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New Directions in Latino/a/x Histories of Education: Comparative Studies in Race, Language, Law, and Higher Education

Part of: 60th Anniversary Forum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2020

Rosina Lozano
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Extract

The twenty-first century has seen a surge in scholarship on Latino educational history and a new nonbinary umbrella term, Latinx, that a younger generation prefers. Many of historian Victoria-María MacDonald's astute observations in 2001 presaged the growth of the field. Focus has increased on Spanish-surnamed teachers and discussions have grown about the Latino experience in higher education, especially around student activism on campus. Great strides are being made in studying the history of Spanish-speaking regions with long ties to the United States, either as colonies or as sites of large-scale immigration, including Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. Historical inquiry into the place of Latinos in the US educational system has also developed in ways that MacDonald did not anticipate. The growth of the comparative race and ethnicity field in and of itself has encouraged cross-ethnic and cross-racial studies, which often also tie together larger themes of colonialism, language instruction, legal cases, and civil rights or activism.

Keywords

language instructioncivil rightsimmigrantsMexican AmericanPuerto RicanChicano StudiesBrown-Black relations
Type
60th Anniversary HEQ Forum
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 612 - 622
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 History of Education Society

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References

1 While many college students prefer the term Latinx, Latino remains the term that most official studies of the community use, and is the term used in this article.

2 MacDonald, Victoria-María, “Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, or ‘Other’?: Deconstructing the Relationship between Historians and Hispanic-American Educational History,” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 3 (Fall 2001), 365–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Lomawaima, K. Tsianina, “History without Silos, Ignorance versus Knowledge, Education beyond Schools,” History of Education Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Aug. 2014), 349–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Kurt Bauman, “School Enrollment of the Hispanic Population: Two Decades of Growth,” United States Census Bureau, Aug. 28, 2017, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2017/08/school_enrollmentof.html.

7 UC Santa Cruz received the designation in 2015. UC Santa Cruz, “Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives,” https://hsi.ucsc.edu/about/faq.html.

8 By 2015, 58.5 million immigrants had entered the United States since passage of the 1965 act, with over half of those immigrants from Latin America. Pew Research Center, “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065,” Sept. 28, 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million-to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065/.

9 While other non-English students were included, the main discussion by Congress was about Spanish-speaking students. Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., Contested Policy: The Rise and Fall of Federal Bilingual Education in the United States, 1960–2001 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2004), 9–10, 12–14.

10 United States Commission on Civil Rights, Mexican American Education Study, 6 vols. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1971–1974).

11 US Commission on Civil Rights, Mexican American Education Study, 6 vols. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1971–1972).

12 US Commission on Civil Rights, The Excluded Student: Educational Practices Affecting Mexican Americans in the Southwest, Mexican American Education Study, Report III (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1972), 11.

13 As quoted in US Commission on Civil Rights, The Excluded Student, 11.

14 An Act to Amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. No. 94–73, 89 Stat. 400 at 20 (1975).

15 Rubén Donato and Jarrod Hanson have completed many of these early studies before Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of Lemon Grove School District (1931). For example see: Donato, Rubén and Hanson, Jarrod, “Mexican-American Resistance to School Segregation,” Phi Delta Kappan 100, no. 5 (Feb. 2019), 39–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Donato, Rubén and Hanson, Jarrod, “‘Porque tenían sangre de “NEGROS”’: The Exclusion of Mexican Children from a Louisiana School, 1915–1916,” Association of Mexican American Educators Journal 11, no. 1 (May 2017), 125–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also California Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR)-146 Civil rights: Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District.(2015–2016), https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160ACR146.

16 The most prominent study of Mexican American court cases is by Valencia, Richard R., Chicano Students and the Courts: The Mexican American Legal Struggle for Educational Equality (New York: New York University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

17 See John Albert Treviño, “Cisneros v. CCISD”: The Desegregation of the Corpus Christi Independent School District” (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 2010); Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954); and Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District, 324 F. Supp. 599 (S.D.Texas, 1970).

18 Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982).

19 Sarah Coleman, “Redefining American: The Shifting Politics of Immigration Policy at the End of the Twentieth Century” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2016), 18, 18–88.

20 Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974); and Mark Brilliant, The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941–1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 246–51.

21 Lee, Sonia Song-Ha, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 191–94Google Scholar.

22 Some projects in urban spaces demonstrate the real promise of this research direction. See Rita Hernández, “The Silent Minority: Mexican Americans in CPS, 1970–2001” (PhD diss., Loyola University Chicago, 2002).

23 Orfield, Gary, Frankenberg, Erica, Ee, Jongyeon, and Kuscera, John, Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future (Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project, 2014), 2Google Scholar.

24 Hosang, Daniel Martinez and Molina, Natalia, “Introduction: Toward a Relational Consciousness of Race,” in Molina, Natalia, Hosang, Daniel Martinez, and Gutiérrez, Ramón A., eds., Relational Formations of Race: Theory, Method, and Practice (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), 6Google Scholar.

25 Catherine Ramírez, “Indians and Negroes in Spite of Themselves: Puerto Rican Students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School,” in Molina, Hosang, and Gutiérrez, Relational Formations of Race, 167–68.

26 Soria v. Oxnard School District Board of Trustees, 386 F. Supp. 539 (C.D. Cal. 1974).

27 García, David, Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 1–3, 39–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Straus, Emily E., Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 1–14, 73–105, 151–52, 194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Adams, David Wallace, Three Roads to Magdalena: Coming of Age in a Southwest Borderland, 1890–1990 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016)Google Scholar; Khalil Anthony Johnson Jr., “The Education of Black and Indigenous People in the United States and Abroad, 1730–1980” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2016); Tamura, Eileen H., “Education in a Multi-Ethnoracial Setting: Seattle's Neighborhood House and the Cultivation of Urban Community Builders, 1960s-1970s,” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 1 (Feb. 2017), 39–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wild, Mark, Street Meeting: Multiethnic Neighborhoods in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Petrzela, Natalia Mehlman, Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Gutfreund, Zevi, Speaking American: Language Education and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

32 Blanton, Carlos Kevin, The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

33 This book inspired An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States, which examines Spanish language use and instruction as a way to understand how language politics operated in the transition of Mexican citizens into US citizens and how it changed through the generations that followed. It explores the place of Spanish as a language of politics in the Southwest, where it was used to build territorial and state governments. It also addresses how Spanish became a political language where its speakers and those who opposed its use clashed over what its presence meant in the United States and whether to allow its continuation. Lozano, Rosina, An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Ramsey, Paul J., Bilingual Public Schooling in the United States: A History of America's “Polyglot Boardinghouse” (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling, 156.

36 Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling; Dennis E. Baron, The English-Only Question: An Official Language for Americans? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); and San Miguel Jr., Contested Policy.

37 Laura Muñoz, “Desert Dreams: Mexican American Education in Arizona, 1870–1930” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2006). See also Jesse J. Esparza, “Schools of Their Own: The San Felipe Independent School District and Mexican American Educational Autonomy, Del Rio, Texas, 1928–1972” (PhD diss., University of Houston, 2008).

38 Rachel Heller Monarrez, “Tales of ‘La Lucha’: Reflections of Latina Bilingual Educators” (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School, 2011); and Angelica Rivera, “Re-inserting Mexican-American Women's Voices into 1950s Chicago Educational History” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008).

39 For a great overview, see Nancy Beadie, “War, Education and State Formation: Problems of Territorial and Political Integration in the United States, 1848–1912,” Paedagogica Historica 52 no. 1–2 (2016), 58–75.

40 Sarah Manekin, “Spreading the Empire of Free Education, 1865–1905” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009); Funie Hsu, “Colonial Articulations: English Instruction and the ‘Benevolence’ of U.S. Overseas Expansion in the Philippines, 1898–1916” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2013); David Rodriguez Sanfiorenzo, “Problems in the Recruitment of English Teachers from the United States by the Department of Education of Puerto Rico, 1900–1910” (PhD diss., University of Puerto Rico, 2009); Vivienne Patricia Williams, “Bilingualism on the Island of Puerto Rico: Memories of an English-Only Education as Told by Members of the Oldest Living Generation of Island Puerto Ricans” (PhD diss., New Mexico State University, 2004); and Mario Minichino, “In Our Image: The Attempted Reshaping of the Cuban Education System by the United States Government, 1898–1912” (PhD diss., University of South Florida, 2014).

41 Joanna Marie Camacho Escobar, “Aquí se habla español: Cultural Identity and Language in Post-World War II Puerto Rico” (PhD diss., University of Texas at El Paso, 2017).

42 Camacho Escobar, “Aquí se habla español,” 62.

43 This file is burgeoning already. Echeverría, Darius V., Aztlán Arizona: Mexican American Educational Empowerment, 1968–1978 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Juan Martín Gallegos, “Reconstructing Identity/Revising Resistance: A History of Nuevomexicano/a Students at New Mexico Highlands University, 1910–1973” (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2014); Carla Joann Gonzalez, “‘Viva la Raza’: Chicano Student Identity and Activism at Predominantly White Midwestern Universities, 1970–1979” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2019); Gustavo Licón, “¡La unión hace la fuerza!” (Unity creates strength!), M.E.Ch.A. and Chicana/o Student Activism in California, 1967–1999” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2009); Joseph Gomez Moreno, “The Chicana/o Studies Movement on Campus: Popular Protest, Radicalism, and Activism, 1968–1980” (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 2015); Marisol Moreno, “‘Of the Community, for the Community’: The Chicana/o Student Movement in California's Public Higher Education, 1967–1973” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009).

44 Chicana/o Studies: The Legacy of a Movement, Bancroft Library Oral History Center, University of California at Berkeley, https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/oral-history-center/projects/cs.

45 For great foundational works in this direction, see Blanton, Carlos Kevin, George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Flores, Ruben, Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico's Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacDonald, Victoria-María, Botti, John M., and Clark, Lisa H., “From Visibility to Autonomy: Latinos and Higher Education in the U.S., 1965–2005,” Harvard Educational Review 77, no. 4 (Winter 2007), 474–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Victoria-María MacDonald, “‘Compromising La Causa?”: The Ford Foundation and Chicano Intellectual Nationalism in the Creation of Chicano History, 1963–1977,” History of Education Quarterly 52, no. 2 (May 2012), 251–81; and Christopher Tudico, “Before We Were Chicanas/os: The Mexican American Experience in California Higher Education, 1848–1945” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2010).

46 There is one master's thesis on textbooks in Texas. See Monique Hyman, “Textbook Representations: Representations of African American and Mexican American History in Adopted 8th Grade American History Textbooks, 1965–1980” (master's thesis, University of West Georgia, 2018).

47 Leslie Hiatt, “How My 4th-Grade Class Passed a Law on Teaching Mexican ‘Repatriation,’” Rethinking Schools 32, no. 4 (Summer 2018), https://www.rethinkingschools.org/articles/how-my-4th-grade-class-passed-a-law-on-teaching-mexican-repatriation; and An Act to Amend Section 51226.3 of the Education Code, California Assembly Bill No. 146, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB146.