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| The mantra hovering over Ethnic Studies |
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As an educator in Chicana/o Studies, I would not be fulfilling my educational and ethical obligations if I did not respond to the legislative assaults on immigrants and the banning of Ethnic Studies Programs taking place in Arizona. These are symptoms of a growing unfounded fear that becomes canon fodder for power brokers when they are threatened. What fear? The fear of approaching another Dark Age, not in the classical sense, but from the “tanning” of América, resulting in unhealthy environmental suspicion and legislation aimed at ethnic cleansing.
The fear of population infiltration and demographic dominance has plagued American demographers and public policy pundits since the 1960 when it was predicted that the sleeping giant might awaken soon. Demographers have predicted that the Latino, Mexicano/Chicano population would reach its apex somewhere in the year 2080. Rumblings of a Hispanic Quebec and the creation of a Nation of Aztlán were on the radar screen then. Ex Colorado’s Governor Richard Lamm’s treatise on the development of linguistic ghettoes in the Southwest was a euphemistic retrograde against the struggle for linguistic rights protected under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Racists like John Tanton, the retired ophthalmologist from California, Samuel Huntington out of Harvard, and John Vinson were preparing for the culture wars as their xenophobic delusions were exacerbated. They feared that a plethora of Third World cultures would replace Western Civilization. Huntington’s paranoia regarding América’s traditional identity was fueled “from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin América, especially México, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white American natives.” Tanton’s WITAN memos were infuriating. “WITAN is an abbreviated form for the Old English term “witenangemot,” meaning a council of wise men. In one memo he stated, “[P]erhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down.”
Paranoid theoreticians would refer to the massive amount of immigrants coming back into the Southwest as a return to their ancestral and “The Coming Triumph of Mexican Irredentism.” Irredentism is defined in Webster’s dictionary as “a territory historically or ethnically related to one political unit but under the control of another. It denotes any movement which aims to unite politically with its co-national mother state a region under foreign rule.” Without a doubt the Immigrant Wars raise fears of reverse annexation, a reclaiming of land admittedly stolen from México by the United States of América.
Many of my students, both Latino and white, by choice recently attended their first march in solidarity with immigrants held on May Day. As apprehensive as many felt, many saw first hand the tough lessons of life experienced by one of the most vulnerable groups in the country. They walked into an unknown world where the best and the worst of the human organism were exposed. Some of my students were spat upon and viewed as white traitors. Verbal assaults were hurled at them by onlookers, driving by to release their pent up hate.
Yet, others were embraced for the first time by Brown strangers as they silently wept together.
The spillover effect will soon be waged against Chicana/o Studies as Colorado’s right-wing legislators wait in anticipation ready to put fresh ink to the paper. What are the driving forces behind this thinking? Perhaps it is the vile conduct and inability by América’s educational institutions to effectively educate Chicanas/os. It could be the relentless questioning by critical thinking youth about the Master’s paradigm and exposing the master’s contradictions.
The Arizonian bill “would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals.” Accusing an educational discipline of being inherently seditious is quite an allegation.
What is obvious is that América’s historians do not understand the true origins of the populations studied in Chicana/o and/or or Raza Studies, especially in the law where they “stipulate that courses can continue to be taught for Native American pupils in compliance with federal law.” To exclude Raza Studies but continue Native American Studies is a contradiction. Many Chicanos/as have Indigenous roots on one side of the border or the other. Historically, they are the same people, with cultural and linguistic variations.
The fictitious border is political. It was created through annexation at a time when Brown people were the dominant population in the Western Hemisphere. Natives on both sides of la frontera are “flowers from the same garden.”
The flagrant attack on Ethnic Studies is not new. Its counterpart, Chicana/o Studies, has been scorned since its inception within the academy by various and sundry academicians within higher education. Its oppositional ideology took on mainstream thinkers. Educational hegemony driven by fear is hovering over Ethnic Studies.
Dr. Ramón Del Castillo is independent journalist.
© 2010 The Weekly Issue/El Semanario
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