CRT IS NOT ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE
What My Students Don’t Know About Their Own HistoryOct. 15, 2022
Credit...Dominic Bodden
OPINION
GUEST ESSAY
By Arlene Dávila
Ms. Dávila is the founding director of New York University’s Latinx Project.
For the last 20 years, I have taught Latinx studies at New York University. My classes often provide my students, many of whom are seniors and Latinx themselves, with their first opportunity to examine their own identity and political histories. Recently, one student was shocked to learn that California schools segregated children of Mexican descent until a case legally struck down segregation for Latino students in 1946, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education. Another student was surprised to learn that the pioneering feminist artist Ana Mendieta was not just a Latina but also Cuban American, like her. This is a reminder of how little information about the ways Latinos have enriched the country’s history have made their way into K-12 curriculums, let alone higher education.
Seeing my students’ reactions takes me back to when I was a student, decades ago. Most of the classes I took focused on Europeans, but there was little to no mention of Latino or African American history in the United States. I learned about Latinx art, culture and history on my own, and mostly during graduate school. My peers and I worked to carve spaces for Latinx studies across the nation’s universities in an effort to address these glaring gaps in education, and we often did so with limited support from our mentors and institutions.
Latinos, who make up 19 percent of the U.S. population, are vastly underrepresented in academia, newsrooms, publishing, Hollywood films, TV and more. If we’re serious about correcting this wrong, we can start with investing in Latinx studies programs, which remain siloed, underfunded and marginalized in most major universities. These courses are foundational to students’ ability to see themselves represented in all sectors of society. They also help educate and ensure that no publisher, museum director, news editor or head of any company can continue to dismiss this demographic out of ignorance. They teach all of us that Latinx history is American history.
It’s worth noting that people of Latin American backgrounds living in the United States have a long history of chafing against the various terms used to categorize them. The label “Latinx” signals an openness to gender inclusivity and more tacit recognition of our racial and ethnic diversity. Some object to the term, but whatever word we choose to describe ourselves, our students deserve to see themselves represented in their studies.
This desire for representation is exactly what fueled the development of a handful of Chicano and Puerto Rican studies programs at schools like Cal State and Brooklyn College. Those programs grew out of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the years since, they have changed focus to recognize the diversification of the Latinx population.
Today, Latinx studies is a vibrant interdisciplinary field with its own scholarly organizations and peer-reviewed journals, spanning Afro-Latinx studies and Central American studies, among other fields where young scholars are innovating disciplines from art history to urban studies. These achievements are the product of hard work and activism on the part of students clamoring for Latinx studies, as well as faculty organizing to create conferences and programming to fill the voids within their universities.
Yet these efforts have done little to challenge our marginalization. Over the past year, the U.C. Berkeley professors Cristina Mora and Nicholas Vargas have been tracking the state of Latinx studies programs and departments. They found fewer than 90 programs providing majors in Latinx studies out of the close to 3,000 institutions of higher learning across the nation.
What’s more, these programs are often subsumed within Latin American or ethnic studies umbrella programs. But while related, they represent vastly different fields. Latin American studies focus on people living in that region, and not on Latinos who live in the United States. The category has also been historically recognized and supported as part of U.S. geopolitical interests in international studies. As a result, these programs have benefited from decades of financial support.
The invisibility of Latinx studies is especially harmful to Latinx students — the fastest-growing demographic in American universities. According to a study on race and ethnicity in higher education by the American Council of Higher Education, Hispanic undergraduate enrollment has almost doubled over the last 20 years. The study also found that these students are typically joining institutions where nearly three-quarters of all full-time faculty are white. Latinx faculty are concentrated in lower-ranked positions, such as instructor, lecturer or assistant professor. Students of color are more likely to see people who look like them in the ranks of clerical and service positions than in the upper echelons of academia.
Even in public institutions where Latinx people make up more than a third of the student body, the average Latinx-student-to-Latinx-faculty ratio is 146 to 1; it’s 264 to 1 in private institutions. Latinx studies scholars are also siloed from traditional disciplines. For example, few are joining graduate programs where they can teach and train the new professionals who will diversify all academic and professional fields.
Research has shown that when underrepresented students learn about their history and culture, they perform better academically and graduate at higher rates. When my own students see themselves represented in readings it leaves them empowered and curious to learn more.
Higher education must recognize the centrality of Latinx studies in all disciplines and fields. We can start by hiring Latinx scholars in schools and departments, with a special focus on Black and Indigenous Latinx scholars. We must invest in curriculums and programs that help mentor and support the next generation of Latinx professors. We must challenge traditional disciplines that remain stubborn to change, and we must nourish the interdisciplinary spaces, such as ethnic studies, that have been at the vanguard of innovation in American universities.
We can do better than to celebrate our heritage once a year, during Hispanic Heritage Month. Our students deserve to learn that their history is expansive and that our cultures have shaped this country since even before its inception.
Arlene Dávila (@arlenedavila1), the founding director of New York University’s Latinx Project, is the author of “Latinx Art: Artists, Markets and Politics.”
OPINION
GUEST ESSAY
By Arlene Dávila
Ms. Dávila is the founding director of New York University’s Latinx Project.
For the last 20 years, I have taught Latinx studies at New York University. My classes often provide my students, many of whom are seniors and Latinx themselves, with their first opportunity to examine their own identity and political histories. Recently, one student was shocked to learn that California schools segregated children of Mexican descent until a case legally struck down segregation for Latino students in 1946, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education. Another student was surprised to learn that the pioneering feminist artist Ana Mendieta was not just a Latina but also Cuban American, like her. This is a reminder of how little information about the ways Latinos have enriched the country’s history have made their way into K-12 curriculums, let alone higher education.
Seeing my students’ reactions takes me back to when I was a student, decades ago. Most of the classes I took focused on Europeans, but there was little to no mention of Latino or African American history in the United States. I learned about Latinx art, culture and history on my own, and mostly during graduate school. My peers and I worked to carve spaces for Latinx studies across the nation’s universities in an effort to address these glaring gaps in education, and we often did so with limited support from our mentors and institutions.
Latinos, who make up 19 percent of the U.S. population, are vastly underrepresented in academia, newsrooms, publishing, Hollywood films, TV and more. If we’re serious about correcting this wrong, we can start with investing in Latinx studies programs, which remain siloed, underfunded and marginalized in most major universities. These courses are foundational to students’ ability to see themselves represented in all sectors of society. They also help educate and ensure that no publisher, museum director, news editor or head of any company can continue to dismiss this demographic out of ignorance. They teach all of us that Latinx history is American history.
It’s worth noting that people of Latin American backgrounds living in the United States have a long history of chafing against the various terms used to categorize them. The label “Latinx” signals an openness to gender inclusivity and more tacit recognition of our racial and ethnic diversity. Some object to the term, but whatever word we choose to describe ourselves, our students deserve to see themselves represented in their studies.
This desire for representation is exactly what fueled the development of a handful of Chicano and Puerto Rican studies programs at schools like Cal State and Brooklyn College. Those programs grew out of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the years since, they have changed focus to recognize the diversification of the Latinx population.
Today, Latinx studies is a vibrant interdisciplinary field with its own scholarly organizations and peer-reviewed journals, spanning Afro-Latinx studies and Central American studies, among other fields where young scholars are innovating disciplines from art history to urban studies. These achievements are the product of hard work and activism on the part of students clamoring for Latinx studies, as well as faculty organizing to create conferences and programming to fill the voids within their universities.
Yet these efforts have done little to challenge our marginalization. Over the past year, the U.C. Berkeley professors Cristina Mora and Nicholas Vargas have been tracking the state of Latinx studies programs and departments. They found fewer than 90 programs providing majors in Latinx studies out of the close to 3,000 institutions of higher learning across the nation.
What’s more, these programs are often subsumed within Latin American or ethnic studies umbrella programs. But while related, they represent vastly different fields. Latin American studies focus on people living in that region, and not on Latinos who live in the United States. The category has also been historically recognized and supported as part of U.S. geopolitical interests in international studies. As a result, these programs have benefited from decades of financial support.
The invisibility of Latinx studies is especially harmful to Latinx students — the fastest-growing demographic in American universities. According to a study on race and ethnicity in higher education by the American Council of Higher Education, Hispanic undergraduate enrollment has almost doubled over the last 20 years. The study also found that these students are typically joining institutions where nearly three-quarters of all full-time faculty are white. Latinx faculty are concentrated in lower-ranked positions, such as instructor, lecturer or assistant professor. Students of color are more likely to see people who look like them in the ranks of clerical and service positions than in the upper echelons of academia.
Even in public institutions where Latinx people make up more than a third of the student body, the average Latinx-student-to-Latinx-faculty ratio is 146 to 1; it’s 264 to 1 in private institutions. Latinx studies scholars are also siloed from traditional disciplines. For example, few are joining graduate programs where they can teach and train the new professionals who will diversify all academic and professional fields.
Research has shown that when underrepresented students learn about their history and culture, they perform better academically and graduate at higher rates. When my own students see themselves represented in readings it leaves them empowered and curious to learn more.
Higher education must recognize the centrality of Latinx studies in all disciplines and fields. We can start by hiring Latinx scholars in schools and departments, with a special focus on Black and Indigenous Latinx scholars. We must invest in curriculums and programs that help mentor and support the next generation of Latinx professors. We must challenge traditional disciplines that remain stubborn to change, and we must nourish the interdisciplinary spaces, such as ethnic studies, that have been at the vanguard of innovation in American universities.
We can do better than to celebrate our heritage once a year, during Hispanic Heritage Month. Our students deserve to learn that their history is expansive and that our cultures have shaped this country since even before its inception.
Arlene Dávila (@arlenedavila1), the founding director of New York University’s Latinx Project, is the author of “Latinx Art: Artists, Markets and Politics.”
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