Beyond Tolerance: Moving Ahead Together
A Community-wide Conference Organized by the Santa Barbara School Districts
June 28, 1997
Annette Cordero, Santa Barbara City College Faculty; Member, Latinos for Better Government
I have two difficult acts to follow. I wanted to start by saying that my brother-in-law recently moved to Europe and he tells me that in Europe they have a saying, "If you speak three languages you’re trilingual, if you speak two languages you’re bilingual, and if you speak one language you’re American."
There are very few countries in the Western world that consider educated people someone who speaks only one language. America seems to be preoccupied with homogeneity. We’d like everybody to look the same, act the same, speak the same, think the same and that really runs up against the issue of diversity. We are probably one of the most diverse countries in the world and yet we continually struggle to make everybody be the same. My predecessor talked about the issue of colorblindness and this goes back to the issue of linguistic homogeneity as well, I think.
One of the issues that we constantly run into is this notion that somehow not seeing differences, not hearing differences, not noticing differences makes us better human beings. Would we really want to be colorblind if we could? Would most of us choose not to see yellow, red, green, or blue or do we only not want to be black, brown, or white?
One of the questions that I think affects the Latino students in the district is that we are an extremely diverse group of people. Many times we are considered as one rather homogeneous group. Unfortunately, we represent a broad spectrum. I am an eighth generation Santa Barbaran. I grew up monolingual English. I had to study Spanish in school. Many of the students in the district now are first generation American immigrants from various Latino backgrounds. Not all of them come from Mexico. This even affects the terminology that we use to describe different people. And sometimes I’ve heard people say, "Well, I can’t understand why that student got so upset when I called him a Mexican?" and I say "Well, he was from El Salvador." So even the language is sometimes affected.
We also have different educational issues for the recent immigrants versus the native-born American students. Some of the native-born American students may be perfectly fluent in English, and they may not even speak Spanish. They are very culturally assimilated. They may come from a middle class and even a fairly well educated background and yet we still see a very different achievement rate in the school district. The recent immigrants, of course, may be monolingual Spanish or very limited English speaking and may come from a family with limited educational background and they may feel very socially isolated in the school district. Of course, even that is a generalization. Some of the recent immigrants come from very wealthy backgrounds with very well educated families. So we have to be careful about not only generalizing the group.
One of the things that I think is important to look at is also some of the changes that have been made recently. The Multicultural Educational Consortium, which I’m sure some of you are familiar with, has adopted some of the following priorities, which are specifically pertinent to Latino students. To maximize student achievement for all students, particularly for students of color and to empower parents, especially Spanish speaking parents, so they can become involved and valued partners in their children’s education activities. This is extremely important. It’s not enough if we ask people to come to a meeting and then disregard what they decide. They have to be valued as well as included. Hire and promote and retain teachers that reflect the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the students.
Unfortunately I think Proposition 209 is going to make this even more difficult. We have already experienced many times a shortage of trained, culturally diverse educators coming out of our colleges and with the elimination of Affirmative Action or the attempted elimination of Affirmative Action, we may find that even more difficult. [We must] promote bilingual and multicultural education as a positive and valued asset to student achievement and community understanding. We must try to make bilingual education an educational policy and not a political one, so it appears the curriculum, which forces and emphasizes themes of diversity is representative of the people of the Santa Barbara community. This issue that we addressed at Allan Hancock College was actually adopted as a gender and ethnic studies requirement. Allan Hancock College also adopted a policy that requires that any General Education course infuse cultural diversity into its curriculum. This is not just a local issue, either. The Multicultural Educational Consortium also identified the following: 1) that the tracking system that, for many students isolates, segregates, defeats, or promotes prejudiced or negative perceptions of themselves and others, should be dismantled, and 2) that for each of the next five years the number of students of color enrolled in university, prep, honors and AP courses be doubled until the approximate enrollment of these classes reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of the district.