership of their writing. The other students, as they listen, use three-by-five-inch cards or sticky notes to jot down what stands out for them about their classmate’s piece. They write down phrases, words, or ideas. During the witnessing stage of the ritual, the “shaman,” as Sandoval calls the performer of the SWAPA, stays in place while the witnesses share what they wrote on their witnessing cards. This is not a moment for them to critique, give advice, or ask questions, but simply to share the knowledge created in them, in their bodies, by the SWAPA they just witnessed. The shaman does not interrupt the witness or comment in response. She simply says thank you and takes her seat. The process can be tweaked as the facilitator feels fit, but the basic process is as described above. Below is an excerpt of a SWAPA written by William Troche, a queer Latino student in my Latina/o Theater and Performance class in New York:

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I’m Puerto Rican/Italian but the Puerto Rican comes before the Italian because I want people to recognize my values. I’m Puerto Rican/Italian when I feel gross that guys are turned on by my whiteness. As if my mixed ancestry is a fetish for him to exploit in me. I’m Puerto Rican/ Italian when my light skin alleviates my mother’s worries that I will have to face racial discrimination because of my skin color and I feel guilty for a “sin” I didn’t commit. I’m Puerto Rican/Italian/Spanish when I stay up at night and wonder if my past mothers were raped by my past fathers or did it happen the other way around? I’m Puerto Rican/Italian/Spanish when my Spanish professor can’t pronounce my last name despite flawlessly pronouncing all of the Anglo names and I have corrected him before. I’m Puerto Rican/Italian/Spanish when I learned Boricua is not a Spanish word but a word that comes from the Taíno’s native language and that makes me feel warm. Troche’s SWAPA, which he wrote inspired by a quote in the play A Chorus Line brings together his mixed race and queer identity and references colonization and conquest, as well as language and fetishization of brown bodies. SWAPA also helped Troche, who was a shy, introverted student, come out of his shell and discover his creative writing abilities. Another student, Shana Calhoun (pseudonym), who moved to New York from California, wrote the following: I sit in the back corner of this classroom every other day, trying to put myself into the shoes of others, listening to each of my classmate’s stories and the stories we read, and trying to become more aware of the issues others face. I do not face much discrimination as a white middleclass woman; however, I try to better myself and learn more by having open ears. Calhoun, like many of my white students, was able to unpack her layers of privilege by listening to others in class and learning how to be an ally. She was particularly adept at witnessing the other students’ stories, especially students of color whose lives differed greatly from hers. As Troche’s and Calhoun’s examples demonstrate, SWAPA guides students toward learning the course material while also being introspective about themselves, their classmates, and the world around them. In a lecture from San­ doval’s forthcoming book on shaman-witness ritual, which she included in one of her syllabi, she wrote, “Since 1970 feminists of color have argued that individual and social change will only occur when those who have been relegated to silence find access to political speech—and to one another.” She argues that

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Anzaldúa developed “a form of liberation philosophy,” which is the foundation of SWAPA. She continues, “Egalitarian forms of being and social organization will be created when human beings learn to self-consciously access and link our “inner worlds and public acts.” This linkage requires particular methods for accessing the powers of speech, language, performance, writing and community.” For Sandoval, SWAPA is this method, a way to bring together and transverse these different worlds. “The purpose of any Spoken-Word-Art-PerformanceActivism (SWAPA),” she posits, “is to generate a Reconquista of cultural space; to create new architecture of seeing; to provide ritualizations of the body/politic; and to generate legacies of interactivity, democratization, creativity and participation.” But how do we achieve this? This resonates with what De los Rios, Lopez, and Morrell (2015) argue when they say, “Ethnic Studies scholars and K–12 teachers also tap into the untold and untapped knowledge production of communities of color that is often absent from mainstream curricula at the secondary and postsecondary levels” (84). In my earlier essay on SWAPA, I argued that as a transformational and liberatory strategy that includes conversations around race, gender, sexuality, and other categories, SWAPA is jotería pedagogy, which stems from the intersection of Ethnic Studies and Queer Studies. In a similar vein, SWAPA is an effective tool to teach Ethnic Studies in an intersectional manner. I should note that Jotería Studies and Ethnic Studies are not mutually exclusive. SWAPA is a critical pedagogy based on embodied knowledge that allows for conversation about race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality among other factors. SWAPA as critical pedagogy, “can encourage students to consider situations of social and historical injustice and inspire them to consider how things could be otherwise” (Wanberg 2013, 33). It allows for a development of collective consciousness and an ability to listen to each other in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise and allows them to see their own privileges via listening to others’ stories. It also creates a conceptual apparatus for them to process knowledge differently given their positionality. María Cotera (2002) decribes her own pedagogical strategies below: Like many students, I began my graduate career naively believing in the power of knowledge to enact change; only to discover that even the most radical texts and ideas can lose some of their potency in the classroom setting. Indeed, the classroom (yes, even the feminist classroom) too often reinforces hierarchical relations based on class, race, gender, and cultural capital that make certain students feel marginalized or ill at ease. Just as often, the products of the classroom, the essays, research papers and presentations can seem like empty performances designed to please the professor or to display one’s command of theoretical discourse to the rest of the class (1).

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When Cotera writes that “the classroom (yes, even the feminist classroom) too often reinforces hierarchical relations based on class, race, gender, and cultural capital that make certain students feel marginalized or ill at ease,” she is referring to the fact that even though we are attempting to teach progressive ideas and fight against racism and sexism, our pedagogical approaches can often make students feel marginalized. Even with our best intentions, we can make students feel this way or the products can be “empty,” as she says. So we must ask ourselves: What kind of transformation is happening in my classroom and how? How do my assignments, my style, even the setup of the class, create democratic exchanges and interactive activities that lead to student learning? As I mention later in this chapter, even the most progressive educator can alienate students and reproduce hierarchies in the classroom. Our goal as professors, in my opinion, is not to alienate students and our colleagues, but rather to create bridges between each other. Of course, to make someone uncomfortable is different. In my experience, the greatest transformation happens when students feel discomfort; but there are ways to do it without shutting them out of the conversation. In my discussion of SWAPA below, I outline how knowledge can be a collective process and how that can enact the change María Cotera, and many of us, seek in our classrooms.

HOW I CAME TO SWAPA I have been teaching Ethnic Studies, specifically Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, for almost ten years now. I taught it to some degree when I was an elementary school teacher, modeled by my friend and mentor, Sharon Donnan, who I introduced earlier. Then as a teaching assistant and an instructor in graduate school, and now as an assistant professor in upstate New York, where I teach Latina/o Studies and Women of Color Feminisms. Throughout my teaching experience it has become evident that there is a need for pedagogical tools to decenter Eurocentric curriculum, teach about privilege, and develop an intersectional social justice–oriented collective consciousness. However, what has become clearer to me is that we need to listen to each other, to hear each other’s stories. We have so much to gain from each other. As multiple scholars argue, Ethnic Studies curriculum has positive outcomes. In general, Ethnic Studies curriculum, if taught in an inclusive way, leads to more democratic views on society and exposes students to analyses of power (Sleeter 2011). Christine E. Sleeter (2011) writes that Ethnic Studies is helpful because it empowers students of color, and for nonstudents of color it helps them to understand privilege and to be more critical. Students of color need to see their lives reflected in the curriculum. For white students, it is important that our strategies are not designed to shame them but to help them understand their privilege and how they benefit from racism and intersectional

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forms of oppression, including homophobia and transphobia. As de la tierra suggests above, we need our white allies. This is particularly true in a space when whites are the majority and can use their privilege to combat intersectional forms of oppression. Despite the scholarship supporting the effectiveness of Ethnic Studies and its growth in cities like Los Angeles and the Bay Area in California, this field is still an embattled zone in K–12 and postsecondary education. While studies show that everyone benefits from Ethnic Studies, many pundits still see it as reverse racism, as building ethnic resentment, as un-American, and as anti­ scholarly, as we saw in the struggles in Tucson, Arizona. Kyle Wanberg (2013), following Henry Giroux and Ondrej Kascak, argues, “Neoliberal reforms to pedagogy represent a critical shift in the operation of neoliberalism towards practices of governmentality that control access to forms of knowledge in the classroom. They operate by promoting neutrality on the basis of a color-blind society” (16). I agree with Wanberg and would add that the challenge is to develop pedagogy that is not only speaking back to neoliberalism but is decolonial, meaning that it is disrupting the mind/body binary that we practice even in antihegemonic curriculum and pedagogy. As I suggested earlier, the most progressive, anticapitalist educator can reproduce hierarchies, unconsciously operating through a prism of whiteness, and disempowering students, all in the name of social justice and antiracism. We must ask ourselves then: How do we uncover the systems of oppression and the systemic inequities that have marked communities of color, while also uncovering the emotional and physical traumas the scars left? How do we bring to the surface the very real lived experiences as the women in This Bridge Called My Back (2015) have expressed? How do we find productivity in this “internal whirlwind,” the state of Coatlicue, as Anzaldúa calls it (1999, 68). How do we avoid paralysis and find sequins in the rubble of abuse and trauma and its physical and mental effects? I am not only talking about the effects for People of Color, but also for white people who have believed the lies they’ve been told and the privileges they’ve inherited. SWAPA is one strategy to achieve this. Whatever the benefits of Ethnic Studies, we need to constantly develop transformative and intentional strategies to teach Ethnic Studies, Women of Color Feminisms, and Jotería Studies.4 SWAPA—a “radical vision for transformation”—is one modality, among many, to negotiate resistance from students (due to its structured rules) and to practice noncombative teaching (Anzaldúa 2002). In this process, I aim to have the kind of classroom Cotera describes above. Given the historical moment when Black churches are being burned, KKK is on the defense, and Donald Trump is speaking violently about Mexicans, we must confront these discourses in our classrooms, which sometimes require new ways of teaching and listening. Of course, Trump’s comments and the violence against Blacks are nothing new. These events, which

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are part of the Ethnic Studies culture wars, are connected to events in the past, from slavery, Jim Crow laws, to the 1960s segregation, to 1990s antiimmigrant legislations like Propositions 187 and 209, which banned affirmative action in California. Conscious of the pernicious nature of our historical moment and that this reactionary mentality is recycled rhetoric, how do we confront the “demons of history” as Susan Sánchez-Casal (2002) asks when reflecting on white resistance in the U.S. Latino Studies classroom. Old models of teaching may not be sufficient anymore. How do we employ in the twenty-first century Freireian forms of “pedagogy of the oppressed” (see Freire 2000). SWAPA is one pedagogical strategy among many models that take into consideration everyone’s social location, including privileged white students and that facilitates a conversation where we listen to each other. Often students in my classes say they never have the opportunity to talk to their peers, learn about them, or get to know each other. They lament that they are always lectured and talked down to. As educators of Ethnic Studies, we have to create an environment that fosters communication and listening, while addressing all forms of privilege and how they contribute to the oppression often discussed in Ethnic Studies classes. De los Rios, Lopez, and Morrell (2015), citing Morrell, posit, “Ethnic Studies curriculum must create avenues for students to see manifestations of love, which humanizes the learning environment and supports student learning (91). Teachers must also possess a love for the community they serve if they wish to impart in students this value. De los Rios et al. ask us to consider how love manifests itself in our teaching. In many ways SWAPA is a pedagogy of love. Focusing on K–12 programs in Los Angeles, De los Rios et al. discuss the impact of two programs, and using this critical pedagogy point to evidence of the transformation that takes place among the students. They cite that students from The Council of Youth Research (CYR), in particular, said that the program provided a “unique space for student voice inside of an education system where they often felt muted” (2015, 92). These findings are similar to students’ responses about SWAPA both in California and New York. SWAPA, a form of critical pedagogy, is one of the strategies that helps to fight what the editors of “White” Washing American Education aptly point out in the call for submissions for these volumes as perilous: “the white-washing of curriculum(s) at both the K–12 and university levels [that] teach students in this so-called post-racial era that racism and White Supremacy are no longer salient problems in society.”

TEACHING SWAPA IN CALIFORNIA In California I taught SWAPA at two different urban institutions. While teaching SWAPA was challenging, most students had been exposed to many

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of the things we talked about and had a more diverse experience. Another aspect that added to diversity was the fact that California had just became a majority Latino state, and almost one hundred of its post-baccalaureate schools, including community colleges, are Hispanic-serving institutions. Despite the progressive politics and diversity in California, I was confronted with students accustomed to traditional classrooms and the Cartesian division of mind, body, and spirit. Regardless of the challenges, the fact that California has many Latinos and other People of Color, and that it is my home, made it less scary than the idea of teaching in rural upstate New York. I thought being in a rural space, unknown to me, would be even harder, especially in the institution where I teach, which is more than 75% white. As I discovered, this wasn’t the case. When I first taught SWAPA at California State University, Fullerton it was in a Chicana/o History class. I wasn’t sure if it would work as I had only done it in a class on women of color feminisms when I was a teaching assistant for Sandoval. I started the class off with classic historical documents like chapters from Acuña’s Occupied America (1987) and “I am Joaquin” by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez, “El Plan de Santa Barbara,” and then moved on to Emma Perez’s The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (1999), and later Maylei Blackwell’s ¡Chicana Power!: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement (2011). It was a small class so it lent itself to SWAPA, which was extremely successful. Students learned that SWAPA could be a way to write their own history, herstory, or “queerstory.”5 The students wrote incredible pieces. The most important things they learned were how they were connected to Chicana/o history, that their experiences were inseparable from that history—just as the recent xenophobic comments and hate crimes in North Carolina against Muslim students are connected to the past. SWAPA made history relevant. Students were able to write new stories and new myths about themselves as Anzaldúa encourages us to do. They situated themselves within Chicano history and mainstream historical narratives. Students wrote their way out of the myths they’d been taught, or into histories of exclusion. For example, they wrote SWAPAs that challenged histories that demonized Mexicans and immigrants. Because they had to be introspective in their mythmaking process they also unveiled vulnerabilities and fears. For Dia de los muertos, students wrote beautiful SWAPAs, interweaving the person they wanted to honor with their family and collective histories.6 The way that SWAPA can be brought into the community is through spoken words events, workshops, and panels. For example, in Santa Barbara, Del Pueblo Café, a local Mexican restaurant, and the local community college hosted a fundraiser for undocumented high school students to attend college. Students from Sandoval’s class at UCSB were invited to perform. It was an effective way to link the Ethnic Studies and feminist classroom with

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the community. Another source of SWAPA’s reach is that once students and practitioners learn the process, they start their own SWAPA groups and teach it to others. Many use it in their presentations and workshops for classes or conferences.

TEACHING SWAPA IN NEW YORK When I was first designing my courses at this new institution, I was afraid to teach SWAPA in a predominately white school, afraid to “unleash the demons” in Sánchez-Casal’s (2002) words. I don’t mean only the demons of white students’ resistant to Ethnic Studies but also the demons carried by students of color whose traumas are the result of multiple systems of oppression. These students also carry the demons from their own family traumas. I also feared my own demons, especially from the challenges and insecurities of being in a new place. Despite this uneasiness and knowing that SWAPA is an effective pedagogical strategy, I took the chance. In an ideologically and racially embattled place like SUNY, Oneonta, where I teach, SWAPA is a way that students of color and white students who wouldn’t otherwise talk to each other, actually get to know each other. Although the students self-segregate in the classroom, SWAPA forces them to listen to each other in intentional ways. They learn about how different they are, about their similarities, and, for many, that perhaps they haven’t experienced certain things due to their social location and privilege. Although SUNY, Oneonta, is actually more diverse than other places, it is the whitest I have ever taught in, and the effects of white supremacy are felt daily by faculty, staff, and students of color.7 In an environment that is so racially divided, when a student of color can stand alone in a class of thirty, these strategies are vital; students may not even talk to each other. How do we teach valuable material while also helping students see themselves as connected, that all oppression is connected, that their privilege is indirectly or directly related to someone in a different geographical and social location? How do we facilitate the process of them hearing one another? Of seeing how privilege and oppression function on everyday levels and systematic levels? Given the turmoil in this institution and others where I have taught, I see how important these rituals are when you are the only one doing this work or when the campus culture and climate is the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. When the environment you work under fosters violent discourses that stifle different forms of communicating, it can be doubly emotionally taxing. I have to decide semester by semester if I want to teach SWAPA. When I do use this tool, the work is transformative, even healing, and I remember Anzaldúa’s (2009) mandate to “do work that matters. Vale la pena” (314).

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Race, Gender, Class, and Culture In the fall of my first year at SUNY, I taught SWAPA in an upper division general education course titled “Race, Gender, Class, and Culture,” which I structured as a hybrid introduction to Ethnic Studies with a focus on women of color feminisms and intersectionality. The course was designed as an intermediate-level course, although for many it served as an introduction. Some of the texts I taught were Women of Color and Feminism (2009) by Maythee Rojas; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1997), a memoir by bell hooks; The Panza Monologues (2014) by Virginia Grise; as well as journal articles, poetry, and excerpts from This Bridge Called My Back. I began the class teaching about intersectionality and privilege, using some introductory essays, especially focusing on the power of storytelling and writing and how women of color have used creative works to challenge systems of oppression and have their voices be heard. We did SWAPA weekly and at the end of the semester the students had to do a final project—an extended SWAPA of sorts where they had to filter who they are through what they learned in class. The results were phenomenal, a true assessment of the effectiveness of SWAPA. Students talked to me after class telling me how much they liked SWAPA because they were able to learn from each other and about themselves. Initially, the students were confused and didn’t know what to expect. They looked at me strangely, but we kept at it and as it usually happens the students loved the outcome. I could see the excitement but also the fear. Through this journey I was constantly reminded of Anzaldúa’s (2015) words when she says, “Touching is an act of making love, and if political touching is not made with love, no connections, no linking happens” (xxviii). This is the love De los Rios, Lopez, and Morrell believe students need to possess to succeed. One student in this class wrote a SWAPA and while she performed it she tore pieces of paper into a bowl, getting rid of her hurt. Another wrote of her father’s physical abuse, another of his brother’s drug addiction. Through these “autohistorias” or testimonios shared in class, we laughed, we cried, we learned from each other because we stepped into each other’s worlds. We “world traveled” in the words of Maria Lugones (1987). Judy Morales, a student in this class, wrote a beautiful SWAPA based on a quote by Gloria Anzaldúa: “Daily, I take my throat in my hands and squeeze until the cries pour out; my larynx and my soul sore from the constant struggle” (Anzaldúa 1999, 94). When I asked the student why she enjoyed SWAPA so much, she responded, “I felt like it was a place where I could heal.” This semester was unique and I felt especially vulnerable because it was my first semester at SUNY and because midway through the term, one of my sisters was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Although it was caught early and she didn’t need chemotherapy, it was a trying time for our family. She and I

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are extremely close and the thought of losing her and knowing she was in pain affected me in profound ways. Teaching a class on women of color that focused on survival and resilience while my own sister, a strong woman in my life, fought cancer was surreal. But my students and their own stories of struggle helped me through. While I hesitated sharing what was going on with my students, it was one of their stories that encouraged me. One student shared in a SWAPA about her sister overcoming cancer. Going to class and being so vulnerable for me was tough, but I imagined what it was like for them. Despite the obstacles, it was healing. My role in the classroom is complicated because I stand at many of the intersections we learn about in class. I cannot expect students to share who they are without also sharing a bit of myself. As a queer professor of color in a predominately white institution I am marked every day inside and outside the classroom and my positionality informs my pedagogy. As women of color feminists have taught us, “The personal is political.” Therefore my own identity is connected to students in complex ways. Often when a discussion about socioeconomic status comes up, I share how I grew up on public assistance and welfare. They look at me a bit perplexed at how a professor could be admitting that, but they appreciate it. Being vulnerable is hard, but in the process of SWAPA, it is essential—not for vulnerability’s sake—but because when you are having authentic, challenging conversations about race and sexuality and oppression, you tie it to your own experience and through the introspection, the layers peel off sometimes, naturally. SWAPA requires a level of trust among the practitioners. How can we be honest about race and its embodied effects if we don’t trust each other or at least acknowledge the distrust? SWAPA creates a path of trust and accountability. Everything in the texts we read told us to share our stories, make ourselves vulnerable, be fearless—so I too have to model that, otherwise I am not being truthful to them. Sharing with them my sister’s battle with cancer or the fact that my father was schizophrenic is part of creating a space of mutual trust that is required to teach SWAPA.

Hip-Hop Culture, Feminism, and SWAPA In the spring semester, I taught a course titled “Hip-Hop Culture” and used SWAPA. I designed the course to teach students to use a feminist queer of color perspective as a framework for understanding hip-hop culture. We looked at the vital role of storytelling, art, and poetry in hip-hop and how African American and Latina/o communities, especially during the birth of hip-hop, carved a space for themselves in society as they spoke their truth about racism and poverty. I assigned seminal essays by Jeff Chang, Tricia Rose, and books such as Maythee Rojas’s Women of Color and Feminism

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(2009), Sujatha Fernandes’s Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip-Hop Generation (2011), and Andreana Clay’s The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism, and Post–Civil Rights Politics (2012). Clay’s book in particular proved to be instrumental in connecting activism and youth to the ideals of hip-hop and that hip-hop isn’t only about the music but also the politics, communities, and so forth. In the process of teaching this class, I found SWAPA to be extremely appropriate and discovered that there were many commonalities between SWAPA and hip-hop and rap. For example, the role of the cipher in hip-hop is very similar to the SWAPA performer who is then witnessed by their peers. Another example is the idea of “one mic,” which George Yancy and Susan Hadley borrow from the rapper Nas’s hit song of the same name. As Yancy and Hadley (2002) write in their anthology on the therapeutic uses of rap and hip-hop, “The metaphor of ‘one mic’ is a source of empowerment” (xxvi) and SWAPA can be compared to the concept of “one mic” (xxiii). In SWAPA “one mic” is created through the witnessing process, which leads to finding links with each other and to eventual transformation, healing, and community building. While SWAPA is not a competitive practice, it does foster many of the skills within “one mic.” “Giving a person ‘one mic’ signifies an ethical movement toward others, of demonstrating a profound respect for the interiority of the lives of others. Giving ‘one mic’ is an invitation that suggests the power of a single voice. Using ‘one mic’ involves risk. [and] is a call to the other. Yet is does not presume that the person with the mic can speak for all who have been marginalized or deemed the subaltern. In fact, ‘one mic,’ says that you can speak for yourself ” (xxvi). These few descriptors of “one mic” are comparable to SWAPA. Students are encouraged to use I statements when writing their SWAPAs and during the witnessing process (the verbal, dialogic component), which I described earlier. They should not write in generalizations, but rather how they personally understand the material they read and how they experience the world based on their embodiment of the material. While in hip-hop culture, the rapping that takes place can often be in the streets or in a competition or club space; SWAPA occurs within a classroom, although it can happen anywhere depending on the facilitator or the practitioners. SWAPA can also be written and performed in the form of a song or a rap. Like “one mic” SWAPA also facilitated students’ understanding that they have a voice and it helped them see, as Yancy and Hadley put it, “the interiority of the lives of others.” It is evident then how this “mic,” and in our case SWAPA, encourages a person to find his/her voice and articulate issues that occlude self-growth, may also have implications for growth. Others may be encouraged to open up, to overcome fear of expression, and to begin to recognize their problems in the words of those with the “mic” (Yancy & Hadley 2002, xxvi). This

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element is very important to SWAPA as students who, by listening to each other’s stories, by witnessing each other’s differences, can find similarities and open up. Witnessing each other is what gives them courage to take the “mic,” share their story, and “recognize their problems” or in the case of the classes I teach, how their problems relate to the world around them and the effects of intersectional forms of oppression. Lastly, highlighting “one mic” in the context of rap, Yancy and Hadley (2002) argue that rap music’s valorization of one’s oral facility and storytelling provide a powerful impetus for finding one’s voice, making sense of one’s own narrative” (xxvi). Similarly they add “that rap and hip-hop provide structure within which youth can achieve a sense of themselves as creators” (xxvii). As my hip-hop students astutely pointed out, the classroom is a microcosm of the larger world, despite what neoliberal and “whitewashed” pedagogy tells us. The discourses in the media, divisions on the streets, and in self-segregated dining halls play out in the classroom. Students need tools to believe that their voices are important, that their experiences matter, that the ideas they generate from what they read are valuable. They need to be seen and heard and witnessed. The idea posited by Yancy and Hadley of youth achieving “a sense of themselves as creators” is paramount. Through SWAPA students are able to see how the feminist concepts of “theory in the flesh” and the “personal is political” are at work. They also see how their writing matters and how they can actually create something as they create a sense of self. For example, in order to connect SWAPA with poetry, I assigned Tupac Shakur’s posthumously published book of poetry The Rose That Grew from Concrete (1999). This text was instrumental in helping the students understand the connection. Many of them felt connected to the lyrics about love, survival, and being a Black man, as well as with the approachability of the text. Not all students understood the connections between SWAPA, hip-hop, and feminism, but most did, as was demonstrated by their final projects and the overall engagement with the class. In the final projects, I asked them to add another dimension to SWAPA and use visuals, sound, and acting. The format changed and there was less structure. One white woman wrote a monologue based on the voices of three women of different racial, sexual, and class backgrounds, another Chicano student wrote a SWAPA as an ode to his father who taught him the value of labor and working the land, and an African American man wrote a rap song about masculinity. I thought it would be challenging to teach SWAPA in a class on hip-hop and in largely white upstate New York, but the pedagogy worked across the board because it asks for students to connect their lives to the material and to look at broad structural and systemic issues affecting students of color, and how white students benefit from privilege. SWAPA helps address regionally specific issues too, like when Nataliah, one of my Black students, talked

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about gentrification and drugs in her community in New York City or when another student stated that before coming to college she had never interacted with People of Color. Often, the SWAPAs unfolded in ways I hadn’t imagined, leading my students to write personal and critically engaged pieces that helped others in the class understand the material through embodied knowledge. Because I believe they truly understood the transformative tenets behind SWAPA, they became increasingly invested and confident about speaking their truth.

CONCLUSION As mainstream media outlets, including social media, tell us the culture wars continue, Ethnic Studies finds itself at the center. In an era of mediated images and sound bites, authentic dialogue is important in the classroom and beyond. The field of Ethnic Studies was developed through and because of social justice activism. Minus a few academic departments that forgot their mission as they became more beauracratized and neoliberalized or that have become stagnant due to outdated, nationalist, and narrow approaches, Ethnic Studies as a whole has kept social justice as its main objective. Thanks to the activism of young people fighting for curricular inclusion and faculty and staff who looked like them and reflected their values, Ethnic Studies continues to be one of the sites in academia where truth is spoken to power. From a pedagogical standpoint it is important for students to know the importance of Ethnic Studies and its value to them as students and global citizens. Whether they are students of color or white allies, Ethnic Studies provides the tools to break down structures of power and create a transformative education, if the right pedagogical tools are used. The content alone is not enough. It is necessary that students (and teachers) learn to listen to each other, to make connections between themselves and the local and the global worlds they inhabit. SWAPA is one way to achieve this goal within Ethnic Studies. My goal in this chapter has been to engage in the ongoing dialogue that this anthology addresses concerning Ethnic Studies and culture wars in the twenty-first century. I’ve offered a few ideas about resisting the whitewashing of education and neoliberal pedagogy as we move toward more embodied ways of doing decolonial education. In particular, I have focused on the need for pedagogical strategies that move beyond the traditional classroom. I’ve presented both a reflection on pedagogy and a personal narrative that highlights the impact of Ethnic Studies on my students and on myself. This, of courses, raises questions about the role of SWAPA in the Ethnic Studies classroom. Can we measure how SWAPA helps us deal with the emotional traumas of a racist, xenophobic, homophobic education system? How can SWAPA be instituted to a further degree in classrooms and other educational settings? Is

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SWAPA a viable tool to be used beyond the humanities and social sciences, for example, in STEM classrooms? Can SWAPA, through its intense writing and performance components, create linkages between Ethnic Studies departments and more traditional departments such as English and theater? Hopefully these questions can create more dialogue and plans of action. In sum, SWAPA teaches students the tenet forwarded by Gloria Anzaldúa, “I change myself, I change the world.” It is no longer enough to present these facts to students. They see and hear them in the media albeit uncritically. Yet many students have been so sheltered by their privilege or by their fear that they cannot hear. They don’t know how to listen to each other—to “world travel” into each other, as Maria Lugones writes. We need ways to teach Ethnic Studies that are about witnessing and collective consciousness. As my discussion shows, whether it is in urban southern California or rural upstate New York, SWAPA is a pedagogical tool that is effective and can transform the classroom into a space of healing. Teaching SWAPA from coast to coast has been both surprising and fulfilling and has shown me that it is a “pedagogy of hope,” because despite all the violence and trauma, I still have hope.

NOTES 1. I choose to use the term “person of size” instead of fat or overweight, which are stigmatizing words to describe overweight individuals. Another term I often use is “llenos de vida,” used by Anita Revilla Tijerina, education scholar and professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She learned this phrase during her research at UCLA with the organization Raza Womyn, specifically from Delia Herrera. 2. For more on Jotería Studies, see “Dossier: Jotería Studies,” 2014. 3. I also used SWAPA as a pedagogical tool in my Latina/o Theater and Performance class, but I do not focus on that class here. 4. One innovative form of pedagogy being used in a transnational setting is Marisa Belausteguigoitia at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) who is teaching the texts of Gloria Anzaldúa and a tool called “pedagogia de desobediencia.” 5. “Queerstory” is a term that means the history of queer folks. It was coined by students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, around 2006. 6. I cited several of these students in my previous essay on SWAPA. See Alvarez (2014). 7. For example, in 1992, SUNY, Oneonta, experienced the Black List during which African American students were profiled after an elderly white woman was assaulted and claimed her assailant was young and Black because she saw his hand. This led to an administrator providing the police with a list of all African American men on campus. This incident caused much pain and trauma.

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REFERENCES Acuña, Rodolfo. 1987. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. New York: Harper Collins. Alvarez, Eddy Francisco, Jr. 2014. “SWAPA, Jotería Studies and Sandovalian Approaches to Liberation.” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies (215–27)39: 1. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 2015. “Acts of Healing.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings by Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, xxvii–xxviii. New York: SUNY Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1999. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 2009. “Let Us Be the Healing of the Wound.” In The Gloria An­ zaldúa Reader, edited by Ana Louise Keating, 303–14. Durham: Duke University Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Ana Louise Keating. 2002. This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. New York: Routledge. Blackwell, Maylei. 2011. ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press. Clay, Andreana. 2012. The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism, and Post–Civil Rights Politics. New York: New York University Press. Cotera, María. 2002. “Creating a ‘Beloved Community’ in the Classroom: US—Third World Feminist Pedagogy.” Introduction to Intersections: Essays on Community, Identity & the Limits of Feminism. http://sitemaker.umich.edu/intersections/home. de la tierra, tatiana. 2002. “Aliens and Others in Search of a Tribe in Academia.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Ana Louise Keating, 358–68. New York: Routledge. De los Rios, Cati V., Jorge López, and Ernest Morrell. 2015. “Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Race: Ethnic Studies and Literacies of Power in High School Classrooms.” Race and Social Problems 7:1: 84–96. Fernandes, Sujatha. 2011. Close to the Edge: In Search of the Hip Hop Generation. New York: Verso. Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury. Grise, Virginia, and Irma Mayorga. 2014. The Panza Monologues. Austin: University of Texas Press. Hames-García, Michael. 2014. “Jotería Studies or the Political is Personal.” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 39(1): 135–41. hooks, bell. 1997. Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood. New York: Holt Paperbacks. Lara, Irene. 2002. “Healing Sueños for Academia.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Ana Louise Keating, 433–38. New York: Routledge. Lugones, Maria. 1987. “Playfulness, World-Travelling and Loving Perception.” Hypatia 2(2): 3–19. Pérez, Emma. 1999. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Rojas, Maythee. 2009. Women of Color and Feminism. Berkeley: Seal Press.

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Sánchez-Casal, Susan. 2002. “Unleashing the Demons of History: White Resistance in the U.S. Latino Studies Classroom.” In Twenty-First Century Feminist Classrooms: Pedagogies of Identity and Difference, edited by Amie A. MacDonald and Susan Sánchez-Casal, 59–85. New York: Palgrave. Shakur, Tupac. 1999. The Rose That Grew from Concrete. New York: MTV Books. Sleeter, Christine E. 2011. “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review.” National Education Association Research Department. Wanberg, Kyle. 2013. “Pedagogy Against the State: The Ban on Ethnic Studies in Arizona.” Journal of Pedagogy 4(1): 15–35. Yancy, George, and Susan Hadley. 2002. “Introduction: Give ’em One Mic: The Therapeutic Agency of Rap and Hip-Hop.” In Therapeutic Uses of Rap and HipHop, edited by Susan Hadley and George Yancy, xxiii–xlii. New York: Routledge.

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On Ethnic Studies, Trauma, and Trigger Warnings Araceli Esparza

Trauma has an adhesive quality that furnishes it with its tenacious complexity. That it both makes us and breaks us is one of its most potent mindfucks: against our consent and despite our protests trauma does more than compromise us. It also constitutes us. And in doing both, it also further rattles and perturbs us. . . . however much we work through it, trauma always marks us. Of course the degree to which we are marked by it varies as does the extent to which we are able to manage its affective and embodied residues. Indeed, it is thus that we may become capable of living, actually of even living well. But even in the best of cases, our traumata never quite leave us alone. —Avgi Saketopoulou (2014) In the early 2010s, public conversations about trigger warnings and pedagogy gained momentum in news publications and on university campuses, especially among student activists, administrators, and scholars in the humanities.1 Often such discussions move between resistance to the establishment of a “nanny university” that is purported to be too invested in protecting students, on the one hand, and concerns about the dismissal of the traumatizing gender and sexual violence experienced by students on and off college campuses on the other. I have become increasingly interested in these debates because of the material I typically assign in my courses as an Ethnic and Gender Studies scholar who focuses on literary representations of violence and holds an appointment in an English department at a public university. Over the last several years, one thing I immediately noticed was the way these debates seem to center on white women students and the sexual violence they have survived and are attempting to come to terms with. As I read

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many of these articles, essays, reports, blogs, and associated comments, I often wonder where questions about racial and ethnic violence stand in these debates. To date, it seems the trauma of racial violence has only tangentially been considered in these discussions, and the possibility of intersectionally grappling with trauma is even further from the center of these conversations. However, Ethnic Studies scholars and educators should and in many instances already have taken up the task of critically considering the relationship between pedagogical approach, course content, and the students who enroll in Ethnic Studies courses. For those who teach at universities with large numbers of first-generation students of color, often the students we teach have experienced or witnessed the types of racial violence we teach about in Ethnic Studies courses. With this in mind this chapter discusses the trigger warning debates and works toward an understanding of why these conversations should matter to Ethnic Studies scholars. This project is fundamentally informed by my unwavering commitment to educational justice and to providing opportunities for success to all students. Educational justice requires that we dismantle the Eurocentric and heteropatriarchal logics that structure the university in order to recognize the complex humanity of our students. This entails teaching from a place of love and respect, even when we do not necessarily like what transpires in our classrooms (see hooks 1994). For many, this is an everyday struggle because the sites where we teach are structured through Eurocentric logics that do not assume people of color or working-class people will be students or faculty. How then do we respond to white supremacist, homophobic, and sexist practices within the university? How do we place such practices within the larger context of colonialism and racist violence? Educational justice requires pedagogical approaches that refuse to simply rehearse the histories of racial violence that are often centered in Ethnic Studies curriculum. Rather, a pedagogy of justice requires that as educators we engage in and encourage our students to participate in practices of resistance and decolonial thinking. Within the conversation about trigger warnings, although student demands for trigger warnings may initially appear to be a practice of resistance, such demands do not reflect decolonial thinking—in that they call upon institutions to take steps that will neither decolonize the university nor address the systematic causes of trauma. I do not support administrative policies that require trigger warnings. However, that is not because I am being dismissive of students or constructing them, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s words, as “the problem student,” “the consuming student, the censoring student, the over-sensitive student, and the complaining students” (Ahmed 2015). Rather, I want to think more critically about demands for trigger warnings. Who is making them? For what purpose? And why? If indeed it is predominantly white women students who are survivors of sexual violence that have been at the center of many organizing

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efforts, what does this suggest about the prevalence of sexual violence? Clearly, sexual violence is recognizable as a significant problem on and off university campuses. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014), as many as one in five women report being survivors of such violence. However, what other types of violence are automatically deemed as having a legitimate place in this discussion? In a mainstream university context where whiteness, U.S. citizenship, English language fluency, and middle-class upbringing are some of the normative subjectivities that are assumed, do racial violence, undocumented status, and poverty have a place in this discussion? While it may be the case that, as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) argues, “The classroom is not the appropriate venue to treat PTSD,” recognizing that students have histories and lives before and outside our classrooms is essential and it is important to make educational success accessible to all students, even those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health conditions. Women of color theorists have contended with the politics of knowledge production and pedagogical commitments in a myriad of ways. Foundational texts such as This Bridge Called My Back, the Combahee River Collective’s “A Black Feminist Statement,” and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women” offer a language for discussing the complexities of violence and social injustice. In so doing, they argue for recognizing people as complex human beings and by extension for building movements that recognize the interlocking oppressions women of color, and people of color more generally, contend with. These interventions are useful to this discussion about trigger warnings and the Ethnic Studies classroom because they open a space for questions such as: How do we teach Ethnic Studies courses while keeping in mind that students are complex beings with backgrounds that might be reflected in the histories of racial and gender violence such classes tend to address? How can we make space for teaching about and discussing such histories without perpetrating further violence by carelessly reinjuring wounds and reopening traumas? Intersectionality allows us to ask, Where do students of color, undocumented students, and/or queer students stand in the trigger warning debates? As is often the case when it comes to people of color and other marginalized groups within the academy, I find that such students are missing from these conversations. Research in the field of psychology reveals that racial and ethnic identity can help shape how survivors of trauma cope with experiences of violence and whether or not they develop PTSD and/or General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Further, research shows that social context and mental health are intimately related. This matters because Latinas/os and Black people are more likely to be low-income earners, increasing their probability of witnessing or experiencing

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violent events and the likelihood that they will experience trauma during their lifetime (Gapen et. al. 2011, 31–37; Horowitz, Weine & Jekel 1995, 1353–61). In one study, Mark Gapen et al. (2011) discuss the relationship between how residents perceive physical and social order in their neighborhood (threats to physical safety, vandalism), neighborhood cohesion (social ties, informal networks), and the mental health of low-income African Americans in urban neighborhoods. Similarly, Carmela Alcántara, Melinda D. Casement, and Roberto Lewis-Fernández (2013) found that Latinas/os are at higher conditional risk for PTSD when they experience traumatic events (107–19). Kelly H. Koo et al. (2014) found higher risk of PTSD among Asian American women college students who had histories of sexual trauma when compared to white women who have experienced sexual violence (337–44). Karyn Horowitz, Stevan Weine, and James Jekel (1995) reported similar findings when they interviewed girls and young women who were largely nonwhite (twelve to twenty-one years old, 81% African American, 15% Latina, and 3% white) living in what the authors characterize as urban New Haven, Connecticut. Such violence included shootings, stabbings, beatings, sexual assault, domestic violence, accidental death, muggings, and the death of loved ones and enemies. This list of violent events suggests that current discussions about trauma and pedagogy do not take into account the complexity of experiences of violence and the compounding effects faced by working-class people of color. Relatedly, discussions about trigger warnings in the classroom fail to acknowledge the possibility of collective trauma when violence is pervasive as part of everyday life. Together these factors should prompt us to consider how we teach, what we teach, and who our students are. As discussed in a recent statement published by the AAUP (2014), Oberlin College’s attempt to develop a trigger warning policy is one of the few places where race and colonialism are explicitly mentioned in this debate: Oberlin College’s original policy (since tabled to allow for further debate in the face of faculty opposition) is an example of the range of possible trigger topics: “racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression.” It went on to say that a novel like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart might “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.” It further cautioned faculty to “[r]emove triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.” However, as I discuss below, this tabled policy does not reflect a complex understanding of trauma and exposure to triggers, because as the AAUP (2014) notes,

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Trigger warnings are an inadequate and diversionary response. Medical research suggests that triggers for individuals can be unpredictable, dependent on networks of association. So color, taste, smell, and sound may lead to flashbacks and panic attacks as often as the mention of actual forms of violence such as rape and war. The range of any student’s sensitivity is thus impossible to anticipate. But if trigger warnings are required or expected, anything in a classroom that elicits a traumatic response could potentially expose teachers to all manner of discipline and punishment. This statement makes clear that demands for trigger warnings are not based on proven mental health treatment options and do not anticipate the existing racial inequalities they will worsen. For instance, trauma research suggests that exposure, as discussed further below, may be beneficial to trauma survivors because it can help them develop coping mechanisms. One of the reasons to note this is that when trauma is triggered most survivors do not organize, advocate, or give voice to their experiences. Most survivors withdraw, shut down, and are rendered speechless. Based on conversations with colleagues, I have learned that many Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies educators have had students who disappear from their classrooms only to return weeks later during office hours to explain that a particular unit had caused anxiety, depression, or triggered some other symptom of their trauma. These moments are important because they reveal that students are able to confront their feelings and, although most faculty are not trained mental health professionals, we can help students find resources and a language for naming and speaking about trauma so that they can work toward building whole healthy lives.

WHAT ARE THE STAKES OF TRIGGER WARNINGS? In Internet conversations about trigger warnings, they are typically understood as a statement or notice that precedes an article, video, image, or other content that includes depictions or discussions that might be potentially distressing to survivors of various types of violence, including, but not limited to, war, sexual violence, or domestic violence. These warnings are often straightforward and are intended to give survivors a choice when it comes to being exposed to material that might trigger symptoms of PTSD, GAD, or other mental health conditions. For example, a warning might read: “Trigger warning: Sexual assault descriptions.” This discussion has arrived on university campuses, because students across the United States are organizing to demand that faculty use trigger warnings on course syllabi when material might trigger mental health conditions. As I have already mentioned, often

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those at the forefront of such organizing efforts are white women students who are survivors of sexual violence. It is interesting to note that this is reminiscent of a long history where white women are constructed as fragile and in need of protection. In contrast, I have not found instances where students have organized to demand similar warnings when it comes to depictions or discussions of racial violence, such as genocide, colonialism, or slavery. Some reasons for this may be that students who might be triggered by such material have been educated within a Eurocentric educational system and have developed coping mechanisms in response to constantly having to navigate such discussions. Additionally, while such students may find conversations about racial violence difficult, they may also appreciate learning about histories of violence that are often left out of the curriculum and that speak to their own life experiences. In the 2014 AAUP statement previously mentioned, the organization provides some background about current demands for trigger warnings on university campuses: The specific call for “trigger warnings” began in the blogosphere as a caution about graphic descriptions of rape on feminist sites, and has now migrated to university campuses in the form of requirements or proposals that students be alerted to all manner of topics that some believe may deeply offend and even set off a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) response in some individuals. The language the AAUP uses in their statement—“all manner of topics that some believe may deeply offend”—suggests that calls for trigger warnings are unfocused and not rooted in mental health science. After all, being offended does not represent a mental health diagnosis. This exemplifies one of the major problems with current demands for trigger warnings in that such calls run the risk of encompassing everything from taking offense to disagreeing with course content. This makes faculty who teach controversial courses— including Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies faculty—increasingly vulnerable to surveillance, censorship, and reprimands. As several essays in this collection document, faculty of color and Ethnic Studies scholars endure hostile conditions on many university campuses. Thus, while I do not necessarily oppose alerting students about course content that might cause distress, I do not support the compulsory institutionalization of such notices. I have several reasons for taking this position, including my distrust of the inherent Eurocentric and bureaucratic underpinnings of the university and the reality that such policies do not materially address the mental health of students by making adequate support services available (see Chatterjee & Maira 2014; Ferguson 2012). Trigger warnings also threaten to

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put faculty—especially already vulnerable faculty, including women, faculty of color, tenure-track faculty, and lecturers—at risk of surveillance, censorship, and even legal consequences. There are many examples that underscore the risks that faculty in already precarious positions face, for instance, the Steven Salaita case in which Professor Salaita was fired from a tenured position at the University of Illinois after tweeting criticism of the Israeli government’s attacks on Gaza in 2014 (Palumbo-Liu 2015); Shannon Gibney, a tenured professor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, who was reprimanded after students filed a complaint about her lectures on structural racism (Flaherty 2013); and the many experiences recounted in publications such as Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira’s The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent and Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs et al.’s Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. When it comes to trigger warnings more specifically, Lisa Duggan comments in her blog post on the dangers that institutionalizing trigger warnings pose for already vulnerable faculty: In the case of trigger warnings, once they become the province of student senates, administrative bodies and university policies, they run the risk of marking and targeting the courses on gender and sexuality, critical race theory, colonial and postcolonial studies. These courses can be marked as the location of materials that endanger student welfare, and administrators may police their content in the name of “protecting” students. Rather than attend to the sources of inequality, conflict and trauma, some students may be motivated to look for triggers in books and films and ask for protection rather than resources and redress. (Duggan 2014) Ann Pellegrini’s 2014 blog post also notes, “an unintended but entirely predictable effect of trigger warnings is to intensify the precariousness of precisely those faculty who are most likely to empathize with student concerns about the violence and traumatic afterlife of homophobia, misogyny, racism, transphobia, and the like.” Thus, while demands for trigger warnings often focus on creating university learning spaces where those who are trauma survivors are accommodated, such warnings can also have unintended consequences for other vulnerable populations. That is, they may make it easier for universities to defund courses in Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies or to sanitize such courses to the point where the material Ethnic and Gender Studies scholars are committed to teaching is no longer allowed. I contend that instead of following the route of institutionalizing mandatory trigger warnings, we have to confront the questions faculty in these fields

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have grappled with for many years. How can we deliver the material we are dedicated to teaching while ensuring that we are creating healthy learning environments for all students? I am not arguing for the creation of “safe spaces,” but rather learning environments in which traumas are recognized and students are given options, resources, and support when material (re)opens unhealed wounds. The reason I do not argue for safe space is because, as Christina Hanhardt (2013) shows in her book Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, such space does not exist and the concept is often used to legitimize violence against vulnerable populations in order to secure imagined “safety” for others. Katherine McKittrick, in her 2014 blog post, adds insight to this claim within educational spaces, stating: I wonder a lot about why the classroom should be safe. It isn’t safe. I am not sure what safe learning looks like because the kinds of questions that need to be (and are) asked, across a range of disciplines and interdisciplines, necessarily attend to violence and sadness and the struggle for life. How could teaching narratives of sadness ever, under any circumstances, be safe!? . . . The only people harmed in this process [of seeking safe space] are students of colour, faculty of colour, and those who are the victims of potential yet unspoken intolerance. I call this a white fantasy because, at least for me, only someone with racial privilege would assume that the classroom could be a site of safety! McKittrick’s insights about race, privilege, and safety in educational spaces are instructive to this discussion about Ethnic Studies and trigger warnings in that they explicitly state that many students and faculty of color do not feel safe and that calling for safety alone will not create justice. In contrast to demands for trigger warnings, one way that faculty and students of color have organized around these concerns is through demands for more conversations and courses about racial violence, not less. Some survivors of sexual violence who are also university faculty have openly described how the traumas they carry have impacted their lives as students and teachers. Angela Shaw-Thornburg, who was raped when she was twelve years old, recalls her experiences with blackouts, apathy, and other PTSD symptoms as an undergraduate and graduate student who was assigned texts that represented rape. Shaw-Thornburg was moved to write about her experiences as a trauma survivor in the academy in light of the ongoing debates about trigger-warnings, recalling: I finally decide to post a comment on The Chronicle’s Vitae to try to explain: Telling students who come to our classes with severe traumas that often leave them with post-traumatic stress disorder to just suck it

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up is not a reasonable response to what trauma does to you. These students deserve the chance to take care of themselves. I couch my argument in terms of best practices for adapting teaching for students with invisible disabilities. (Shaw-Thornburg 2014) Based on her experiences as a trauma survivor, Shaw-Thornburg calls for the creation of spaces where all students can succeed, seeking educational access for all. However, it is unclear what that would look like in practice. Perhaps this is because one approach would not help accommodate all trauma survivors. For instance, Duggan recounts that her own traumas are not triggered by something predictable. Rather, she writes, “The only PTSD-like symptom I developed during my journey through childhood was the propensity to have a panic attack when I heard a barking dog. It is very very difficult to avoid the sound of barking dogs! Anywhere, any time, I might hear them. So I needed strategies to cope with the panic attacks, which could happen anywhere” (2014). Duggan’s experiences underscore that having access to ways of processing and making sense of trauma so that effective coping mechanisms can be developed is essential for trauma survivors. Further, it also dispels the idea that triggers are predictable and avoidable for trauma survivors. If this is the case, an organizing strategy that would be more effective than demanding trigger warnings would be to create adequate—affordable, accessible, culturally relevant, destigmatized—mental health aid for survivors of trauma who need and choose to seek out such services. Adequate health services should be made available to students on university campuses; presumably this would mean that students diagnosed with PTSD, GAD, or other trauma-induced conditions would have access to a variety of mental health services and that appropriate accommodations could be formally requested from professors just as allowances are made for those with learning and physical disabilities. Currently, comprehensive and accessible mental health treatment is far from a reality on university campuses. In 2012, the American Psychological Association (2012) reported on the inadequacy of mental health services available to students on college campuses with only 56% of four-year colleges and 13% of community colleges offering on-campus psychiatric services. Limited mental health services on college campuses are even more alarming when put in the context of a 2012 American College Health Association report that found 31.3% of students “felt so depressed that it was difficult to function” and 50.7% reported “overwhelming anxiety.” In stark contrast, only 11.9% of those who participated in the study reported being diagnosed or treated for anxiety in the past twelve months and 10.9% reported being treated or diagnosed with depression (15). Presumably that means that the majority of students who reported depression or were overwhelmingly anxious did not receive any mental health services or that their condition did not

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meet the guidelines for such a diagnosis. Thus, organizing to demand such services might be a more effective way to help trauma survivors process their experiences than trigger warnings would be. In a 2014 blog post titled “Beyond the Pros and Cons of Trigger Warnings,” Andrea Smith adds another dimension to this discussion. Centering the work of antiviolence organizers, she recalls: This intervention [trigger warnings] emerged from the recognition by many of us in the anti-violence movement that we were building a movement that continued to structurally marginalize survivors by privatizing healing. We had built movements that were supposed to be led by bad-ass organizers who were “healed” and thus had their acts together. If we in fact did not have our act together, this was an indication that we had not healed sufficiently to be part of the movement. (Smith 2014) Smith’s insights about healing and belonging provide a critical contribution to the discussion of trigger warnings on university campuses by calling for a collective understanding of healing that is critical of prevailing ideas about healing that understand it as a necessarily private process. This departs dramatically from most conversations about trigger warnings. For example, while the 2014 AAUP statement discussed above recognizes that some students need mental health services, it simultaneously establishes that such treatment is a private matter and that the public space of the classroom is no place for processing trauma and healing. Certainly, there are valid reasons for not placing the responsibility for such endeavors on faculty since most professors are not trained mental health providers. However, if we are committed to social justice as Ethnic Studies educators the idea of collective healing is useful, because “these [antiviolence] movements have demonstrated that historical trauma impacts us on the individual and collective level and that we cannot decolonize without centering the impact of trauma in our organizing [and teaching]” (Smith 2014). As Smith argues: In the end, the question is not really about the pros and cons of trigger words. The questions are around, what are the organizing practices and strategies for building movements that recognize that settler colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy have not left us unscathed? How do we create spaces to experiment with different strategies, as well as spaces to openly assess and change these strategies as they inevitably become co-opted? How do we create movements that make us collectively accountable for healing from individual and collective trauma? How do we create critical intellectual spaces that recognize that intellectual work is not disembodied and without material

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effects? How do we collectively reduce harm in our intellectual and political spaces? And finally, how can we build healing movements for liberation that can include us as we actually are rather than as the peoples we are supposed to be? (Smith 2014) These questions become increasingly relevant if we recognize that while the university is often touted as a space of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and objectivity, there are multiple forms of violence that faculty and students experience both inside and outside the classroom. Often such experiences are explained away as aberrations that do not reflect the present role of the university in society as a bastion of inclusivity and understanding. However, for those who are simultaneously invisible and hypervisible in educational spaces such claims do not reflect their everyday experiences. While student-organizing efforts in favor of trigger warnings should be taken seriously, such a call is not without problems. As Andrea Smith (2014) notes, “it is certainly the case that this intervention [trigger warnings] can be and is misused. I have seen white students say they are ‘triggered’ by having to hear about racism. The intervention of trigger warnings also often shifts from asserting a public space to organize around trauma to creating a safe space from it.” This echoes Jack Halberstam’s (2014) concern that “As reductive as such responses to aesthetic and academic material have become, so have definitions of trauma been over-simplified within these contexts.” Halberstam further adds: Claims about being triggered work off literalist notions of emotional pain and cast traumatic events as barely buried hurt that can easily resurface in relation to any kind of representation or association that resembles or even merely represents the theme of the original painful experience. . . . Where once we saw traumatic recall as a set of enigmatic symptoms moving through the body, now people reduce the resurfacing of a painful memory to the catch all term of “trigger,” imagining that emotional pain is somehow similar to a pulled muscle—as something that hurts whenever it is deployed, and as an injury that requires protection. (2014) Like Halberstam, I suggest that we need to think about trauma more critically in terms of contending with the differences between being a trauma survivor and feeling uncomfortable about the content discussed in the classroom. As both Smith and McKittrick suggest, there is a component of racial privilege in the assumption that certain people should be protected from learning about the multiple forms of violence that prevail in the world we live in, even while other people experience that violence on a daily basis.

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In my own ethnic literature courses, there is usually at least one student who does not want to engage in conversations about racism, colonialism, slavery, or heteropatriarchy. This is often reflected in their engagement with the material during class meetings and on assignments, as well as on teaching evaluations where claims of bias may appear. However, in every class I teach there are also students who yearn to learn about and discuss representations of racial violence in the United States and frequently those students have experienced such violence firsthand. While these students may also be trauma survivors they are not actively making demands to be warned about such material. However, it is still important to proceed with care, letting students know that assigned readings may be difficult to contend with and that racist, sexist, and/or homophobic language will not be tolerated in the classroom. Further, for those students who have intense psychological responses to assigned readings, I make it clear that they have options if the material at hand is causing them to feel distressed or exacerbating mental health conditions. For example, I had one student request my signature so that they could withdraw from a class where we were reading a novel that was causing them to vomit, lose sleep, have nightmares, develop rashes, and experience other mental health distress symptoms.2 I told the student that if they were sure about their decision I would sign the withdrawal form. However, I also gave them the option of completing the course via alternative assignments, including reading another novel, conducting library research, and writing an essay. Clearly, the student was not merely uncomfortable with the material and within a university setting that touts individual achievement and hard work as the only way to survive they thought their only option was to drop the course, which was only adding to their anxiety and stress due to graduation timeline expectations. In this case, the student decided to complete the alternative assignments, which meant more work for them and for me, but allowed them to successfully complete the course. This practice of care and caring allowed the student to continue being a student instead of encouraging them to withdraw from the conversation altogether, which in the end would have created greater stress and anxiety for them. Of course, for a variety of reasons, not all students will take this route and that must also be recognized as a possibility. While most discussions about trigger warnings tend to assume that exposure to reminders of a traumatic event can only have negative consequences for trauma survivors, research shows that exposure can have a therapeutic effect for some. As psychoanalyst Avgi Saketopoulou explains: Amidst all this complexity we cannot lose track of the fact that inherent in the call for trigger warnings is the understandable wish to avoid pain. Pain is not always the de facto villain it’s made out to be. Counterintuitive

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though it may sound, the avoidance of pain oftentimes encysts and calcifies trauma. . . . Avoidance reinforces and buttresses the experience of helplessness that originates in the traumatic event and which may or not necessarily continue to apply in the present. Avoidance can then generalize to a more overall phobic and timid approach to the world. (Saketopoulou 2014) While the vast majority of university faculty are not trained or equipped to provide exposure therapy in the classroom, it is noteworthy that avoidance can inhibit the development of healthy coping mechanisms. Thus, readings and discussions that help trauma survivors process traumatic experiences, such as those that take place in college classrooms, may help them develop a healthier approach to life. In terms of teaching, Saketopoulou’s discussion of the importance of processing trauma reminds me of the appreciation some students express after reading novels that help them make sense of their own traumatic experiences and/or those of their family members. In what appears to be a therapeutic process, students, especially students of color, tend to value having a space where their histories are recognized and discussed. This seems to be especially true for students who are taking an Ethnic Studies course for the first time. For example, when I assign novels that depict the Central American civil wars, such as The Tattooed Soldier by Héctor Tobar, many students find that such literary representations of war and displacement help them process and understand the violence they and/or their family members have endured (Tobar 2000). In these cases, students often share that the trauma of war is not something that is openly discussed in their family and that having a space where this topic is open to reflection helps them process how they grew up and the way their family interacts. Many undocumented students and recent immigrants also express having a similar experience when they read about the experience of undocumented immigration in texts such as Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway (2005).

CONCLUSION As I note above, many discussions about trigger warnings focus on sexual violence, leaving out or at times it seems purposely disregarding the traumas produced by racist violence. Most people in the United States have at least heard about incident after incident of racist violence: recent examples include the murderous violence police inflict upon Black and Brown people on a daily basis; the murder of nine Black people by a white supremacist at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; and the U.S. government’s response to the Central American child refugee crisis. For each of these widely publicized murders and detentions there are

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many others we do not know about and about which we will likely never hear. For every murdered, tortured, beaten, bloodied, arrested, deported person we know about, there are thousands of others whose names we will never collectively speak. I bring this up because as educators it is important to keep in mind that those who have experienced these traumas may be our students too. Many of our students grow up in violent environments that scar and traumatize them and they enter our classrooms with those wounds. As educators it is critical that we recognize and address the realities of the students we teach and not the students we imagine we should be teaching. Educational justice would mean that all students, including survivors of racial violence, are given a chance to thrive in our classrooms and on our campuses. Instead of excluding such students by claiming that if they are not prepared to engage with course material due to trauma they may be too emotionally “damaged” to be in a college classroom, we can challenge ourselves as educators to create spaces for collectivized healing and critical processing. For those of us who teach Ethnic Studies, and in the humanities more generally whether in an Ethnic Studies department or not, filling multiple roles for our students is often part of the job. Many Ethnic Studies educators fill multiple positions for students in need, including the roles of teacher, mentor, advisor, and counselor. Though most professors and teachers are not trained in mental health counseling, nonetheless this often becomes one of the functions we fulfill. Students grappling with a wide range of traumatizing experiences seem to find faculty who they think will understand what they are going through. Such students often base their perception of how understanding a particular professor will be on the types of material that is covered in class and the perceived accessibility of faculty members. Thus, Ethnic Studies classrooms often become a space for the forms of collective healing Smith calls for in the blog post discussed above. Since many Ethnic Studies faculty and scholars of color experience the university as a precarious site and teach about histories of racial violence, we are in a position to develop teaching approaches that facilitate collectivized healing in the classroom through discussions that allow for processing trauma using a critical lens. Even while the scholarship we produce and pedagogical interventions we make may not be valued within the academic spaces we inhabit, such work is worth undertaking in order to create the possibilities for transformation within our students, ourselves, our classrooms, and the university. Beyond the classroom, it is important to ensure that students have access to adequate mental health services on and off college campuses. Thus, facilitating educational justice and collectivized healing in classrooms extends beyond the university and the types of bureaucratic solutions trigger warnings represent. Instead, we should struggle to institute structural changes that address the material causes of trauma so that there will be no such thing as a trauma

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survivor. In the context of ongoing racial, gender, sexual, and homophobic violence it is reasonable for students to request spaces where self-care and collective healing are possible. However, this cannot be easily achieved with trigger warnings or any other singular practice. Rather, a pedagogy of care requires spaces for discussion and for listening where all students and faculty are recognized as complex beings, recognizing the possibility that some may be trauma survivors. Thus, even if they are unspeakable and not visible or understandable, it is critical to make space for the wounds our students may carry.

NOTES 1. For instance, see the Atlantic, the New York Times, the New Republic, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Nation, the Washington Post, and the New Inquiry. Campuses that have received the most media attention include the University of California, Santa Barbara, Oberlin College, University of Michigan, Bryn Mawr College, Rutgers University, Scripps College, and Wellesley College, among others. 2. I have decided to use plural pronouns to discuss this example in order to protect student anonymity.

REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara. 2015, June 29. “Against Students.” The New Inquiry. http://thenewin quiry.com/essays/against-students/. Alcántara, Carmela, Melynda D. Casement, and Roberto Lewis-Fernández. 2013. “Conditional Risk for PTSD Among Latinos: A Systematic Review of Racial/ ethnic Differences and Sociocultural Explanations.” Clinical Psychology Review 33(1): 107–19. American Association of University Professors. 2014, August. “On Trigger Warnings.” http://www.aaup.org/report/trigger-warnings. American College Health Association. 2102. “American College Health Association— National College Health Assessment II: Reference Group Executive Summary.” Hanover, MD: American College Health Association. http://www.acha-ncha.org /docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_ReferenceGroup_ExecutiveSummary_Spring2012.pdf. American Psychological Association. 2012. “Mental health services remain scarce at community colleges.” American Psychological Association 43(4). http://www.apa .org/monitor/2012/04/community-colleges.aspx. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2014. “Understanding Sexual Violence: Fact Sheet.” http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/sv-factsheet.pdf. Chatterjee, Piya, and Sunaina Maira, eds. 2014. The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Combahee River Collective. 1979. “A Black Feminist Statement.” In Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, edited by Zillah R. Eisenstein, 362–72. New York: Monthly Review Press.

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Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–99. Duggan, Lisa. 2014, November 23. “On Trauma and Trigger Warnings, in Three Parts.” Bully Bloggers (blog). https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/on -trauma-and-trigger-warnings-in-three-parts/. Ferguson, Roderick A. 2012. The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Difference. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Flaherty, Colleen. 2013, December 3. “Taboo Subject?” Inside Higher Ed. https://www .insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/03/black-professors-essay-raises-questions -why-she-was-investigated-after-offending. Gapen, Mark et al. 2011. “Perceived Neighborhood Disorder, Community Cohesion, and PTSD Symptoms Among Low-Income African Americans in an Urban Health Setting.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 81(1): 31–37. Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella et al., eds. 2012. Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press. Halberstam, Jack. 2014, July 5. “You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma.” Bully Bloggers (blog). https://bullybloggers.wordpress .com/tag/feminist-humor/. Hanhardt, Christina. 2013. Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence. Durham: Duke University Press. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. Horowitz, Karyn, Stevan Weine, and James Jekel. 1995. “PTSD Symptoms in Urban Adolescent Girls: Compounded Community Trauma.” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 34(10): 1353–61. Koo, Kelly H. et al. 2014. “Posttraumatic Cognitions, Somatization, and PTSD Severity Among Asian American and White College Women with Sexual Trauma Histories.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 6(4): 337–44. McKittrick, Katherine. 2014, December 17. “Katherine McKittrick, author of Demonic Grounds, on Trigger Warnings.” Bully Bloggers (blog). https://bullybloggers .wordpress.com/2014/12/17/katherine-mckittrick-author-of-demonic-grounds -on-trigger-warnings/. Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press. Palumbo-Liu, David. 2015, August 11. “Steven Salaita, Professor Fired for ‘Uncivil’ Tweets, Vindicated in Federal Court.” The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article /steven-salaita-professor-fired-for-uncivil-tweets-vindicated-in-federal-court/. Pellegrini, Ann. 2014, November 27. “Classrooms and Their Dissed Contents.” Bully Bloggers (blog). https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/?s=Classrooms+and+Their+ Dissed+Contents&submit=Search. Saketopoulou, Avgi. 2014, December 6. “Trauma Lives Us: Affective Excess, Safe Spaces and the Erasure of Subjectivity.” Bully Bloggers (blog). https://bullybloggers .wordpress.com/2014/12/06/trauma-lives-us-affective-excess-safe-spaces-and-the -erasure-of-subjectivity/.

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Shaw-Thornburg, Angela. 2014, June 16. “This is a Trigger Warning.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/article/This-Is-a-Trigger-Warning/147031. Smith, Andrea. 2014, July 13. “Beyond the Pros and Cons of Trigger Warnings: Collectivizing Healing.” Andrea Smith’s Blog: The 18 year plan to end global oppression (blog). https://andrea366.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/beyond-the-pros-and-cons-of -trigger-warnings-collectivizing-healing/. Tobar, Héctor. 2000. The Tattooed Soldier. New York: Penguin Books. Urrea, Luis Alberto. 2005. The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. New York: Back Bay Books.

Index

Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 44, 50, 51, 53 Academic Labor in Dark Times (Giroux), 13 Acuña, Rodolfo F., xv, xviii–xix, 100, 143, 146, 198, 205, 253, 315 Adams, Frankie, 51 Adegbile, Debo, 50 “African Americans, Police Brutality, and the U.S. Criminal Justice System Historical Perspectives” (Taylor), 44 Africana Studies, 42, 46 Africana/Ethnic Studies and Carceral Studies, 45 Aguilar-Hernández, José M., xxvi, xxvii, 316 Ahmed, Sara, 298 Aiyetoro, Adwoa, 44 Alarcón, Norma, 31 Alcántara, Carmela, 300 Aldama, Arturo J., 30, 32 Alejo, Luis, 64 Alkalimat, Abdul, xv alternative citizenships, 23, 23–24, 25, 26 Alumbaugh, Jennifer “Jenuine,” 209–210 Alvarez, Eddy, xxvii, 317 Alvarez, Milo, 259 Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (Rodriguez), 206

American Association of University Professors (AAUP), 299, 300, 302, 306, 311 American Book Company, 61 American College Health Association, 305, 311 American Cultures requirement, ix, x American imagination, nightmare image of, 27 American Psychological Association, 305 Anderson, Benedict, 21 Anderson, Malcolm, 27 antiprison Africana pedagogy, Ethnic Studies, and the undoing of the carceral states, 41–56; Africana Studies and, 42; Black radical activism, 51; Bukhari, Safiya, 47, 48–49, 51; Challenging Punishment conference, 44–45; conclusion concerning, 53–54; Historians Against the Carceral State group, 45; insurrectional knowledge(s), institutionalizing, 51–53; overview of, 41–42; political prisoners, 46–51; Sentencing Project on, 43; Shakur, Assata, 41, 47, 48; Shoatz, Russell Maroon, 49–50; State of the Field conference, 44; studying prisons in a post-movement context, 43– 46

316Index

Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles (Acuña), 198 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 19, 284, 287, 288, 293 Anzaldúa’s “inner works, public acts,” 280 Applied Africana Studies, 41 Aranda, Enrique, 264, 265 Arizona, state of: the American Dream and, 57–60; antagonistic names for, 70; borderlands critique of SB 1070, 28–29; censorship, 60–61; Chicanas/ os and HB 2281, 30; House Bill 2281 (HB 2281), 19, 20, 23, 24, 33, 34, 70, 90n4, 150; Huppenthal, John, 20; Mexican American Studies curriculum, 19; Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, 70; politics of education, 116; Proposition (203), 69; Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 69; reputation of, 69, 89, 90n1; Senate Bill 1070, 19, 20, 23, 24, 34, 69; Senate Bill 1318, 69; Tucson Unified School District, 19, 35, 60, 61, 65, 70. See also Northern Arizona University, challenges and opportunities of teaching Ethnic Studies at; theories, experiences, and perspectives teaching Ethnic Studies in Arizona Arizona Critical Ethnic Studies (AZCES) collective, 88 artivism, xxv, 204, 206, 207, 210, 216, 224 Asian American Political Alliance, xii Asian American Studies (AAS)/Ethnic Studies (ES), 221, 222 Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS), xxvi, 221, 222, 223 “Autoethnography, a Chicana’s Methodological Research Tool” (Chávez), 122 Aztlán Underground, 211

Bakke decision (1978), 7–8 Bañales, Xamuel, xx, 79, 81–82, 82, 88, 316 Barnett, Teresa, 257 Barrio Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture (Villa), 200–201 “A Barrio Playground” (Hernandez), 207 barriology, 200–201, 206 Belausteguigoitia, Marisa, 293n4 Bell, Derrick, 44, 123 Bennett, William, 7 Bernal, Dolores Delgado, 252, 317 “Beyond the Pros and Cons of Trigger Warnings” (Smith), 306 Black and Latino/a Studies programs and departments, 90n9 Black Ice magazine, 112n8 the Black List, 293n7 Black Lives Matter movement, x, xxviii, 54n3 Black News, 47 Black Panther Party (BPP), 48, 53 Black political prisoners, xviii Black print culture, 47 Black radical activism, 51 The Black Scholar, 47 Black Student Union, xii, 112n8, 271n5 Black Unity Council, 49 Bloom, Allan, 7 Blowouts of 1968, 251, 252 Bois, W. E. B. Du, 117 Boni Maroons, 49 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 157 Border Patrol, 28 “borderdom”: alternative citizenship: Arizona SB 1070 and HB 2281, 23, 24; borderlands pedagogy and, 26; citizenship as “borderdom,” 29–30; Martinez, Oscar J., 23; notion of “borderdom,” 23; relationship between borderlands and ethnic identities, 23–24; the term border,

Index317

23; the term borderland, 23; traditional citizenship and, 36 borderlands and ethnic identities, relationship between, 23–24 borderlands critique of SB 1070, 28–29; Border Patrol, 28; Heater, Derek, 28; immigration policies, 28, 29; Kearney, Michael, 28; legal pretexts, 29; social construction of the “illegal alien,” 29; traditional citizenship, 28 borderlands pedagogy, 24–26; “borderdom” and, 26; Giroux, Henry, 25; hooks, bell, 26; Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 24; purpose of, 25. See also immigration and borderlands pedagogy borders, regulation of, 21 Bowling Green State University, 143, 147n1 Bracero Program, 202, 250 Brewer, Janice, 69, 70 Bridges to Success Program, 117 Brown v. Board of Education decision, 161n4 Buck, Marilyn, 53 Buenavista, Tracy Lachica, 224, 229, 238, 315 Bukhari, Safiya, 47, 48–49, 51 Cacho, Lisa, 70 California: Academic Senate at the California State University at Los Angeles, 89; California Community College system, 128; California Master Plan for Higher Education, 128; California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 99, 174, 199, 221; California State University system, 128, 178, 226; “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed and Sung” (a festival), 207; census data of 2000 concerning, 205; Citrus College, Glendora, 117; Ethnic Studies curriculum, 64; Ethnic Studies in, 119; Ethnic Studies

requirements, 89; Los Angeles, 98; Los Angeles Unified School Board of Education and Ethnic Studies, 64; Propositions 187, 209 and 227, x, 205; “Save Ethnic Studies Campaign,” 65; teaching SWAPA in, 285–287; Watts Riots, 205. See also Ethnic Studies research, art activism, and the struggle for space and place in the Northeast San Fernando Valley California State University systems, 178 Carceral Studies, 42 Carceral Studies and Africana/Ethnic Studies, 45, 52 Carrasco, Jacqueline, 265 Casement, Melinda D., 300 Castañeda, Jorge, 27 Ceja, Karina, 210, 211, 212 “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed and Sung” (festival), 207 censorship, 60–63, 180; Horne, Tom, 63; National Association of Scholars, 62; pornography and, 180; Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 62; state of Texas, 62–63; Texas Education Agency (TEA), 61; Tucson Unified School District, 60, 61 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 299, 311 Central America, 97, 99, 101 Central American Studies, 99, 100– 101, 111nn2 and 4 Central American United Student Association (CAUSA), 10l, 111n5 Central Park Five, 158, 162n16 César E. Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction (CII), 249, 251, 267–268, 270 César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, 270, 273n23 César E. Chávez Learning Academies, 202–203

318Index

César E. Chávez Memorial Park, 203 Chabran, Richard, 260 Challenging Punishment conference, 44–45 Charter Books, 61 Chatterjee, Piya, 129, 303 Chávez, César E., 202, 205, 249, 253 Chávez, Minerva S., 122 Chesler, Mark A., 76, 79 Chicana feminist perspective, 31–32 Chicana/o as a political term, 30 Chicana/o cultural identities and borderlands pedagogy, 29–34; Arizona HB 2281 and, 30; Chicana/o borderlands pedagogy, 32–34; Chicanas/os as a political term, 30; citizenship as borderdom, 29–30; creation of the other American, 30– 32; educational citizenship, 34 Chicana/o movement and barriology legacy, 201–204; artivism, 204; Bracero Program, 202; César E. Chávez Learning Academies, 202–203; César E. Chávez Memorial Park, 203; Chávez, César E., 202; Chicano mural movement, 203–204; definition of the Chicana/o movement, 201–202; Huerta, Dolores, 202; National Farm Worker Association (NFWA), 202; nuevo arte del pueblo, 204; United Farm Workers of America (UFW), 202–203 Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), 253, 271n6 Chronicle of Education Almanac, 135 citizenship: Anderson, Benedict, 21; borderdom and, 29–30, 36; “citizenism,” 22; educational citizenship, 24; Jenson, Jane, 22; membership, 22; microtransformations, 24; “the Other” and, 29–30; Papillon, Martin, 22; power of, 21; regulation of borders and, 21; Revilla, Anita Tijerina, 22; traditional, 22, 28, 36

Citrus College, Glendora, California, 117 classic historical documents, 286 Cleaver, Kathleen, 51 Closing of the American Mind (Bloom), 7 COINTELPRO, 265, 272n19 Collins, Patricia Hill, 189 Combahee River Collective, 299, 311 “Compton Cookout” party, 79 Conscious Students of Color (CSC), 260 contemporary student campus protests, xxviii “The Corporatization of Higher Education” (Mills), 104–105 corporatization of universities, 4, 95, 101, 105, 109, 111n4 Cotera, María, 277, 282–283 The Council of Youth Research (CYR), 285 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 44 The Crisis, 47 critical pedagogy: basic tenants of, 152; defined, 144; Latina/o Studies in the Midwest, teaching of, 143–144; and the struggle for democratic public life, 13–15; teaching race and, 151–152; Wink, Joan, on, 151 critical race theory (CRT): autoethnography, 123; counter storytelling, 124; critical race history (CRH) and, 255–256; Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (Delgardo and Stefancic), 271n1; Ethnic Studies and, 122; genealogy of, 254; overview of, 151–152; purpose of, 228; tenants of, 255–256; tenets of, 152 CSUN Asian American Studies: “What We Dream, What We Want, What We Do,” xxvi, 221–248; Asian American Studies (AAS), 221; Asian American Studies (AAS)/ Ethnic Studies (ES), 221, 222, 243,

Index319

245; Asian American Studies Conference (AAAS), 221–222; Asian American Studies Conference (AAAS), attendance of, 227–231; California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 221, 226; catalysts and motivations, 226–231; conclusion concerning, 245; Ethnic Studies at CSUN, 226; Ethnic Studies (ES), 222, 224, 226, 227; Fonua, Ilaisaane, 233; Fonua, Ilaisaane and Louise, 225; Guzman, Kevin, 223, 224; institutionalization of AAS, 222; interpersonal transformation and community building, 235–236; Jones, Samantha, 224–225, 232–233, 234–235, 236; Kann, Presley, 224, 231, 237, 238, 241, 244; Karen American community, 224–225, 235, 236; Lai, Clem, xxvi, 223, 224, 228; Lan, Lawrence, 223, 224, 240, 242, 243; lessons learned from AAAS conference, 243–245; Masequesmay, Gina, 228, 230; networking, off site, 238–241; networking, on site, 236–237; Nguyen, Alina, 224, 234, 235, 244; Omatsu, Glenn, 228; overview of, 221–222; Pancho, Greg, 223, 230, 234, 242, 244; personal transformation and finding voice, 232–235; Quiambao, Chelley, 223; Quintanilla, Carolina, 223, 224, 233–234, 241, 242, 244; Roundtable One presenters, 224–225; Roundtable Two presenters, 225; roundtable participants, 223–224; roundtables, description of, 223–225; Shrake, Eunai, 223; transformative experience of AAAS conference, 231–243; transgressing space and AAAS, 241–243; Vallega, Emilyn, 223, 232, 234, 237, 238–239, 240, 244 Cuba, 41

cultural broker, 190, 193n2 cultural nationalism, xiv, xv Darder, Antonia, xv, 144, 146, 316 Davis, Angela, xv de la tierra, tatiana, 277, 278, 279, 284 De los Rios, Cati, 282, 285, 288 Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority (Wise), 150 death penalty, 47, 104 DeBerry, Cristine Soto, 262, 265, 268 decolonization, epistemic, 85–88; “check-in” or “check-out” activities, 86; collective group agreement, 86; “the community” and “local politics,” 88; ego-based attachments, 87; Ethnic Studies Ambassadors project, 88; Ethnic Studies and, 85–86; “Racism and the Power of Film,” 88; student-centered approach to, 86 Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Smith), 198 Delgado, Richard, 123 Delgado Bernal, Dolores, 252, 254, 256, 257 The Devil’s Highway (Urrea), 309 Díaz-Cotto, Juanita, 52, 189, 191 Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Schlesinger), 62 Dividio, John, 121 Dong, Harvey and Bea, 239, 241 D’Souza, Dinesh, 7 Duggan, Lisa, 303, 305 Dunayevskaya, Raya, 16 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 156 Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 235, 238, 239 economic Darwinism, 4–5, 8, 12, 14 education, concept of, 104 educational citizenship, 20, 24, 34 Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and Ethnic Studies, xxiv, 174–177, 277

320Index

El Plan de Santa Barbara (EPSB), 251–252, 259 El Renacimiento, xii Elenes, C. Alejandra, 34 Elijah, Soffiyah, 44 Ellis, Carolyn, 122 emotional labor concept, 156 epistemology and Ethnic Studies: community versus mainstream, 168–172; anticolonialism, 170; community projects, 170; community-based epistemology, 171–172; definition of Ethnic Studies, 168–169; epistemology defined, 169; examples of in universities, 169–170; key elements in the epistemology of Ethnic Studies., 171–172; as liberatory, 170; mainstream epistemology, 170–171; uniqueness of Ethnic Studies, 169 equal opportunity program and Ethnic Studies: relevant education, 174–177 Espinoza, Paul, 202 Ethnic Studies: Africana Studies and, 42; in Arizona, 35–36; birth of, 32; challenges to the validity and rigor of, 127–131; culture wars in higher education, contesting the, xiii–xvi; definition of, xi; development of professional organizations, xii; epistemic decolonization and, 85–88; as epistemic necessity, 89–90; impact on students, 118–119; inferiorization of, 133–134; learning communities and, 117–118; political and theoretical ships in academia, xvi–xix; professional organizations, xii–xiii; research and community engagement, xxiii–xxv; San Francisco State University, xii; student activism and classroom pedagogy, xxv–xxviii; teaching Ethnic Studies at white institutions, xix–xxiii; Third World Liberation Front (TWLF)., xii; transnational

Ethnic Studies, xv. See also service and struggle in Ethnic Studies: a composite autoethnography Ethnic Studies Ambassadors project, 75, 88 Ethnic Studies research, art activism, and the struggle for space and place in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, 195–219; artivism, 204, 206, 207, 210, 216; barriology, 200–201, 206; barriology legacy: the Chicana/o movement, 201–204; Ceja, Karina, 210, 211, 212; community history[ies] and the Northeast San Fernando Valley, 197–199; Hernandez, Angel F., 214; Mazahua, Yaotl, 210–211; Montes, Felicia, 212; Moraga, Cherríe, 212; Northeast San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, 197, 204–208; nuevo arte del pueblo, 204; “Omeyocan ” (Ortega), 207–208; overview of, 196–197; Pacoima, 197, 205; Ponce, Mary Helen, 205–206; Rodriguez, Luis J., 206; Rodriguez, Trini, 210, 211, 215; Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community 196–197, 209, 213, 216; Soto, Violet, 213–214; Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore, 197, 204–208; Villa, Raúl, 200–201; women and, 213; “Xochipilli” (Friend), 208; Young Warriors program, 215; Zaragoza, Mayra, 215 Ethnic Studies, trauma, and trigger warnings, 297–313; Alcántara, Carmela, 300; American Association of University Professors (AAUP), 299, 306, 311; American Association of University Professors (AAUP) on trigger warnings, 300–301, 302, 306; American Psychological Association, 305; “Beyond the Pros and Cons of Trigger Warnings” (Smith), 306;

Index321

Casement, Melinda D., 300; collective healing, 306–307, 310, 311; conclusion concerning, 309– 311; demands for trigger warnings, 301–302; Duggan, Lisa, 303, 305; exposure therapy, 308–309; faculty risks, 303; foundational texts for discussing the complexities of violence and social injustice, 299; Gapen, Mark, 300; General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), 299; Gibney, Shannon, 303; Halberstam, Jack, 307; Hanhardt, Christina, on safe space, 304; Horowitz, Karyn, 300; institutionalized trigger warnings, 302–304; Jekel, James, 300; Koo, Kelly H., 300; Lewis-Fernández, Roberto, 300; McKittrick, Katherine, on safe space, 304; mental health, 305–306, 310; Oberlin College, 300; overview of, 297–299; Pellegrini, Ann, on trigger warnings, 303; posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 299, 300, 304–305; racist violence, 298, 309–310; safe space, 304; Saketopoulou, Avgi, 297, 308– 309; Salaita, Steven, 303; sexual violence, 299, 300, 302, 304–305; Shaw-Thornburg, Angela, and trauma survival, 304–305; Smith, Andrea, 306–307, 310; social justice, 306; student-organizing efforts, 305– 307; trigger warnings and pedagogy, 297–301; trigger warnings, stakes of, 301–309; war, trauma of, 309; Weine, Stevan, 300; white women and sexual violence, 300, 302 Evers, Medgar, 153 exclusion and borders, 27 Fanon, Franz, 31 Faulkner, William, 154 Feminist Wire online, 50 Fenton, Edwin, 65 Fernandes, Leela, 87

Filipino American Collegiate Endeavor, xii Fisk, Milton, 16 Foley D., 190, 193 Fonua, Ilaisaane, 233 Fonua, Ilaisaane and Louise, 225, 236, 237 Fonua, Louise, 237, 244 Ford, Aaron, 41 Ford, Kristie A., 155 Forester, Werner, 48 4StruggleMag, 47 Freire, Paulo, 14, 65, 144 Freireian forms of “pedagogy of the oppressed,” 285 Friedman, Milton, 104 Friend, Erica, 207, 208 Gapen, Mark, 300 García, Jorge, 100 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 62 General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), 299 Gibbs, Joan, 44 Gibney, Shannon, 303 Giroux, Henry, 4–5, 9, 13, 24, 25, 144 Gómez, Alan Eladio, 52 Gómez-Quiñones, Juan, 249 Gonzales, Jordan, 238 González, Carmen G., 123 Gordo, Blanca, 260, 262, 263, 264, 266, 268 Gore, Dayo, 51 “Grassroots Leadership Reconceptualized: Chicana Oral Histories and the 1968 East Los Angeles School Blowouts” (Delgado), 252 Green, Anna, 256, 257 Grosfoguel, Ramón, 85 Guatemala, 97, 111n3 Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella, 303 Guzman, Kevin, 223, 224 Hadley, Susan, 290 Halberstam, Jack, 307

322Index

Hames-García, Michael, 279 Hanhardt, Christina, 304 Harriet Tubman Literary Circle (HTLC), 51, 55n5 Harris, Angela P., 123 Hasan, Ghassan, 265 Heater, Derek, 28 Hernandez, Angel F., 214 Herrera, Raul, 207 Herzog, Lawrence A., 30 hip-hop culture, feminism, and SWAPA. See Spoken-Word-ArtPerformance-As-Activism (SWAPA), teaching Ethnic Studies through The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism, and Post–Civil Rights Politics (Clay), 290 Historians Against the Carceral State, 45 Hochschild, Arlie, 156 Holder, Eric, 41 homophobia, xiv, 138, 172, 190, 279, 284, 303 Honduras, 97 Honma, Todd, 236 hooks, bell, ix, x, 26, 144 Horn, Etta, 50–51 Horne, Tom, 63, 70 Horowitz, Karyn, 300 The Houses of History (Green and Troupe), 256 Hoyt Street (Ponce), 205 Huerta, Dolores, 202 Huppenthal, John, 20 identity-based resource centers, 131, 139n1 “illegal alien,” social construction of, 29 illegal Americans, other Americans, and the citizenship regime, 19–39; “borderdom”: alternative citizenship, 23–24; a borderlands critique of SB 1070, 28–29; borderlands pedagogy, 24–26; Chicana/o borderlands pedagogy, 32–34; citizenship,

nationality, and residency, 21–24; the citizenship regime, 21–22; conclusion concerning, 35–36; creation of the illegal American, 26–27; creation of the other American, 30–32; educational citizenship, 24, 34; imagined community, 21; immigration and borderlands pedagogy, 26–29; Mexican view of, 27–28; nation-states strategies for, 26–27; overview of, 19–21 Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (D’Souza), 7 imagined community, 21 immigration and borderlands pedagogy, 26–29; borderlands critique of SB 1070, 28–29; creation of the illegal American, 26–28 The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent (Chatterjee and Maira), 303 institutional surveillance, 5 insurrectional knowledge(s), institutionalizing, 51–53; Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 52; Harriet Tubman Literary Circle (HTLC), 51; James, Joy, 51–52; Rabaka, Reiland, 52 internationalization of capital, 8–9 issues in the Ethnic Studies culture wars, 57–66; the American Dream and Arizona, 57–60; censorship, 60–63; Obama’s immigration order and Ethnic Studies, 63–66 Jagger, Alison, 181, 185 James, C. L. R., 15–16 James, Joy, 46, 51–52 Jekel, James, 300 Jenson, Jane, 22 Jericho Movement, 47 Joaquin Murrieta Committee, 264 Jones, Samantha, 224–225, 232–233, 234–235, 236 Jotería Studies, xxvii, 279, 282, 284, 293

Index323

Journal of African American History, 44 Journal of Asian American Studies, 229 Kann, Presley, 224, 231, 237, 238, 241, 244 Karen American community, 224–225, 235, 236 Kearney, Michael, 28 Kelley, Robin D. G., xv Kennedy, Robert F., 153 Killen, Monica G., xxi–xxii, 115–116 Kimball, Roger, 7 King, Rodney, 204 Koo, Kelly H., 300 L.A. Live, 271n1 “La Lucha Continua/The Struggle Continues” chant, 196 Lai, Clem, xxvi, 223, 224, 228, 239, 246n2 Lan, Lawrence, 223, 224, 240, 242, 243 Lao-Montes, Agustin, xv Lara, Jose, 64 Lara, María, 261, 262, 264 The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Moraga), 212 Latin American Students Organization, xii Latin Liberation News Service, 47 Latina/o Studies in the Midwest, teaching of, 143–148; conclusion concerning, 146–147; counternarratives as the key framework of, 145–146; critical pedagogy, 144; intersectionality, 146; overview of, 143–144 Latino Studies in the White, liberal arts, corporatized university, 95–113; California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 99; CAUSA, 5 the Central American United Student Association, 101, 111n5; Central America, 97, 99; Central American Studies program, 100–101; corporatization of universities, 105;

education, concept of, 104; as “emergency response,” 103–108; Facebook page, 108; final considerations of, 108–111; from Honduras to the creation of the first Central American program in the U.S., 96–101; overview of, 95–96; University of Puget Sound, 101–103 learning communities and Ethnic Studies, 117–118 Lemelle, Sidney, xv Levassuer, Ray Luc, 53 Lewis-Fernández, Roberto, 300 López, Jorge, 282, 285, 288 López-Garza, Marta, 180, 318 Lorde, Audre, 83, 136, 195, 196 Los Angeles, City of, 64, 89, 101, 111n1 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 90n8, 261–262, 265, 269 Lowe, Lisa, xv Madison, D. Soyini, 180 Maira, Sunaina, 129, 303 Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, 47 Maldonado, David, 258, 263 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, 87 The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling (Hochschild), 156 Marín, James R, 315 Maroon the Implacable (Shoatz), 49 Marquez, Anabel, 267 Martínez, Elizabeth, 253, 254 Martinez, Oscar J., 23 Masequesmay, Gina, 228, 230 Massé, Michelle A., 125 Matthews, Tracye, 51 Mazahua, Yaotl, 210–211 McDougal, Serie, 41, 56 McKittrick, Katherine, 304, 307 McLaren, Peter, 144 McNair Scholars Program, 227 Media Committee, 266 Melamed, Jodi, 4

324Index

Menchú, Rigoberta, 99 Meredith, James, 153, 154 Mesilla Treaty (the Gadsden Purchase), 33 Mexican American Studies (MAS), 63, 65, 70 militant humility: the essential role of community engagement in Ethnic Studies pedagogy, 167–178; anticolonial epistemology, 170; community-based epistemology, 170, 171–172; epistemology and Ethnic Studies: community versus mainstream, 168–172; epistemology in Ethnic Studies, 169; equal opportunity program and Ethnic Studies: relevant education, 174–177; liberatory epistemology, 170; militant humility in praxis, 177–178; overview of, 167–168; the university, challenging of, 172–173 Mills, Nicolaus, 104 Minneapolis Community and Technical College, 303 Mitchell, Koritha, 79, 80 Mitchell Brothers, 181 Montañez, Cindy, 264, 266–267, 272n16 Montes, Felicia, 212 Moraga, Cherríe, 188, 212 Moreno, Luis H., xxii–xxiii, 318 Morrell, Ernest, 282, 285, 288 “Movement, Milpas y Mujeres: LA Artivists who Educate, Empower & Transform” (Montes), 212 Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana y Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) de UCLA, 250, 252, 258, 260, 268 multiple marginality, 121 A Nation at Risk report, 7 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 47, 119 National Association of Scholars, 62

National Commission on Excellence in Education, 7, 17 National Committee for Protection of Foreign Born Workers, 57 National Farm Worker Association (NFWA), 202 National Rifle Association (NRA), 63 nationality, term, 21 Native American Students Union, xii neoliberalism in the academic borderlands, xix, 3–17; critical pedagogy and the struggle for democratic public life, 13–15; economic Darwinism, 4–5, 8, 14; Giroux, Henry, 4–5, 9, 13; institutional surveillance, 5; internationalization of capital, 8–9; internationalizing project of neoliberalism, 4; legal battles, 7–8; logic of neoliberalism, 4–5; Melamed, Jodi, 4; motive force of revolution, 15–16; A Nation at Risk report, 7, 17; neoliberal multiculturalism, 6–9, 8; overview of, 3–6; Peters, Michael, 4; professorial formation, 5; profit-logic, 7; Reaganomics, xiii, 7; whitewashing the borderlands, 9–13 “New World antiblackness,” 42 New York Times, 229 Nguyen, Alina, 224, 234, 235, 244 nightmare image of the American imagination, 27 Noriega, Chon, 257 Northeast San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, 204–206 Northern Arizona University, challenges and opportunities of teaching Ethnic Studies at, 76–85; “Ethnic Diversity” institutional requirement, 75; Ethnic Studies Ambassadors project, 75; Ethnic Studies program, 75; ethnic studies program at, 74–76; gender and sexuality and teaching Ethnic Studies, 80–81; hip-hop culture, 82–83;

Index325

location of, 74; race as irrelevant, 78–79; “racial progress,” 78, 81; “reserve sexism,” 82; rewarding aspects of teaching Ethnic Studies at, 83–84; “role appropriateness,” 79; student behavior toward faculty of color, 79–80; student entitlement or indifference, 77–78 Northwest Immigrant Detention Center, 101 nuevo arte del pueblo, 204 Obama, Barack: diplomacy with Cuba, 41; immigration order and Ethnic Studies, 63–66; presidency of, 14; racial progress and, 78–79 Oberlin College, 300 Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (Acuña), xviii, 286, 315 Occupy Wall Street movement, 14 Ochoa, Joaquin, 264 Olguín, B. V., 52 Omatsu, Glenn, xxiv, 179, 195, 196, 228, 319 “Omeyocan ” (Ortega), 207–208 one mic metaphor, 279, 290–291 oral history, 256–258 Ortega, Rick, 204, 207 “the Other,” 29–30 Pacoima, 197, 205 P’alante, 47 Pancho, Greg, 223, 230, 234, 242, 244 Papillon, Martin, 22 Pardo, Mary, 180, 252, 315 Paredes, Americo, 33 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 24, 144 Pellegrini, Ann, 303 “personal is political” concept, 289, 291 Peters, Michael, 4 Phillips, Mary, 149 Philosophy and Revolution (Dunayevskaya), 16 political prisoners, xviii, 46–51

politics of education, 116–117 Ponce, Mary Helen, 205, 205–206, 206 pornography, 180 positionality when conducting research, 181–185 postracial students, 156–157 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 299, 300, 302, 304–305 Prashad, Vijay, xv presumed biased: the challenge and rewards of teaching “post-racial” students to see racism, 149–164; Arizona HB 2281, 150; conclusion concerning, 160–161; counternarrative, 151, 152; critical pedagogy and, 151–152; emotional labor concept, 156; findings, discussion of, 154–159; methods, 151–154; overview of, 149–150; postracial students, 156–157; the presumed biased, 154–156; racial battle fatigue, 159; racism, seeing (why some students can’t), 157–159; recommendations concerning, 159–160; rewards for, 159–160; “sistah” scholars, 152, 159, 162n5; storytelling, 152; University of Mississippi, 153–154, 162n12 Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (Gutiérrez y Muhs), xix, 303 prisons in a post-movement context, studying of, 43–46; “African Americans, Police Brutality, and the U.S. Criminal Justice System Historical Perspectives” (Taylor), 44; Africana Studies and, 46; Africana/ Ethnic Studies and Carceral Studies, 45; Black print culture, 47; Challenging Punishment conference, 44–45; Historians Against the Carceral State, 45; James, Joy, 46; State of the Field conference, 44; Williams, Franklin, 47 professorial formation, 5

326Index

profit-logic, 7 “A Public Letter to the Faculty and Administration of the University of Puget Sound,” 111n7 “queerstory,” 286, 293n5 Quiambao, Chelley, 223 Quiñonez, Naomi H., 30, 32 Quintanilla, Carolina, 223, 224, 233–234, 241, 242, 244 Rabaka, Reiland, 52 racial battle fatigue, 159, 164 Racial Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparisons (Winant), 156 racism, definition of, 246n4 racism, seeing (why some students can’t), 157–159 Ramirez, Sarah, 31 Ratcliff, Anthony J., 315 Reaganomics, xiii, 7, 104, 112 At the Rendezvous of Victory (James), 15–16 residency, term, 21 “Respect Our Mothers: Stop Hating Women” (Shoatz), 50 Revilla, Anita Tijerina, 22 Reyes, Cindy, 64 Rhoads, Robert, 253 Right On! Black Community News Service, 48 rights, as a term, 21 Roaf, Mary, xx, 78, 80, 83, 319 Robinson, Cedric, xv Rodriguez, Isis, 180, 181, 187 Rodriguez, Luis J., 195, 197, 206, 213, 216, 319 Rodriguez, Trini, 209, 210, 211, 215 Ross, Stanley R., 33 Ruiz, Everto, 202 Ruiz, Vicki, 257 Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community, xxv, 196–197, 209, 213, 216

Sacramento, City of, 89 safe space, 160, 209, 304, 307 Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence (Hanhardt), 304 Saketopoulou, Avgi, 308–309 Saketopoulou, Avgi, on trauma, 297 Salaita, Steven, xv, 303 Salinas, Raúl, 53 San Francisco, City of, 89 San Francisco State University, xii Sanchez-Tranquilino, Marcos, 203 Sandoval, Chela, xxvii, 280, 281, 282 Sandoval, Denise M., xxv, 315 Santiago, Josefina, 268 Sassen, Saskia, 24 “Save Ethnic Studies Campaign,” 65 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 62 scholarship and activism: our journey from community concerns to scholarly work, 179–193; community, connection to, 180–181; community concern projects and advancing scholarship, 185–191; conclusion concerning, 191–192; Jagger, Alison, 181; overview of, 179–180; positionality when conducting research, 181–185; sex work, 180–182, 187, 188, 190 Sentencing Project, 43 service and struggle in Ethnic Studies: a composite autoethnography, 121– 141; address Ethnic Studies climate concerns, 138; “Autoethnography, a Chicana’s Methodological Research Tool” (Chávez), 122; California Master Plan for Higher Education, 128; challenges to the validity and rigor of Ethnic Studies, 127–131; co-curricular service expectations, 131–132; critical race theory (CRT), 123, 124; curricular service expectations, 132–134; essentialized committee representation, 125–127; Ethnic Studies coalitions and

Index327

collaborations, support for, 137; Ethnic Studies models, recognize and use, 138; gendered pattern in the nonretention of tenure-track faculty, 134–135; inferiorization of Ethnic Studies, 133; institutional priorities, 128–129; methodology, 122–124; multiple marginality, 121; overview of, 121–122; recommendations concerning, 137–139; womanist leadership, 138–139; women leaders versus womanist leadership, 134–137 sex work: cultural homophobia and, 190; parallels to, 187; Pardo, Mary, on, 180–182; pornography, 180; regulation of, 188 Sexton, Jared, 42 Shakur, Assata, 41, 47, 48, 53 Shaw-Thornburg, Angela, 304–305 Shoatz, Russell Maroon, 49–50, 51 Shrake, Eunai, 223 Sigurdson, Richard, 26 Silva, Eduardo Bonilla, 157 “sistah” scholars, 152, 159, 162n5 Siu, Oriel Maria, xxi, 319–320 skateboarding, 214 Sleeter, Christine E., 150, 283 Smith, Andrea, 306–307, 310 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 198 Smith, William A., 159 social rights movements, 117 Soldatenko, Michael, 253–254, 268 Solórzano, Daniel G., 159, 252, 256 Soto, Violet, 213–214 The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Radical Liberalism to Neoliberal Multiculturalism (Melamed), 4 Spoken-Word-Art-Performance-AsActivism (SWAPA), teaching Ethnic Studies through, xxvii, 277–295; Calhoun example, 281; in the classroom, 280–281; conclusion concerning, 292–293; Cotera example, 282–283; The Council of Youth Research (CYR), 285; De los

Rios, Cati, 282, 283, 285; Freireian forms of “pedagogy of the oppressed,” 285; hip-hop culture, feminism, and SWAPA, 289–292; Jotería Studies, 279, 282; neoliberal reforms to pedagogy, 284; notable texts for, 288, 289–290; one mic metaphor, 290–291; overview of, 278–279; personal is political concept, 289, 291; race, gender, class, and culture, 288– 289; reverse racism, 284; Sandoval, Chela, 280, 281, 282; Sleeter, Christine E., 283; summation of, 293; SWAPA as a pedagogical tool for Ethnic Studies, 279–283; SWAPA in the community, 286–287; teaching SWAPA in California, 285–287; teaching SWAPA in New York, 287–292; Troche example, 280–281; vulnerability, 289; Wanberg, Kyle, 284 Springer, Kimberly, 51 Staples Center, 271n1 State of the Field conference, 44 Stavans, Ilan, 149–150 student activism in the Chicana/o Studies movement at UCLA (1990– 1993), 249–275; Acuña, Rodolfo F., 253; Alvarez, Milo, 259; Aranda, Enrique, 264, 265; Blowouts of 1968, 251, 252; César E. Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction (CII), 249, 251, 267–268, 270; Chicana/o Studies movement at UCLA (1990–1993), 253–254; Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), 253; COINTELPRO, 264, 272n19; conclusion concerning, 268–270; critical race history (CRH) and, 255–256; CSC (Conscious Students of Color), formation of, 260, 263; CSC and MEChA de UCLA relationship, 263; CSC and the faculty center sit-in, 261–263; CSRC library, 260; DeBerry, Christine Soto, 268; El Plan de Santa Barbara

328Index

(EPSB), 251–252, 259; faculty center sit-in, 259–264; faculty hires of the CII, first, 270, 273n23; Gordo, Blanca, 260, 262, 263, 264, 266, 268; High Potential Program, 253; historical background, 251–254; hunger strike and, 249, 253, 264–266; hunger strikers, names of, 272n17; Interdepartmental Program (IDP), 249; Joaquin Murrieta Committee, 264; Lara, María, 264; Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 261–262, 269; Martínez, Elizabeth, 253; methodology, 256–258; Montañez, Cindy, 264; Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana y Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) de UCLA, 250, 252, 258, 260, 268; Ochoa, Joaquin, 264; oral history, 257–258; overview of, 249–251; participants in study, 271n9; pilgrimage from Olvera Street to UCLA, 266–268; recommendations for present and future Ethnic Studies movements, 270; Rhoads, Robert, 253; Soldatenko, Michael, 253–254; student-driven commitment to Chicana/o Studies departmentalization, 258–259; transformational resistance, 256; United Community and Labor Alliance (UC&LA), 259; Valenzuela, Mario, 260, 262, 264; Young, Charles E., 249 The Tattooed Soldier (Tobar), 309 Taylor, Charles, 154–155 Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (Kimball), 7 Texas and censorship, 61, 62–63 Texas Education Agency (TEA), 55n5, 61 “Texas Ethnic Studies Bill Protested by Latino Activists” (Planas), 90n8

theories, experiences, and perspectives teaching Ethnic Studies in Arizona, 69–94; epistemic decolonization, 85–88; epistemic necessity, Ethnic Studies as, 89–90; epistemic struggle, a combat zone of, 69–74. See also Northern Arizona University, challenges and opportunities of teaching Ethnic Studies at Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), xii This Bridge Called My Back (Moraga and Anzaldúa), 39, 284, 288, 299 Thomas Theorem, 154 Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore, 197, 206–213 Till, Emmett, 153 Tillman, Johnnie, 51 Tillotson, Michael, 41, 56 Tinson, Christopher M., xviii, 320 Title V Bridges to Success Program. Bridges to Success, 117 Tobar, Héctor, 309 transformational resistance, 251, 256 transphobia, 284, 303 “Treaty Maroons,” 49 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 28, 30 Troche, William, 280–281 Troup, Kathleen, 256, 257 Trump, Donald, 284 Tucson Unified School District, 19, 35, 60, 61, 65, 70, 180 United Community and Labor Alliance (UC&LA), 259 United Farm Workers of America (UFW), 202–203 the university, challenging, 172–173 University of California, Berkeley: American Cultures requirement, ix, x; Ethnic Studies and, ix–x; first Ethnic Studies programs, 117 University of California systems, 117, 128, 178 University of Illinois, 303

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University of Mississippi, 153–154, 162n12 University of Missouri, xxviii University of Puget Sound, 101–103, 111n7 (Un) occupy Albuquerque, 15 (Un)occupy Sante Fe, 15 U.S. Department of Education, 227, 246n3 Valens, Ritchie, 197 Valenzuela, A., 190, 193 Valenzuela, Mario, 260, 262, 264, 265 validity and rigor of Ethnic Studies, challenges to the, 127–131 Vallega, Emilyn, 223, 232, 234, 237, 238–239, 240, 244 Velázquez-Vargas, Yarma, 180, 320 Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos G., 33 Vest, Jennifer Lisa, 138 Vigil, James Diego, 31 Villa, Raúl, 200–201 Villalpando, Octavio, 275 voter ID legislation, 154 Wanberg, Kyle, 284 Warren, Earl, 161n4 Watson, Bruce, 153 The Watts Riots, 205 Watts Riots, 205

Weine, Stevan, 300 Wetschler, Ed., 149 “When Butterflies Soar Free: A Monarca in Resistance” (Ceja), 212 white women and sexual violence, 300, 302 Williams, Franklin, 47 Wilson, William Julius, 157 Winant, Howard, 156 Wink, Joan, 151 Winn, Maisha, 47 Wise, Tim, 79, 150 Wolfe, Tim, xxviii womanist leadership, 138–139 Xochipilli, 208 “Xochipilli” (Friend), 208 Yancy, George, 290 Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne, 31 Ybarra-Frausto, Tomas, 204 Yosso, Tara J., 145, 159, 254 Young, Charles E., 249, 269 “Young Warriors: Every Youth Is a Warrior of Their Own Struggles” (Zaragoza), 215 Yu, Phil, 229 Yu, Timothy, 228 Zaragoza, Mayra, 215

About the Editors and Contributors

Editors DENISE M. SANDOVAL, PhD, is professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her research interests include popular culture and the arts, cultural histories of Los Angeles, oral history and community histories. ANTHONY J. RATCLIFF, PhD, is assistant professor in the Department of PanAfrican Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. His research interests include Ancient and Pre-Colonial African history, Black Feminist theory and praxis, the impact of colonialism, mass incarceration, and immigration on Hip-Hop cultural production. TRACY LACHICA BUENAVISTA, PhD, is associate professor in the Department of Asian American Studies and a core faculty member in the doctoral program in educational leadership at California State University, Northridge. In her research she uses critical race theory to examine how education, immigration and militarization shape the contemporary experiences of Pilipinxs in the U.S. JAMES R. MARÍN, EdD, is a principal at Animo College Prep Academy, a Green Dot Public School on the campus of Jordan High School in Watts, Los Angeles. His research is focused around teacher development in urban schools of color and culturally relevant instructional practices for Latino and Black males.

Contributors RODOLFO F. ACUÑA, PhD, is professor emeritus and founder of the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. He is the author of one of the foundational texts of Chicana/o Studies, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, now in its 8th edition since its 1972 debut. He is the author of 20 titles, 32 academic articles and chapters in books, 155 book reviews and 188

332

About the Editors and Contributors

opinion pieces. Three of his books have received the Gustavus Myers Award for the Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America. As an activist and scholar, he has been a leading voice in the Mexican American community. JOSÉ M. AGUILAR-HERNÁNDEZ, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic and Women’s Studies at Cal Poly Pomona. His research interests include social movements, educational history, Queer People of Color, Women of Color feminism(s), critical race theory, oral history, and archives. XAMUEL BAÑALES, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Stanislaus. His scholarly interests include social movements, critical pedagogy, and decolonial thought. BARBARA HARRIS COMBS, JD, PhD, is an associate professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Clark Atlanta University. Her research interests include race and race relations in the contemporary U.S. South and how the variables race, place, and space influence human interactions. She is committed to interdisciplinary examination of the social world. ANTONIA DARDER, PhD, is an internationally recognized Freirian scholar. She holds the Leavey Presidential Chair of Ethics and Moral Leadership at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles and is Professor Emerita of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For more than 30 years, her practice and scholarship have focused on political questions and ethical concerns linked to racism, class inequalities, language rights, critical pedagogy, Latino education, and social justice. ARACELI ESPARZA, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of English at California State University, Long Beach. Her research and publications focus on representations of violence in Chicana/o and Latina/o literature and cultural production, women of color feminism, and gender studies. EDDY FRANCISCO ALVAREZ JR., PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Africana and Latino Studies at State University of New York, Oneonta. His research interests include Latina/o performance, Latina/o popular culture, queer latinidad, queer oral history, queer migrations, Los Angeles Studies, Fat Studies, critical feminist geography, SWAPA (Spoken-Word-Art-Performanceas-Activism) and decolonial consciousness. MONICA G. KILLEN, MA, is a doctoral student at Chapman University and is the Director of College Success at Citrus College in Glendora, California. Her current research focuses on Latinas and community involvement. CLEMENT LAI, PhD, is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at California State University, Northridge. His research and teaching interests

About the Editors and Contributors333

include critical pedagogy, racial and spatial theory, political mobilization, community engagement, and Third World Liberation Movements. CSUN alumni Lawrence Lan and Alina Nguyen participated in the 2014 Association for Asian American Studies Conference and they co-authored this chapter in collaboration with fellow alumni Louise and Ilaisaane Fonua, Kevin Guzman, Samantha Jones, Presley Kann, Gregory Pancho, Carolina Quintanilla, and Emilyn Vallega. LAWRENCE LAN is currently a graduate student in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include contemporary social movements and left political organizing in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, particularly in Los Angeles. MARTA LÓPEZ-GARZA, PhD, is a professor in the Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her current research focuses on formerly incarcerated women. T. MARK MONTOYA, PhD, is an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at Northern Arizona University. His research and teaching focus on Latin@/Chican@ Studies, U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and Race Politics. LUIS H. MORENO, PhD, is an instructor at Bowling Green State University teaching Latina/o Studies in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies. He is working on a book manuscript on the intersections of migration, labor, and activism within the Mexican working-class community in Oxnard, California, between 1930 and 1980. ALINA NGUYEN is a graduate candidate at California State University, Long Beach in Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry. Her work often reflects her family’s experiences as Southeast Asian refugees. GLENN OMATSU is a lecturer in the Department of Asian American Studies and the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at California State University, Northridge, and has taught basic writing classes for EOP freshmen since 1995. MARY PARDO, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her area of research focuses on Latinas and social movements and she has published on Mexican American women and grassroots activism. MARY ROAF, PhD, was a faculty member in Anthropology and Ethnic Studies at Northern Arizona University from 2012–2015. Dr. Mary currently wears her applied anthropology hat as an education facilitator at Valley of the Sun United Way with 5 schools in 3 school districts in Phoenix, Arizona.

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About the Editors and Contributors

ORIEL MARÍA SIU, PhD, is the director of Latina/o Studies and assistant professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Puget Sound. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary Central American cultural productions from the diaspora, de-colonial border thinking, Latina/o cultural productions and diasporas, and narratives of race and racisms in the United States. CHRISTOPHER M. TINSON, PhD, is associate professor of African Studies and History at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. His interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on the intersections between Africana radical traditions, U.S. Ethnic Studies, hip-hop culture, critical media studies, incarceration, community-based education, and race and sports. WOMYN OF COLOR COLLECTIVE is a group of scholar-activists that promote the dismantling of social inequality and systems of oppression through their teaching, scholarship, mentorship, and service. Their teaching and scholarship use anti-deficit frameworks to bring awareness to these topics YARMA VELÁZQUEZ-VARGAS, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her research interests include gender, queer studies, Latina studies, and political economy. Her current research explores issues of media representation.