2 MADRES POR LA EDUCACÍON Community Cultural Wealth at Southside Elementary1 Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION A recent report from the American Association of University Women found that Latinas represent the largest “minority” group of girls in the United States K–12 system.2 In the 2003–2004 school year, Latinas comprised over 50% of California’s public school kindergarten, first-, and second-grade classes.3 Latinos did not lag too far behind, making up over 50% of the kindergarten and first grades. Because people of Mexican descent account for the majority of Latinas/os, these numbers reflect the growth pattern of Chicana/o populations. While evidently present at the primary school level, numerous structural barriers continue to hinder Chicana/o access to the ensuing levels of the educational pipeline. Chicanas/os usually attend underfinanced, racially segregated, overcrowded elementary schools that lack basic human and material resources.4 The least experienced teachers tend to be placed in the most low-income, overcrowded schools.5 Indeed, schools comprised predominately of lowincome Students of Color evidence a higher proportion of uncertified and less-experienced teachers, more unfilled teacher vacancies, and a high teacher turnover rate.6 Few Chicanas/os have access to a well-trained teacher who appropriately implements bilingual/multicultural education by drawing on the cultural and linguistic knowledge students bring from their homes and communities to the classroom.7 Because elementary school serves as an important prerequisite to later educational attainment, one would expect to find a high-quality academic curriculum available to all students.8 This is not the case. Compared to White schools, elementary schools comprised of low-income Students 21 Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 22 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline of Color rarely offer high-quality programs.9 Most often, the elementary schools Chicanas/os attend stress academic remediation and a slowing down of instruction, rather than academic enrichment or an acceleration of the curriculum.10 The common practice of rigid ability grouping in these early grades also leads to lower academic achievement for Chicana/o students.11 Moreover, English Language Learners (ELLs) tend to find a shortage of quality programs.12 Well before high school, most schools do not nurture a college-going culture for Chicanas/os. Low per-pupil expenditures exacerbate the lack of a quality, academically enriched curriculum in Chicana/o elementary schools.13 For instance, Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) and magnet programs severely under-enroll Chicanas/os.14 This disproportionate access corresponds with discriminatory school-based structures and practices as opposed to a lack of student or parent interest in academic enrichment. For example, teachers tend to hold low educational expectations for Chicana/o students, school staff may assume less responsibility for educating Chicana/o students, and school boards usually place quality academic enrichment programs outside Chicana/o neighborhoods.15 Too often, educators perceive Chicana/o students’ culture and language as deficits to overcome instead of strengths to cultivate.16 Furthermore, primary curricula often exclude or minimize Chicana/o social and historical experiences and reinforce negative stereotypes.17 To explain unequal conditions or discriminatory practices, social science researchers most often use deficit models. Deficit models blame Chicana/o students and communities for lacking certain attributes and therefore causing low academic outcomes. Little empirical evidence exists to support deficit models.18 Even so, researchers rely on at least two main deficit models—genetic and cultural.19 The genetic determinist models traces the low educational attainment of Chicana/o students to deficiencies in their genetic structure.20 This scenario features few social policy options—lacking genetic transformation or total neglect—to raise the educational attainment of Chicana/o students. The works of Lloyd Dunn,21 the Minnesota Twin Studies,22 Frederick Goodwin,23 and Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray24 evidence a renewed interest in the genetic model. Meanwhile, in everyday classroom situations, this genetic deficit thinking continues to inform an over-reliance on aptitude tests and other inappropriate standardized assessments.25 The culture deficit model is the most widely used in the deficit tradition. The cultural deficit model finds dysfunction in Chicana/o cultural values and insists such values cause low educational and occupational attainment.26 These supposedly deficient cultural values include a present versus future time orientation, immediate instead of deferred gratification, an Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Madres por la Educacíon • 23 emphasis on cooperation rather than competition, and a tendency to minimize the importance of education and upward social mobility.27 Cultural deficit models assert that Chicana/o families also exhibit problematic internal social structures. They claim these social structures—large, disorganized, female-headed families; Spanish or nonstandard English spoken in the home; and patriarchal or matriarchal family hierarchies—cause and perpetuate a culture of poverty.28 Cultural deficiency models also argue that since Chicana/o parents fail to assimilate and embrace the educational values of the dominant group, they continue to socialize their children with values that inhibit educational mobility.29 Informed by racial stereotypes, the cultural deficit model enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, but remains the theory of choice (hidden and overt) at many elementary schools,30 teacher education departments,31 professional meetings, and settings where people discuss the topic of Chicana/o educational inequality.32 Indeed, the revival of the cultural deficit model over the last 20 years features a rubric of the cultural “underclass” and terms such as “at risk” and “disadvantaged.”33 Joseph Kretovics and Edward Nussel explain, “At the highest levels of educational policy, we have moved from deficiency theory to theories of difference, back to deficiency theory.”34 Schools driven by deficit models most often default to methods of banking education critiqued by Paulo Freire.35 As a result, schooling practices usually aim to fill up supposedly passive students with forms of cultural knowledge deemed valuable by dominant society. Scholars Shernaz García and Patricia Guerra find that such deficit practices overgeneralize family background and fail to acknowledge the ways personal views of educational success shape “sociocultural and linguistic experiences and assumptions about appropriate cultural outcomes.”36 Ironically, while schools may perceive numerous cultural deficiencies originating in Chicana/o homes, they increasingly claim to want more parental involvement in education. Of course, Chicanas/os again face the blame in this scenario because educators insist low educational outcomes result from parents’ supposed, “lack of involvement.” Educators most often assume that schools work and that students, parents, and communities need to change to conform to this already effective and equitable system. Indeed, deficit thinking permeates U.S. society, and both schools and those who work in schools mirror these beliefs. García and Guerra argue that this reality necessitates a challenge of personal and individual race, gender, and class prejudices expressed by educators, as well as a “critical examination of systemic factors that perpetuate deficit thinking and reproduce educational inequities for students from nondominant sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds.”37 The counterstory in this chapter attempts to Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 24 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline offer such a challenge to specifically address the elementary school level of the Chicana/o educational pipeline. The counterstory below recounts perspectives of some of the most marginalized yet important voices in Chicana/o elementary education— Chicana/o parents. Drawing on national, state, and district level data from the Office of Civil Rights, social science scholarship presenting ethnographic accounts of Chicana/o communities, and the work of actual parent organizations, this counterstory offers a conceptual discussion of community assets. A Chicana graduate student, Paula Guevara, serves as our narrator during three meetings with a parent group from Southside Elementary School. She and the parents meet in the downtown district of a city in the southwestern United States. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. MEETING LAS MADRES I felt a little anxious walking into the parents’ meeting that first night, but a warm welcome from a woman named Guillermina calmed my nerves right away. I apologized for being late, telling her my graduate seminar ran longer than I had expected, so I got stuck in a lot of traffic. Guillermina reminded me to call her Mina, saying, “así me llaman todos.”38 She introduced me to the childcare volunteers and to her own kids, who were already engaged in an arts and crafts activity. Mina reminded her youngest child that the paste was for sticking things to her paper, not for eating, and proceeded to guide me into the room where about 20 parents had gathered their folding chairs into a discussion circle. As I learned, the woman who organized most of the meetings, Barbara Johns,39 made sure to schedule around parents’ work responsibilities and she also coordinated transportation and childcare activities. Ms. B, as she preferred to be called, had worked as a grassroots organizer for almost 30 years, and had been mobilizing with this Southside group since its inception about 2 years prior. An African American woman who grew up in the segregated South, Ms. B. moved to our southwestern city in the 1980s with her husband and they opened a café/art gallery dedicated to artwork by and about Black Native Americans. She regularly offered the gallery space to host progressive events such as the parent group. I had met Mina the month before, while doing some participant observation research at Southside Elementary. The front office secretary called me over from my post, supervising children on the playground at recess. She asked me to facilitate a conversation between her and Mina. Although Mina understood a lot of English, she was a relatively recent immigrant and felt much more comfortable expressing herself in Spanish. Mina had dark skin, long hair that she wore in a beautiful braid, and a very quick wit Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Madres por la Educacíon • 25 accompanied by an infectious laugh. She volunteered in the Head Start program and her third grader, Jazmin, attended Southside Elementary. After finishing with the secretary, Mina walked with me back out to the playground and began to tell me the story about how she and other parents came together to challenge the ongoing inequalities occurring at Southside Elementary. Demographically, Southside Elementary’s student population includes about 70% Chicanas/os, 20% Whites, 5% African Americans, and 5% Native Americans. Southside offers a magnet school and the regular school on the same campus. Designed to attract students through academic enrichment, the magnet program specifically caters to students designated “Gifted and Talented Education” (GATE). White students from the Northside of the city account for 75% of the magnet/GATE program’s enrollment. Chicanas/os comprise less than 20% of the magnet/GATE program, and African Americans or Native Americans represent less than 5% of the magnet/GATE students. Approximately 95% of the students in the “regular” program at Southside Elementary qualify for free lunch. Mina explained that 2 years ago, while picking up her kindergartener from school, she saw some Chicana/o students stomping on boxes in the trash dumpster. Shocked to see them physically in the dumpster, Mina asked the students why they were not in class. Apparently, their teacher had asked for volunteers and they had been working in the cafeteria serving lunch and cleaning up since the beginning of the school year. Upon further investigation, Mina learned that this practice of having Chicana/o students “volunteer” for cafeteria duty was not new. In fact, 30 minutes before lunch everyday, the fifth grade teacher excused his Chicana/o fifth graders from math so they could report for work in the cafeteria while their White peers remained in class, learning fractions. The school did not inform any of the parents about their children working in the cafeteria during class time. Mina spoke with her neighbor, Ms. B., and together they informed the Chicana/o parents about what had been happening. They delivered a petition with parents’ signatures to the principal, insisting that their children did not have permission to leave the classroom to work in the cafeteria. When Mina told me initially, I thought, “If those children volunteered for having a 2-hour recess, would the teacher have allowed that and never told their parents?” Mina said this was not an isolated incident and it exemplified the complete lack of respeto40 the school shows Chicana/o parents and students. She explained that the school did not provide a translator or transportation for Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meetings, and did not send home notices to students in Spanish outlining PTA proposals. Chicana/o parents who had attended PTA meetings reported feeling very intimidated. PTA members tended to speak condescendingly to Chicana/o parents and regularly Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 26 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline dismissed their concerns. Mina and the other parents felt frustrated that the PTA depended on Chicanas/os to make food for the school fundraisers, but that money usually went to the magnet program. Beyond bake sales and tamale fundraisers, the PTA did not seek out Chicana/o parents’ input when organizing events or proposing school activities. As she recounted the other parents’ concerns and her own experiences, it struck me that Mina did not use victim language to describe their situation. Historically, the city’s Southside communities suffered from lack of access to quality education, healthcare, and housing. But in response, these survivors worked to mobilize and change ongoing inequalities. They named their group “Madres Por la Educación,” usually abbreviated as Las Madres. Listening to Mina, I began to wonder if this group might allow me to observe and participate as a graduate student researcher. When I asked Mina if I could volunteer and learn from Las Madres, she seemed surprised, but also a little skeptical. She said she would have to ask the other parents. A few weeks later, I received a phone call from Ms. B., who asked if I would be available for translation at one of the meetings. It took a few months of volunteering and being a good listener at the meetings for the women to begin to trust me. Ms. B. explained that the Southside community was all too familiar with the tendency for academics to conduct “driveby” research. She remarked, “They barely slow down the car, let alone park, look around, and listen to what’s really going on.” I thought about a few scholarly readings I had done about other grassroots organizations such as the Comité de Padres Latinos41 in Carpinteria, California and the Mothers of East Los Angeles.42 In addition, I looked at some of the methods other Chicanas used in their work to ensure a respectful and reciprocal research process.43 Through my actions, I tried to assure the women of my commitment to be there and to learn. Over the first year of monthly meetings, I noted that Las Madres began their evening sessions with an update on the list of ongoing grievances and actions pending or in progress. They conducted all of the meetings bilingually in Spanish and English, providing all materials in both Spanish and English, and designating at least one translator as needed.44 Some of the major concerns parents expressed focused on issues of language and culture in the classroom.45 They wanted to know whether their children needed to take the “mandatory” standardized tests in English if they had not yet transitioned into English. On one occasion, a teacher gave out a practice exam, and one of the parents made copies for the group. The women realized none of the exam questions addressed the cultural experiences of their children. Many parents wanted to know why their students could not gain access to any extra academic enrichment activities like those in the GATE/magnet program. Some parents suggested that the whole concept seemed a little backward. They Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 27 remarked that it makes more sense to offer enrichment activities to ‘regular’ students as opposed to those already identified as gifted. Diane, a young woman who usually wore tailored suits with her hair slickly pulled into a bun, repeatedly asked: “Why not label the whole school gifted?”46 EDUCACIÓN CON CORAZÓN:47 FREIRE FOR PARENTS That first night at our meeting in the Art Gallery, Mina gave me a few of the bilingual handouts and I proceeded to read through them while listening to the discussion already underway. One of the pamphlets offered a mission statement, which read: We are concerned parents and community members working to change our school system so students have equal educational opportunities. We are inspired by the work of Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire,48 and we believe all education is political. Since schools are not neutral institutions, we will not be neutral parents or community members. We will be advocates for change. The lower half of the paper had two sketches: one showing “knowledge” deposited from the teacher down to the student, and titled “Banking Approach” (figure 2.1). I read a list of main points evident in the banking approach to education noted along with the sketch. Parallel to this sketch, another drawing, titled “Problem-Posing Approach” (see figure 2.2), indicated “knowledge” flowing from the student Knowledge Teacher Student is passive, empty Teacher has knowledge Student accepts knowledge No critical thinking Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Student Figure 2.1. Banking Approach Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 28 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline Knowledge Teacher Student Student is active Teacher/student communicate in dialogue Student creates/holds/challenges knowledge Critical thinking Figure 2.2. Problem-Posing Approach to the teacher and from the teacher to the student. Again, I read the main points featured in the problem-posing approach to education listed underneath this sketch. The back of the handout (figure 2.3) showed “problem-posing” as a cyclical method with four phases: (1) naming/identifying the problem, (2) analyzing causes of the problem, (3) finding solutions to the problem, and (4) reflecting on the process.49 A short description of the process also accompanied the sketch. It read: Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. In the naming phase, we dialogue with our community to identify and name the problems we face. In the analysis phase, we engage with the community to describe and analyze the causes of the problem. In the solution phase, we collaborate with community members to find and carry out solutions to the problem. We then reflect on the process, and begin to ask more questions to again start the naming phase. This is the process of liberatory education. WOW! I thought to myself, this group is…wow! I don’t think anyone in my graduate seminars could ever imagine working-class Parents of Color—let alone recent Mexican immigrant and Chicana/o parents—engaging critical pedagogy in this way. The second handout entailed a packet of information, stapled together, including a calendar of upcoming meetings, the contact numbers for some of the parent coordinators, minutes from the previous meeting, and the current meeting agenda. I looked up from my reading and listened in more carefully to the conversation in progress. Diane, a woman in a tailored navy suit, was explaining, “Through the problem-posing process, we found that Southside Elementary seems to expect failure from our children.” I soon learned that Diane worked downtown as a legal secretary and had a son in the third grade. Some parents’ Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 29 Naming the Problem Reflecting on Process Analyzing Cause(s) Finding Remedy (Remedies) Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Figure 2.3. Problem-Posing Methodology side comments revealed a strong sentiment that schools did not really prioritize education for youth on the predominately Mexican Southside of the city because of racial discrimination.50 A woman named Carmen, who had light skin and medium brown straight hair, spoke as she gave a bottle to her 6-month-old son. Rocking back and forth, Carmen explained that Las Madres shared a connection to a history of struggles against racism in Chicana/o communities. She offered an example of this history with the Committee de Los Vecinos de Lemon Grove, who successfully challenged an all-White school board’s decision to racially segregate schools in California in 1931.51 She also noted that multiple organizations (including Black, Jewish, Japanese, and Latino groups) joined the familia Mendez, who successfully sued the California Westminster School District in 1946 for racial segregation. She suggested that the group think about what they can learn from this history to inform their current struggle against racially segregated schools.52 In response, Sylvia, an older woman with medium brown skin and short black and gray hair who worked as an administrative assistant at the university across town, remarked, “Sí Carmen, gracias por sus palabras y esa breve historia. Podemos aprender mucho de esas luchas. Por ejemplo, Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 30 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline no nos importa si nuestros hijos están o no están sentados a un lado de los Americanos, queremos que tengan las mismas oportunidades.53 Carmen nodded in agreement and as we all paused and reflected for a moment, I thought to myself about the irony of referring to White people as Americans while identifying everyone else by their skin color or their ancestors’ national origin. I recalled the song by Los Tigres Del Norte, America, which lists all the countries south of the U.S.–Mexico border and asserts with a soft cumbia rhythm that “los del norte dicen que soy Latino, no me quieren decir Americano …America es todo el continente, el que nace aquí es Americano. El color podrá ser diferente, más como hijos de Dios, somos humanos.”54 Mina tapped my shoulder to show me some pan dulce55 and champurado56 that I hadn’t seen at the back of the room. I thanked her and humming the song to myself quietly, I walked to the back table and served myself an evening snack. Long after the meeting that night, I continued to reflect on Carmen’s comments about the historical racism Chicana/o communities endure and challenge. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. CAN LEGAL REMEDIES CHANGE UNEQUAL SCHOOLING? I took a break in July to visit with family, travel, and try to renew my energies after what had been another tough year of graduate school. Ms. B. left me a phone message in mid-August, asking if I could assist with one of the night courses Las Madres offered. Later that month, a legal team comprised of various civil rights and advocacy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), asked Las Madres to speak about some of their experiences with inadequate facilities and lack of basic educational needs. These organizations had recently put together a case against another state and wondered if Las Madres could help them to document the short- and long-term impacts of such overt educational neglect here. Diane, the young legal secretary, worked for the ACLU and had mentioned her involvement with Las Madres to her boss. She believed Southside Elementary offered a clear example of uneven distribution of resources between the regular and magnet school, both housed on the same campus. A series of portable classrooms without air conditioning housed the “regular” school and its predominately labeled English Language Learners (ELLs). Most of the teachers for the regular school had not yet earned their credentials or were in their first years of teaching. On the other hand, the new Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Madres por la Educacíon • 31 building with air-conditioning and a technology center including 40 new computers, housed the “magnet” school’s GATE-designated students. Most of the magnet school faculty had earned advanced degrees beyond the credential and were veteran teachers. Although these issues seemed quite unfair to the parents, they also knew that a number of other Southside schools suffered years of institutional neglect under even worse conditions. The lawyers explained that across the state and here in our city, schools “overwhelmingly populated by low-income and nonwhite students and students who are still learning the English language” are “being deprived of basic educational opportunities available to more privileged children.”57 They shared with us some of their statewide documentation, showing that most Chicana/o students “go to school without trained teachers, necessary educational supplies, classrooms, or seats in classrooms…schools that lack functioning heating or air conditioning systems, that lack sufficient numbers of functioning toilets, and that are infested with vermin, including rats, mice, and cockroaches.”58 They thanked us for helping add depth to their documentation. Some of the parents expressed doubt that a court mandate would create equal opportunities for their students. They gave an example from the parent-initiated “create a garden” day for Southside Elementary. While volunteering, Mina’s husband Armando learned that the city had a parks ordinance mandating a certain number of parks per square foot of the city. The mandate did not stop developers from putting most of those parks on the Northside of the city. And the parks’ programs on the Southside were not maintained at the same level as programs in other parts of the city. Ms. B. added that the scarcity of sports and other extracurricular activities available to Southside communities reflected a pattern evident in many urban communities. She pointed out that the slow pace of civil rights legislation made her more cynical that legal reforms could effectively change schools, but she always maintained hope because folks continued to fight for change. Others mentioned that the lawsuit failed to discuss issues of air pollution. They noted that their children suffered from asthma, likely exacerbated or even caused by breathing in the toxins in the Southside portable classrooms.59 In addition, parents believed that when the state finally settled the suit, the pressure would remain on parents and communities to make sure the agreements on paper converted into actual change in the schools. In general, the lawsuit seemed like an important step, but most parents felt something lacking. I think this feeling became more obvious at the following month’s meeting, when Las Madres challenged deficit thinking with a discussion about community cultural wealth. A bit of mystery still surrounds that night, but it was truly an unforgettable, inspiring meeting. Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 32 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. A SPIRITED DISCUSSION: A FREIREAN CHALLENGE TO CULTURAL DEFICIT SCHOOLING I arrived late to the gallery for that evening’s meeting because my roommate Eva felt sick. Because of her high fever, I took her to the student health center, where we waited for hours until a nurse practitioner finally sent us home with some medication. Embarrassed about my tardiness, I sat down quietly in the circle of folding chairs and silently waved to a few of the parents on the other side of the room. One of the mothers, Debbie, who was already raising her hand, waved to me as the coordinator acknowledged her. Debbie said, “Last month we were talking about how Freire developed the problem-posing method to teach educational skills, while also helping develop critical consciousness. But we didn’t get a chance to finish our discussion in terms of connecting it to the list of school-based problems we’ve encountered. I see it here on the agenda, but am hoping we can get to it sooner rather than later because my daughter is sick and I need to get home early tonight. Can we move it up on the agenda?” The meeting coordinator, Nancy, smiled and replied, “Well, I think we were heading right in that direction. Does everyone think this is OK?” Most folks nodded in agreement and Carmen leaned over to Debbie to share some consejos60 about easing the coughing of her sick child. I made a mental note to myself to take some extra zinc before going to bed tonight. “OK, thank you. And I’m sure Debbie thanks you too,” said Nancy. While jotting down a soup recipe, Debbie looked up and nodded with a big smile of appreciation. Debbie had long brown hair pulled loosely back in a ponytail with dangling, brightly painted calavera61 earrings. We considered her the artist of the group and some of us teasingly nicknamed her Frida.62 Nancy continued, “So, according to Freire, students may move through different stages of consciousness63 including magical, naive, and critical consciousness. In our initial discussions, we discussed these stages and we came up with working definitions as well as examples from our own experiences, verdad?64 So tonight we printed out these definitions on your handout to refresh our memory briefly, especially for a few of us who are new to the group.” I looked around the circle, nodding slightly to acknowledge the new faces, and surprisingly saw an elderly man sitting next to Nancy with his hands folded neatly on his lap. Although fathers and uncles supported our efforts in different ways, men rarely participated in the monthly meetings. I had not slept much the night before with my roommate being ill, so I felt kind of dazed and caught myself staring at this elderly man for a minute. He looked so familiar. He returned my gaze with a nod and a smile. Startled and a little embarrassed, I smiled briefly and looked away. Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 33 Nancy paused as we each read over the three short definitions on the handout. I marveled at how Nancy kept up her energies and seemed to not have any white hairs. She must be in her late 40s, I thought to myself, how does she do it? Nancy was from a working-class Irish family, but she grew up on the Southside so she knew a lot of Spanish. She and her husband Carlos had been foster parents for many years and she was very committed to Southside Elementary and the parent group. She had short brown hair and wore stylish reading glasses. Nancy reminded everyone where to find the Spanish version on the bottom of the page, as she put her glasses on and read in English out loud: Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. “Magical: At the magical stage, we may blame inequality on luck, fate, or God. Whatever causes the inequality seems to be out of our control, so we may decide to not do anything.” “Naive: At the naive stage, we may blame ourselves, our culture, or our community for inequality. A naive response to experiencing inequality may be to try changing ourselves, assimilating to the mainstream culture, or distancing ourselves from our community.” “Critical: At the critical stage, we look beyond fatalistic or cultural reasons for inequality to focus on structural, systemic explanations. A critically conscious response to experiencing inequality would be working to change the system.” Nancy reminded the group that transitioning from the magical stage to the naive stage and then to the critical consciousness stage corresponds with the literacy process and provides the foundation for the adult literacy classes Las Madres sponsors twice a week there at the gallery. She also discouraged us from judging or belittling anyone regardless of which stage we might feel they are in. Nancy admitted that for many years she tended to blame fate or luck for most problems. She said her own process of shifting away from the magical stage might look different from someone else’s process. Sylvia asserted that sometimes people seem very critical about class issues but respond naively when confronted with racial inequality and even respond almost from a magical consciousness regarding sexism. I made myself a mental note to ask her more about that later. I wondered if she was also drawing on her experiences interacting with university faculty and administrators. I recalled reading in the paper that just last month, some university employees had gone on strike for a living wage and yet some of the supposedly progressive professors did not support the workers’ demands. In my graduate program, I had certainly come across a few professors who seem very critical of the way schools reproduce socioeconomic inequality, Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 34 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline but express great discomfort in addressing racism. They can talk about poverty in theory, using big three-syllable words, but feel uneasy dealing with the reality that class intersects with race.65 While they write about Freire and empowerment, in their classes and hallway interactions, these professors silence Chicanas/os in general and Women of Color in particular. Maybe Sylvia had some insights about the uneven development of critical consciousness. Mina took a sip of her coffee and explained, “In this process we have been discussing that our schools tend to work from a naive consciousness. At Southside, casi siempre los maestros culpan a los estudiantes o a las familias66—they blame Mexican or Chicana/o culture, and the Southside community when our students’ scores are low. Maybe they should ask why the teachers have such low expectations of students, or what’s wrong with those tests, or why the teachers don’t have much training.” Debbie then added that her concern came from a visit to the local library. She explained, “My daughters go every other week to the storybook hour, where a volunteer reads a book and then the children act out the book using puppets.” I nodded as she spoke, remembering that though she remained quite humble about her contributions, Debbie facilitated the creation of the puppet theater a few years back. She continued, “Well, I was looking in the education section and I came across a book titled, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. The author, E. D. Hirsch, has been in the news lately because a local elementary school just adopted his ‘Core Curriculum’ in their effort to raise the standardized test scores of ‘disadvantaged children.’67 Have any of you seen this book?” Debbie answered her own question. “Hirsch’s curriculum is dedicated to having students memorize a list of ‘essential names, phrases, dates, and concepts’ so they can be culturally literate, and then have social and economic success.” Diane commented that the anti-bilingual education initiative68 used the same argument a few years back—that since Latina/o parents want economic stability and success for their children, they should vote for Englishonly.69 Debbie nodded and continued, “Sí, sí, es horrible!70 As I looked closer at Hirsch’s book, I found that in his list of ‘5,000 essential names, phrases, dates, and concepts that every American needs to know,’ students might only have access to 27 terms that relate with Chicanas/os.71 Debbie began listing the terms for us and Nancy wrote them with a brightly colored marker on a large piece of poster paper (figure 2.4). Ms. B. added, “Wow, thank you for sharing this with us, Debbie. I didn’t realize Hirsch and company were still advocating that schools organize their curriculum around these ‘essential’ phrases and concepts.72 In the 1970s, as part of the research team supporting the Council for Interracial Books for Children,73 I worked to uncover and challenge similar racial and gender Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon 1492 Adiós Alamo Alto Aztecs Basta Chicanos Figure 2.4. Conquistadores Diego Rivera Fiesta Gracias Gringo Hector Macho Maestro Mañana Mayan Civilization Mexican War Mexico Mexico City Rio Grande • 35 Señor Señora Señorita Siesta Wetback Zapata E. D. Hirsch’s 27 Chicana/o-related terms stereotyping in school curriculum. We focused more on U.S. History high school textbooks, and we found an elitist emphasis on Europe. These nationally used texts either ignored or distorted Black, Chicana/o, Native American, and Asian American experiences.” Carmen remarked, “I guess racism changes forms, but the message is still the same. Mexicans were seen as biologically inferior and then culturally deprived.74 So instead of calling us the uncivilized savages or genetically unintelligent, now they’re calling us culturally illiterate?” Debbie nodded and sarcastically noted, “Supposedly, we’re at a cultural disadvantage because we don’t know all these phrases, dates, and names!” She continued in a more seriously concerned tone, “Looking at the books on the shelf, I saw that Hirsch also published grade-by-grade lists of what students should know.” Nancy pointed at the words on the poster paper as she asked the group almost rhetorically, “Looking at this list, what do Chicana/o elementary students learn about who they are and what their history means in the context of the United States? What do White students learn about Chicanas/os in the United States?” Diane made a guttural noise, showing her annoyance as she pointed to the terms on the poster paper and responded, “Hirsch sees Chicanas/os as a conquered people who have parties (fiestas), take naps (siestas), and put off work for tomorrow (mañana).” Debbie added flatly, “I didn’t find any other racially derogatory words besides wetback in the over 5,000 terms. Apparently, Hirsch feels that all Americans need to be familiar with the word wetback in order to be culturally literate.” Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. MOVING FROM DEFICITS TO ASSETS The elderly man’s gentle voice interrupted the silence in the gallery. He said, “Hirsch’s idea of literacy domesticates and socializes students to accept the status quo and accept their subordinate position. It doesn’t help students Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 36 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline critically understand the power relationships of their world in order to challenge inequality.” Perhaps surprised that no one else responded to this insightful observation, Mina asserted, “This discussion is helping me process a meeting I had last week with one of my daughter’s teachers. First of all, the teacher scheduled the meeting at 10:00 am last Monday, during the in-service day, but didn’t ask if that was a good time for me!” Mina added this comment because the group had repeatedly asked the school to schedule parent–teacher conferences at times when parents were not working and when there was a translator available. The district provides a translator for parent–teacher meetings scheduled from 3:00–7:00 pm and only with plenty of advanced notice. Mina told the group that she felt privileged to at least understand English and to have a flexible job, but the teacher should not have assumed anything without making an effort to communicate with her in advance. “Last year, my daughter Jazmin read on grade level,” she continued, “But this year, the teacher placed her in the slow reading group. Right away in our conference it became clear to me that this teacher hadn’t noticed todo lo que sabe mi hija y todo lo que ella puede hacer.”75 Mina told the group that at the laundromat, her daughter recites impromptu poems as a way to study for her vocabulary tests. Sometimes, she even creates melodies to sing the poems. Mina added, “But the school ‘sees’ my daughter as lacking in language skills! Well, if the maestra76 can’t see these types of abilities in Jazmin, she’s probably not seeing the abilities in the other students either. I think this follows up on some of the comments made earlier.” Debbie nodded in agreement. At this point, the elderly man offered, “Perhaps the naive consciousness of our schools is based on the banking method. Since the school does not see that our students bring any knowledge with them to the classroom, they see our communities as empty places too. So instead of ‘seeing’ the cultural assets and wealth we have in our communities, they ‘see’ deprivation.” I almost thought it seemed odd that no one responded directly to this comment, but the discussion kept flowing, obviously informed by the elderly man’s words. Consuelo, who worked as a seamstress in the garment district downtown, raised her hand and shared that her son had been recently labeled Educable Mentally Retarded (EMR) after scoring poorly on the standardized test.77 On the verge of tears, she asked how this could be possible if at home, her son helped translate the bills and write out checks. An older woman with a cane shared that her granddaughter was very quick when it came to thinking on her feet and negotiating prices for fruit and vegetables at the farmer’s market, but at school she did not excel in math and the teacher said she was “slow.” Why couldn’t the school see her granddaughter’s abilities? Soon, each of the parents began offering examples of Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Madres por la Educacíon • 37 their own children’s skills and strengths that the school either did not see or saw as weaknesses. The elderly man said, “Listening to you share about the multiple talents and skills of your children brings me great joy.” Many of us must have looked confused at such an optimistic comment. I know I probably looked puzzled, but then again, I had a slight headache from lack of sleep. The elderly man continued, “The school is really just telling you whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is discounted in an already unequal U.S. society.”78 This comment reminded me of French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu,79 so I shared this idea with the group, describing Bourdieu’s assertion that our hierarchical society considers the knowledges of the upper and middle classes valuable capital. I said, “His work explains that if we are not born into a family whose knowledge is already deemed valuable, we need formal schooling to help us access the knowledges—the cultural capital—of the middle and upper class.” I then described to the group the way Bourdieu’s theoretical insight about how a hierarchical society reproduces itself has been repeatedly used to rationalize the deficit model we were discussing earlier. I summed up, “The assumption follows that People of Color ‘lack’ the social and cultural capital required for social mobility. So, schools often structure ways to help ‘disadvantaged’ students whose race and class background has left them lacking necessary knowledge, social skills, abilities, and cultural capital.” The elderly man asked the group: “Are there other forms of capital that racially marginalized groups bring to the table that are not recognized or are not acknowledged by this interpretation of social capital theory?” Sylvia asked for clarification. She turned to me, saying: “OK, so it sounds like in that argument, some communities are culturally wealthy while others are culturally poor? Hmmm, so does that mean we are all compared to some sort of White, middle-class culture? They don’t recognize our forms and expressions of culture, so they say we’re culturally poor?” She paused and then motioned to one of the women who spoke earlier, saying, “Doesn’t that sound familiar? It’s like the standardized tests they give our students. Whose standard? Which group do they build the standard around?”80 Carmen added, “So cultural capital includes knowledge and skills that the White middle class already has. And White middle-class kids inherit those specific forms of cultural knowledge and skills that schools turn around and say are valuable.” Mina offered, “A middle- or upper-class student may have access to a computer at home and can learn computer vocabulary or skills before arriving at school. This student may have what you called, what? Cultural capital?” I nodded in agreement, wondering why she didn’t direct her Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 38 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline question to the elderly man who sat patiently listening to the ensuing discussion. Debbie continued, “Yes, computer-related vocabulary and technological skills are valued in the school setting, so that would be cultural capital. And, on the other hand, a working-class Chicano student whose mother works in the garment industry, like Consuelo, may bring a different vocabulary, probably in two languages (English and Spanish), to school, along with skills of conducting errands on the city bus and translating phone calls, reading mail and bills for his mother.”81 Consuelo blushed as she heard her name and her child’s experiences described for the group. Mina put her arm around Consuelo to ease her embarrassment and added, “This cultural knowledge is very valuable to Consuelo, to her son Jaime, and to the whole familia,82 but it isn’t necessarily considered valuable, or a form of capital in the school context.” Ms. B. remarked, “This seems to connect with some of our questions about the long-term effectiveness of that lawsuit.” Debbie added, “You’re right, it’s easy to just say, ‘Oh those Chicana/o students lack cultural capital,’ or what E.D. Hirsch83 terms ‘cultural literacy,’ because that’s the popular thing to do, right? Even that lawsuit focused on all the things we’re lacking. It’s important to focus on how schools are structured so that we are not given access to equal conditions or what the lawyers were calling opportunities to learn, verdad? But then what? We have new textbooks and new buildings but no corazón84 inside those buildings that listens to and appreciates our kids?” The elderly man remarked, “If, like you’ve noted, schools are working with a naive lens and they don’t ‘see’ our communities as bringing resources to the classroom, then they would likely continue to teach from that deficit perspective in a new building. New textbooks continue to distort the histories and lives of Chicana/o communities. So now students will have an extra book to take home with them, but whose knowledge does that book value? Whose history does that book dismiss?”85 Finally, it seemed like some of the other women responded more directly to this elderly man who had made some very insightful comments. In reference to the lawsuit, Diane admitted that the law appeared limited in its ability to “see” community resources. We took a 15-minute break so we could visit the restroom, check in on the children, and grab a snack from the cafe. I called the apartment to check on Eva’s status and was relieved to find out she felt better. She thanked me for making her some fideo86 before I left. I tried to splash some water on my face in the bathroom and swallowed a couple pain relievers I had in my purse, hoping that my headache would ease up soon. I grabbed an oreja87 and cup of chamomile tea before taking my seat again. The elderly man Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 39 dunked some bread into what looked like a cup of café con leche.88 He smiled at me and I lifted my teacup slightly, acknowledging him with a silent toast. I wondered if anyone had greeted him during the break and I hoped he felt welcome. I was about to walk over and introduce myself to him and thank him for his comments, but Nancy called us back to order and the discussion rapidly picked up where we had left off before the break. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. REVEALING CULTURAL WEALTH IN CHICANA/O COMMUNITIES Nancy put her reading glasses back on and referred to the poster paper, “OK, how do we get the school and teachers to ‘see’ our community resources?” The elderly man remarked, “Maybe the teachers can conduct community case studies with their students?”89 I nodded in agreement and added, “A community case study could connect this back to Freire90 and engage students in the problem-posing approach to education.91 With this approach, students actively discover and develop their own knowledge. Students could create knowledge with their teacher and others.” Mina added, “And students would not just be talked down to, but they would be more in una plática92 with their teacher. A community case study would encourage students to feel that their thoughts and ideas are important enough to engage the teacher in a dialogue. And then teachers would be more like facilitators as opposed to the know-it-alls, verdad? So students can challenge the teacher? Not in a disrespectful way, of course, but you know what I mean, like questioning the ideas and values of the dominant group—asking why los Americanos, the White students, are seen as the norm and Chicanas/os have to always try to fit that standard. Porque nunca van a ser como ellos, aun con ‘hooked-on-phonics,’ con su ingles bien pronunciado. Siempre van a ser Mexicanos. Y como dicen, hablando se entiende la gente. Asi es que, ojalá ya no se vayan a sentir tan despreciados siendo de herencia Mexicana, no?”93 Debbie took advantage of the natural pause in the discussion to say goodnight. She commented that this dialogue about the Southside as a place with valuable cultural resources offered an exciting start to bringing a Freirean approach into the school. I waved good-bye to Debbie and thought about Mina’s code-switching hooked-on-phonics remark. It seems so ridiculous the way mass media and too many educators misunderstand literacy reform efforts that seek to help students acquire high levels of comprehension across subjects and real-world analytical skills, while learning to speak English.94 Instead of empowering students with Freirean literacy, reactionary policies trashed “whole language” in order to “get back to basics” with phonics, and then threw out bilingual education altogether. I also thought about the arguments Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 40 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline that Richard Rodriguez made in his book Hunger of Memory.95 His embarrassment of his parents’ Spanish-accented English connected to his feeling humiliated, defenseless, and without options in a society that did not value what his familia offered. I wonder how dramatically different Rodriguez’ schooling experiences may have altered if his teachers had been trained to value his community’s assets. Anti-bilingual education folks and mass media probably would not cite him so frequently if his writings did not support the deficit view of Chicana/o communities as places of cultural poverty and disadvantage. Ironically, a real scoop for the media would be stories featuring cultural assets in Communities of Color.96 The elderly man interrupted my thoughts by asking, “This connects to some of your undergraduate sociology readings, no?” I paused briefly, confused as to how this man may have had a casual conversation during the break where my sociology major came up as a topic. I must have looked like a light bulb went on over my head though, because Nancy looked at me expectantly. I wiped my mouth of the remaining pastry crumbs and decided to ignore the awkwardness of the man’s interjection. I said, “Yes, maybe some of my work from college can help us here with the concept of community resources. Sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro97 argue that income includes our wages or salary over a typical year. So income is one single source of capital, right? On the other hand, they argue that wealth includes the total extent of an individual’s accumulated assets and resources, like ownership of stocks, money in the bank, owning a home or business, etc. A broad range of resources and diverse forms of capital account for part of wealth.”98 Nancy wondered out loud, “So maybe cultural capital can be seen like income? It’s one source of capital, which White, middle-class students have, and that’s the form of capital schools value.99 Then maybe wealth could include our community’s cultural assets and resources added together over time? And different forms of capital would add together to create cultural wealth, verdad?” She drew some circles on the poster paper to help create a visual aid for the dialogue (see figure 2.5). The room began to buzz with excitement. Our late-night sugary treats probably helped raise our energies, but in any case, the group began a fast-paced discussion of various forms of capital that might comprise cultural wealth. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Aspirational Capital Carmen, balanced her baby on her lap and started the dialogue, asking, “What would we call the dreams I have for mis hijos, the hopes I have that my children will go to college and do all the things I never had the chance to do? I don’t have a college degree, yet. I’ve been at the community college Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon Figure 2.5. Capital Wealth income, wages, salary accumulated assets, resources Cultural Capital Cultural Wealth • 41 Cultural Capital versus Cultural Wealth for 2 years, taking the classes I should have had in high school. I might not have a lot to give my kids in terms of money, but I always talk with them about my dreams for them. My mom had a lot of dreams for me too. She worked in a maquila and came to the U.S. alone, raising her own hijos and working as a nanny, raising other people’s children at the same time. My mom held onto her hopes for a better future and always encouraged me to dream. And now I have dreams for my kids.”100 Sylvia responded, “That is so beautiful, Carmen. I think those hopes and dreams are also like aspirations. Even without the personal experience of going to college, or even finishing high school, we can still hold high aspirations for our children and we can support them to reach those dreams.”101 Nancy nodded excitedly, “Should I write aspirational capital as we continue to talk about this?” She drew a circle on the poster paper (figure 2.6). Most of the group nodded and Ms. B. commented that maybe the working definition could read: “Aspirational capital: the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future even in the face of barriers.”102 I thought to myself about farm worker union activist and human rights organizer Dolores Huerta, who is also a mother. Huerta has held onto hope for her own familia and works tirelessly to make dreams of social justice for thousands of familias a reality. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the elderly man Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Aspirational Capital Figure 2.6. Aspirational Capital Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 42 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline nodding and smiling. I smiled to myself and refocused my attention on the women’s discussion. Linguistic Capital In reflecting on the experiences Mina shared earlier, Diane asserted that maybe we could have a category for language or linguistic capital. She explained, “Even though our state doesn’t ‘see’ or doesn’t want to ‘see,’ or recognize the benefits of bilingual education.”103 Nancy agreed this reflected the idea that Chicana/o students arrive to school with multiple language and communication skills. She said, “By kindergarten, Chicana/o children have usually already experienced community traditions of storytelling. So they have listened to and probably retold some cuentos,104 dichos,105 and oral histories of their family. Mina added, “And in storytelling, they learn memorization, how to pay attention to details, how to take dramatic pauses.” Sylvia chimed in, “They learn how to tell jokes, and that making faces when you speak can change the meaning of the words. Or changing your tone or the volume of your voice.” Mina nodded, made a funny face, and went on, “And if they are anything like my daughter, who tries to play drums on everything she comes across, they also learn rhythm with their words.” I laughed at Mina’s facial expression and thought about her daughter’s poems at the laundromat. That reminded me of my niece, who made up little rhymes and she twirled around like a dancer at the end of each phrase. I said, “Yes, and they learn how to rhyme.” Mina continued, “And as we sit here in this art gallery, isn’t visual art also a form of communication?” Diane remarked, “Even graffiti is a form of language, right?” Ms. B. admitted, “And I might not understand it or even like it too much, but the hip hop my grandkids listen to does speak through music and, well, poetry.”106 Nancy added, “ And just like we learn to whisper, whistle, or sing, our children often develop and draw on various language styles to communicate with different audiences.” Diane said, “The school should ‘see’ that because bilingual children often translate for their parents or other adults, they actually gain all kinds of vocabulary. They start becoming more aware of how to communicate with different audiences and across cultures.107 They may also have developed math, Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Linguistic Capital Figure 2.7. Linguistic Capital Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 43 teaching, and tutoring skills. And certainly, these translating experiences give children a sense of family and community responsibility, and even social maturity.108 Aren’t those all important tools for school success?” Nancy prompted us again for what she should write on the poster paper. The group agreed to a working definition for linguistic capital as those intellectual and social skills learned through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style. She again drew a circle with the term inside (figure 2.7). Navigational Capital Mina reminded the group of what Consuelo shared earlier about her son helping run errands on the city bus. She said, “Navegando por la ciudad es difícil, pero tambien navegando por el sistema de educación!109 Diane exclaimed, “Yes, that’s it—navigational capital.” Nancy began writing it on the poster paper (figure 2.8) as Diane continued, “Maybe it’s like what we talked about earlier in terms of the limits of the legal system. Navigational capital is the ability to make our way through social institutions not created with Chicanas/os in mind.” Sylvia added, “Of course, that makes so much sense, like Consuelo was saying too, our students can achieve even while they struggle through really stressful conditions and events.”110 She went on, “So they’re very vulnerable to all these forms of oppression and barriers, but at the same time, some are making it through and they are very—.” Sylvia seemed to be at a loss for words, so Nancy interjected, “Resilient!” Nancy added, “Oh yes, with foster kids I’ve been amazed how resilient111 children can be, even in extremely stressful environments.”112 She had shared with us on a couple of occasions her own experiences as a foster parent and the amazing resilience of children stuck in a system offering poor odds for their survival, let alone successful navigation. Thinking about this, I commented to the group that researchers call resilient students “academically invulnerable.”113 But I also noted that for students to navigate through school successfully—to be academically invulnerable or resilient—they needed individual, family, and community support. I added, “And schools could help nurture these students’ social and psychological ‘critical navigational skills.’114 No?” Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Navigational Capital Figure 2.8. Navigational Capital Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 44 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline Ms. B. nodded in agreement, and remarked, “Academic invulnerability and resilience do not take place in a social vacuum, though.” She reminded the group that working-class Women of Color experience layers of racialized privilege, so one’s social location115 influences one’s navigational strategies. “For example,” she said, “as a Black woman I experience layers of race and gender oppression, but I experience some privileges because I speak English and am relatively middle class.” Nancy added that as a White woman raising Chicano foster kids, she sometimes felt limited in how many strategies she could teach them because her own experiences had been so layered with privilege. “They are still vulnerable even when they’re invulnerable,” she remarked. Through teary eyes she said, “They’re resilient, and they find a way through the situation—through the racism—but the wounds of that stress stay with them.” Carmen reached over and rubbed Nancy’s back soothingly and we all paused for a moment of reflection. Nancy took a deep breath and reworded the working definition she had already written on the poster paper, “Navigational capital refers to skills of maneuvering through social institutions.” She took off her glasses again, wiped her eyes, and commented that she really liked this form of capital because it acknowledges that individuals have agency even though their decisions and actions take place within constraints. She said, “And it also connects to social networks that facilitate community navigation through places and spaces including schools, the job market, and the healthcare and judicial systems.”116 Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Social Capital Mina brought up the fact that many in the group had met through other community social activities outside of the school. She offered, for example, that she and Sylvia met because their daughters played on the same soccer team. Carmen added that she had met Diane at a church function. Many of the women nodded when she gave this example. Apparently, a lot of Southside families interacted at church. Carmen continued, again helping provide some historical context for the discussion. She explained, “In my Introduction to Chicana/o Studies class last semester, the professor talked about the history of Mexican immigrant social networks—mutualistas, or mutual aid societies.117 Thinking about how we each get and give information, we could probably draw out a whole social network for ourselves that we might not even realize we are part of.” Many of the women nodded and a few remarked that mutualistas still play an important role for the neighborhoods on the Southside. They offered examples of holding fundraisers to assist families in need, helping recent arrivals find Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 45 housing and employment, and organizing tandas118 to save money without depending on a bank. Sylvia added, “And from the brief examples we’ve just seen here, many of our social networks probably overlap! I’m thinking also about how our kids have their own social networks. And we are usually concerned about who is part of their peer group because of the types of information and resources they may share, verdad?119 So Carmen, would you say it’s social capital?” Carmen nodded in agreement and for a minute or two, many of the women talked to one another about social networks they and their children shared in common. Nancy brought us back to the group discussion while drawing on the poster paper (figure 2.9), saying, “OK mujeres, so social capital can be understood as networks of people and community resources?” Carmen asserted, “Yes, and historically Chicanas/os utilize their social capital to maneuver through the system, but they also turn around and give the information and resources they gained through the navigation process back to their social networks.” Nancy remarked, “OK, so social capital can help us navigate through society’s institutions. That’s important because Sylvia mentioned that our social networks overlap, and it seems like these forms of capital, these types of community cultural wealth also overlap?” I nodded in agreement and said, “Yes, because social capital addresses the peer and other social networks developed to assist in the movement through social institutions, like schools.”120 I added, “And social capital speaks to the fact that we are not alone in our struggles. We develop social spaces rich in resources. Without social spaces to share information, our ability to help each other navigate would weaken. So these forms of cultural wealth do seem interdependent.” Ms. B. commented that this tradition of offering emotional support while sharing information and resources as part of a community reminded her that her aunt participated in one of the oldest African American women’s organizations in the country, the National Colored Women’s Association, and their motto is “lifting as we climb.”121 Carmen took a moment to thank the group for being a supportive social network for her family, especially in light of some difficult personal circumstances that she had shared with us in recent months.122 I shared with the women that this reminded me Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Social Capital Figure 2.9. Social Capital Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 46 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline again of how they are conceptualizing cultural wealth very differently than cultural capital. I said, “Cultural capital is accumulated, like a deposit in the bank, but cultural wealth is meant to be shared.”123 Familial Capital Nancy asked, “Speaking of sharing, what about how our families model lessons of caring, coping, and providing? Family lessons help shape us emotionally and give us moral guidance.124 Can there be familial capital?” At this point the room seemed to sigh collectively. So often, schools insist Chicana/o parents hinder their children’s progress, and Las Madres were recognizing family as a source of community cultural wealth! Consuelo explained that the lessons Nancy mentioned are taught not just within families, but also between families, and through church, sports, school, and other social community settings. She said, “y nos demuestran la diferencia entre una persona con educación universitaria e una persona bien educada. Porque a veces tienen la escuela, pero no tienen la educación no tienen la educación para ser una persona con principios.”125 Nancy interjected that traditional understandings of “family” tend to carry race, class, and heterosexual assumptions, so if we agree to call it familial capital, we should expand the concept of family to include a more broad understanding of kinship. Diane thanked Nancy for reminding the group about the power of words and the power to choose words.126 Other women also nodded and commented supportively about this expanded notion of family. They remarked that immediate family as well as aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends—living or long passed on—might all be considered part of our familia.127 Nancy drew a circle indicating familial capital on the poster paper (figure 2.10). Sylvia commented, “It seems that familial capital connects with a commitment to community well-being. We learn the importance of maintaining a healthy connection to our community and its resources. So we don’t feel so isolated. Like with the social capital, families ‘become connected with others around common issues’ and realize they are ‘not alone in dealing with their problems.’”128 Mina nudged a woman sitting next to her, Elena. Mina exclaimed, “Yes! And helping each other find solutions. Like Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Familial Capital Figure 2.10. Familial Capital Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Madres por la Educacíon • 47 when Elena’s oldest son wanted to drop out of school, she told him, ‘está bien!’” The women paused, looking at Elena expectantly. Elena had medium brown skin and light brown wavy hair. She had been listening intently but had not spoken. She said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Pues sí. Plactiqué eso con Mina porque me daba tanta tristesa. Y luego, le dije a mi hijo, ‘andale, si no quieres ir a la escuela, está bien mijo.’” She paused and then remarked, “Puedes trabajar conmigo en la K-Mar. Y así agarras todos los blue light specials.” Most of the woman laughed out loud as others shook their heads, smiling at Elena’s response. Mina added, “He’s in his second year of college now?” Elena nodded and smiled. Diane continued, “It sounds almost like familial capital includes some of the language we use in the law. On the one hand, families can give emotional support like what we’ve talked about. But then we can also give instrumental support.129 Like when my son is trying to study, I have my husband turn off the TV, even if it’s in the middle of his favorite program, and I make sure the house is totally quiet. And Sylvia also gives this support by buying enough detergent so her daughter can do her laundry when she’s home from college.” Sylvia smiled and said, “And buying her groceries she can take back to school when she leaves!” Consuelo also noted that parents use multiple teaching strategies with their children that the school does not seem to notice. “Dicen que no nos importa, que no estámos involucrados en la educación de nuestros hijas e hijos.”130 She told the group that like many of them, she had also tried to get involved with the PTA, but that the women did not welcome her, did not make Spanish translation available, and they set up a pretty intimidating environment where she felt almost invisible. Nancy suggested that perhaps the group could think about developing a list of ways they do engage their children’s education. She gave an example of a family she knew. She said that on summer break and sometimes on weekends, the parents brought their children with them to work picking fruit in the fields. Apparently, four of their children now attend or already graduated from top universities and their youngest is set to graduate as the valedictorian from Southside High School this year. Knowing they could not help with algebra or reading in English, these parents taught about hard work and integrity while working alongside their children in the fields.131 Nancy offered that maybe we could present these types of examples to the school at a later date. She explained this might help challenge the false and historically inaccurate idea that Chicanas/os are not “involved” in their children’s schooling and therefore don’t value education.132 I thought to myself that familial capital connected to aspirational capital, and I smiled, imagining the parents Nancy mentioned sharing their dreams with their children of a life with options, a life without back-breaking work. Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 48 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline Consuelo also shared with us that her husband—a carpenter—was in the process of making a desk for her son, Jaime. She believed the desk would give Jaime a consistent place to study and help him better organize his homework and develop good study skills. In addition, Consuelo saw the desk as a way to show her son that his education is important to his parents. Nancy jotted down a few more notes on the poster paper and read aloud the working definition of familial capital as those “cultural knowledges nurtured among familia (kin) that carry a sense of community history, memory, and cultural intuition.”133 She said, “Chicana/o students bring these teachings from home134 with them to the classroom, but the schools ignore or can’t ‘see’ these funds of knowledge.”135 Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Resistant Capital Sylvia said she hoped her daughters would carry some of those teachings even beyond high school. Through verbal and nonverbal lessons, Sylvia tried to teach her daughters to assert themselves as intelligent, beautiful, strong, and worthy of respect.136 She emphasized her efforts to teach her girls to question society’s distorted messages about beauty, success, love, and integrity. She explained, “I have been consciously ‘raising resistors.’”137 Another older woman agreed and added that it was very difficult to teach her daughter to darse valor138 or valerse por si misma139 within a racist, materialistic, and sexist society and perhaps even more difficult to raise a son who would resist the pressures of perpetuating patriarchy through stereotypical macho140 attitudes. As Carmen reminded us in a past meeting, Ms. B. noted that Communities of Color have historically resisted racial and social injustice. She spoke about her own children’s involvement supporting various community efforts for equity. Ms. B remarked, “Students’ efforts to transform unequal conditions show us that this continuity of community resistance includes many forms of expressing opposition.141 But of course, not all behavior that seems to go against the norm is motivated by a critical consciousness or a desire for social justice. Many of our young people today participate in what seem to be self-defeating or conformist strategies of resistance, like dropping out of school or trying to challenge racial and gender stereotypes through their individual actions to ‘fit in.’ Those forms of resistance feed back into the system and don’t challenge the more structural causes of inequality. But, when students recognize and name the structures of oppression, and then are motivated to work toward social and racial justice—resistance takes on a transformative form.”142 Ms. B. pointed to the handout section on Freirean critical consciousness. Nancy drew another circle on the almost filled-up piece of poster paper (figure 2.11), as she asked, “So should we say that resistant capital draws on Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 49 Resistant Capital Figure 2.11. Resistant Capital this legacy of resistance to oppression in Communities of Color and refers to those knowledges and skills cultivated through behavior that challenges inequality?143 Women nodded and some applauded in agreement, feeling the excitement in the air about resistance initiated by communities to transform society. Diane remarked, “Through this group, we are learning to recognize the structures of racism and we are definitely motivated to transform them. But how do we use transformative resistant capital to challenge what’s happening at Southside Elementary?” Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. A Model of Community Cultural Wealth Before anyone could answer her question, we paused to admire the fresh piece of poster paper where Nancy busily finished connecting the circles to reflect the discussion (see figure 2.12). She stepped back to reveal a visual model of cultural wealth! I sketched out the model on my own notepad and again smiled, thinking of how surprised most of my colleagues would be when I shared the ways these parents engage with theory. In all my graduate school reading, social theories seem too obtuse and difficult to apply in “real life.” Yet here, I witnessed these working-class Parents of Color applying Freire144 and Bourdieu145 to their everyday experiences. I felt so humbled to listen and learn from these women. From their position at the margins of society, these women challenge the inequalities of the educational system. They develop and demonstrate pedagogies of the oppressed.146 These women hold on to the belief that as bell hooks writes, the margin can be “more than a site of deprivation … it is also the site of radical possibility, a space of resistance.”147 As they question the forms of racism that shape their children’s educational opportunities, they also offer a model that can transform the prevalent cultural deficit approach to elementary schooling. Nancy noted that Diane asked a good question we had not addressed. Mina agreed and said, “I like the idea Nancy had, to make a list of the ways Chicanas/os are involved in education. Maybe we can show the principal this chart when we do that, so he can ‘see’ what our community brings to Southside Elementary.” Carmen lit up and said, “I think the PTA and the teachers should be hearing this too, no? We could have a forum or something. Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 50 • Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline Wealth: The total extent of an individual’s accumulated assets and resources. Income: The dollars received from salaries, wages, and payments. Familial Capital Aspirational Capital Social Capital Community Cultural Wealth Cultural Capital Linguistic Capital Navigational Capital Resistant Capital Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Figure 2.12. A Model of Community Cultural Wealth Maybe before that, though, we should ask ourselves, what would Southside Elementary look like if it centered the curriculum on the community cultural wealth of Chicana/o students?”148 Though it had been a long night, the women exuded a clear feeling of excitement about the possibility of presenting the cultural wealth model to the principal, teachers, and the PTA. Mina took a deep breath and remarked, “Sería una transformación completa.”149 Most of the women nodded in agreement, while some shook their heads with doubt that such a transformation could occur. Diane commented that to start, they could advocate for making the whole school a magnet school and designating all the students GATE. Pointing to the model on the poster paper, she exclaimed, “Look at all the ways our students are gifted and talented!” Diane’s suggestion offered an example of school transformation that seemed to resonate with the group. Putting community cultural wealth into practice required much more discussion, which would have to wait for another night. Ms. B. announced that the childcare volunteers were scheduled to leave at 9:00 pm and it was already 9:15. Nancy thanked the women for their patience through what had been a pretty long, but productive meeting. The women again ap- Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Madres por la Educacíon • 51 plauded each other before saying goodnight, collecting their children and heading home in their own cars or in the vans that Ms. B. had arranged for transportation. I stood to stretch and throw away my tea bag and napkin of pan dulce crumbs. I wanted to introduce myself to the elderly man who had offered such insightful comments earlier. In the fast-paced excitement of the discussion, I realized that my headache had eased up. I walked back over to the circle of chairs and began to help the women clear out the space for the cafe customers the next morning. As I picked up and stacked the folding chair where the elderly man sat, I asked Mina if she had seen him leave. She looked at me bewildered, “An elderly man was here tonight? Ay mujer,150 I hope your compañera151 gets over the flu soon, sounds like you need some rest.” Sylvia asked if my headache was better or if I needed a ride home. She gave me a hug and said she would check on me later in the week because I looked a little pale, “Like you’ve seen a ghost.” Suddenly, I got chills realizing why the elderly man looked so familiar. Could it be? Mi tocayo152 Paulo Freire? Instead of being pale by the time I got home, I felt flushed with excitement. I found Eva awake and enjoying leftovers from the refrigerator. Her fever had finally broken and she had not eaten much for a few days. I shared with her the details of the spirited discussion at the meeting and she laughed and said, “Paula, I hope Freire comes by again sometime soon. Our schools need him now more than ever. His legacy should never be forgotten.” She paused and then jokingly chided me, “Should I leave some of this chicken for him in case he comes over for a late-night snack? Or maybe we can play Ozomatli’s song, Cumbia de los Muertos153 and he’ll come dance with us?” I laughed as she began dancing with me in the kitchen. She obviously felt much better. I headed to bed, thinking about dancing with my loved ones who had passed on. I too hoped humbly that Freire’s spirit would not be a distant memory. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. NOTES 1. Mothers for Education. Southside is a composite elementary school located in an unidentified city in the Southwest region of the United States. 2. Ginorio & Huston, 2001 3. Office of Civil Rights, see http://205.207.175.84/ocr2000r/ 4. Valencia, 2002b 5. Donato, Menchaca, & Valencia, 1991; Orfield & Monfort, 1992; Valencia, Menchaca, & Donato, 2002 6. Darling-Hammond, 1988 7. There is also a general shortage of teachers servicing minority communities, with the most severe involving Latina/o teachers, and specifically teachers in bilingual and special education fields (Darling-Hammond, 1988; Los Angeles County Office of Education, 1994; Tomas Rivera Center, 1993). 8. Orfield, 1996 Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 52 • 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline Lockheed, Thorpe, Brooks-Gunn, Casserly, & McAloon, 1985 Levin, 1987; See also Solórzano, Ledesma, Pérez, Burciaga, & Ornelas, 2003 Oakes, 1985, 1990 Garcia, E. E., 1987/88, 1999; Willig, 1985 See Garcia, E. E., 1999 See Solórzano, Burciaga, Calderón, Ledesma, Ochoa, Rivas, Sanchez, Velez, Watford, Ortega, & Pineda, 2004 Baron, Tom, & Cooper, 1985; Persell, 1977; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1973 Delgado-Gaitan, 1992 Council on Interracial Books for Children, 1977; Loewen, 1995; Pearl, 1991, 2002 Kretovics & Nussel, 1994; Persell, 1977; Solórzano & Solórzano, 1995; Valencia & Solórzano, 1997 See Valencia, 1997 Jensen, 1969; Kamin, 1974; Terman, 1916 Dunn, 1987; See Fernandez, 1988 Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal, & Tellegen, 1990 See Breggin & Breggin, 1993 Herrnstein & Murray, 1994 For example, Louis Terman (1916) was a eugenicist and one of the main importers of the Stanford Binet Intelligence test, now called the SAT. See Valencia, 1999; Valencia & Aburto, 1991; Valencia, Villareal, & Salinas, 2002 For examples of cultural deficit writings, see Bernstein, 1977; Chavez, 1992; McWhorter, 2000; Ogbu, 1990 For further description and critique of cultural deficit models, see Barrera, 1979, 1997; Carter & Segura, 1979; Valencia, 1997 For culture of poverty argument, see Lewis, O., 1968; Sowell, 1981 See Banfield, 1970; Heller, 1966 Persell, 1977; Solórzano, 1997; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001b See Lewis, A., 2003 See Kretovics & Nussel, 1994; Spring, 2001 Baca Zinn, 1989; Valencia & Solórzano, 1997 Kretovics & Nussel, 1994, p. x Freire, 1973 García, S. B., & Guerra, 2004, p. 163 García, S. B., & Guerra, 2004, p. 155 That’s what everyone calls me. This character is inspired by Barbara Johns, the teenager who organized a student strike against Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, and led 450 students to a walkout on April 23, 1951, to demand a new, updated, and quality school. Fearing for her safety, her parents sent Barbara to live in another city. Her leadership led to the Davis v. the School Board of Prince Edward County lawsuit, which was one of the five suits brought before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Ms. B.’s gallery also draws inspiration from the John Sayles film Lone Star, where an African American man living in Texas has a picture collection dedicated to the history of Black Native Americans (see Foster, Miller, & Renzi, prds., 1996). Respect. See Delgado-Gaitan, 2001 See Pardo, 1990, 1991, 1998 See Delgado Bernal, 1997 This format does not lend itself to fully translating the entire meeting bilingually. To remind readers of this and to emphasize certain points, I code-switch throughout. See Donato, 1997 See Hopfenberg, Levin, Meister, & Rodgers, 1990 Education with Heart. Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Madres por la Educacíon • 53 48. Freire, 1970, 1973 49. Alschuler 1980; Freire 1970, 1973; Smith & Alschuler, 1976 50. Edward Buendía, Nancy Ares, Brenda Juarez, and Megan Peercy (2004) detail the ways that notions such as “southside” or “westside” in cities across the U.S. take on racially coded, classed significance that are constructed and reconstructed by schools. 51. Álvarez v. Lemon Grove School District, Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Diego, 1931, Petition for Writ of Mandate, No. 66625. See also Espinosa, 1986; Montoya, 2001 52. Mendez v. Westminster School District, 64 F. Supp 544 (S.D. Cal 1946), affirmed 161 F. 2d 774 (9th Cir. 1947). See also Perea, 2004; Valencia, 2005 53. Yes Carmen, thank you for your words and that brief history. We can learn a lot from those struggles. For example, it’s not important that our children sit next to the White students, we want them to have equal opportunities. See DuBois, 1935 54. People from the north say that I’m Latino, they don’t want to call me American. America is the whole continent, whoever was born here is American. Skin color might differ, but just like we’re all children of God, we are all human. See Los Tigres Del Norte, 1988 55. Sweet bread. 56. A hot drink with chocolate, cinnamon, flour, and milk. 57. Williams v. State of California, Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Francisco, 2000. No. 890221 (plaintiff complaint, p. 5). 58. Williams v. State of California, Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Francisco, 2000. No. 890221 (plaintiff complaint, p. 5). See also settlement conditions Williams v. State of California, Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Francisco, 2004, No. 312236 (settlement agreement). 59. See Donoso & Reyes (2002), p. 20, Table 5: Environmental Working Group: Air Pollution Inside California’s Portable Classrooms, May 1999. 60. Advice. 61. Skeleton. 62. Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist and socialist. 63. See Freire, 1970 64. Right? 65. CRT and LatCrit scholars continue to work toward better understanding and articulating the intersection of race and class. See for example, Hutchinson, 2004; Revilla, 2001 66. The teachers tend to blame the students or the families. 67. See Hirsch, 1988, p. xiv 68. See Proposition 227 in California (1998), Proposition 203 in Arizona (2001). 69. The majority of Latinas/os voted against the “English-only” initiatives in both California (Prop 227) and Arizona (Prop 203). 70. Yes, yes, it’s horrible. 71. See Hirsch, 1988, pp. 152–215 72. Ragland, 2002 73. See Council for Interracial Books for Children, 1977 74. See Solórzano & Valencia, 1997 75. Everything that my daughter knows and everything that she can do. 76. Teacher. 77. See Donato, 1997 78. See Delgado Bernal, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 2000 79. Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977 80. See Rosner, 2001 81. See Faulstich Orellana, 2003 82. Family. 83. Hirsch, 1988, 1996 84. Heart. 85. See Loewen, 1995 Yosso, Tara J.. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pasadena/detail.action?docID=1123177. Created from pasadena on 2021-04-03 14:09:35. 54 • 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 109. 110. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline Similar to angel hair pasta, but prepared like chicken noodle soup with a spicy tomato base. A type of pan dulce, pastry shaped like two orejas (ears) stuck together. Coffee with milk. Barnes, Christensen, & Hansen, 1994 Freire, 1970, 1973 See Smith-Maddox & Solórzano, 2002; Solórzano, 1989 A casual conversation. Because they’re never going to be like them, even with “hooked-on-phonics,” with their wellpronounced English. They will always be Mexican. And like the saying goes, in dialogue, people develop a better understanding of one another. And that way hopefully they won’t feel too humiliated because of their Mexican heritage, right? Martinez, C., 2000 Rodriguez, 1982 Solórzano & Solórzano, 1995; Valencia & Solórzano, 1997; Villalpando & Solórzano, 2005; Yosso, 2005 Oliver and Shapiro (1995) differentiate between income and wealth to document ongoing racial inequality between Black and White communities. They explain that while the income of Blacks may be climbing and the Black/White income gap may be narrowing, their overall wealth, compared to Whites, is declining and the gap—the inequality between the two groups—is increasing. In his 2004 book, The Hidden Cost of Being African American, Thomas Shapiro extends this discussion of wealth to address the role of schools in exacerbating racial inequa...
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