My generation didn’t have the benefit of ethnic studies classes. Our kids deserve better

Subscriber Exclusive to The Tribune (San Luis Obispo)

Originally published March 28, 2021

A new generation faces the legacy of injustice and the promise of change—reminded that education in truth and representation is essential for healing a divided community.

Read the original courtesy of The Tribune here

If George Floyd being executed on the street in broad daylight by the same person who swore to protect and serve him didn’t make it apparent enough — we are boiling over with ethnic tension in our society.

We have to do better at connecting with each other as human beings. Lives depend on it.

If you are in need of a local reason to take note, take a look at the March 23 Paso Robles School Board meeting, where a predominantly Caucasian panel made decisions on an ethnic studies course for a district where 60% of its students are people of color.

The familiar awkwardness of the lack of representation wasn’t the only takeaway from the evening. I’m not sure what part of this session was more cringe-worthy: the notion that “the students who elect to take this class are going to look at the white students differently,” voiced by Trustee Lance Gannon, or when board President Christopher Arend took to berating a Spanish-speaking Dr. Susana Lopez, citing a non-existent policy favoring English as the default language of board meetings. He told Lopez she was “out of order” for choosing to speak Spanish.

This wasn’t the first time Mr. Arend has been hostile to non-English speaking constituents during public comment — in the city of El Paso de Robles, a community with a Latinx population of 40%.

Nonetheless, he has no problem going on the record about his thoughts on the “myth” of systemic racism. If you were looking for a sign that multi-cultural studies are desperately needed as essential life skills, look no further than the pattern of behavior displayed at these school board meetings by full-grown adults. With our kids, at least we still have a chance to reverse course by providing access to forward-thinking ethnic studies in public schools.

With a curriculum established by experts, one that includes classes such as the Multicultural America course created for Paso Robles High, we have an opportunity to reach, teach and prepare our children for reality — not the Care Bears’ version of equality we were sold in the ’80s and ’90s that led us to the path of tear-gassing racial justice protesters in the streets of our own city.

We simply can’t make strides with watered-down public service announcements that gloss over the plight of our friends and neighbors of color in order to keep white people from feeling uncomfortable about our hand in it. As much as we hoped that learning to be “colorblind” would be the way to come to a kumbaya moment as a human race, it failed miserably.

In teaching “we are all the same,” we turned the other cheek to the unique life experience of each culture. Despite the best intentions, it missed the mark and has facilitated a lot of pain and suffering.

It took me longer than most to understand this, due in part to the fact that I have spent the better part of four decades on the predominantly white Central Coast. I can count on one hand how many Black children I attended primary school with. Our diversity in this region is stunted, and I simply had no concept of how other cultures live their lives, both in and outside of this relatively Caucasian microcosm we call home.

It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood and had ventured beyond the comfy confines of SLO County that I was finally able to learn how unintentionally toxic my “I don’t see color” mentality was. I knew I didn’t have a speck of hate in my body for any race, but I had been living life not properly acknowledging the existence of others.

I simply didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Snacking on Tide Pods and TikTok challenges aside, our children have far surpassed us with their emotional intelligence and are poised to become more than anything our generation could have ever hoped to be — assuming they survive the ravenous clutches of climate change. Providing our children with basic tools to interact, coexist and relate to each other without kneeling on each other’s necks seems like low-hanging fruit.

Perhaps if my generation had the opportunity to grow from ethnic studies courses during our youth, we wouldn’t have scared men scaling buildings with automatic weapons in response to the radical notion that Black Lives Matter. Maybe if we had learned about inherited bias in our formative years, we wouldn’t have spent countless resources as a county hassling young Black social justice leaders for peacefully protesting.

And maybe — just maybe — if we lowered our defenses and attempted to try something different, we could craft a community culture where non-English speakers of the future aren’t bullied for having the audacity to take an active role in something as vital as their children’s education.