A Forum For Community Issues : Community Essay : Multiethnic Studies Are Needed for All

It was one of those days at the end of a semester when the teacher is trying to sum up lessons learned over the term. In my Mexican American Studies class at predominantly Latino Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, I had one of my best and brightest groups of students in years.

We had covered tens of thousands of years of history in the class. We were finishing up with Mexican American experiences in Southern California during World War II.

My students had learned how Mexican people had been segregated from whites in the 1940s. We had looked at the infamous “Pachuco Riots” and the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, both unfortunate examples of overt racism against Mexicans in Los Angeles. I made comparisons to what had been done to Jews in Germany and to Japanese and Japanese Americans here in California. We discussed the effects of racial prejudice and of stereotypes. I concluded by making a plea for racial and cultural understanding in this complex and diverse city. Suddenly, one student stuck his hand up.

“But I just don’t like them,” he said.

“Who don’t you like?” I asked.

“Them . . . you know, Asians. They think they’re better than us,” he mumbled. “I just don’t like ‘em.”

No one challenged his statements. No one seemed bothered by them.

Extensive news coverage has been devoted to student demands for Chicano Studies programs at both the high school and college level, including the hunger strike late last year at UCLA. But these efforts must be put in the context of some troubling events.

A few years ago at Jordan High School, which was once predominantly African American but is rapidly becoming Latino, there was a Cinco de Mayo assembly. The black students walked out. At Alhambra High in the San Gabriel Valley, racial tensions have flared between Latino and Asian students, including fistfights and stabbings. In past decades, these types of clashes would have been white versus black. Today, it is Asians versus Mexicans or Latinos versus blacks.

Mexican Americans with strong cultural pride insist on being called Chicanos. They emphatically reject the term Hispanic as being insulting and inaccurate. Yet when referring to Asian people, many young Latinos use the term Chinos or Chinitos. A significant number of my students at Garfield do not know the difference between a Vietnamese, a Cambodian, a Chinese or a Japanese person. To large numbers of the Mexican American teen-agers at Garfield, all Asians are Chinos. And like the student in my class, many believe that Chinos are “rich” and “stuck up.”

Similarly, only a handful of my students know the difference between Armenians and Iranians, two of the largest ethnic groups in Los Angeles. This ignorance is scary.

As someone who has taught Chicano Studies in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 15 years, I am totally committed to this curriculum. But what good does it do to be knowledgeable and proud of your own cultural identity and yet ignorant and potentially racist toward others? In our increasingly multiethnic world, Chicano Studies is just not enough for young Chicano and Latino students.

What is needed is required multicultural studies for all students, beginning at a very early age. USC has implemented such a requirement, but younger people need the same thing. Alhambra High students have drafted a bill that would require California students to take a class in multicultural awareness before graduating. Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Alhambra) has introduced the bill to the Legislature.

Some would brand this blatant “political correctness.” But many who oppose multicultural education are themselves woefully ignorant of the ethnic diversity of the United States. Maybe such a program would help reduce the alarming rise of hate crimes and the ugly racial incidents we all have witnessed in recent years.

To the activists who are pushing for more Chicano Studies, I say: Keep up the fight! But stop and think a moment the next time you or someone you know uses the term Chino. Reflect on how much you dislike being ignorantly lumped together with all other Latinos as Hispanic.