Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Prison House of Textbook History: Remembering the Chicano Blowouts
Sikivu Hutchinson
01 May 2013

by Sikivu Hutchinson

1968, the year of the biggest high school walkout in U.S. history, was not so different than the present. “Then, as now, there was no room for analyses of sexism, racial apartheid, heterosexism, and patriarchy and how our lived experiences diverged from the corrupt pedagogy of the American dream.”

Prison House of Textbook History: Remembering the Chicano Blowouts

by Sikivu Hutchinson

“Activism was framed as though it was a distant, hallowed phenomenon propelled by charismatic god-status heroes.”

In all my years of “post-Jim Crow” public education no one ever handed me a book written by a black woman and said that what she wrote is universal truth.  I was never told that so-called civilizations rose and fell on the power of her words, or that entire belief systems sprung from her ideas.  I was never taught that the world’s greatest intellectuals worked plantations, were herded onto reservations, or traveled everyday from barrios and “ghettoes” to keep white people’s children.  Intellectuals and philosophers—serious thinkers—were white men, with no need for a living wage job.  They did not ride public buses or clean houses or go to schools where stop-and-frisk was a routine practice.  They did not have to worry, like my students do, about being assigned to special education classes because they were chronic discipline “problems” or didn’t speak “proper” English.  They were never told that they would be more likely to drop-out and get pregnant than go on to a four-year college.  

These vaunted intellectuals and philosophers were certainly not seventeen year-old East L.A. girls like Paula Crisostomo, a Mexican-American Filipina activist who helped spearhead the Chicano student walkouts of 1968.  As a student at Lincoln High School in East L.A. Crisostomo was influenced by social studies teacher Sal Castro, who recently passed away at the age of 79.  Castro’s fierce commitment to culturally relevant education inspired generations of youth social justice activism in the LAUSD.  His guidance of Crisostomo and other youth leaders helped make the 1968 walkouts the largest high school student protests in this nation’s history.  Thousands of students boycotted their classes in protest over lack of college access, tracking policies, prohibition of Spanish in the classroom, and racist curricula.

I did not learn about the walkouts in high school.  In the march of great Western liberal democratic traditions there were no textbook portrayals of the homegrown activism in our own communities or link between the apartheid legacy of the past and its echoes in the present.  Instead, “social justice” history consisted of canned recitations of how Martin Luther King solely “led” the civil rights movement.  Then, as now, many of us disengaged from these token classroom discussions because activism was framed as though it was a distant, hallowed phenomenon propelled by charismatic god-status heroes.  Racism equaled the Klan, black people getting hosed down and spit at, black men being lynched, and the indignity of segregated water fountains.  Racism wasn’t the systematic sexual terrorism of black women in the Jim Crow South and the de facto segregationist North or the demonization of black women as welfare queen matriarchs.  Then, as now, there was no room for analyses of sexism, racial apartheid, heterosexism, and patriarchy and how our lived experiences diverged from the corrupt pedagogy of the American dream.

“The 1968 walkouts the largest high school student protests in this nation’s history.”

Last year, Crisostomo came and spoke to a group of my students at Washington Prep High School in South Los Angeles.  She drew parallels between the racism she’d encountered during the Vietnam War era and the de facto segregation of the Obama age.  Girls like Ms. Crisostomo were not supposed to go to college.  Homemaking, caregiving, becoming a maid in a white household on the Westside—these were the common life expectations for young Latinas.  For Crisotomo’s generation, the military was pervasive.  Youth of color died in disproportionate numbers fighting and killing other dark-skinned peoples in Vietnam because college was not an option in the “ghetto.”  Despite an increase in the number of students of color in college, aggressive military recruitment continues to be a reality for black, Latino, and Native American students.  For many, college preparation and equitable college access are still a distant dream.  For some, simply graduating from high school at campuses where less than 50% of the entering freshman class makes it to graduation is an accomplishment.  This has become the standard in an era in which the Education Trust estimates that only “one of every 20 African American kindergartners will graduate from high school and go on to a four-year California university” in the next decade.  While predominantly black and Latino schools in South and East L.A. are besieged by military recruiters, the more affluent white schools get the college recruiters, college prep classes, and highly qualified teachers. The Americana fever pitch of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines is unheard of on predominantly white campuses in Los Angeles.  It is a given that these students will be going to college, not dying on the frontlines.

Forty-five years after the walkouts, high drop-out rates, black student suspension rates and low four year college-going rates undermine the illusion of post-Jim Crow progress.  The conditions that walkout activists like Crisostomo and Castro protested are still in place, just with a “kinder gentler” post-racial varnish, buffed to blinding.

*Excerpted from Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels, by Sikivu Hutchinson. She is also author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio May 9, 2025
    09 May 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe in World War II, and the disinformation that centers on the U.S.'s role and dismisses the pivotal Soviet role in that…
  • Book: The Rebirth of the African Phoenix
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Rebirth of the African Phoenix: A View from Babylon
    09 May 2025
    Roger McKenzie is the international editor of the UK-based Morning Star, the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world. He joins us from Oxford to discuss his new book, “The…
  • ww2
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Bruce Dixon: US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan Hostility Toward Russia
    09 May 2025
    The late Bruce Dixon was a co-founder and managing editor of Black Agenda Report. In 2018, he provided this commentary entitled, "US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan…
  • Nakba
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Meaning of Nakba Day
    09 May 2025
    Nadiah Alyafai is a member of the US Palestinian Community Network chapter in Chicago and she joins us to discuss why the public must be aware of the Nakba and the continuity of Palestinian…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr
    07 May 2025
    Black people who are among the rich and famous garner praise and love, and so do those who are in distress. But concerns for the masses of people and their struggles are often missing.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us