How Can One So Unenlightened Teach?
Some of the chief roadblocks to progress for African Americans and Latinos in this country have been negative stereotypes about us.
Case in point: In mid-September, Lino Graglia, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, said that blacks and Hispanics came from cultures that don’t promote success or condemn failure. This, he concluded, rendered these groups unable to compete at certain schools.
Graglia’s comments have been met with outrage and condemnation by some, but the law school defends his remarks as free speech.
Graglia’s remarks, and the administration’s tolerance of them, raise troubling questions.
What are the school’s criteria for being a good teacher? Doesn’t an instructor have to respect the potential of all of his or her students?
When Graglia grades essay exams, writes letters of recommendation or selects a promising young student to mentor, will he give as much to those he sees as doomed to failure? Can he see past the brown and black faces of his students enough to treat them all fairly? It does not appear likely.
Graglia’s remarks are not only offensive, they are also just plain wrong. In a meritocracy, hard work is supposedly one of the criteria for success. If this were true, Latinos and African Americans would be on the top of the economic pyramid. American agribusiness has made millions off the labor of Mexican and Mexican-American farm workers for generations. Black slave labor formed the foundation for the rise of both Northern and Southern industry in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Blacks and Latinos have not been fully rewarded for our labor or recognized for our potential. The reason is systematic discrimination.
We were excluded from the best schools until the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. We were denied loans, mortgages, promotions and even full political participation until the civil rights laws of the 1960s. And, being bilingual has often been held against Latinos instead of being seen as an indicator of linguistic and cognitive ability.
Given all the obstacles people of color have had to contend with historically, our achievements are quite impressive. Graglia’s response has been to cite Asian-Americans as the “model minority” that has succeeded despite the odds. This assumption too is ill-informed.
The migration pattern for various Asian groups, and their role in the economy and history of this country, has been quite different. There were few American-dream success stories among ChineseAmericans in the late 1800s, when they were sweating and dying building this country’s railroads. And there are few rags-to-riches stories involving Southeast Asian immigrant refugees today. A visit to any Chinatown testifies to the poverty and want that persists among many Asian-Americans to this day.
The University of Texas recently abandoned its commitment to affirmative action because that policy allegedly lowers standards. But Graglia’s remarks call into question the standards for faculty members at the university. His blatant admission of bias, his self-assured cultural ignorance and his insensitivity to a supportive and positive learning environment should raise questions about his qualifications, not those of black and Latino students.
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