Missing Minority

Those of you who have followed the slow release of data from the Census Bureau (and who hasn’t!) know that the nation’s demographics have shifted considerably over the past ten years. The Midwest, once the metaphorical and population “center” of the nation, is hemorrhaging people faster than Sarah Palin’s campaign team. Part of that change, of course, is the combination of Midwestern urban decay, failing infrastructure (Why pay taxes?), and mass relocations to "sunbelt" areas in the southwest. Another contributing factor, though, is the rapid growth of Latino populations in the border states. Census officials estimated that there were 45.5 million Latinos and Latinas in the United States as of 2009. This represents an almost 29 percent increase from the 2000 Census report of 35.3 million Latino/as.

What has surprised me is that our national entertainment industry has been remarkably slow to reflect this new reality. Latina/os might be the largest minority, but you would be hard pressed to find substantial representations on either broadcast or cable television. Some networks, including Oprah’s OWN, Lifetime, or FX, have zero (0) recurring Latino characters or hosts in all of their 24/7 programming. Those that do exist on other networks are sadly retreads of some pretty worn out stereotypes. Latinos remain relegated to the supporting cast. This is true despite the fact that various corporations have become increasingly hungry to grab a slice of the Latino economic pie.



It strikes me that the most visible characters currently on the air are Latinas. Yet, this is not necessarily good news. Two major roles define the options for Latinas on television: the sex bomb and the steely enforcer. The first has deep roots in this country. Since way back in the nineteenth century, mainstream representations of Latinas have most often presented them as tempting “tamales” who turn out to be “too hot to handle.” Latina women became convenient metaphors that legitimated multiple racialized assumptions as the U.S. contemplated war with its neighboring republic. Latinas were construed as always sexually available to Euro American men even as they were simultaneously presented as duplicitous, scheming, and dangerous. Euro-American travel writers first circulated these types of images to suggest that "immoral" Mexico needed a U.S. invasion to satisfy God’s supposed plan of manifest destiny (You can read about this and many other fascinating elements of nineteenth-century Chicano history when you purchase a copy of NERPoD from a fine on-line book retailer near you).

Such images live on in the conniving and fickle character played by Eva Longoria on Desperate Housewives; Colombian-born Sofía Vergara’s “trophy wife” role on Modern Family; and even Naya Rivera’s role on Glee. The last character, Santana López, hits many of the hallmarks of the stereotype. López uses her sexuality, often presented as irresistible to the white men around her, to satisfy her ambitions or as part of a larger scheme. At the same time, she can be depended upon to enact the “loca” traits that make her untamable. Quick tempered and cruel, López shows she is always ready for a fight. This includes a recent episode where she claimed to have razor blades hidden throughout her hair (!). Perhaps the revelation of her same-sex love interest will redeem this character, or at least steer her from being a twenty-first century incarnation of “wicked Felina.”


Another less noticed, but still identifiably stereotypical role, appears in the police-procedure genre. Many shows, like Law and Order, Eureka, or the doomed Detroit 187 feature the tough Latina enforcer. While I can’t say for sure, it seems like this version of Latina can find some of its roots in Aliens (1982). That film introduced the memorable character Private Jeanette Vásquez, a tough-as-nails marine. Here was a Latina character who got to do things on screen that had previously been reserved almost exclusively for men, including handling some really big guns. She also met her demise memorably in an altruistic blaze of fire, ultimately hugging a grenade rather than being taken by the titular aliens. Reportedly, the Vásquez character left such an impression on Gene Rodenberry that he intended the security officer on Star Trek: The Next Generation to be a comparable Latina figure (which was later dropped when he cast blond Denise Crosby for the role, contributing to Star Trek’s long history of failing to include Latino/as in the future – but that is another entry).



What I call the “Vásquez type” presents Latinas as figures who bend traditional gender conformity through their military/police skills. They are often presented as invaluable to the white leads in solving crimes, battling aliens, or generally kicking ass. They know their way around a gun, wear their hair in a sensible bob or poneytail, and can more than handle themselves in battle. All of that is nice . . . but these Latina figures are also always ancillary to the main white characters. If they provide the muscle, than it is up to their white (usually male) partner to provide the problem solving skills which truly stops the criminals/aliens/mayhem. Representations of their personal lives range from non-existent to deeply troubled. While generally I appreciate their rejection of gender conformity, it can nonetheless becomes a racial marker that only serves to highlight the more authentic masculinity of the (white) male lead and/or the more alluring femininity of the (white) women around them. Latinas become characters who have not quite mastered the mainstream gender rules, and therefore remain outside of society.



Keep in mind that those are the most positive options currently seen on television. Most of the time, television networks prefer to imagine that Latinos don’t exist at all. Even shows set in geographic areas with significant Latino populations manage to sideline those inhabitants or simply turn them into background “color” that spices up the main white characters’ lives. As I have talked about elsewhere, the USA show Burn Notice takes place in Miami but manages to only grant roles for Cubans as either victims (usually women) or as villains (either men or women). Whatever the case, both are easily dispatched after one episode.

For obvious reasons, I am the most sensitive about this phenomena when programs are set in New Mexico. My home state, as everybody knows, has always had a non-white majority population. Recently, the census bureau also revealed that Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in the land of enchantment. Making a show set in New Mexico without showing Latinos is like making a show set in Washington, D.C. without showing idiots. Nonetheless, that is exactly what happens in USA’s In Plain Sight or the critically acclaimed AMC show Breaking Bad. The first, which centers of the blond lead, has a token Latino character who is a Dominican baseball player. Apparently the USA network could only imagine Latinos as recent immigrants, thereby ignoring the Latinos actually residing in the state whose families have been there for generations.

Breaking Bad, also set in Albuquerque, does little better. Like in Burn Notice, Latinos zest up the drab background by providing Spanish-language music, low-rider cars, or colorful expressions. When they aren't providing the literal and metaphorical salsa, they appear as threats to the main white leads. These roles as side characters serve to contrast the normalcy of the two middle-class white characters. Latinos, as dangerous drug dealers, represent an upending of the “quiet” life of the white school teacher and his former student. The series lead, we are told, had no choice but to enter the drug underground. He begins manufacturing meth in a noble attempt to provide for his family after his imminent death from cancer. Latino drug dealers, on the other hand, are shown to be motivated only by greed and violence with few redeeming characteristics. They are almost always recent arrivals in the country.



I am disappointed that television programming has failed to understand or represent the variety of Latino/a experiences in the United States. This is even more troubling when we consider that many (most?) of the nation’s other citizens probably depend on television as the only venue through which they get to know the United States' largest minority. For the most part, it seems that television executives consider Latinos too much of a political hot potato to represent fairly. When they do make an appearance, they enforce the notion that Latinos (and a multi-cultural society in general) threatens to upend the national status quo through their supposedly hyper sexuality and unquenchable thirst for violence.

Some of this might change when media monopoly Comcast launches its new English-language Latino network in 2012. I’m not holding my breath, though.

Ethnic Studies is for Everyone

Arizona’s legislature and governor recently decided to try to end ethnic studies within the state’s public schools. While it might be easy to ridicule Arizona (fun, too), we should be careful about assuming that the Grand Canyon state is anomalous in these efforts. It is merely one piece of an increasingly reactionary right-wing effort to control education curriculum. Far-right members of the Board of Education in Texas also recently attempted to alter that state’s “social studies” standards with a similar philosophy as Arizona: Students shouldn’t learn anything about this nation’s past that might make them feel bad.

One of the more astounding elements in the Texas changes is that they sought to downplay Thomas Jefferson’s role within the curriculum because of his critique of Christianity. That’s deep, man. How much more conservative can Texas get? When you start thinking that one of the slave-holding, elite “founding fathers” was just “too liberal” you know you’ve crossed into a new horizon of crazy. I imagine that the only place further to the political right you could go next would be to start arguing that George III wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Next thing you know, the Texas school board will be suggesting that the U.S. war for Independence was just some socialist conspiracy, what with their demands for a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.



Leaders in Arizona couched their animosity to ethnic studies as really being about defending the ideals of the nation. Tom Horne, the architect of Arizona’s measure, pulled off a neat rhetorical trick that the right has found so useful these days. He posited that programs initiated to combat institutional racism are, in fact, the “real racism.” “The most offensive thing to me, fundamentally, is dividing kids by race,” Horne stated to the New York Times. Tucson’s ethnic studies programs (where Latino/a children make up 56 percent of the students enrolled) particularly irked Horne. He claimed that existing Mexican-American classes “are teaching a radical ideology in Raza, including that Arizona and other states were stolen from Mexico and should be given back.” Of course, Horne never bothered to actually attend any of these classes or find out their daily content. Nope. Why worry about things like that when you are ceratin you are right?

Really Horne gives ethnic studies teachers/professors too much credit. As I often say, I can’t convince my students of the need to use the spell checker before they submit their assignments, much less alter their political views about the nation (nor is that my goal).

Horne wants a new curriculum that depicts his fairytale version of the nation with an education focused on the “individual” How one can talk about a nation only through individuality seems to be a paradox to me, but what do I know?



Now, I haven’t been involved in Arizona’s ethnic studies programs, so I am as ignorant as Horne to their particular content. It would be foolish to comment about it without more first hand knowledge. So, the rest of this post is not about the Arizona public schools in particular.

I do know ethnic studies programs broadly, though, and can imagine that Horne is operating off of some pretty outdated notions of Chicano Studies. Most Chicano/a Studies programs would indeed encourage students to question the intent and results of the U.S. Mexican War. In doing so, they aren’t offering a radical reinterpretation of historical events, but instead offering students opportunities to think critically about hotly contested issues that were, in fact, alive in the nineteenth century (even Abraham Lincoln believed the U.S.’s rationale for the war to be dubious). But when was the last time that you heard any Latino/a scholar, politician, or activist invoke Chicano nationalism (the idea that the U.S. is unredeemable and Chicano/as should break off to form a separate nation)? That form of Chicano nationalism has dropped out of the popular discourse so much that I have to explain the very idea to my students when we reach the sixties and seventies. Otherwise they assume “Chicano nationalists” were deeply patriotic toward the U.S. So, you might say that Horne and his ilk are battling the Ghost of Chicano Past.



These recent moves in Texas and Arizona suggest that the far right is looking to win votes by appealing to people’s worst intentions. Apparently hating the gays isn’t the vote getter that it used to be for the GOP, so they are reverting back to the tried-and-true in U.S. history: exploiting anxieties about racial difference.

All of this comes at the same time that there has been a lot of hand wringing at Big Midwestern University about the future of its own ethnic studies programs. The omnipresent budget crisis that exists across academia has led some to suggest that ethnic studies programs are unnecessarily costly. This is somewhat absurd given that ethnic studies programs’ operating costs aren’t even a drop in the bucket of the whole university. Nonetheless, cuts must be made somewhere. Proposals have ranged anywhere from eliminating Chicano/a Studies and other ES programs entirely to creating a monolithic ethnic studies program that will “include everybody.” While most scholars (and anybody who thinks for more than five minutes) discount the idea that we now live in a “post-racial nation,” some are nonetheless suggesting that individual ethnic studies programs have passed their prime. Previous arguments that the individual units each provide much needed and distinct service to the campus by providing diversity no longer hold. The message has been clear: The ethnic studies programs must adapt to the current model of consumer student demands or die. BMU wants to see students in seats. With all of these attacks on ethnic studies programs, we may well ask, have ethnic studies programs become anachronistic?



Readers won’t be surprised to learn that I think it is premature to dig a grave for ethnic studies. Besides, when the time comes, ethnic studies would much rather be cremated.

Ethnic Studies Programs still address key needs within the nation’s schools and universities. Rather than shirking from these attacks or going on the defensive, it may well be worth the effort for ethnic studies programs to reevaluate their core missions and goals. For my part, I’ll talk specifically about Latino Studies.

No single history or literature class can cover everything about the United States in great detail. Added into that is the fact that many (most?) U.S. history professors and teachers continue to omit any mention of Laitno/as at all in their course content. Specific courses on ethnic groups permit us to consider unique experiences within the U.S. They provide basic knowledge that all citizens in the U.S. can use. Had he taken a Latino Studies course, for instance, Vaughn Ward, the Republican congressional candidate from Idaho, might not have made the huge gaffe of declaring Puerto Rico a separate country.

As many attempted to point out in the Arizona case,“heritage” students do find education more rewarding and personally relevant if they are able to engage with materials related to their own sense of cultural and racial identity. Ethnic studies units provide support and a fundamental knowledge about the histories, experiences, and artistic expressions of groups that are not often discussed.



It is a mistake, though, to assume that ethnic studies programs can (or do) only serve “ethnic” students. Horne and others erroneously imagined that the existing Chicano/a studies programs excluded non-Latino/a students (which they did not). On the contrary, regardless of a student’s personal racial identity, ethnic studies programs provide a cultural and intellectual competence to think critically about this increasingly diverse nation. Race-studies units work in partnership with women’s studies and LGBTQQ studies to provide alternative perspectives on the history and experiences of various groups within the United States.

Much to Horne’s dismay, ethnic studies programs reveal that this country wasn’t (isn’t) always a fair place. Certainly the nation has given Horne a good ride, a nice standard of living, and political access. Had he learned more about ethnic studies, though, he would learn that his individual experience cannot be translated to an entire nation’s worth of people. Racism, homophobia, sexism, and other forms of social inequalities have prevented the country from living up to its self proclaimed goals. Indeed, he might even ask the historical question, “If the U.S. is a land of such opportunity and egalitarianism, just why did Chicano/a activists ever advocate breaking off from it?” Chicano/a activists in the sixties and seventies developed cultural-historical narratives that were therapeutic at the time, but as mythical as Horne’s imagining of a race-blind U.S. He could condemn Chicano/a activists if he likes, but their experiences and strategies are nonetheless part of U.S. history.

Providing exposure to the unique experiences of ethnic groups remains a key element of ethnic studies programs. To expand their usefulness and explain their value to those seeking to trim the budget, ethnic studies programs will need to establish themselves as providing key support for students in a variety of careers. While politicians and scholars are losing sleep about the future of ethnic studies programs, professionals in health, law, education, and marketing are already well aware of the potential value of ethnic studies. These are fields that see first hand the rapid transformation of this nation and the emergence of Latinos as the nation’s largest minority. These are also fields that are desperate for professionals who have the cultural competence to enhance their services to diverse populations.

To end, I’ll say that I am always surprised when folks like Mr. Horne accuse professionals in ethnic studies of being irrationally angry or “hating America.” Where do I hear people saying that we should hate the government? It seems to me that these days that message is much more likely to come from the right wing Tea baggers. They tend to ignore that the current government was elected by a hefty majority of voters or that their radical views are far outside of the mainstream.

Ethnic studies, women’s studies, LGBTQQ studies, disability studies, and others do remind us that the nation has lots more work to do before it can claim to be governed by the consent of the people. People on the right are mistaken, however, if they imagine that these units are fueled by anger. On the contrary, these units actually have a tremendous optimism that the future can be better than the past for everybody in the country. Pointing out institutional inequities isn’t the end game for ethnic studies. Ethnic studies programs also interrogate the variety of strategies that various groups have employed to battle and transform institutional inequalities. Scholars in those fields have faith that learning from the hard work of previous generations will ultimately lead to the nation becoming the egalitarian republic it pledges to be.

Justicia, Libertad, y Ciudadanía

Arizona just continues its journey to crazy land. In addition to the draconian antimmigrant/racial profiling law, the legislature is also considering two measures that would deprive funding to schools with undocumented students and also a measure that would outlaw race and ethnic studies programs in the state of Arizona. Well, race and ethnic studies programs except those focused on white people, who apparently aren't a racial group in Arizona. The latter measure also carries a reference title of “prohibited courses.” Sounds to me like Arizona is racking up its anti-U.S. points by now being against free speech, doesn’t it?

Today happens to be Cinco de Mayo. In Mexico, this holiday commemorates an important military victory against a French invasion force. That's right, France. Personally, I always suspected that this holiday only gained traction during the brutal dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (since he was involved in said Battle of Puebla), but I’d need to look into that.

In the United States, this holiday commemorates any flimsy excuse to drink oneself silly midweek. Nota bene to the people of the U.S., José Cuervo was not a Mexican freedom fighter.

President Benito Juárez led Mexico into battle with the rousing statement, "The [French] Imperial Government will not succeed in subduing the Mexicans, and its armies will not have a single day of peace... we must stop them, not only for our country but for the respect of the sovereignty of all nations." He did not motivate his troops by saying, "Winning this war will mean half off on all pitchers of frozen Strawberry Margaritas! If you finish by 1867, then I'll throw in some complimentary chips and salsa."

Far be it from me to interfere with people's drinking, though. Hey, even ol’ GayProf will take the opportunity to enjoy his new favorite spring cocktail, the Tequila Gimlet.



Beyond the ritual drinking, I thought we could also use the day to strike back against Arizona’s anti-Mexican lunacy. There have been a number of proposals to hold Arizona accountable for its legalized hatred. Boycotts seem the best measure. If there is one thing Americans respond to, it’s cash-based incentives.

Still, I think we can be more creative in our approach to Arizona. Here are some additional ideas to make Arizona rethink its xenophobic policies:

* Since Arizona is so obsessed with documentation, let’s void Arizona drivers licenses in neighboring states. Before being permitted to take your car across state lines, an Arizona driver would need to prove their adeptness at parallel parking. I’ve seen these people’s driving skills. Trust me – There would be a whole lot of walking once they left the state.

* Cut off their water. Over 1.5 million people are greedy enough to live in Phoenix, or, as I like to call it, the City that Shouldn’t Exist. I would imagine the desert city could get might thirsty this August if their external sources of water suddenly dried up.

* Redesign Arizona’s flag to be this:



* Disallow Mexican food from being served in Arizona. Hey, if they don’t like the people, then they shouldn’t like the cuisine either. Let’s put them back on the diet that turn-of-the-twentieth-century Euro Americans used to prize so highly. For breakfast, they will now get to enjoy cornmeal mush with top milk, toast, and coffee. Not very satisfying? Well, wait until Arizona’s new lunch course: dried peas, bread with oleomargarine, and stewed rhubarb. If they want to pretend like it is 1906, then they can eat like it too.

* Maybe it’s time for another meteor to visit the state...

* Manufacturers should stop shipping sunscreen into the state. Some cases of melanoma might give Arizonans a new appreciation for their neighbors of a darker hue.

* Given Arizona really likes the idea of racial profiling, let’s allow police to start targeting angry white men. After all, several of the most recent terrorist attempts in our nation seem to have been performed by angry white men (Eight members of the Christian Michigan Militia Hutaree are charged with plotting to levy war and also trying to use weapons of mass destruction; Gregory Guisti allegedly threatened to assassinate Nancy Pelosi and some of our other national leaders; and Joseph Stack tried to fly his plane into Austin’s IRS building). Shoot, if Arizona started racially profiling angry white men, Sheriff Joe Arpaio wouldn’t be able to make it out of his own driveway without being pulled over by the cops.



* Only allow Delta to provide airline service to the state. A couple of flights on the “world’s largest carrier” and the residents will be begging for mercy.

* Since Arizona is claiming that they are doing the job of the federal government, let them take possession of the national debt. By my calculation, each Arizona citizen would owe $1,945,615.06. They might want to hold off on applying for that boat loan.

* John McCain and Jon Kyl will henceforth be introduced as “the honorable Senators from that jerkwater state that makes the rest of the U.S. sick.”

* Force Arizona to relinquish its claims to the Latina star Lynda Carter. She might have been born in Phoenix, but she is a national treasure now.



* Conversely, Arizona must take back former Scottsdale resident David Spade.



* Arizona can no longer claim to be a republican government. Jan Brewer, who was not actually elected as governor, should be given a new title, like “Chairman Brewer” or “Leader Brewer” to suite her style of government.

* GayProf will withhold his recipe for the remarkably tasty Tequila Gimlet until Arizona comes to its senses. It’s a shame that Arizona is making the rest of the nation suffer like that.

* Make sure that Alice really doesn’t live there anymore.

* Put all of those who supported this measure on a plane to Russia with a note pinned to their clothes stating, “These Arizonans have severe antisocial issues/behaviors. We no longer wish to be citizens with them.”

* Every person who supports the legislature's measures needs to write an essay entitled, “Why Hating Immigrants is Unamerican.”

* Send Zorro in and watch him kick some tyrannical ass.



* Since the legislature claims that their real motivation is jobs, allow them to retire from government and assume a job recently vacated by a migrant worker. Oh, look at me, assuming that members of the legislature could do a real day of hard work.

* BP now has a new place to stick all that spilled oil. I’m not sayin’, I'm just sayin’.

Nasty Law in a Nasty State

GayProf goes away for just a bit of time and look what happens to man’s world! Like most Americans, I watched with revulsion as Arizona passed a draconian measure that basically compels police to harass anyone they “reasonably suspect” to be an undocumented migrant worker. Apparently Arizona is tired of waiting in the shadow of Texas to be named the most evil state in the nation. They want that trophy for themselves!

What constitutes “reasonable suspicion?” To claim that it won’t involve forms of racial profiling is disingenuous at best. Do they seriously think that we believe that police will be instructed to be on the look out for anybody sporting a beret? Are they going to scrutinize people whose clothes suspiciously display a red maple leaf?

Arizona shouldn’t insult our intelligence. This is a mean spirited law that will target people of Mexican descent, particularly if their first language is not English. The law also requires that migrants carry papers with them at all times and produce them on demand. Yet, the law's drafters are shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that many people are making comparisons between Arizona and fascist governments. All Americans who believe in fairness should boycott Arizona.

Those in the historical know see this as a continuation of Arizona’s long history of racism and harassment of Latinos. You might not be aware, but pro-slavery Confederates founded Arizona way back in the 1860s. And weren’t those the type of people you would want as neighbors? It turns out, they didn’t arrive in Arizona with a cherry pie and a smile. They had every intention of instituting a brutal racial hierarchy against the already existing Mexican community in the region (which predated the U.S.-Mexican War). In 1877, the editor of Tucson’s Spanish-language newspaper Las dos repúblicas lamented the “the attack of the [Anglo] hordes from the north . . .” Before the arrival of these white supremacists, Arizona had been part of the territory of New Mexico. For the rebel whites, though, the idea of living in a territory with a Mexican majority was anathema. They therefore separated themselves from New Mexico and created a whole new territory where they could institute a tyrannical government.

One of the first things that whites did when Arizona became a state in 1912 was to enact measures to restrict the civil rights of Mexican Americans. Arizona passed laws that denied the vote to any person unable to “read the Constitution of the U.S. in the English language.” Don’t be deceived, though. Euro Americans never truly wanted to rid Arizona of Mexicans entirely. Through the nineteenth century, corporate mining interests came to control the region. These mines were more than happy to exploit Mexican laborers in inhumane working conditions, harshly segregated living arrangements, and depressed wages. They simply created institutional mechanisms that deprived those workers of their basic voting rights.

So, while I am greatly depressed by it, the new law does not surprise me. Many things strike me about it. Mostly it seems a product of conservative white fantasies about the nation. It distracts from the role Republicans had in crippling the United States economy. Scapegoating Mexican migrants has been a cherished Republican tradition at least since 1929. Republicans hope that it will stop Arizonans from asking tougher questions about the gluttony of the small majority motivated by uncontrolled corporate greed.

Enacting this measure also taps into xenophobic fantasies. It presumes that the nation’s demographics have not already shifted tremendously. Though Republicans might wish it were not true, Latino/as are now the nation’s largest minority (accounting for 15 percent of the total population). No amount of walls or borders will alter that fact.

They seem to be under the delusion that migrating to the United States is just a matter of daintily crossing an imaginary line in the sand. The U.S. Border Patrol, however, has made crossing the border a remarkably brutal endeavor. Their patrols and posts have intentionally funneled undocumented workers into the Sonoran desert. They imagine that making entry into the U.S. so difficult (even deadly) it will deter migrants.

Yet, it does not. We should well ask why not? Migrants brave conditions unimaginable to most Americans. Crossing into the United States is expensive and dangerous. Coyotes routinely abandon entire groups in the desert. Others kidnap those who paid them and extort money from their families in Mexico. Violence, including sexual violence, is well documented in these crossings. Yet, the United States remains blind to the circumstances it is creating on the border.

White supporters of this law also fantasize that the United States exists in some supposed isolation from the neighboring republic in everything except migration. What they don’t seem to appreciate is that migration from Mexico occurs because the U.S. is so deeply intertwined with the history and present of Mexico.

We live in a nation with just 4 percent of the global population, but consume over a quarter of the world’s resources. The overwhelming majority of those who cross into the United States are seeking basic employment opportunities and an escape from the crippling economic conditions in Mexico. Most Americans are probably vaguely aware of the rapid pace that U.S. corporation built factories ( maquiladoras) after the passage of NAFTA in the 1990s. They might not be aware, though, that when the U.S. economy started to decline in 2000, almost 300,000 of those jobs were eliminated in northern Mexico. More than 340 maquiladoras closed between 2000 and 2003. The United States’s unending quest for avoiding a fare wage brought many of those factories to China. WTO membership (and the accompanying changes in tariff restrictions) allowed China to compete with the same labor advantages as Mexico. Between 1997 and 2006, the number of jobs in China’s versions of maquiladoras increased from 18 million to 40 million. Unemployment and underemployment in Mexico leaped by bounds.

I cannot deny that the United States desperately needs to rethink its immigration laws. What I would suggest, though, is that we need to consider the motivations for migration and our commitment to a basic standard of living for the world. It is a nation that depends on the degrading labor of workers that most Americans scarcely know exist to maintain their standard of living.

The Past is a Footnote

Over the past few weeks I have been hearing from a variety of graduate students in my academic programs about their frustrations with the current curriculum. Normally I don’t pay much heed to the whining. A complaining graduate student is about as rare as a Popeye Pez dispenser. Disappointingly, they don’t jettison delicious candy from their throat, either. Trust me.

In these cases, though, the graduate-student concerns reflect a much more serious problem with History and American Studies as fields beyond Big Midwestern University. Many of these students arrived at BMU with the explicit intent of studying Chicano/Latino/a Studies. Yet, in their required courses on the U.S., they have read zero (0) books on Latino/as in the U.S.

I am concerned about these revelations less for the students already interested in Latino/a Studies. After all, they will do what similar scholars have always had to do. They will fulfill the expectations for their classes while simultaneously building reading lists on Latino/a Studies that they will complete on their own time. Despite their intellectual isolation, they will nonetheless persevere because they are committed to Latino/a communities.



Rather, I am worried about the students who are not explicitly interested in Latina/o Studies in those classes. These are students who will (if they have some luck) obtain jobs teaching U.S. history at other universities across the nation. They will do so having received the implicit message that it is acceptable to ignore the nation’s largest minority entirely. It will, in other words, replicate a disciplinary ignorance that has been in place since the nineteenth century.

Curriculum, of course, is a touchy subject. It is hard to bring up these issues without sounding like I am wagging my finger and clucking in disapproval. That’s probably because I bring these issues up while I am wagging my finger and clucking in disapproval.

Still, these classes are taught by colleagues whom I deeply respect. They are some mighty smart people whose own research is impeccable. We aren’t talking about secret members of the Klan in other words. I can guarantee they aren’t pushing a covert white supremacist agenda. Hey, that might not sound like such a ringing endorsement, but it’s not a guarantee that I could have made about some of my former colleagues in Texas. At Big Midwestern University, though, these are faculty who are fiercely interested in social justice issues.



So if these colleagues aren’t disciples of Lou “Immigrants are Hiding Under My Bed” Dobbs, just what is going on? Why is there a disconnect between their politics and their course content?

Latino/as’ long presence in this nation means they should appear in both halves of the traditional U.S. history survey. For most U.S. historians, though, Latinos (much less Latinas) remain an “and also” topic rather than being construed as fundamental to the history of the nation. If they make it onto a syllabus at all, Latinos are most likely to be found in the “Suggested Reading” section rather than in the “required” list.




Part of this is a problem much larger than academia. For the past 160 years, the United States has been in collective denial about Latino populations north of Mexico. The mass media periodically expresses “shock (SHOCK!)” that Latino/as account for a large slice of the nation every twenty years or so. Even in those moments, you can depend on the fact that Latino/as will be figured as “foreign” or “recent arrivals” rather than as communities with a century-and-a-half of history that informs their experiences in this nation.

But where would the media learn such things? Given my recent conversations with grad students, it turns out that even the best history departments can't be relied upon to teach that history.

This year, 2009, marks the fortieth anniversary of El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education. Back in 1969, Chicano/a college students were mighty pissed. Universities failed to acknowledge the contributions, struggles, and perspectives of Chicanos and Chicanas (and Latino/as more broadly) within the United States. These students turned their frustration into direct action. Most universities responded by creating subunits focused on Latino/a Studies. After four decades of activism, scholarship, and teaching within those units, it seems that Latino Studies has failed to convince other historians of their importance. And guess what? Latino/a students are still pissed.

It is to historians’ peril that they continue to bury their head in the sand around Latino/a issues. Today, twenty percent of the nation’s schoolchildren currently identify as Latina/o. The Census Bureau further predicts that Latino/as will constitute 28 percent of the nation’s population by 2050. Latino/as will profoundly change the face (literally) of higher education in the next decade.

What will the poorly trained historians we are producing tell those future students? That the nation’s history isn’t relevant for Latino/as? That a quarter of the nation's population isn't relevant for its history? That they would have learned more about Latinos in grad school, but it just didn’t seem that important? That salsa is delicious?

This is not to say that I think every U.S. historian must devote themselves to studying the experiences of Latino/as exclusively. I am saying, however, that it is inexcusable that we have graduate students earning Ph.D.’s who have little or no knowledge of this history. Savvy departments who are currently searching in any field in U.S. history would be wise to ask a new assistant professor how they will address the surging Latino/a Student body in their course content.



The knowledge and research that we conduct about the past means that historians have an unusual ability to speak about political and social issues in the present. By refusing to understand how much the nation’s population has actually changed, however, historians forfeit their intellectual authority.

Confirming Racism

Barack Obama has had a difficult relationship with two (sometimes overlapping) constituencies within the Democratic Party: Latinos and the gays. He never really won over either group during the tense primary season. Despite that fact, both groups nonetheless voted overwhelmingly for him in the general election (Before Clinton apologists jump on this, it is important to note that her stated positions toward both groups were almost identical to Obama’s – I have serious doubts her administration would have acted any different in these issues).

One would have imagined that Obama would therefore be more mindful of Latinos and gay concerns so that they remained on his side. Turns out, not so much.

For the gays, his administration has decided that we are expendable and is more than happy to toss us aside. He recently allowed his administration to file a legal brief comparing gay marriage to incest. Not only won’t Obama support equal marriage rights, but he has even balked at upholding the right of queer folk to serve their nation’s military. In place of real justice, he invited a few select A-list gays to the White House for a cocktail party.

During the campaign, Obama pledged to be a good “friend” to the queer community. Apparently Mr. Obama doesn’t see friendship as being about recognizing our basic equality before the law. Friendship seems to mean serving some soggy appetizers and watered-down cocktails in the East Room.

Or maybe Obama wants us to be the equivalent of adolescent “secret friends.” It’s cool if we come over to his house and play video games, but he doesn’t want the popular kids at school knowing that we hang out. He has his reputation to consider.

Latinos have not fared much better under Mr. Obama. Political considerations prompted him to appoint the notoriously anti-immigrant Arizona governor Janet Napolitano to head Homeland Security (the bureau that currently controls immigration for the entire U.S.). Obama also largely ignores Latin America until an absolute crisis forces him to pay attention.

He was, however, willing to throw [straight] Latinos a bone by nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Don’t get me wrong – That’s a pretty good bone. There is lots of meat on it and all the marrow is intact. We could be chewing on it for decades to come. Well, that’s assuming that Nepolitano doesn’t deport us all.

Merely being Latina, though, is not enough to draw the support of the Latino community. After all, the Bushie administration frequently floated Alberto Gonzales’s name as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court. Latinos rarely supported the idea, even before Gonzales contracted that crippling case of amnesia that seemed to tear his life apart.



Still, I generally like Sotomayor. By all accounts, she has been a remarkably thorough and deliberate judge. What really sealed the deal for me was when she broke her ankle while traveling to meet with the Senate. Not only did Sotomayor still make her flight, she hobbled her way up the steps of Capitol Hill without missing an appointment. There is a woman who wants a job! Well, who can blame her given how high the unemployment rate is these days? I hear that Supreme Court Justice gig comes with a nice benefits package, maybe even dental!

Sotomayor’s path from nomination to confirmation has exposed the general public’s ambivalence about discussing race in the nation. Republicans know that they are in a precarious position with the public. Voters appear to finally have had it after decades of Republican mismanagement, corruption, and a disregard for the welfare of the majority of citizens. Since most Republicans don’t actually want to change their positions, they see their best bet at victory as whipping up hate. Hey, it worked for Bushie in 2004. Despite having driven the nation into the ground (and spending most of his time on vacation), he could still build a winning reelection campaign based on homophobia, anti-immigrant hysteria, and unending war. Republicans see a prime chance to use common racism as a means to get back into the limelight (They also conveniently ignore that it was Bush I who appointed Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court).




At the instant of her nomination, Republicans attacked viciously. Newt Gingrich and the various pundits declared her a “racist.” Mitt Romney declared her nomination “troubling.” Religious zealot Mike Huckabee released a scathing statement slamming Sotomayor. Of course, Huckabee was a bit confused and called her “Maria” Sotomayor rather than her actual name, Sonia Sotomayor. Apparently Huckabee just assumes that all Latinas are named Maria. Yeah, but Sotomayor is the “racist.”

More than anything else, Republicans have seized on Sotomayor’s now infamous statement that “a wise Latina woman” might make decisions about the law differently than an individual of another race or gender. If we are to believe Republicans, apparently Sotomayor will use her seat on the Supreme Court to institute a bloody race war that will only end when Puerto Rico has triumphed and enslaved the rest of the world.

Of course, Republicans also argue that Sotomayor is going to take away everybody’s guns. So, I guess it will be a race war fought with banana-cream pies.



What I find astounding about the whole debate is that we are seemingly expected to believe that the Supreme Court in the United States, up until this point, has been somehow “race blind.” If we accept what the Republicans are saying, then Sotomayor would radically alter the court because she *gasp* might be influenced in her interpretations of the law by her racial and gender identities.

Actually, the Supreme Court has often made decisions with racial implications (if not directly influenced by race). These were decisions that upheld a racial hierarchy within the United States by interpreting the Constitution in particular ways that benefited white men. They were also decisions made exclusively by white men.

Indeed, it was often cases involving race that helped solidify the Supreme Court’s authority within the U.S. Of course, there are the well-known ones: In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court ruled that the drafters of the Constitution considered African Americans “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled the forced separation of the races was just dandy. Other cases, though, are not as frequently discussed. In the 1831 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that Native-American tribes existed in a type of legal limbo as “domestic dependent nations.”

As residents in Puerto Rico, Sotomayor’s family felt the implications of the Supreme Court’s power directly. In 1901, the U.S. Supreme Court case Downes v. Bidwell more-or-less defined that island (and other occupied U.S. territories) as a colony of this nation. While ostensibly about taxes, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution did not extend to Puerto Rico or its inhabitants because it was merely a “possession” of the United States.



The majority of justices couldn’t find a consensus about how the law permitted that to be true. Instead, they submitted five different opinions, none of which received a majority endorsement. The one with the most support explained that Puerto Rico “was foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.” In other words, Puerto Ricans just didn’t “fit in” with the rest of the U.S. They spoke a different language, looked different, and had different customs. As a result, the U.S. did not legally have to treat Puerto Rico as an equal part of the nation. One might hope that, had a Puerto Rican been on the Supreme Court in 1901, that ze might have objected to such logic (no matter how based in the “law” it was).

Such rulings, which certainly had racial implications, have had long-term implications that have yet to be resolved. The Pew Hispanic Center just recently released a report on Puerto Rican demographics in the fifty states. Today, more than four million Puerto Ricans live in the mainland United States, slightly more than live on the actual island of Puerto Rico (which, btw, is still a U.S. possession without a voting member of Congress – All Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens). Puerto Ricans are the second largest Latino population in the U.S., but are far overshadowed by Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Puerto Ricans account for only 9 percent of the total Latino population in the U.S., but Mexicans and Mexican Americans are a substantial majority (constituting 64 percent of the total Latino population). Puerto Ricans, like all Latinos, have less access to education and earn less than the general population. They also have lower rates of homeownership, lower than even the rate for Latinos overall.

So, it doesn’t surprise me that Sotomayor might have a particular take on the law based on her background. Of course, accusations that one’s racial and gender identities would bias their decisions is not something that seems to come up when white men are appointed to the court. The current Chief Justice, John Roberts, sailed through the confirmation process. Shortly thereafter, in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that Seattle, Washington’s defacto segregated school system did not violate the rights of minority students. The Court thus severely limited the ability of all the nation’s schools to consider race as a means to achieve integration. Roberts glibly promised that pretending that race doesn’t matter in this nation will make it so. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” he wrote, “is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.”



Did you hear that, people? Simply stop being racist and racism will be over. Why didn’t we think of that before? It’s all so simple! All these centuries and it took such a brilliant jurist to simply say, “stop discriminating based on race.” Oh, brave new world!

How can one not but conclude that Roberts’ naïve assumptions about racism are the result of his elite background and status as a middle-age white man? One guesses that he probably still believes that it was his clapping that brought Tinkerbell back to life.

The legal and social status quo means inequity for Puerto Ricans and other Latino groups (Not to mention women, other racial minorities, queer folk. . .) Existing injustices, some of which are written into our laws, are the legacy of racism in this nation. That can’t be wished away.

Obama's Fiesta Platter

HistoriAnn recently had a snarky critique of Barack Obama’s not-so-sudden swing to the political right. Maybe it was more snark than even I dare give out, but she had a point. Given that I never really imagined Obama as the “progressive candidate” that people claimed he was, this move does not surprise me (I was not, as I am sure you all remember, a Clinton supporter either. I would likely be as displeased with her had she been victorious – Remember: gravitas).

Certainly, though, I have been less than impressed by Obama’s ill-advised attempts to attract white conservatives to his cause. Moreover, I was literally made nauseous when Obama announced plans to continue the “faith-based” shit initiated by George W. Bush. Why? WHY would he support the faith-based initiatives when even Republicans didn’t really care for them? Actually, given that George W. Bush is the most hated president that we have ever had, why would any candidate endorse anything that he has done? If I were running for president, I wouldn't even admit to wearing the same brand of shoes as George Bush. Whatever the case, collapsing the distinctions between religion and government makes both worse.

As a gay man who has seen the religious right use their faith as an excuse to eliminate my basic civil rights, I am particularly horrified to see any politician wanting to give religion a bigger role in government (plus tax money). It made Obama look like he was wants to get into bed with the bigots. Yuck! And if he knew anything about their religious beliefs, Obama would know that they are strongly opposed to being in bed with him.



While I still intend to vote for Obama, support for such measures is making it difficult for me to do so. After that faith-based nonsense, it is only my fear of John McSame that keeps me in the Obama camp (for the time being). McSame is a bitter old man trying to buy power with his wife's beer money. The nation won't survive another four years of that horror. Push me a bit further, though, and I might not be able to stomach Obama's right wing tendencies either.

If I feel this way – Somebody who will support the Democrats for pragmatic reasons despite being much more on the left than they – I imagine that he is in danger of alienating a great number of the voters who would be most likely to bring him to the White House.

Pandering to those who would rather die than see him take power is a one-way road to doom. Talking to people who want him to succeed is a better choice.

Obama would be well served to remember that conservative white men are the minority in this nation. A real winning strategy for the Democrats (and I often wonder if they actually want to win elections) would involve getting out the majority of voters in this nation. Yep, the majority of voters are the combined strength of left-leaning racial minorities, women of all backgrounds, and the racially-diverse GLBTQ community. Do all of these groups vote 100 percent Democrat? Obviously, no. But majorities in all of those populations do -- which, when we combine them, means a majority of the nation does. If we all voted (or were allowed to vote honestly (which is a topic for another post)), we would easily defeat the right wing over and over again. Mysteriously, appealing to these groups, the core of the Democratic Party and the nation, seems to be Obama’s biggest failure right now.



This problem didn’t appear out of nowhere. Obama showed that he had serious problems during his never-ending primary with Hillary Clinton. He never could get the gays on his side, for instance, despite the fact that his and Clinton’s position on “queer issues” were virtually indistinguishable (and equally offensive). Even more telling (and even more foreboding) was his failure to attract Latino/a voters.

The media, of course, spent considerable time discussing the “Latino Community’s” support for Clinton. Yet, despite the many hours of wasted video tape that went into the issue, they never offered any significant reasons about why Latino/as preferred Clinton. That would have involved talking to actual Latino/as -- and the major networks really prefer not to do that.

Part of the answer, of course, is that there is no such thing as a monolithic “Latino Community” or consistent bloc of “Latino voters.” Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and the various other groups that fall under the racial umbrella of “Latino” have distinct histories and interests that result in different voting patterns. Cuban Americans have more often voted Republican, for instance, than other Latino groups (despite the fact that Republican victories have cut or eliminated things that are critically important to Cuban Americans like affirmative action or bilingual education (poor whites don't have a monopoly on voting against their own best interests)).

Any attempt to attract Latino/a voters requires a recognition that they have a diverse set of concerns. Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans in New Mexico, whose concerns center on a century-plus of U.S. imperialism in their homelands, might or might not connect their concerns with second-generation Mexican Americans or Colombian American voters. Economic class, likewise, can be as divisive within the “Latino Community” as in any other segment of the population.

So what is the key for a political victory among “Latino/as”? Hell if I know. If I did, I would rule this nation with an iron fist. Alas, though, I can only comment on how pitifully Obama has been in his efforts to this point.

I am surprised that Obama has found it so difficult to understand the complexity and diversity of Latino/as in this nation. His own personal history reveals a greater diversity within the “African American” community, another group that is often imagined to be flat and monolithic. Why has he been unable to transfer his personal experience and identity to his political message to minority groups?

Instead, Obama depends on the most broad statements possible. Recently I visited Obama’s campaign web page to see how he tailored his message for Latino/a voters. It turns out, he really can’t be bothered to do so. There is a paltry Spanish-language section that was seemingly last updated weeks ago (!). It offers a fraction of the information that is offered on the Anglophone site.



In addition to the pitiful Spanish-language section, there is also a separate English-language “Latino” section comparable to his sections for “women” and “environmentalists” (because politicians still prefer the notion of separate and easily distinguished marketing niches). For Latinos, his staff apparently could only come up with half-a-page of text to explain why Latino/as should support Obama’s campaign. Compare that half-of-a-page with the 12 pages of text devoted to "Americans Abroad" or the 7 pages of text under the "Women" section.

Much of that measly text aimed at Latinos, moreover, is entirely boiler-plate. If you deleted the word "Latino," you would have no idea that it is supposed to be addressed to a specific group.

In his “[Latino] Education” paragraph, Obama does not endorse bilingual education, address Latino/a dropout rates, discuss access to higher education, or the need for diversity in the curriculum. Instead, he promises a vague English-only policy as he will “hold schools accountable for teaching English-language learners.” English-language learners? Does he mean like George W. Bush?

Such calculated prose seems designed to cater to skittish white voters who fear a multilingual nation rather than actually providing real bilingual education (which, btw, would help white students as much as Latino/a students compete in the global market (if that is our goal)). He doesn't even come close to addressing Latino/as' real frustrations with their place in the U.S.-education system (the Latino dropout rate hovers around 20 percent -- Meaning that one-fifth of Latinos in the U.S. education system will not graduate from high school(a dropout rate three times higher than whites)).

Obama also touts his Health Care plan and his Iraq policy in the Latino section, but offers nothing specific about why Latinos would see those issues as important. In terms of Iraq, he might have mentioned a 2003 Pew Hispanic Center study that indicated that Latinos serving in the U.S. military are over-represented in the categories that get the most dangerous assignments (infantry, gun crews) -- and make up over 17.5 percent of the front lines despite being only 9.5 percent of the enlisted forces. Or he could have even noted a study that showed that nearly half of all Latino voters have somebody close currently serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

As for health care? “You Latino people get sick, right?," the site might as well say, "I mean, we aren’t certain about that as the market research hasn’t come back. But we are pretty sure that you get sick. If you elect Obama you will be marginally less likely to be completely devoid of health insurance.”

Finally, Obama offers vague wording about immigration that promises to fix “our broken immigration system” and “enforce our laws" and "reaffirms our heritage as a nation of immigrants.” The rabidly xenophobic Lou Dobbs could just as easily support that empty statement as Latino/a voters. Hell, Lou Dobbs could have written that statement.

Here is a hint to the Obama campaign people: When the words “fix” “immigrant” and “problem” appear in close proximity to each other, Latino/as are almost always left with the assumption that this is going to involve a program of racial profiling and police harassment regardless of citizenship status. Why? Because that has been the history of such rhetoric in this nation for the past 160 years. It doesn’t help matters that Obama signed onto the same immigration bill as John McSame.

Now, I am not naïve. I understand that modern politics is about building as vague a message as possible to attract the greatest number of voters. In the case of Latino/as, though, I get the impression that Obama isn’t even trying. This is supremely foolish.

Latino voters could potentially swing a number of states, including places like Michigan and Ohio (The Mexican/Mexican American section of Detroit, for instance, is one of the few places in that urban wasteland that has experienced economic growth). Instead, Obama seems content to either ignore Latino/as entirely or to depend on crude stereotypes and assumptions.

Let’s take a look, for example, at the campaign ad that he ran during the Texas campaign:



Really? Mariachi singers? Really? For real, that is all that Obama came up with for tejano voters? Could he have aimed for a bigger stereotype? Was Speedy Gonzales unavailable that day? Did the Frito Bandito declare in favor of Clinton?

Who on the Obama campaign decided to get the costumed mariachi singers? Alas, it wouldn’t totally surprise me if some Latino in his campaign came up with this idea, but they should be fired for doing so.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like mariachi music a great deal. It is just one of many musical genres unique to the Mexican-American community. Trotting out costumed mariachi singers, however, raise red flags when they are deployed by somebody who obviously has no connection with Mexicans/Mexican Americans. Mariachi singers suggest that Obama thinks very little about Latino/as beyond stereotypes. Tell me, how much different was that Obama ad verses a recent Taco-Bell campaign?



Was Obama really surprised that Mexican Americans rejected such ploys? Sorry, Barack, we've been served those same old beans and cheese since ¡Viva Kennedy! in 1960. We expect more.

If Obama really is the “savior” candidate that his self-created hype promises, I want to see a new vision of the United States from him. A Democrat who tries to sound like a Republican is neither progressive nor likely to enter the White House. A Democrat who sounds like he spent more than two seconds thinking about the diversity of this nation could make me feel a lot better about having to vote for him.

What is Wrong with Arizona?

Republicans in the Arizona legislature are at war with the state’s universities. Last year the legislature attempted to limit professors’ ability to assign texts that might make students “uncomfortable.” Basically, the end result of that measure would have meant that students could opt out of having to read anything at all. It also included a provision that would have forbidden professors from taking any action that might “endorse, support or oppose any pending, proposed or enacted local, state or federal legislation, regulation or rule.” Yeah, because why would we want universities to be places where people think and discuss legislation? Apparently Arizona Republicans have taken a look at higher education in their state and said to themselves, “You know, I would really like higher education to be less educational.”

This year, the Republican legislature has proposed an even more insidious bill. SB 1108 would forbid students from participating in groups organized around racial solidarity. So, for instance, students could not join the Black Business Students Association, Native Americans United or MEChA (Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). Whether one agrees with these groups or not, one would have thought they would be protected by freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Arizona Republicans say "No!" You can sign a petition against this measure here.

Moreover, the measure would also forbid courses to be organized around race. Latino/a Studies, African American studies, and Asian American studies would all be illegal. Note to self: Never take an academic job in Arizona. Note to current Arizona Professors: Get out, if you can.

Republicans have called this measure part of “Homeland Security.” They promise to cut state funding to Arizona schools whose courses “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.” SB 1108 also would bar teachers from “overtly encouraging dissent” from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration. All teaching materials would have to be approved by the school superintendent for review.

We can set aside the stuff that is just plain confusing or nonsensical (How exactly has Mexico not participated in “Western Civilization?” Why is participating in the Black Business Students Association against capitalism?). We can focus, instead, on the ways that this measure combines Republicans' favorite forms of disinformation.

First, of course, it upholds the myth that we live in a “color-blind” society. It ignores that African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately poor, excluded from higher education, and earn less than their white counterparts. Whites remain the majority of university students (even in states (like Texas) with a non-white majority) at most flagship institutions. Yet, these measures place the blame for racist institutional practices onto minorities. MEChA emerged forty years ago to combat racism in the United States. In a classic Orwellian move, however, Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) and other supporters of the bill have declared that it is groups like MEChA that are “real” racists.



Republicans and other conservatives get testy when notions of race move beyond their control. Clearly MEChA doesn’t understand that racial categories are only supposed to be used to oppress people. Using race as a means to organize for social justice is so missing the point.

This isn’t to say, obviously, that every member of MEChA or similar left-leaning organizations is automatically a saint. Both individually and collectively, they make mistakes. A few members of the left on university campuses, for instance, have wrongly tried to silence people on the right. They must also be educated about the importance of universities being sites of free speech and intellectual engagement.

Don’t be fooled, though. People on the right are not interested in “academic freedom.” They are interested in crushing any person who dares to say they are wrong.

For over a decade, members of the right have been attacking universities and attempting to control their curriculum. A former - liberal - turned - neoconservative named David Horowitz led the charge starting in the 1990s. In essence, Horowitz claimed that university-level humanities departments had become secret havens for Democrats. He put forward (without any real evidence) the outlandish claim that these same faculty keep conservatives out, deprive them of funding, and openly indoctrinate their students to blindly vote Democrat. In an unexpected twist, Horowitz and crew claim that their own Academic Freedom is being impinged.

The notion that college humanities departments are hotbeds of radicalism seems fairly laughable. From my vantage point, these departments are pretty darn conservative. The faculty is not racially diverse (not even coming close to representing the general population of the nation); they loathe change; and they maintain the status quo more than they rock the ship of state.



Moreover, Republicans give faculty way too much credit while giving university students none at all. If, as a professor, I had the power to “indoctrinate” my students, do you think that Bush would still be sitting in the White House? I have no special power to brainwash my students into being radicals. Heck, I can’t even convince my students to use the spell checker on their wordprocessor before submitting a paper. Just imagine how little power I have to foment revolution.

This is not to say that my politics don’t inform my research and my research doesn’t inform my politics. It would be impossible for me, as a Latino historian, to disentangle those two components. I own and make explicit my political perspective to my students and suggest that it does, indeed, influence my teaching.

Being explicit about my perspective does not mean that I am trying to dazzle or trick students into sharing my political ideas. Instead, I believe that students are smart enough to grapple with the information presented in my class. They always decide what to think on their own (as they should). Trust me, students can be asked to question social relations of power, government authority, imperialism, and resistance without having a single one fly off to Cuba the next morning.



Unlike those on the right, moreover, my own political ideology is not threatened knowing that other professors express viewpoints counter to mine in their classrooms. Students should hear as many ideas as possible.

Universities are supposed to be places where students encounter a wide-range of ideas and perspectives. Students learn how to reconcile those ideas for themselves – that is the point of an education – Learning to think independently and stuff.

What the right wants to do with these measures is silence dissent. The right’s vision of “not indoctrinating” really means that we should never hear or learn from people different from themselves. Apparently people on the right imagine that their own intellectual positions are so fragile that they won’t survive a confrontation with alternative epistemologies. Ironically, by shutting down university professors who propose radical ideas about the nation, the right implies that those ideas are more attractive than the status quo.



Finally, it is not surprising that this effort would occur around the time that Arizona is projecting a massive budget deficit for 2009. In a classic move, Republicans look to distract Arizona from their economic mismanagement of the state. Instead, they claim that they are in an ideological war with the “left” to “preserve” the nation. If they really want to preserve the nation, they might look into the collapsing value of the U.S. dollar. That will destroy this nation much faster than a prof who dares to suggest that Mexican migrants have basic human rights.