The Struggle to Decolonize Official Knowledge in Texas’ State Curriculum: Side-Stepping the Colonial Matrix of Power

ABSTRACT

This article relies primarily on both postcolonial theory and Critical Indigenous Studies to demonstrate how the Mexican American Studies (MAS) PreK-12 Committee of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco, or chapter, successfully waged battle in getting the Texas State Board of Education to officially incorporate Ethnic Studies, generally, and MAS, specifically, into state curriculum. I situate this struggle in Texas against the backdrop of the fight for MAS in the Tucscon Unified School District in Tucson, Arizona, and make the case for the valuable role that a collectively-shared, Chicana feminist mestiza consciousness played in our ultimate victory, even as we faced, a formidable “colonial matrix of power” embedded in official, social studies curriculum. Drawing on both postcolonial theory and Critical Indigenous Studies, I develop the argument that this colonial matrix of power has deep roots that find expression today in vexed Anglo-Mexican race relations in both Texas and Arizona. In Texas, this has been historically manifest in social studies curricula, alongside deep-seated white supremacist ideology and state structures like the Texas State Board of Education and the Texas State Legislature. Via an Anzaldúan Chicana feminist mestiza consciousness, this article further situates MAS at a theoretical crossroads of postcolonial theory and Critical Indigenous Studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Founded on February 20, 2014, at the annual NACCS-Tejas Foco Conference held at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, the “Prek-12 Committee” is a name that has encouraged us as a whole to imagine ways that MAS can be a focus at the pre-Kindergarten level. In this same year, Academia Cuauhtli (AC), Nahuatl for “Eagle Academy,” was founded in Austin, Texas, on the grounds of the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center. AC is a Saturday school with an Indigenous, danza Mexica (Aztec ceremonial dance) and Civil Rights, social justice curriculum and is the only school to date in Texas that is offering MAS to Pre-K children statewide. While officially serving approximately 34 fourth- and fifth-grade students annually from five East Austin elementary schools, the curriculum is made available districtwide to teachers in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 11 in both English and Spanish. The danza Mexica component additionally consists of the teaching of basic Nahuatl. Consistent with the aspirations of the PreK-12 Committee, what has evolved is a professional, multi-age curriculum that gets administered to pre-K siblings and parents (Nuestro Grupo, 2019; Valenzuela et al., 2015).

2. This article is part of the collective work by Emilio Zamora and Angela Valenzuela, including Valenzuela, Zamora, and Rubio (2015), Zamora and Valenzuela (2019), and Zamora (2017).

3. NACCS national consists of chapters, or “focos,” throughout the nation with each organization functioning autonomously while adhering to the legacy of activism espoused by NACCS national, an organization born out of Mexican Americans’ Civil Rights struggle for curricular inclusion via Mexican American Studies in higher education (MacDonald & Hoffman, 2012; Pulido, 2006). The PreK-12 Committee to which Emilio Zamora and I belong consists of university and college faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as public school teachers from throughout Texas, including community colleges and universities from San Antonio, Seguín, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and the Rio Grande Valley. Many of the committee members have enjoyed membership in both state and parent organizations for many years.

4. Throughout, references to both Ethnic Studies and Mexican American Studies substantively equate either to what may be termed, “Ethnic Studies-Social Studies” or “Mexican American Studies-Social Studies.” Although it was never given this name, which would have been a more accurate one, the social studies curriculum worked as a subtext for this course given that the single special topics course registered on the Texas Education website for Mexican American Studies was a re-purposed course designed by a curriculum specialist from the Houston Independent School District. Another consideration by the PreK-12 Committee was that Tejano history should form the backbone of any menu of courses that might, in the future, populate the school curriculum, such that a conflation of Ethnic Studies with social studies for the time being, was appropriate (McInerny, 2018).

5. My blog is titled Educational Politics and Policy in Texas: https://texasedequity.blogspot.com

6. Specifically, Professors Emilio Zamora, Christopher Carmona, and Juan Tejeda advocated for this unsuccessfully across several meetings with SBOE Chairwoman Donna Bahorich, Rubén Cortez, and other members of the board.

7. In Texas, the high school social studies curriculum consists of the following: U.S. history, U.S. government, economics, and either World History or World Geography. In practical terms, any Ethnic Studies-Social Studies course equates to a 5th social studies course for students’ schedules that leaves little room for electives, on the one hand, and competes with other electives, on the other. Also, because several of these courses are offered as both dual credit, as well as Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, this can disincentivizes the taking of any additional social studies courses.

8. In 2013, before the case was remanded by a federal appeals court, presiding judge Wallace A. Tashima, of the U.S. District Court in Arizona, dismissed this claim (Jung, 2017).

9. At trial in June, 2017, plaintiffs’ attorneys delivered opening statements where they argued that shutting down the MAS program as a consequence of House Bill 2281 was a ploy used by Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, for political gain. Tom Horne used his so-called patriotic stance to propel him to the ranks of Attorney General for the state of Arizona. Defense attorney Rob Ellman characterized the district’s MAS curriculum as “politicized, biased and propagandist” (Jung, 2017), teaching students to hate whites. Pitti, (2016) demonstrated in his report and testimony that this false accusation in the fight against Mexican American Studies was part and parcel to a racist, right-wing strategy that pushed for laws that sought to target immigrants and win elections.

10. It is worth mentioning here that with thousands of bills getting filed each legislative session, it can be hard to catch bills like SB 1128 that fly under the radar that depend on a public that has to be attuned to rather arcane, rarely discussed, policy areas like higher education history curriculum. In a later conversation with Zamora (2019) about this, he said that he caught wind of this bill while reading a newspaper report by the National Association of Scholars that also mentioned arch-conservative Dan Patrick. To this, I would add that Zamora is a seasoned political activist and strategist with a Chicana mestiza consciousness that has always informed his thinking and action.

11. Alonzo’s amendment to Senate Bill 286 stated th following: Sec. 130.0102. Mexican-American Studies Program or Course Work. The governing board of a public junior college district located in one or more counties with a substantial and growing Mexican-American population shall evaluate the demand for and feasibility of establishing a Mexican-American studies program or other course work in Mexican-American studies at one or more junior colleges in the district. With approval of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the governing board may establish a Mexican-American studies program or other course work in Mexican-American studies at any of the colleges if the governing board determines that such a program or course work is desirable and feasible (Texas Legislature Online, 2003).

12. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Professor, Christopher Carmona, succeeded Juan Tejeda as chair in 2016.

13. A later opportunity to adopt a textbook occurred in a hearing on September 12, 2017, by the SBOE. Under consideration was a co-authored book by Diaz, Allender, and Mark (2017)titled, The Mexican American Toolkit for the textbook adoption process (Swaby, 2017a). The board issues a preliminary negative vote against it while expressing openness to the idea of an official elective course in Mexican American Studies. Citing errors submitted by a Texas Education Agency-appointed review panel, on November 10, 2017, the board issued a final negative vote against the book with SBOE member Rubén Cortez providing the only supporting vote. Diaz questioned whether the SBOE really wants a course in Mexican American Studies, with Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network stating that the lack of an Ethnic Studies textbook is an artifact of the SBOE’s own creation (Swaby, 2017b).

14. “Grow your own” educators refers to equity-based, pathway initiatives used by colleges and universities to recruit or “grow” their teaching talent locally with the idea of such individuals, once credentialed in teaching, returning to their neighborhoods to work as homegrown teachers.

15. In the heat of the textbook battle, Planas (2016) attempted to reach out to Momentum Instruction owned by Cynthia Dunbar with Mexican American Heritage as its first publication, reporting that the book “was produced by an infant company run by a conservative ideologue with no background in multicultural education.” Strangely, neither Dunbar nor either of the two authors returned his calls and the Lynchburg, Virginia address appears to be Dunbar’s home.

16. The REST Coalition consisted of the following organizations: ACLU of Texas, Dr. Hector P. Garcia American GI Forum, Education Austin, El Paso Community College Chicana/o Studies Program, Hindu American Foundation, La Fe Policy Research and Education Center, Labor Council For Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), Librotraficante, McNeil Educational Foundation, Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives (MALC), Mexican American School Board Members Association (MASBA), National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Tejas Foco, National Council of La Raza, Rio Grande Valley Coalition for Mexican American Studies, San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Somos MAS, Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP), Texas Association for Bilingual Education (TABE), Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE), Texas AFT (American Federation of Teachers), Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce (TAMACC), Texas Graduate Student Diversity, Texas HOPE (Hispanics Organized for Political Education), Texas Latino Education Coalition, Texas LULAC, Texas NAACP, Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus, Texas State Teachers Association, and the William C. Velasquez Institute (WVCI).

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Angela Valenzuela

Angela Valenzuela is Professor of Educational Policy in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas, Austin. She also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy.