Is officially out! I received my copy from www.floricantopress.com or you can purchase it on amazon.com too.
I came across a book titled, "Dude, Where's My Black Studies Department" and the author Clemens Brown stated that outsiders teaching Black Studies has been detrimental to Black Students. I use the word Black because I am originally from Inglewood and Blacks called themselves Black. That is the only identity they have created themselves which should be valued.
But Mr. Brown stated that "Carribbean, Asian and White females teaching Black Studies has hurt Black students and Black professors". Meaning US Blacks.
This made me think about the points that I say about Mexican American Studies and the negative affects of outsiders teaching including those born in Mexico. First and foremost, any Centro American, Carribbean or South American who teaches Mexican American Studies is detrimental to Mexican American students. The simple reason is they do not know the culture and facts do not substitute for culture. These people are stealing from those Mexican Americans who have limited opportunities in higher education.
And White administrators who permit this should be held accountable for their racism including non-white administrators. How dare them disrespect the culture and our specific US Americaness.
Second, I would throw in Whites who have a Mexican parent and those born in Mexico. Those Whites who want to claim the Mexican American card, because this word is used now more for Whites who have a Mexican/White parent than for us US born Mexican Americans, the answer is simple. I do not have a White card in my pocket. I should know, I married one. They can morph into Whiteness, I cannot. So just because you dress up in folkloric dresses like the chair of Chicano Studies at CSU Dominguez Hills, that does not make you Mexican American. And for the record, no mother of mine ever dressed with those ballet folclorico dresses, she would think you were dancing in some festival. In addition, Mexican American mothers do not dress that way, they are in the US not in some Oaxaca market. Talk about stereotyping. The only time I see women wear those dresses are White women who want to be Oaxacan, travelled to or they moved to Oaxaca and feel they are now Zapotecs.
For those born in Mexico, the rule should also apply because they were not born in the US must the same as a Mexican American is not born in Mexico. They are two foreign entities. And if you think I am wrong, for Mexican Americans go to the Mexican Consulate or el Registro Civil in Baja California and ask them for your birth certificate. The Consulate in Los Angeles will make you feel quite American even if your parents are born in Mexico and in Baja California they will do a data search for your birth certificate and tell you that you do not exist. I learned that the hard way from both places.
So my Mexican Americaness is strictly American.
But the hard hear is to assume that somebody born in Mexico who is moved north will have the same upbringing as those from the US. The answer is simple, no. You can't arbitrarily say that they have the same upbringing. They do not.
US Mexican born have their own culture and if you throw in geography I would argue that Tejanos and Califorences have nothing in common. We don't even eat the same food. If you have travelled to Nuevo Mexico and Tejas one should know the difference. I have driven throughout the Southwest and the Sierra Madre Occidental east of Meza, Arizona serves as a true cultural continental divide.
But returning to the Mexico born who teaches Chicano Studies. The danger falls in one case I have seen from teaching in Glendale College. A full time job was given to a man named Carlos Ugalde who taught he was Che Guevara. He was hired to be a Mexican American Studies professor and in his warped communist vision of we are the world he killed Mexican American Studies. There was never any growth from 1980 for Mexican Americans. He felt he had to be Mr. Latin America. Like they care about us.
He created courses on Centro America, the Carribbean, South America and neglected Mexican American Studies. The same Mexican American course from 1980. This was a rotten hire for the future by these White administrators who wanted to have a brown face there. In addition, he made us look like clowns with his Fidel Castro look and usage of the word companhero, like we were "comrades". That is not even Mexican American cultural lingo from Los Angeles.
Thus he killed Mexican American Studies and created a curriculum that amounted to foreigners teaching classes versus Mexican Americans. No courses were created for MexAm literature, culture, sociology, male or family studies much less on the diversity of Mex Am communities. It's like we died. No wonder I use to think that Chicano Studies were low class grade studies; just take a look at the professors who did teach these subjects. The barrio mentality was present. Or how to differentiate between MexAm and recent arrivals from Mexico. Because immigration is not a Mexican American topic. We don't care about immigration, we were born here. If people don't have their residency what this demonstrates is new history which means not Mexican American. Ugalde killed any curriculum and pedagogical growth for the pleasure of his make believe mentality that all people from the Western Hemisphere is one when they are not.
So he retired and with budget cuts made it essay to just continue with one miserable course that amounts to peanuts. In 28 years of teaching he proved that Mexican Americans are not thinkers or philosophers but idiots of the modern era. And with a non Mexican American chair who believes in the Latinoness of the era and his feminist mindset, it is not shocking to see the Ethnization of Mexican Americans into a Feminization that amounts to "we hate Mexican American males" and that is the curriculum of today. If women want a feminization curriculum, why don't they attend female colleges. Go join the Wellesleys and Mills Colleges.
Thus foreigners not only monetarily take away from Mexican Americans they kill the curriculum.
And as a female from Saltillo, Coahuila once told me when I asked her what she thought about Mexican Americans, "We don't think about you guys, you are lost to us".
And we should not lose ourselves!
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