ERIC Number: EJ1155773
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Apr
Pages: 3
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0002-8312
EISSN: N/A
Commentary: The History of Education for the Next America
Anderson, James
American Educational Research Journal, v54 n1 suppl p75S-77S Apr 2017
The Centennial article by Ruben Donato and Jarrod Hanson demonstrates the critical importance of writing the history of America's variegated ethnicity not only for a comprehensive understanding of the past but also to inform future struggles to overturn segregation and inequality in America's schools (see e.g., Ball, 2006). Donato and Hanson portray a quasi-legal, largely de facto tri-racial stratification system in Kansas designed mainly to accommodate White civic interest in segregating Mexican students. The authors do an excellent job of uncovering the nuanced, contradictory, and customary ways in which various cities within Kansas arranged to segregate Mexican students in segregated schools. They also demonstrate the international context in which Mexican segregation unfolded; Mexican nationals with children in Kansas's schools frequently contacted their consul to protest the assignment of their children to separate and unequal schools and classrooms. In vital respects, the segregation of Mexicans in Kansas represents segregation through institutionalized racism in contradiction to the legally mandated system that characterized the segregation of African American children. Hence, this history informs current and future struggles for education equality as school segregation and inequality in today's America is based squarely on institutional racism. Donato and Hansen's historical analysis enables us to comprehend segregation and resistance from an angle of vision that is uniquely Mexican. [This article offers a commentary on ""In These Towns, Mexicans Are Classified as Negroes": The Politics of Unofficial Segregation in the Kansas Public Schools, 1915-1935" (EJ1155344).]
Descriptors: Equal Education, School Segregation, Mexican Americans, Mexicans, Racial Bias, Hispanic American Students, United States History, Minority Group Students
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Kansas
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A