DANCING WITH BIGOTRY DANCING WITH BIGOTRY >>> Beyond the Politics ofTolerance BY DONALDO MACEDO AND LILIA I. BARTOLOME Palgrave Macmillan DANCING WITH BIGOTRY Copyright © '999 Donaldo Macedo and Lilia I. Bartolome. SoftcoIvSeBr Nre p9r7in8t- 0o-f3 t1h2e- 2h9a3r2dc6o-0v e r 1 s tI SedBiNtio 9n7 81-919-91 37-10952-1 (eBook) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner what soever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical arti cles or reviews. For information, address 51. Martin's Press, Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. ISBN 978-0-312-29326-0 ISBN 978-1-137-10952-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-10952-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in· Publication Data Dancingwith bigotry: beyond the politics of tolerance I Donaldo Macedo and Lilia Bartolome. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Critical pedagogy-United States. 2. Mulitcultural education United States. I. Macedo, Donaldo P. (Donaldo Pereira), '950' II. Bartolome, Lilia I. LC196·SU6D26 '999 370.11'S-dc21 99-27682 CIP Designed by Adam B. Bohannon First edition: December, 1999 109876543210 CONTENTS Introduction vii Christine E. Sleeter CHAPTER 1 DANCING WITH BIGOTRY 1 The Poisoning of Racial and Ethnic Identities CHAPTER 2 TONGUE-TIED MULTICULTURALISM 34 CHAPTER 3 RACISM AS A CULTURAL FACTOR 79 A Dialogue with Paulo Freire CHAPTER 4 INSURGENT MULTICULTURALISM 93 A Dialogue with Henry Giroux CHAPTER 5 BEYOND THE METHODS FETISH lI8 Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy Index 17I INTRODUCTION Christine E. Sleeter Multicultural education grew out of the political work of the 1960s, as African-Americans, later joined by other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups, struggled to define how and what children in the United States should be taught (Gay, 1983). In its early history, multicultural education involved: community empowerment, a challenge to low expectations for student learning, and an outrage about the absence of people of color from the curriculum. Today I find it important to situ ate multicultural education in this historic context, not to glorifY its beginnings, but rather to direct audiences toward its embeddedness within political struggle. Although multicultural education now is known as a field within education, many people do not think of it as a site of political struggle. In Dancing with Bigotry: Bl1'ond the Politics of Tolerance, Donaldo Macedo and Lilia Bartolome examine the connection between multi cultural education and politics very closely. They challenge us to ask: How can we prepare young people, as well as teachers, to analyze events around us using a political consciousness? They ask how we can teach people to see through the ideological fog of mainstream interpretations of pluralism. Freire (1998) wrote: [E]ven if the ideological fog has not been deliberately constructed and programmed by the dominant class, its power to obfuscate reality undeniably serves the interests of the dominant class. The dominant ideology veils reality; it makes us myopic and pre vents us from seeing reality clearly. The power of the dominant ideology is always domesticating, and when we are touched and deformed by it we become ambiguous and indecisive. (6) vii viii < Dancing with Bigotry Events and issues are situated in particular locations and times, and acted out by particular people. Issues themselves do not come to us analyzed and interpreted, although we are constantly taught analy tical perspectives. I wish to compare interpretive lenses for examining some schooling issues in Monterey County, where I live, to illustrate the power of ideological fog. The first will be a mainstream white lens, which represents the dominant viewpoint that I very often encounter when working with white educators. The second is a "human rela tions" multicultural lens, in which the concern is tolerance of differ ences. The third is a critical, political multicultural lens, which I believe is most consistent with the political struggle in which multi cultural education was born, and which this book elaborates. Who Is in the Schools? The public schools of Monterey County, for the I998-I999 school year, were as follows: 59 percent Latino, 28 percent white, 7 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, 4 percent African-American, and 2 percent other. About one-third of the students spoke Spanish as their first lan guage. The teaching and administrative staff, however, was predomi nantly white. In I997-I998, 73 percent of the administrators in Monterey county were white (22 percent Latino), and 78 percent of the teachers were white (IS percent Latino) (California Department of Education, October I997). Monterey County itself is a study in con trasts. The Salinas Valley is home to the United Farm Workers founded by Cesar Chavez; field workers there are still paid very poorly and many people live in very impoverished circumstances. Pebble Beach and Carmel, on the other hand, boast some of the most expen sive housing in California, and are a Mecca for tourists and well heeled golfers. Statewide, in I998, the median wage of Latinos was $I4,560, while that of whites was $27,000. This portrait can be read in different ways. From a mainstream white perspective, the very low wages of Latinos is due to low levels of education and high rates of immigration. The main job of schools is to improve all children's achievement levels, and as that happens, from this perspective, earnings gaps will close. The teaching and Introduction > ix administrative staff is remarkably diverse, given that about 90 percent of the teachers in the United States are white. Also from this perspec tive, race and ethnicity are personal characteristics that should not matter when making professional decisions. From a human relations multicultural perspective, these data call for a need to learn to get along. Cultural awareness celebrations are supported; ethnic holidays become the focus of multicultural curric ula. Human relations advocates also see a need to learn to dialog respectfully and peacefully across differences, and invest energy in teaching peaceful conflict resolution. From a critical multicultural perspective, however, it appears that little has changed politically for Latinos in Monterey County since the United States occupied California. California had formerly been part of Mexico, and was taken by the United States through conquest. Rodolfo Acuna (I972) wrote that "California in I848 resembled the typical colonial situation, with the Mexicans outnumbering their new masters" (I04). In I999, Monterey County still resembles the typical colonial situation. The masters (in schools as well as other institu tions) are still predominantly white, and the system works in such a way that low-wage service work is being done primarily by people of color (mostly Latino). The main beneficiaries of the system are affiu ent whites. The system itself, dominated by white power, is the prob lem. Political literacy entails learning to examine that problem and collective strategies to address it systemically. To do otherwise is to "dance with bigotry." What Schools Teach California, like most other states, has worked over the past decade to develop curriculum standards. In I987, a new History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools was adopted by the California State Board of Education, amid considerable controversy. Although the Framework claimed to be multicultural, from the perspectives of many communities of color and intellectual leaders of color, it was not (Cornbleth & Waugh, I995; King, I992). In I997, the California State Board of Education readopted the Framework. The introduction to the