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Friday, February 04, 2011
Hispanic Education Act About Serving Majority
By Milton F. Brown
Latino/Hispano Education Improvement Task Force
The recent assassination attempt on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords engulfed the nation briefly in a passionate discussion of mental health, ideological politics, gun control and cultural character.
Consistent with the normal tendency of American pundits, politicians and media, each of these relevant and important issues has been made into opposites: guns or no guns; liberal or conservative; good or bad.
In each of these programmed discussions, the humanity of Giffords became secondary at best. One prominent politician implied that the shooter was insane even if his actions were not. Defending herself from public attacks about her use of inappropriate images and words, she also suggested that Americans have always been prone to violence. In a perverse way, her attempt to deflect attention away from criticisms of her own questionable behavior, gives us an opening to discuss what I consider to be the real issue — context.
It was context that allowed the founding fathers of our country to declare that slaves were not as human as non-slaves, while struggling to write a Constitution that would guide us toward being a nation of laws and social justice. And, it was context that gave legal cover to Supreme Court justices in constitutionally declaring that corporations are people, too, and therefore can exercise the same fundamental rights of citizenship as the rest of us. Context, like difference, matters.
These social contexts, and the ways in which we have constructed them, give meaning to the actions that may flow from them. When we sling racial slurs at our first non-white president and declare that he isn't even a citizen, our words have meaning. When we put cross-hairs on an oppositional party member — in the most violent gun society in the world — we make an implied connection between "our enemy" and the kinds of actions that are permissible.
If we believe, as far too many of us do today, that immigrants from the south are not as humanly viable as immigrants from the north, then what we communicate to each other is a permission to treat them, and those visibly like them, differently. Calling them illegal immigrants is not much different from the framers of the Constitution determining, for political purposes, that slaves were three-fifths of a person. Categorizing them, respectively, as three-fifths of a person or illegal sends a clear message that neither was/is deserving of full rights and privileges of citizenship or as fully recognized human beings. The Constitution made slavery legal, while the illegality of those crossing our southern border makes them pariahs.
Here in New Mexico, we are not immune to this kind of thinking and behavior.
We saw some of this when the Hispanic Education Act was proposed by Gov. Bill Richardson and a sitting New Mexico legislator opined in essence that he wouldn't vote for anything that focused on Hispanics. Given general attitudes about Mexican/Latino immigrants from the south and the racial animus that percolates under the surface of polite conversation, context was foundation for this legislator's feelings and words. I don't believe this legislator would have ever said anything similar about whites, even though it is a given that this "unremarked permanent majority" always reaps more than its share.
As it was with Giffords, the humanity of Hispanics/Latinos was secondary to our ideas about difference and change to this legislator.
In New Mexico, Latino/Hispano children are the majority in our public schools. The Hispanic Education Act is about how best to serve that majority, and in so doing, all of us. The Hispanic Education Act calls us to do what we have always done for the majority.
Again, the context for this, as always, is difference.
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