Campaign against critical race theory matters for Hispanics’ rewritten history
Hispanic Heritage Month, like Black History Month, celebrates people of color and their tremendous contributions to American history. It’s a cultural connection we — Hispanic and Black people — share because our history and our voices are often rewritten, abbreviated or omitted from textbooks.
So Texas’ new critical race theory law for K-12 classrooms, while an effort to quiet the truthful telling of the nation’s past of slavery and systemic racial practices, also undermines the greatness that comes from these celebrations.
Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, began as Hispanic Heritage Week, created by Congress in 1968. Expanded to a month in 1988, it begins in the middle of September to coincide with national independence days of several Latin American countries, including El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, on Sept. 15, and Mexico on Sept. 16.
“Hispanic heritage is American heritage,” President Joe Biden declared in a proclamation earlier this month.
“National Hispanic Heritage Month is an important reminder of how much strength we draw as a nation from our immigrant roots and our values as a nation of immigrants,” he wrote.
But the new Texas law will stifle classroom conversations about race, the history of people of color and immigration, while penalizing teachers who talk about the issue of race by withdrawing funding to the schools. Just recently, a Black principal in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was accused of teaching critical race theory and promoting “the conspiracy theory of systemic racism.” James Whitfield was the first Black principal at Colleyville Heritage High School, and the district suspended him without explanation.
If you don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen, right?
“I am not the CRT (Critical Race Theory) Boogeyman,” Whitfield wrote in a Facebook post. “I am the first African American to assume the role of principal at my current school in its 25-year history, and I am keenly aware of how much fear this strikes in the hearts of a small minority who would much rather things go back to the way they used to be.”
The problem is that conversations about Hispanic and Black history in this country cannot be held effectively without understanding how race and racism have shaped many of the inequities, such the economic wealth gap and access to quality education and health care, that are current today.
We know when children of color see themselves in the classroom lessons, they perform better.
“The majority of school-age children in Texas are of color. They need to see themselves in all of the glory and with all of our flaws,” said Pamela Quiroz, Ph.D, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston. “Latinos are a founding culture of this society. Students need to be able to identify and understand the causes of inequity in this country.”
A National Education Association report, which included studies of the Mexican American Studies program of the Tucson, Ariz., school district and San Francisco school district’s ethnic studies program, consistently shows that ethnic studies courses have a positive impact on students of color — and on white students.
Though there were few conversations about Black history and culturally relevant teachings in my primary public and private education, I was given full opportunity to explore Black, Latino and Native American history and culture at a small, mostly white liberal arts college in Colorado. It was the first time I saw myself and my college friends of color clearly reflected in history taught in the classroom.
There have been valiant efforts in Texas to give students a full picture of history. In 2018, the Texas State Board of Education approved a Mexican American studies class, after debating for more than four years whether to offer teachers materials and guidance to teach Mexican American studies in public high schools. In 2020, the board approved an African American studies course.
So with this new law, what happens to those opportunities?
That depends on how critical race theory is interpreted. Most people don’t even know what it means.
Critical race theory refers to an intellectual movement founded by legal scholars of color — two Black and one Mexican American — in the 1970s to explain racist practices in our laws and systems. The concept has been discussed widely since the killings last year of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other people of color by police officers led to a national reckoning on race.
“This campaign against critical race theory is an anti-Black Lives Matter campaign, an anti-George Floyd-era campaign,” said Tony Diaz, a writer, activist and professor of Mexican American literature and rhetorical analysis at Lone Star College.
While the nation has recently undergone a re-evaluation of structural discrimination and institutions, and even seen the removal of Confederate statues, Diaz said the attack on ethnic studies and history is nothing new.
In 2012, he made national news when he successfully led an effort to defy Arizona’s 2010 ban of Mexican American studies. His Libro-Traficante Caravan smuggled in books banned in Tucson. In 2017, a federal judge forbade the state from enforcing such a ban.
“What’s happening now in Texas is an update of the ethnicstudies attack in Arizona,” he said. “Arizona went after Mexican Americans, but they forgot we are citizens, we speak English, we have degrees. We pushed back and defeated the law. Now, they have come up with this other campaign that sounds logical but isn’t. It’s meant to intimidate teachers and confuse people about history, to think it is bad.”
Diaz said it’s ridiculous to think the concept of critical race theory, which is taught in graduate schools, is seeping into elementary schools.
“It should be clear an attack on the Black and Chicano community like this is an attack on the Asian community, too. It’s all a direct response to the browning of Texas,” he said.
The U.S. Hispanic population reached 62.1 million in 2020, up from 50.5 million in 2010. In Texas, people of color account for much of the state’s 95 percent growth, according to the recent census. The Hispanic population is now nearly 40 percent.
“Critical race theory is not synonymous with culturally relevant teaching, which affirms identity,” Quiroz said, but she’s worried that the state’s ban will set a precedent. “Basically, anything that is a different perspective could create problems for African American and Mexican American studiesm. It’s censorship. All cultures need to be recognized, and people need to understand history, the good and the bad.”
Quiroz is optimistic for the future of an inclusive and culturally enriching education system.
“I don’t believe the force of progress will reverse itself. It might in the short run, but I believe progress will prevail,” she said.