Powerful interests don’t want students to “interrogate the systems of power and privilege that are at stake” in today’s struggles, said Dr Gilda Ochoa, a professor of Chicano/Latino Studies at Pomona College and supporter of legislation requiring all students in California’s public university system to pass an ethnic studies course before graduation. The bill was put on hold in the face of fierce opposition. Seventy-five percent of the state’s K1-12 students are non-whites, but few students or teachers “have learned this crucial history,” said Ochoa.
