In Texas education, there always plenty of fodder still out there to spark outrage. Take a proposed social studies textbook titled “Mexican-American Heritage”submitted to the Texas Education Agency as required for review before appearing on bookshelves in the classroom.
Tony Diaz, an activist based in Houston and host of Nuestra Palabra on KPFT, says this book is the opposite of what activists and scholars, who have campaigned for more visibility of Latino stories in history, wanted to include in the Texas curriculum – in part because of its racist undertones.
“This is so far from what anyone would want in a classroom,” Diaz says. “This book is possibly the most poorly written, most racist book I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. So, no, this is not what we want in Texas classrooms.”
Diaz says the problem is no amount of revision will fix the text, because it omits important parts of Latino and Chicano history. “It really does whitewash parts and it really does characterize Latinos and Chicanos as violent, illiterate, illogical.”
To read more about the Latino community’s concerns visit here.
