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Up for a fiesta? On Thursday, Cal State L.A. will hold a shindig complete with a mariachi, a new song by '70s punk icon Alice Bag, and a keynote speech by labor activist Dolores Huerta. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of the school's Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies -- their grammar, not mine -- the nation's first such department.
The nostalgia will be heavy, but so will the sense of accomplishment. Although college attendance rates for Latinos are still too low, Cal State L.A. showed a partial solution that still works: education by Chicanos, for Chicanos, to improve themselves and the community as a whole.
There's always been a cadre of critics of the ethnic studies concept, but Chicano studies has drawn particular disdain because of that unapologetic approach. Opponents claim this type of curriculum teaches students to believe they're perpetual victims of white America and preaches self-segregation and seditious behavior. Writer and historian (and Cal State Fresno professor emeritus) Victor Davis Hanson is typical of such naysayers; he once wrote that programs "too often graduated zealous advocates who lacked the broad education necessary to achieve their predetermined politicized ends."
In other words, Chicano studies just creates dumb activists.
I used to be such a skeptic. I ridiculed Chicano studies...
