270a Race and Pedagogy Project - Research Archive » Latina/o American

Latina/o American

December 1, 2005

Moraga, Cherrie. “From a Long Line of Vendidas.” Loving in the War Years. Boston: South End P, 1983. 90-144.

December 01st 2005 Posted to Race, Gender and Sexuality, Latina/o American

Cherrie Moraga begins “From a Long Line of Vendidas” with the dedication “para Gloria Anzaldua, in gratitude.” Like Anzaldua’s work, this essay is also a heavily autobiographical account of the way in which gender intersects with race and sexuality. Alternating between journal entries, poetry, and expository writing and combining English with Spanish, Moraga explains how her childhood experiences taught her that as a racial minority and a woman, she was and is doubly marginalized: her brother’s sex, she writes, “was white. Mine, brown” (94). While her brother’s gendered location within the patriarchal system allows him to identify with the white oppressor, Moraga’s gender “fully necessitated my claiming the race of my mother” (94). This identification as a Chicana, however, is complicated. Blending personal narrative with an account of the “historical/mythical” Malintzin Tenepal figure—La Vendida, the native Mexican woman who slept with the Spanish conqueror Cortez and thereby sold out her race—allows Moraga to analyze the cultural prejudice against women and the ways in which women are still coded as “traitors” within Mexican/Chicano culture. (Read the article)

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October 11, 2005

Latina/o American Bibliography

October 11th 2005 Posted to Latina/o American

Carter, Thomas P. Mexican Americans in School: A History of Educational Neglect. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1970.

Chavez, Linda. Out of the Barrio : Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation. New York: Basic Books, 1991. (Read the article)

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September 8, 2005

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

September 08th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, African American, Public School Initiatives, Court & Policy Issues 2516

In this widely-discussed book, Kozol examines the inequalities of the public school system by interviewing teachers, students, coaches and administrators in six of the nation’s poorest urban areas. Kozol compares the day-to-day experience of students in well-funded, predominately white suburban schools to the experience of students living in predominately black and Latino urban areas. Kozol notes that many problems facing urban schools (poor facilities, high dropout rates, large class sizes and underpaid teachers, to name a few) are largely the result of funding inequalities. He suggests that desegregation through school bussing programs combined with a nationwide effort to equalize funding could help narrow the gap between suburban and urban schools. (Read the article)

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August 25, 2005

Donato, Rubén. The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican Americans During the Civil Rights Era. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997.

August 25th 2005 Posted to Race, Literacy and Pedagogy, Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues

In this book Donato explains that while many scholars have focused on the African American struggle for equal education during the Civil Rights movement, few have focused on the Mexican American community during this period. Donato summarizes this “silent” history, using as his primary example Brownfield School District in northern California. Donato writes that in Brownfield, “The concern for respecting and preserving the cultural identity of Mexican Americans found itself at odds with the traditional values of the Brownfield school system and the larger white community…Despite the claim that Mexican children were being processed by a neutral school system, public schools across the Southwest were rife with ethnic, linguistic and class biases. If one of the prime values of the Brownfield schools was uniformity, then there was an inherent conflict between the organization of schools and the desires of the Mexican American community” (10). (Read the article)

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Rumberger, Russell W. and Gloria M. Rodríguez, “Chicano dropouts: an update of research and policy issues,” Chicano School Failure and Success. Ed. Richard R.Valencia. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002, 114-146.

August 25th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues

In Ch.4 of Valencia’s anthology, Rumberger and Rodríguez address the issue of Chicanos’ high dropout rate, citing the fact that “in 1999 the dropout rate for White, non-Latinos was 7.3 percent, compared to 12.6 percent for Black, non-Latinos and 28.6 percent for Latinos (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, 2001, Table 106)” (Rumberger and Rodríguez 114). Rumberger and Rodríguez examine the individual and institutional factors that contribute to this high dropout rate, identify the economic and social consequences of large numbers of Latino dropouts, and offer several programmatic and policy-based solutions to the dropout problem. (Read the article)

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August 17, 2005

Valencia, Richard R., Martha Menchaca and Rubén Donato, “Segregation, desegregation, and integration of Chicano students: old and new realities”, Chicano School Failure and Success. Ed. Richard R. Valencia. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002, 70-113.

August 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues

In the third chapter of Valencia’s book, Valencia, Menchaca and Donato explore the issue of the segregation of Chicanos in public schools. They begin by providing an overview of the history of Chicano segregation, beginning with the post-1848 decades following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In addition, they paint a picture of Chicano school segregation today and offer several practical solutions. (Read the article)

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Valencia, Richard R. Chicano School Failure and Success. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002.

August 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American

This book is a compilation of the most recent research being done on the historical, political and social factors contributing to what Valencia describes as “the persistently, pervasively, and disproportionately, low academic achievement” of Chicano students (4). In his introductory chapter Valencia provides an historical background of Mexican Americans as a conquered people who have always been subject to language suppression and cultural exclusion (7). He then outlines the main factors contributing to Chicano school failure today, which include: (Read the article)

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August 15, 2005

Kao, Grace and Marta Tienda, “Educational Aspirations of Minority Youth,” American Journal of Education, 106.3 (1998): 349-384.

August 15th 2005 Posted to Race, Gender and Sexuality, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, African American

Kao and Tienda use the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1998 (NELS:88) to analyze how educational aspirations are formed and maintained from eighth to twelfth grades. They find that family socioeconomic status (SES) is the single most important factor, not only in establishing high aspirations in the eighth grade but also in maintaining these aspirations throughout high school. Kao and Tienda conclude that “because black and Hispanic students are less likely to maintain their high aspirations throughout high school, owing to their lower family SES background…their early aspirations are less concrete than those of white and especially of Asian students” (349). Kao and Tienda supplement their quantitative analysis with focus-group discussions with students. In these discussions Kao and Tienda discover that Hispanic and black students tend to be less informed about funding options for college and have less concrete occupational goals than their Asian and white counterparts. (Read the article)

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August 13, 2005

Cummins, Jim. “Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention.” Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools. Ed. Lois Weis and Michelle Fine. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993. 101-117.

August 13th 2005 Posted to Latina/o American

Cummins argues for a reciprocal interaction model—as opposed to a transmission model—of instruction. Whereas the transmission model is based on the premise “that the teacher’s task is to impart knowledge or skills that he or she possesses to students who do not yet have these skills,” the reciprocal interaction model empowers students “to become active generators of their knowledge” (111). (Read the article)

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August 10, 2005

Darder, Antonia and Rodolfo D. Torres. After Race: Racism After Multiculturalism. New York: New York UP, 2004.

August 10th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, Race and Globalization, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, The Academy

In this book, Darder and Torres critique the concept of “race” in contemporary political and academic rhetoric as a mask for the class oppression that underlies late capitalist American society. “The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “race”—an ideology that has served well to successfully obscure and disguise class interests behind the smokescreen of multiculturalism, diversity, difference, and more recently, whiteness,” write Darder and Torres (1). Darder and Torres focus their Marxist analysis on the United States education system, and specifically on the key issues of bilingual education, standardized testing, critical race theory and Latino studies departments. They argue that if any real changes are going to be made in educational policy, the concept of ‘race’ must be dismantled and the underlying class issues revealed and critiqued. (Read the article)

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