Table Of ContentDANCING WITH BIGOTRY
DANCING WITH BIGOTRY
>>> Beyond the Politics ofTolerance
BY DONALDO MACEDO
AND LILIA I. BARTOLOME
Palgrave Macmillan
DANCING WITH BIGOTRY
Copyright © '999 Donaldo Macedo and Lilia I. Bartolome.
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ISBN 978-0-312-29326-0 ISBN 978-1-137-10952-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-10952-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in· Publication Data
Dancingwith bigotry: beyond the politics of tolerance I
Donaldo Macedo and Lilia Bartolome.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Critical pedagogy-United States. 2. Mulitcultural education
United States. I. Macedo, Donaldo P. (Donaldo Pereira), '950'
II. Bartolome, Lilia I.
LC196·SU6D26 '999
370.11'S-dc21 99-27682
CIP
Designed by Adam B. Bohannon
First edition: December, 1999
109876543210
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
Christine E. Sleeter
CHAPTER 1
DANCING WITH BIGOTRY 1
The Poisoning of Racial and Ethnic Identities
CHAPTER 2
TONGUE-TIED MULTICULTURALISM 34
CHAPTER 3
RACISM AS A CULTURAL FACTOR 79
A Dialogue with Paulo Freire
CHAPTER 4
INSURGENT MULTICULTURALISM 93
A Dialogue with Henry Giroux
CHAPTER 5
BEYOND THE METHODS FETISH lI8
Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy
Index 17I
INTRODUCTION
Christine E. Sleeter
Multicultural education grew out of the political work of the 1960s, as
African-Americans, later joined by other racial, ethnic, and cultural
groups, struggled to define how and what children in the United
States should be taught (Gay, 1983). In its early history, multicultural
education involved: community empowerment, a challenge to low
expectations for student learning, and an outrage about the absence of
people of color from the curriculum. Today I find it important to situ
ate multicultural education in this historic context, not to glorifY its
beginnings, but rather to direct audiences toward its embeddedness
within political struggle. Although multicultural education now is
known as a field within education, many people do not think of it as a
site of political struggle.
In Dancing with Bigotry: Bl1'ond the Politics of Tolerance, Donaldo
Macedo and Lilia Bartolome examine the connection between multi
cultural education and politics very closely. They challenge us to ask:
How can we prepare young people, as well as teachers, to analyze
events around us using a political consciousness? They ask how we
can teach people to see through the ideological fog of mainstream
interpretations of pluralism. Freire (1998) wrote:
[E]ven if the ideological fog has not been deliberately constructed
and programmed by the dominant class, its power to obfuscate
reality undeniably serves the interests of the dominant class.
The dominant ideology veils reality; it makes us myopic and pre
vents us from seeing reality clearly. The power of the dominant
ideology is always domesticating, and when we are touched and
deformed by it we become ambiguous and indecisive. (6)
vii
viii < Dancing with Bigotry
Events and issues are situated in particular locations and times,
and acted out by particular people. Issues themselves do not come to
us analyzed and interpreted, although we are constantly taught analy
tical perspectives. I wish to compare interpretive lenses for examining
some schooling issues in Monterey County, where I live, to illustrate
the power of ideological fog. The first will be a mainstream white lens,
which represents the dominant viewpoint that I very often encounter
when working with white educators. The second is a "human rela
tions" multicultural lens, in which the concern is tolerance of differ
ences. The third is a critical, political multicultural lens, which I
believe is most consistent with the political struggle in which multi
cultural education was born, and which this book elaborates.
Who Is in the Schools?
The public schools of Monterey County, for the I998-I999 school
year, were as follows: 59 percent Latino, 28 percent white, 7 percent
Asian and Pacific Islander, 4 percent African-American, and 2 percent
other. About one-third of the students spoke Spanish as their first lan
guage. The teaching and administrative staff, however, was predomi
nantly white. In I997-I998, 73 percent of the administrators in
Monterey county were white (22 percent Latino), and 78 percent of the
teachers were white (IS percent Latino) (California Department of
Education, October I997). Monterey County itself is a study in con
trasts. The Salinas Valley is home to the United Farm Workers
founded by Cesar Chavez; field workers there are still paid very poorly
and many people live in very impoverished circumstances. Pebble
Beach and Carmel, on the other hand, boast some of the most expen
sive housing in California, and are a Mecca for tourists and well
heeled golfers. Statewide, in I998, the median wage of Latinos was
$I4,560, while that of whites was $27,000.
This portrait can be read in different ways. From a mainstream
white perspective, the very low wages of Latinos is due to low levels of
education and high rates of immigration. The main job of schools is
to improve all children's achievement levels, and as that happens,
from this perspective, earnings gaps will close. The teaching and
Introduction > ix
administrative staff is remarkably diverse, given that about 90 percent
of the teachers in the United States are white. Also from this perspec
tive, race and ethnicity are personal characteristics that should not
matter when making professional decisions.
From a human relations multicultural perspective, these data call
for a need to learn to get along. Cultural awareness celebrations are
supported; ethnic holidays become the focus of multicultural curric
ula. Human relations advocates also see a need to learn to dialog
respectfully and peacefully across differences, and invest energy in
teaching peaceful conflict resolution.
From a critical multicultural perspective, however, it appears that
little has changed politically for Latinos in Monterey County since the
United States occupied California. California had formerly been part
of Mexico, and was taken by the United States through conquest.
Rodolfo Acuna (I972) wrote that "California in I848 resembled the
typical colonial situation, with the Mexicans outnumbering their new
masters" (I04). In I999, Monterey County still resembles the typical
colonial situation. The masters (in schools as well as other institu
tions) are still predominantly white, and the system works in such a
way that low-wage service work is being done primarily by people of
color (mostly Latino). The main beneficiaries of the system are affiu
ent whites. The system itself, dominated by white power, is the prob
lem. Political literacy entails learning to examine that problem and
collective strategies to address it systemically. To do otherwise is to
"dance with bigotry."
What Schools Teach
California, like most other states, has worked over the past decade to
develop curriculum standards. In I987, a new History-Social Science
Framework for California Public Schools was adopted by the California
State Board of Education, amid considerable controversy. Although
the Framework claimed to be multicultural, from the perspectives of
many communities of color and intellectual leaders of color, it was not
(Cornbleth & Waugh, I995; King, I992). In I997, the California State
Board of Education readopted the Framework. The introduction to the
