Opinion

Legislation takes aim at future of ethnic studies

Sen. Dan Patrick's bill is likely to morph into an attack against ethnic studies. Sen. Dan Patrick's bill is likely to morph into an attack against ethnic studies. Photo: Austin American Statesman Photo: Austin American Statesman Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Legislation takes aim at future of ethnic studies 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

On the surface, Republican state Sen. Dan Patrick's bill on what history courses should count toward core credit at Texas colleges and universities sounds innocuous.

The 300 words or so in Senate Bill 1128 aren't offensive or threatening. They aren't even necessarily interesting.

But when Patrick's bill — along with companion House Bill 1938 from Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione — is heard and amended, it's likely to morph into what its authors truly intended: an attack against ethnic studies, including Mexican American Studies, African American Studies and other programs developed in the last half-century to fill in the blank spaces left by Eurocentric scholarship.

Members of the Houston-based Librotraficantes movement went to the state Capitol last week to lodge their concerns. Those concerns should spur other watchdog groups to oppose the bill.

Last year, members traveled to Arizona and “smuggled” banned books back to a state that has been at the center of hateful, anti-Latino politics.

But these “book smugglers,” among them scholars, writers and activists, are looking past Arizona for the root of Texas' anti-ethnic studies legislation.

And they point to a recent study by the New York-based National Association of Scholars of history departments at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.

NAS is well known by those who teach Mexican American and African American history.

Scholars such as Gilberto Hinojosa of the University of the Incarnate Word, Emilio Zamora at UT-Austin and Carey Latimore of Trinity University describe it as a conservative group of academics.

NAS purports to be devoted to neutral, unbiased scholarship and maintaining and lifting standards, but theirs seem more an attempt to revert to a time when race and gender studies weren't part of the academy. Consider the title of the NAS study, “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?”

Less critical of A&M, the study found a lot wrong in the classes, books and even the historical interests of professors at UT-Austin.

But like Arizona legislators and so many conservative think tanks, the NAS study comes from a place of fear. They look at national demographic trends and see an America they don't recognize.

Hinojosa said they seek an America that probably never was. By 1700, “one in every five persons in English colonial America was an African American,” Hinojosa said. But do you remember that being reflected in a U.S. history course, especially a survey course?

Thankfully, cadres of scholars in African American Studies, Women's Studies, Mexican American Studies and others specialties have taken their seats in the academy and are influencing new generations of professors and students.

Recently, San Antonio scholar José Angel Hernández of the University of Massachusetts was honored for his new book, “Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century: A History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.” It received the William M. LeoGrande Prize for the Best Book on U.S.-Latin American Relations by the School of Public Affairs and Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University.

As hard as Arizona or Texas might try, it will be difficult to remove these stories from bookshelves, curricula or discourse.

For now, Patrick — an evangelical Christian best known for backing the sonogram law and introducing anti-immigration legislation — has filed a bill that would amend a 1955 law so that only “comprehensive survey” American and Texas history classes would count toward core-credit requirements.

It's essentially a continuation of the Texas State Board of Education battles, in which some Mexican American contributions were removed from textbooks.

But SB 1128, which threatens academic freedom and university governance, illustrates the tension that demographic changes are putting on leadership and how badly they're dealing with it.