Discourse and Power

"A discourse is a way of talking about or representing something. [Discourse] produces knowledge that shapes perceptions and practice. [Discourse] is part of the way in which power operates. Therefore, [discourse] has consequences for both those who employ it and those who are 'subjected' to it" p.225.

Hall, Stuart (1996) The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies. The Open University Press.

A Critical Review of Huntington and Saldivar: Using Culture to Claim Power and Representation

By Oscar Medina
In this paper I discuss how Samuel P. Huntington and Jose David Saldivar use the concept of culture in their academic work. I argue that both scholars use culture to advance their concerns about power and representation. First, I summarize Huntington and Saldivar’s main arguments. Secondly, I provide a working definition of culture from a cultural studies perspective. Thirdly, I discuss and examine how Huntington and Saldivar conceptualize and use culture as critical tool. Lastly, I argue that culture is used differently and similarly to advance both authors’ agendas: a cultural politics of power and representation is present throughout their work. My unit of analysis is at the cultural sphere, particularly paying close attention to the author’s writing, discussion and perceptions of culture.

Summary of Huntington’s Work
In The Hispanic Challenge (2004) by Samuel P. Huntington, professor at Harvard University in the Department of Government, Huntington writes how Hispanic immigrants pose a major threat to American culture. Huntington uses Anglo-Protestant culture to claim the foundation of the United States. He particularly emphasizes Anglo-Protestant culture to push his rhetorical claim that Hispanics are causing a “cultural division” among white Anglos and Latinos, a division that is replacing the black-white cultural binary. Huntington is explicitly concerned with American identity and culture. He defensively frames his argument to force his readers to question the historical and present U.S. culture and identity. Huntington states, “will the United States remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture” (32)? Anglo-Protestant culture, in Huntington’s view is the national identity of the U.S. Furthermore, a cultural identity under attack by the influx of Latin American immigrants, whom fail to assimilate to the Anglo-Protestant language and culture. Huntington writes, the “most serious challenge to America’s traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico” (32). Not only does Huntington warn that Hispanics are a cultural threat to U.S. national identity but also warns of the political threat that may occur if Latino enclaves prevail. Huntington argues, “…Spanish-speaking communit[ies] with economic and political resources sufficient to sustain its Hispanic identity apart from the national identity of other Americans [may] influence U.S. politics, government, and society” (43). Comparing Cuban immigrants in Miami to Mexicans immigrants in the Los Angeles, Huntington forecasts a warning of a similar trend that may shift the cultural politics and government in the Southwest.

Summary of Saldivar’s Work

In Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies (1997), postcolonial, literary and cultural critic Jose David Saldivar exposes U.S.- Mexico borderland culture through critical reviews of different texts such as novels, short stories, corridos, poems, autoethnographies, hip-hop and punk music, paintings and performance arts. In doing so, Salidvar claims to challenge U.S. nationalism and American culture. His interest in challenging U.S. nationalism and British and American cultural studies, in particular stems from a systemic exclusion of Chicana/o borderland experiences in the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies. In his work, Salidvar provides critical accounts of the U.S. – Mexico borderlands to disrupt the mainstream cultural narratives of what he calls the “tranfrontera contact zone,” a geopolitical border zone. The U.S. – Mexico borderlands is the space, according to Salidvar, where the subaltern produce cultural meaning of their lived experiences based on their material conditions (13). Saldivar is primarily concerned with disrupting the nation-state paradigm to include and represent a hybrid Chicana/o U.S. - Mexico borderland culture in the academic interdisciplinary field of cultural studies.

What is Culture and Cultural Studies?
Culture is often used loosely and undefined. The concept of culture evolved from the western academic discipline of anthropology. Today, in practically every academic discipline, culture is a sub theme or topic used to differentiate linguistic and social entities. Culture is commonly used to represent different linguistic and social practices. Moving away from a static anthropological definition of culture, cultural studies considers power and meaning as an intersection to the concept of culture. Culture enables different ways of talking about human activity. Culture is a terrain of struggle and the study of culture is a zone of contestation over meaning. In cultural studies, culture is the production and exchange of meanings that are centered on issues of power, politics and social change. Huntington and Saldivar use culture as their framework to write about Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Chicana/os and Anglos. I use the definition of culture from cultural studies to examine how Huntington and Salidvar use culture in their academic texts.
Cultural Politics
Cultural politics is concerned with the contestation over the meaning and resources of culture. For example, Huntington uses a nation-state language to preserve the meaning of Anglo-Protestant culture. Cultural politics produces new languages that have social consequences. In other words, cultural politics is about the power to name, to represent common sense, to create knowledge, and to represent the legitimate social world. For example, Huntington’s work ties Anglo-Protestant culture to U.S. national identity. Huntington’s cultural politics is the practice of hegemony. Gramsci concept of hegemony, in cultural studies helps describe how a ruling class exercises social authority and leadership over subordinate classes. According to Gramsci, hegemony is achieved through the wining of consent. Huntington’s work as a cultural political text, attempts to win the consent of his readers in order to preserve the power of Anglo-Protestant culture as an ideology that sustains the nation-state paradigm.
Cultural Policy
Cultural policy seeks to manage and organize the production of cultural power. Huntington’s argument is one of cultural policy, a set of attempts that try to regulate and administer the production of culture and practices. Huntington is producing cultural policy by defining what is Anglo-Protestant culture to defend the nation-state. Saldivar, too, is producing cultural policy. However, Saldivar’s cultural policy re-imagines the nation-state to acknowledge a transnational borderland culture.
Analyses of Saldivar’s use of Culture
How does Salidvar use and define culture? Using the cultural studies language of hybridity, subjectivity, discursive formation and postcoloniality, Saldivar’s definition of culture is informed by Raymond Williams, a Welsh academic and cultural critic. Saldivar borrows from Williams’ definition of culture to propose that culture represents “a whole way of [hegemonic] life [in struggle], material, intellectual and spiritual” (11). Saldivar adds the concepts of hegemony and struggle, two key concepts that derive from the works of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian social theorist that profoundly influenced cultural studies. Because cultural studies is concerned with the process of making, sustaining, and reproducing emergent meanings and practices, Gramsci’s concept of hegemony describes how subordinate populations consent to authoritative structures of power, like those who control and produce popular culture. Saldivar proclaims that cultural studies should encompass the “everyday” and “should focus on the lived experiences and struggles of people” (21). For Salidvar, culture is a terrain of struggle.
Saldivar analyzes Mexican and Chicano popular culture such as norteño music of Los Tigres del Norte to demonstrate how a text (language) challenges the uneven power relations between national entities and advances an argument of transnational struggle (14). Saldivar views culture as fluid and subjective. He does not privilege one culture over another. Using the language of cultural studies, Saldivar suggest that the U.S. – Mexico borderlands is a site of transnational struggle. He is critical of the way in which culture is commonly used by the nation-state to construct borders and boundaries. Salidvar considers his academic work to be an interculturalist paradigm that challenges the common use of culture by that nation-state. Saldivar proposes hybrid cultural identities that are shaped and reshaped through crossing boundaries and blurring imagined communities and languages. For example, Chicanas and Chicanos are engaged in this process by making and remaking their identities. His notion of culture is not fixed, static but rather always in transit. In other words, identities are produced and reproduced on the bases of material and geopolitical conditions.

Analysis of Huntington’s use of Culture
How does Huntington use and define culture? Huntington posits that “America was created by 17th and 18th century settlers who were overwhelmingly white, British and Protestant.” He continues, “their values, institutions and culture provided the foundation for and shaped the development of the United States in the following centuries”(31). Essentially, Huntington argues that white protestant culture is the foundation of the U.S. Here, I am not interested in discussing if this is true or not, rather I’m interested in how Huntington conceptualizes his use of Anglo-Protestant culture. Huntington’s views Anglo-Protestantism as an essential culture, static and monolithic. He conceives Anglo-Protestant culture as a superior objective entity. He proclaims that Anglo-Protestant culture must organize the nation state identity because of threat that Mexicanos pose. His cultural politics are strictly concerned with challenging biculturalism and bilingualism. Huntington uses culture to defend the imperialist nation-state rhetoric. In fact, Huntington does not separate Anglo culture from the nation-state; he sees culture and the state interlocked and part of a nation-state identity. He conceives culture as homogenous. Huntington makes no effort to problematize “Anglo-Protestant culture,” rather he envisions culture as an identity with superior values that founded the U.S. Despite his monologue narrative of Anglo-Protestant culture, his work delivers a strong empowering message to whites in positions of power. He manages to convey his message to the academic and policy arenas. Huntington positions the Anglo-Protestant culture above others.
How does Huntington and Saldivar use culture similarly and differently?
Both succeed in using culture to advance their cultural political agendas. Although it may appear that Huntington is writing in defense of the nation-state and concerned with the distribution of social resources, he manages to defend and advocate white nativism through his weak conception of Anglo-Protestant culture. Saldivar too successfully uses culture to mark a borderlands culture within U.S. cultural imperialism.
Huntington and Saldivar are in a theoretical dialogue. While Saldivar re-imagines borderlands, Huntington reinforces the ideology of borders. Huntington defends Anglo-Protestant culture, while Saldivar is on an intellectual journey to illuminate cultural subjectivities and intercultural identities that break away from the nation-state. Indeed, these two individuals conceive culture in their own terms, but nonetheless, are concerned about cultural power and representation.
Concluding Thoughts
To conclude, both scholars use culture to claim power and representation. Huntington is concerned with not only maintaining Anglo-Protestant culture at the core of U.S. identity, but also in sustaining U.S. cultural power and representation. Huntington does not interrogate the changing Anglo-Protestant culture. His nativist ideology is no different from 18th and 19th century Anglo-Protestants who believed they were a superior race destine by god to control and govern. Huntington uses culture in a uncritical modern fashion to maintain the state apparatus. In other words, he converges the theoretical relations of culture and the state to explain what he considers a social threat to U.S. society.
While Huntington advances his notion of Anlgo-Protestant culture, Saldivar too advances his conception of U.S-Mexico borderland culture. Salidvar, on the contrary, views culture and society through a postmodern lens that attempts to disrupt the monolithic cultural perception of the U.S. - Mexico borderlands. Saldivar elaborates the importance of border experiences through a critical assessment of Chicano literature, and art. Saldivar uses the venue of cultural studies to include lived border experiences of Mexicanos, Mexican-Americans and Chicanos. Lived experiences of the borderlands are important because they map meanings of self-representations in the field of cultural studies. More importantly, lived experiences are a fundamental result of the material conditions. Saldivar succeeds in exposing U.S. cultural imperialism and remaps meaning to the field of cultural studies by including a critical dialogue of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
In this paper I have discussed how Huntington and Salidvar conceptualize culture in their work. I have illustrated how Huntington conceptualizes Anglo-Protestant culture to advance the nation-state while Saldivar conceptualizes borderlands culture to challenge the nation-state. The problem with Huntington’s use of culture is his fixed perception of Anglo-Protestant culture. He uses culture uncritically to defend Anglo-Protestant culture as if it was one identity represents the entire culture. Huntington uses culture to reaffirm Anglo-Protestant cultural power and representation in the nation-state. Salidvar uses culture to disrupt the nation-state. He particularly affirms a borderlands culture in a transnational paradigm. For Salidvar, the borderland culture is in constant movement. Using culture, Saldivar is able to claim space, identity and power. Both scholars manage to use culture to claim power and representation.

Work Cited

Huntington, Samuel P. (2004) The Hispanic Challenge. In Foreign Policy, March/April 2004
Issue. Washington, DC.

Saldivar, José David (1997) Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies. University
of California Press. Berkeley, CA.

Situating the Community College in Theories of Social Reproduction, Cultural Capital, Cultural Reproduction, Critical Multiculturalism and CRT

By Oscar Medina

In California, the few working-class first-generation Chicana/os who pursue higher education do so through the community college system (De los Santos, 2006; Huber, 2006; Ornelas & Solorzano, 2004a). Though community colleges claim that one of their primary functions is to prepare students for bachelor degrees, studies show that a low proportion of minority students transfer to a four-year bachelor granting institution (Grubb, 1991; Ornelas & Solorzano, 2004b; Rendon & Valadez, 1993; Sengupta & Jepsen, 2006). How is the community college working to reduce structural race, class and gender inequality in higher education? The goal of this paper is to present theories that inform my working research questions. The community college and its student body are discussed through these theoretical lenses: social reproduction, cultural capital, cultural reproduction, critical multiculturalism, and critical race theory. This paper focuses on the ways in which scholars use these theories to examine the social and cultural organization of the community college and student experiences with the institution. The questions below guide this literature review:
1) How do Chicana/os navigate and negotiate the community college system in pursuit of transfer to a four-year institution?
2) What are their experiences in the community college transfer process?
The Community College: Back Then and Now
Although community colleges provide opportunities for students to transfer to four-year institutions, policy reports continue to emphasize the theme that the role of community colleges is to produce skilled-workers for the capitalist economy (Lizardo et al., 2007; Sengupta & Jepsen, 2006). Several scholars and policy makers articulate the varied missions of the community college, including two popular missions— the liberal arts transfer course preparation program and the vocational job training program. Historically, community colleges were small liberal art institutions that prepared students with two-years of liberal art studies to transfer to a senior college or university (Brint & Karabel, 1989). According to Brint and Karabel (1989), the vocational movement of two-year institutions came after World War II when thousands of veterans returned to the States and the U.S. was unprepared to take such a large pool of veterans into the labor market. Under the G.I. Bill of 1944, veterans flooded the higher education system, calling for the need to construct more two-year institutions with an undertone for more vocational training programs. Brint and Karabel write that students favored maintaining transfer programs while junior college administrators favored vocationalizing the two-year college. Alternately termed two-year institutions, junior colleges, and community colleges, these institutions of higher education continue to serve large constituents of low-income and minority groups.
A more contemporary scholar on community colleges, Levin (2001) highlights how the community colleges' educational purposes have moved from placing their emphasis on education to occupational training, from social needs to business and industry desires. Levin claims that the community colleges have lost sight of their social role and turned increasingly toward economic interests. He argues that the emphasis on inclusiveness and multiculturalism at community colleges belies an underlying capitalist agenda. He provides examples of the way two year institutions operate and are organized in an efficient way that is focused on profit. Levin posits that globalization has shifted the community college from its transfer function to a vocational function. The changes according to Levin are the consequences of forces such as the global economy, the impact of immigration, and increased communication systems. Levin claims that these forces are mediated by state policies and therefore contribute to the establishment of an institution that reflects the globalizing process in its organizational actions.
Nonetheless, his work also explains how community colleges respond to immigrant student enrollment in a way that stresses job training. His major claim is that community colleges are becoming firmly implanted as the producers of skilled workers through a highly prioritized vocational institution that has abandoned its role as an educational institution that once emphasized the opportunity to transfer to four-year institutions. His work offers a light critique of global capitalism that fails to offer a comprehensive analysis of the cultural and political ideologies that fuel global capitalism and migration. Like Brint and Karabel, Levin places an emphasis on community college administrators who pursue opportunities to capitalize on changing economic conditions that push occupational training rather than liberal art transfer programs.

SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Theories of social reproduction suggest that schools (including colleges) are sites that sustain the socioeconomic inequalities in the capitalist structure. The Marxist structuralists approach emphasizes the community college structure and the ways in which the college systemically track and sort students into non-academic vocational programs, academic transfer programs, or lead them to opt out of higher education all together.
Clark (1960) develops and justifies the “cooling out” concept in the community college. Clark posits that there are three types of community college students, pure terminal (vocational students), pure transfer (four-year institution track) and latent terminal student (the ‘cooling out’ student). The latent terminal student is the student that threatens the conventional ideology of community college and must be “cooled out.” This latent terminal student is a student who would like to transfer but is not likely to meet the academic qualifications to transfer. According to Clark, the “cooling out” process is a system that serves to remove students from the institution by placing the blame of their low academic performance on the individual student rather than the institution. Clark’s three-type student model justifies a system where a group must be “cooled out.” The “cooling out” of the latent terminal student serves to legitimize unequal outcomes and legitimizes the removal of the “problem” to sustain a bureaucratic institution of “equal educational opportunity.”
Karabel (1977) provides a Marxist structuralist critique of the community college. His critique specifically argues against Clark’s perception of the community college and his three-type student model. Karabel contends that community colleges, considered by many to be democratic and egalitarian institutions, track and sort poor working-class students into vocational and occupational programs rather than guide them into academic transfer programs. “The community college” according to Karabel, “lies at the base of the stratification structure of higher education both in the class origins of its students and in their occupational destinations” (p.246). Karabel further posits that the socioeconomic position of the community college illustrates how policy planning, for the community college, is made by an elite ruling class that pushes for more occupational education and vocational training that serve to reproduce class inequality (Karabel, 1977; Karabel & Halsey, 1977).
Most critical research on the social position of the community college is viewed through structuralism. Structuralists illustrate and critique how the community college contributes to the maintenance and reproduction of class inequality. Their critique is one that views the problems of inequality and unequal opportunity as a result of an oppressive capitalist system. Employing organizational theory and the ideological myth of meritocracy, scholars like Clark support the idea that community colleges work for those who find their place in the community college system, either in a vocational or transfer programs and those who don’t are systemically pushed out the institution. In Clark’s capitalist and organizational analysis of the community college he enables a system that pathologize the latent terminal student so that the community college can continue to market its open enrollment policy. Clark’s interpretation manages to cover up the institutional failure of the community college. Structuralists critiques of Clark and the community college provide a useful lens to understand how institutions reproduce society along class lines.
Neo-Marxists like Bowles and Gintis (1976) posit that within the capitalist system, schools reproduce economic inequality through the correspondence between school and work structures. Their argument suggests that schools do not pursue the goal of social equality because they operate to meet the needs of the capitalist labor market. A critique of correspondence theory by Leonardo (2004) suggests that their work is a form of structural functionalism because although they are critical of capitalism, they believe that schools serve a predetermined social function along class lines. Bowles and Gintis’ analysis reduces racial groups and race relations to class relations in the U.S. capitalist system. In sum, while structural analyses effectively highlight the general failure of community colleges to abet social mobility, they fail to examine the lived experiences and interactions that make up the culture of these institutions.

CULTURAL CAPITAL

Working from a neo-Marxist terrain and away from economic reductionism , Pierre Bourdieu (1997) explains three forms of capital: economic, social, and cultural. Bourdieu begins by defining capital as “accumulated labor, which when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor” (p.47). Like Marx, Bourdieu interprets capital to explain the way people make meaning of their lives through economic and social relationships. Bourdieu’s approach to capital differs in his claim that social relationships must work to create capital. Capital exists under certain material conditions that make something valuable. Capital in Bourdieu’s view is value that exists in social relationships. Marx argued that profit came from the bourgeoisie’s overvaluation of commodities over the value of the labor that went into the production of commodity. The exchange value of commodities is not the same as Bourdieu’s capital, which refers to the social relationships that appropriate value to commodities. Bourdieu’s use of capital implies social relationships. In other words, Marx discusses capital as a form of monetary value while Bourdieu talks about capital as a set of social relationships that appropriate value. The appropriation happens by a selective group who organizes capital, including its value and meaning, at a collective level.
Rather than making an economically mechanistic and deterministic explanation for unequal academic achievement among children in France, Bourdieu (1997) develops the concept of cultural capital and its three interlinked forms: the embodied state, objectified state, and institutionalized state. The embodied state of cultural capital revolves around the family, which provides a form of long lasting dispositions of the mind and body. An embodied state of cultural capital, for example, is to condition a child (ideologically) that her or his family members belong to a royal society. “The accumulation of the cultural capital in the embodied state,” according to Bourdieu, is “a process of embodiment, incorporation [that] implies a labor of inculcation, assimilation, [it] cost time, time which must be invested personally by the investor” (p.47). In other words, cultural capital consists of a laborious process by a groups “social energy” that appropriates value. It is in the embodied state that cultural capital is accumulated over a period of socialization. Bourdieu further posits that the transmission of cultural capital is “the best hidden form of hereditary transmission of capital” (p.49). The objectified state of cultural capital exists in the form of cultural goods such as a picture or book archive of a family’s membership to a royal society. Lastly, the institutionalized state includes the school and its value and reward system. In the institutionalized state of cultural capital, schools value and promote the dominant cultural capital.
Bourdieu’s cultural capital cannot be discussed in isolation; it must be discussed in relationship with social and economic capital. The value of material and ideological taste happens through social relationships. In Bordieu’s lens, capital is inherently social and economical. The different forms of cultural capital suggest that cultural capital happens before the schooling process. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital is often simplified. Cultural capital is commonly used to articulate a set of cultural knowledge, skills, norms, and linguistic codes that students bring with them to the school without an actual reference to its social and economic relations.
The accumulation of cultural capital is an informal process that begins before schooling. Also, cultural capital takes time to accumulate. Nonetheless, cultural capital “cannot be accumulated beyond the appropriating capacities of an individual agent; it declines and dies with its bearer” (p.49). Cultural capital is not transmittable; people work (social energy) in the social and economic material conditions to make, rather than transmit, cultural capital.

CULTURAL CAPITAL AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Trujillo and Diaz (1999) provide an example of how one urban community college in San Antonio, Texas recognizes cultural differences and actively seeks to incorporate the cultural capital of nontraditional students through its formal pedagogical and informal curricular practices. The authors claim that this process consists of the acknowledgement of students’ cultural diversity and their educational needs. It should be noted that grassroots community activists, who strongly advocated that the institution prioritize a liberal arts transfer education program, founded this college. Trujillo and Diaz argue that faculty and staff recognize and value the cultural capital of student and community culture. Because faculty and staff acknowledge students' cultural capital and the community's culture, students develop networks that facilitate communication and social trust, which in turn lead to collective benefits and academic triumph in transfer success. Students build social networks through formal curriculum and cultural accommodations (e.g. faculty-initiated pedagogy) that make classroom material relevant to students and collaborative learning activities. Student activities, support services, and the college’s link to the local community further engage students in building social networks that formulate social capital – all of which eventually facilitate the transfer to a four-year institution (Trujillo & Diaz, 1999).
Also using Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, Valadez (1993) writes that community colleges utilize particular linguistic structures, authority patterns, and types of curricula that are familiar to students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Valadez uses cultural capital to explain how community college students have to make informed academic decisions that guide them through the community college system. Valadez posits that the community college arrangements and practices act as detriments to the academic achievement and upward social mobility of nontraditional students rather than helping them get through a unfamiliar system.

CULTURAL REPRODUCTION

Schools play a pivotal role in legitimating and reproducing the cultural capital of the dominant classes (Bourdieu, 1977). Bourdieu argues that the educational system reproduces the structure of distribution of cultural capital among social classes because the culture, practices, and value systems it embraces is closest to the dominant culture. Working from a similar Marxist and Bourdieun terrain at the social and cultural level, Willis (1977) writes how students participate in their own reproduction of society. Although his analysis comes from a structuralist tradition, his explanations of why working class “lads” get working class jobs is infused by a cultural interpretation of the reproduction of society. Willis’ book adds culture – human agency — to supplement his explanation of why working class “lads” get working class jobs. He claims that these working class “lads” reproduce their social and economic conditions.
Using Willis’s work to create his framework for looking at why a group of poor women enter a work preparation program at the community college, Valadez (1999) examines their process of making life decisions. He describes the ways in which the instructors, the community college, and the local employers all interact to create the conditions that sustain a work preparation program that sends students toward low-level, short-term, dead-end jobs. Valadez also shows how these women’s choices are limited by what the institutions provide for them, and how their ideas are shaped by instructors, their families, and the economic conditions of the community. The study reveals the way in which community college women make decisions to go into particular lines of work. The study recognizes that these women are active in determining their own fate, but their perceptions of reality and choices are forged by a variety of institutional, social, and cultural factors.
Bourdiue’s concept of cultural capital and social and cultural reproduction challenges meritocratic notions of schooling. Bourdieu’s theory is useful to explain unequal academic achievement that exist among upper-middle class and working class groups. These inequalities are reproduced because one group has institutional advantage that others do not. However, this structural and constructivist theory fails to acknowledge that educational institutions operate not only along dominant class and cultural preference but also on race preference. For example, Leonardo (2004) posits that Bourdieuan analysis of schooling would benefit from an integration of the race concept because race and class are inextricably linked to student academic achievement.

CRITICAL MULTICULTURALISM IN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Working from a theoretical framework of feminism, critical theory and postmodernism, Rhoads and Valadez (1996) scrutinize the community college and develop three concepts: critical multiculturalism, border knowledge, and politics of identity. In doing so, they argue that community colleges should adopt critical multiculturalism in contrast to conventional multiculturalism. Rather than multiculturalism, which typically celebrates cultural differences by offering courses that expose students to a wide variety of cultures and worldviews, critical multiculturalism “seeks to transform educational institutions from monolithic centers of power to democratic constellations in which organizational structures reflect diverse cultures and perspectives” (p.9). Rhoads’ and Valadez’s definition of critical multiculturalism comes from post-structuralists Benismon (1994) and McLaren (1995), who write that critical multicultural praxis “understands representations of race, class and gender as being the result of larger social struggles over signs of meanings, … [that] stress the central task of transforming, social, cultural and institutional relations in which meanings are generated” (Roads & Valadez, 1996). As critical multiculturalists, Rhoads and Valadez posit that the idea of a common culture and a common body of knowledge promotes the colonization of culturally diverse peoples and the suppression of their cultural identities. They contend that a common culture or body of knowledge “leads to cultural hierarchies contained in notions of the privileged and the deprived, the insider and the outsider, the dominant and the subjugated” (p.19). Institutions such as the community college continue to acknowledge a common culture or body of knowledge, usually of the white middle class and exclude the non-white working class culture and knowledge.
Rhoads’ and Valadez’s critical multiculturalists perspective develops the concept of border knowledge, “knowledge that resides outside the canon, outside the cultural mainstream” (p.7). They argue that border knowledge is a form of cultural capital unworthy of exchange in mainstream educational institutions. Border knowledge is in relationship with cultural production because “all forms of cultural production exist within social relations framed by power” (p.23). Finally, Rhoads and Valadez assert “the politics of identity moves beyond understanding how forms of cultural production have named and situated otherness. The politics of identity both interrogates the intent behind representations and attempts to create newer self-representations” (p.24). To make this claim, the authors place agency as a crucial element to engage with the politics of identity. Within the context of community college, Rhoads and Valadez successfully critique the culture of the community college and provide an alternative vision for the community college. They conclude by proposing that the community college must take on two important roles as an institution: 1) It should take on an organizational multiplicity (multiple identities) that dismantles an authoritarian view of knowledge and pedagogy and 2) it should embrace multiple forms of cultural knowledge—border knowledge—that the community college can use to exhibit more features of a democratic institution. Indeed, their argument presents a challenge to the conventional ideologies, practices, and norms that shape the culture and organization of the community college today.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY (CRT)

Recently employing critical race theory (CRT) some scholars have taken a leap into examining the institutional racism in community college (Ornelas, 2002; Solórzano et al., 2005). There are five tenets to CRT in higher education that Solorzano (1998) claims 1) the centrality and intersections of race and racism with race, class, and gender, 2) the challenge to dominant ideology, 3) the commitment to social justice, 4) the centrality of experiential knowledge, and 5) the interdisciplinary perspective. CRT explores the ways in which “race-neutral” laws and institutional structures, practices, and policies in higher education perpetuate racial inequality in education. CRT challenges dominant liberal ideas of color blindness and meritocracy and attempts to illustrate how these ideas operate to disadvantage people of color while giving further advantage to whites. CRT in higher education considers how race and racism are woven into structures, practices, discourses and policies that inhibit the success of students of color. One recent study using CRT (Solórzano et al., 2005) examined the conditions of Chicana/os in higher education in the U.S. The study found how racialized structures, policies, and practices influence the educational attainment and academic progress of Chicana/os.

CRT AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Using CRT Ornelas’ (2002) dissertation examines the institutional available resources and barriers that Latina/o students experience in the community college transfer process. Ornelas’ work examined the role of race as it informs the transfer function and process to a four-year institution. By decoding the voices of community college students, counselors, faculty and administrators, she found that Latina/o students faced institutionalized racism that constrained them from transferring to four-year institutions.
CRT AND CULTURAL CAPITAL

Through CRT, Yosso (2005) has critiqued Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital accusing it of continuing to impose a deficit thinking model on poor working class students of color. She asserts:
While Bourdieu's work sought to provide a structural critique of social and cultural reproduction, his theory of cultural capital has been used to assert that some communities are culturally wealthy while others are culturally poor.
This interpretation of Bourdieu exposes White, middle class culture as the standard, and therefore all other forms and expressions of 'culture' are judged in comparison to this 'norm.' In other words, cultural capital is not just inherited or possessed by middle class, but rather it refers to an accumulation of specific forms of knowledge skills and abilities that are valued by privileged groups of society (p.76).

Yosso fails to mention the scholars that have interpret Bourdieu’s work as white middle class being the standard. Bourdiue’s work of cultural capital attempts to highlight how white middle class values, knowledge, and language are institutionalized, thus granting those who posses the white middle class values, knowledge and language are at an institutional advantage. Never does Bourdieu literally mention that white middle class is the standard that poor working class communities of color must meet. Bourdieu argued that the knowledge of the upper middle classes are valued by educational institutions.

CONCLUSION

In the 1970’s scholars problematized the community college using Marxist structuralist analysis that located capitalism and notions of meritocratic schooling as the central problem. These Marxist arguments highlighted how the community colleges sorted students based on class status. Students from working class background were commonly sorted into vocational programs where instructors and curriculum trained them to be efficient and obedient workers (Brint & Karabel, 1989; Karabel, 1977). Students from middle or upper class background were sorted into transfer programs, where instructors and curriculum stressed critical thinking skills and leadership training. These structural analyses were criticized for being too economically deterministic and mechanistic. Marxist analysis failed to acknowledge agency and cultural differences. Nonetheless, culture, race and gender were subordinate factors in Marxist structural analysis of community colleges.
Bourdiue demonstrates how cultural capital is produced, reproduced and maintained through accumulated labor of social energy accord with the social and economic material conditions. Cultural capital is working knowledge, skills, and language that serve as tools for navigation. Educational institutions reward and value the dominant cultural capital. The educational structures, in this case the community colleges, serve to reward the cultural capital of the dominant class—white middle-upper class. Bourdiue’s theory allows us to understand how school-based relationships and organizational structures work to the advantage of the white middle-upper class students. On the flip side, Trujillo and Diaz (1999) illustrate how the faculty and staff at one community college valued the cultural capital that Chicano and Mexican immigrant students brought to the campus. Through curriculum and cultural accommodation by faculty-initiated pedagogy, Chicano and Mexican immigrant students built trusting social networks with faculty and peers that facilitated transfer to a four-year college.
Willis’ work of cultural production interprets the way people reproduce their social and economic conditions based on their perceptions shaped on social, economic and cultural factors. This is different than Bourdiue’s structural model of social and cultural reproduction. Bourdiue’s concept of social and cultural capital combines theory and empirical data to explain the differences of educational achievements in France (Bourdieu, 1977). His theory of cultural capital is widely used in higher education research but often misinterpreted. Bourdieu examines the notion of cultural capital within schools and concludes that schools are sites that privilege the culture of the dominant class at the expense of marginalizing the culture of the subordinate class. His theory of cultural capital can be used to explain how white middle-class college students in the U.S. systemically out perform students of color because the institutional values, practices and norms work to their advantage.
Last but not least using critical multiculturalism to examine the community colleges Rhoads and Valadez (1996), bring insight to the importance of using feminist theory, critical theory, postmodern theory and cultural theory to inform their argument that challenges the dominant organizational and student culture in the community college by institutionalizing critical multiculturalism, border knowledge, and politics of identity. Critical multiculturalism seeks to transform educational institutions and change organizational structures that reflect diverse cultures and perspectives. Border knowledge, knowledge that resides outside the canon, should be equally valued within the community college. Politics of identity is where cultural production and agency are central elements that interrogate mainstream representations of race, class, gender and sexual orientation to create new self-representations. By using ethnographic and case study methods, supplemented with theory, Rhoads and Valadez (1996) uncover the lived experiences of students and faculty in the community college setting that add important detail that go beyond the traditional kinds of structural analysis of community colleges (Brint & Karabel, 1989; Karabel, 1977).
Critical race theory commits to challenging explicit white supremacist institutional structures, practices and norms in higher education. Unlike structuralist or social and cultural reproduction models, CRT intersects race, class, gender and other forms of oppression to understand the “colored” experience (Solórzano, 1998). Nonetheless, the other principals of CRT—the challenge to dominant ideology, the commitment to social justice, the centrality of experiential knowledge, and the interdisciplinary perspectives—allow researchers to weave framework and methodologies that move away from traditional research frameworks and methodologies. For example through CRT’s value of centrality of experiential knowledge, Ornelas allows Latina/o community college student’s voices to be the primary sources guiding her study. She argues that Latina/o student narratives are a valid approach to research because research according to her “must not simply be an academic interpretation” (p.26).
These theories allow one to see how people make meaning of the social structures and institutions they navigate on the daily basis. Particularly, they provide insight to the formal and informal way we analyze, interpret, and critique educational institutions, social and racial structures. These theories and concepts allow us to go beyond simple explanations of students’ experiences by offering complex and different lenses interpret representations of institutional structures and student experiences in community college. I end with a quote that gives light to a research approach that I hope to model in pursuit of my research questions.

“A critical analysis of the community college culture calls for a qualitative approach that brings researchers closer to their subjects, allowing them to explore the complexities and nuances of truth, meaning and understanding” (p.195) – Laura I. Rendone in
Community Colleges As Cultural Texts: Qualitative Explorations of Organizational and Student Culture (Shaw et al., 1999).

This quote best illuminates the next step question. How do approach documenting how people experience the community system? What coupled methods, tools and theories can we use to let the voiceless speak?

WORK CITED
Bensimon, E. (Ed.). (1994). Multicultural teaching and learning. . University Park: National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, & Assesment.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In J. Karabel & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and ideology in education. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1997). The forms of capital. In A. H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown & A. S. Wells (Eds.), Education, culture, economy, and society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist america: Educational reform and the contradictions of ecnonomic life. New York: Basic books/Harper.

Brint, S., & Karabel, J. (1989). The diverted dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in america, 1900-1985. New York: Oxford University Press.

Clark, B. R. (1960). The open door college: A case study. New York: McGraw Hill.

De los Santos, A. G., De Los Santos, G.E. (2006). Latina/os and community colleges. In A. M.
G. Jeanett Castellanos, Mark Kamimura (Ed.), The latina/o pathway to the ph.D.: Abriendo caminos (pp. 37-53). Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing.

Grubb, N. (1991). The decline of community college transfer rates: Evidence from national longitudinal surveys. Journal of Higher Education, 62(2), 194-222.

Huber, L. P., Huidor, O., Malgón, M.C., Sanchez, G., Solorzano, D.G. (2006). Falling through the cracks: Critical transitions in the latina/o educational pipeline. UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center(7), 1-13.

Karabel, J. (1977). Community colleges and social stratification: Submerged class conflict in american higher education. In J. Karabel & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and ideology in education (pp. 232-254). New York: Oxford University Press.

Karabel, J., & Halsey, A. H. (1977). Power and ideology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Leonardo, Z. (2004). The unhappy marriage between marxism and race critique: Political economy and the production of racialized knowledge. Policy Futures in Education, 2(3 & 4), 483-493.

Levin, J. S. (2001). Globalizing the community college: Strategies for change in the twenty-first century. New York: Palgrave.

Lizardo, R., MacMillan, J., Olsen, L., Stanley, B., Valenzuela-Vergara, I., & Bhattacharya, J. (2007). California community colleges struggle to meet the challenges of the state's underprepared workforce (Policy Brief). Oakland: California Tomorrow.

McLaren, P. (1995). Critical pedagogy and predatory culture. New York: Routledge.

Ornelas, A. (2002). An examination of the resources and barriers in the transfer process for latina/o community college students: A case study analysis of an urban community college. Unpublished Dissertation, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles.

Ornelas, A., & Solorzano, D. G. (2004a). Transfer conditions of latina/o community college students: A single institution case study. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 28(3), 233-248.

Ornelas, A., & Solorzano, D. G. (2004b). Transfer conditions of latina/o community college stuents: A single institution case study. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 28(3), 233-248.

Rendon, L. I., & Valadez, J. R. (1993). Qualitative indicators of hispanic student transfer. Community College Review, 20(27), 27-37.

Roads, R. A., & Valadez, J. R. (1996). Democracy, multiculturalism and the community college: A critical perspective. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc.

Sengupta, R., & Jepsen, C. (2006). California's college college students. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.

Shaw, K. M., Valadez, J. R., & Rhoads, R. A. (Eds.). (1999). Community colleges as cultural texts: Qualitative explorations of organizational and student culture. Albany State University of New York Press.

Solórzano, D. G. (1998). Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience of chicana and chicano scholars. Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 121-136.

Solórzano, D. G., Villapando, O., & Oseguera, L. (2005). Educational inequities and latina/o undergraduate students in the united states: A critical race analysis of their educational progress. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 4(3), 272-294.

Trujillo, A., & Diaz, E. (1999). "Be a name, not a number": The role of cultural and social capital in the transfer process. In K. M. Shaw, J. R. Valadez & R. A. Rhoads (Eds.), Community college as cultural texts: Qualitative explorations of organizational and student culture Albany: State University of New York Press.

Valadez, J. (1993). Cultural capital and its impact on the aspirations of nontraditional community college students. Community College Review, 21(3), 30-43.

Valadez, J. R. (1999). Preparing for work in a post-indusrial world: Resistance and compliance to the ideological messages of a community college. In K. M. Shaw, J. R. Valadez & R. A.

Rhoads (Eds.), Community college as cultural texts: Qualitative explorations of organizational and student culture (pp. 125-151). Albay: State University of New York Press.

Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Wose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

Tyacks Marxian Analysis of Compulsory Schooling

By Oscar Medina
David Tyack offers five ways of seeing compulsory schooling. Hoping to learn from his comparative exploration on compulsory schooling, Tyack describes compulsory schooling through a 1) political lens, 2) ethnocultural lens, 3) organization/bureaucratic lens and concludes with two economic analysis 4) human capital theory and 5) Marxian analysis. This paper outlines Tyacks’ Marxian analysis to explain the nature of schooling during the bureaucratic phase of compulsory schooling.
Tyack draws from the work of revisionists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis for his Marxian analysis. Their unit of analysis describes the nature of schooling and the amount schooling that is forced under a capitalist system. The strength of this analysis offers a lens that examines how the capitalist class structure is systematically reproduced through schooling. The Bowles’ and Gintis’ argument posit that schools serve to perpetuate the hierarchical social relations of the capitalist production. Their theory highlights how the capitalist class determines the range of acceptable choice in a manner that strengthens and legitimizes its position. The claim is that schooling supports the reproducing of capitalism and inequality. This perspective illustrates how and why schools prepare individuals differently to perform different roles in the economic hierarchy.
According to Bowles and Gintis the socialization in schools reflects the capitalist economic system. They see educational development as an outcome of class conflict, not class domination. The historical economic function of schooling was to accredit future workers to work in the capitalist system. Prior to Bowles and Gintis, there were Marxist approaches that urged for free and compulsory schooling for all young people (Tyack, 1976). However, Bowles and Gintis assert that schooling reforms were engineered by those who controlled the leading sectors of the economy, hence corporate leaders sought to stabilize and rationalize the economy and support social institutions like the school. This was lead by the existing unequal social classes. David Tyacks’ political construction of compulsory schooling cannot explain the day to day operation of schooling, except for his Marxian analysis. Tyack is concerned with providing an historical analysis of compulsory schooling and not the purpose of schooling in general. In his Marxian analysis, he asserts that the demand for education by the working class lead to further a unequal society. What started as a socialist idea, compulsory schooling for all in the bureaucratic phase, later had a negative impact for the working class. The institution (school) that granted them “educational opportunities” reproduced their status quo.
This case can be made along the same lines for Emma Willard and her role as an advocate for women’s education and academies. It is clear that Willard’s role in the social history of the 19th century was more complex than it has generally been understood. Willard argued that a proper education for Republican Motherhood involved a distinct body of knowledge and philosophic coherence that could only be maintained with the help of state aid and authority (Beedie, 1993). Further, she argued that the state’s investment in female education would yield prepare hardworking women to be mothers or teachers, to raise children of good character (Scott, 1979). Willard was able to frame her case under the circumstances of white male patriarchy.
Both working class people and Emma Willard were seeking educational opportunities. The working class was forced to compromise with schooling in a capitalist system and Willard was given state funding to reproduce women’s roles in a dominant white male chauvinist system. Both compromises were sought under in systems that operate to (re)produce unequal social classes and gender roles.
Tyack concludes that the Marxian model used to analyze compulsory schooling does not sufficiently explain the motive force of religion and ethnic differences. However, this does not mean that the model cannot hold. I support Bowles’ and Gintis’ critique of schooling in capitalist America. Their argument helps explain the American educational opportunities that are a mere illusion to schooled youth in the barrios of East Oakland and East Los Angeles. This phenomenon helps crystallize the social reproductive capitalist class structure. In Willards case, several women in higher education today, take women dominated job position that reproduce their social status.

Work Cited
Beadie, Nancy (1993) Emma Willard’s Idea Put to the Test: The Consequences of State Support
of Female Education, 1819-67. History of Education Quarterly. 33:4.

Scott, Anne Firor (1979) The Ever Widening Circle: The diffusion of Freminist Values from the
Troy Female Seminary. 1822-1872. History of Education Quarterly.19.

Tyack, David (1976) Ways of seeing an essay on the history of compulsory schooling. Harvard
Educational Review 46:3.

Immigrant Hysteria, Immigrant Students and The Framing of Immigrant Schooling in “Made in America”

Oscar Medina

The history of immigration to the U.S. is peculiar but interesting. At several points in U.S. history, the nation has welcomed immigrants, but today, in times of economic and political turmoil, immigrants have increasingly become the scapegoats of America’s social problems. Recent policies at the federal level best exemplify these anti-immigrant sentiments. The passage of the border protection, anti-terrorism, and illegal immigration control act H.R. 4437 in December of 2005 demonstrates how nativists in the House of Representatives (who are considered public servants) have reacted in hostile manners to the flow of immigration. H.R. 4437 would have criminalized anyone affiliated with undocumented immigrants; thus, teachers, priests, and social workers would be charged with a federal felony if caught assisting undocumented immigrants. These nativists who supported such bill were left exposed, showing their ignorance as they caused an uprising of hundreds of pro-immigrant marches and rallies throughout the country. Never in U.S. history has this country witnessed massive rallies and marches in the thousands like on the days of March 25, April 9, and May 1 of 2006.
This was not the first attack on immigrants in the U.S. In the 1990s California experienced numerous attacks; in 1996 the passage of the “Save Our State Initiative” proposition 187 attempted to deny social services, health care, and education to undocumented immigrants residing in California. Following this proposition another anti-immigrant initiative struck in 1998. Proposition 227, the “English for the children” initiative banned bilingual education programs in public schools.

Today anti-immigrant forces like the minutemen continue to be fueled by right wing academic rhetoric like Samuel Huntington, a Harvard political science professor who recently published a book that dedicates an entire chapter titled “The Hispanic Challenge” to warning his readers explicitly about the large influx of Latino immigrants who pose a major threat to U.S. protestant culture. Huntington argues that compared to other immigrant groups Latinos fail to assimilate into “American culture.” However, Huntington’s primary concern is not the assimilation of Latinos but rather the transforming identity of the traditional Anglo-Protestant U.S, shifting to a more diverse multicultural identity.
On that note, diversity and multiculturalism is at the forefront of recent books centered on education and immigration. Laurie Olson’s book Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools is one of the few emerging critical texts that detail how immigrant students are excluded in American high schools. Her book takes the readers deep into examining how Madison High School fails to embrace immigrant students, diversity and multiculturalism. The following best conveys her sentiments as she embarks on her story: The story of one school [Madison High school] is…fundamentally a reflection of those wider struggles about immigration and its impact on our society, the struggle with responses to cultural linguistic and ethnic diversity, and the ways in which this nation turns to schools to mediate crises over diversity (Olsen, pg.15). This paper will identify and analyze how Laurie Olson’s book Made in America frames and narrates immigrant high school students at Madison High School with a moral undertone of inclusion, diversity and multiculturalism.
First, I describe Olson’s core ways of explaining how immigrant youth (“newcomers”) are incorporated into the U.S. secondary education system. I discuss the methodology and positionality she takes. Then I provide an example of the way Olsen frames and narrates the moral discourse on incorporating “newcomers” into Madison high. Which leads to discuss the style in which Olsen book is written. Last but not least, I discuss how Olsen’s theoretical lens guided the moral narrative of her book. I conclude by locating Olsen’s book as an informative and well-crafted piece of literature that details the issue(s) affecting immigrant students in American public high schools.
When I began reading Olsen’s book it reminded me of a book that I had recently read by Angela Valenzuela’s titled Subtracting Schooling. Valenzuela also conducts an ethnographic investigation; however her site is Juan Seguin High School in Houston, Texas. Olsen’s book takes place at Madison High School, located in the East Bay of Northern California. Valenzuela’s high school is composed primarily of Mexican-American and Mexican immigrant students whereas Olsen’s high school serves a racially and ethnically diverse mix of students—immigrant and U.S. born. Lastly, Valenzuela writes academically on how schools subtract students’ culture and subjugate students to an educational environment where teachers and administrators “don’t care,” which consequently creates a negative attitude of “not caring” among students. Olsen’s work resonates on a different terrain, where the concern is on how schools negotiate and incorporate immigrant students. Furthermore, Olsen’s ethnography is a compelling moral narrative that details the process of how immigrant students are excluded, sorted and incorporated at Madison high school.
Olsen’s Methodology
Olsen spends two and a half years at Madison high school to compile a story of a diverse and multicultural urban high school that excludes and academically separates and sorts immigrant students from “regular” high school students. Olsen documents Madison High from inside the classroom, on the quad, and through observing life and talking to people on campus. She interviews faculty members, administrators and roughly four-dozen students at Madison high school and in the “Newcomer school.” Olsen opens in the introduction by identifying and positioning herself within her book as the “story teller, anthropologist and advocate,” which I believe makes her narrative strong and story tenacious. She states her position within the first few pages of her text, providing the reader with her academic background and political stance. As a white woman, Olsen articulates that she has a deep ideology on the matters of diversity, racial and language relations that position her within the struggles she attempts to record at Madison high (pg.22). These quotes best summarize her positionality and identity: I walked into the world at Madison High with my own concerns, interests, and lenses – and I held to these … as an activist and person in a position of some leadership in the immigrant education movement, my work aside from this piece of leadership was full of a sense of urgency about the need for institutions to address fully the diversity to their communities. How could I continue to try to be a fly on the wall, a neutral documentator of the struggle over immigrant education issues? (pg. 23,25) Throughout Olsen’s ethnography at Madison high, she keeps three formal journals, each representing three very different lenses and concerns. One journal is her story journal, the other is a formal field journal and the third is a personal journal. The notes in each journal helped guide her moral narration of her story of Madison high.
Olsen’s Story
The central theme that frames Olsen’s book is her perceived analysis of how the Americanization process operates to racialize “newcomers” at Madison High School. This process is best described in the chapter titled “The Maps of Madison High: On Separation and Invisibility.” In this chapter Olsen illustrates how students draw a social map of their campus solely on racial fault lines. She was able to do this with the help of a history teacher who had each of her classes do the same assignment. Students were to observe and describe why social groups on campus formed based race. The assignment was a brilliant methodology but also dangerous. Brilliant because students became ethnographers and sociologists at their own school, interviewing their peers and trying to make sense of the social groupings at Madison high; dangerous because students were prone to distort a group’s representation, which could provoke or lead to deepening segregated lines rather than encouraging integration. Ultimately the purpose behind the assignment was to see how immigrant students were perceived on the school grounds by “regular” U.S.-born students and to see how immigrant students perceived “regular U.S. American” students at Madison high. The social maps made by immigrant students and “regular” high school students demonstrates how students label and draw lines among other students based on national identity, skin color, culture and language. Using this student assignment, Olsen was able to illustrate how a multiracial urban high school faced internal segregation on campus amid its diverse (immigrant and U.S. born) student body.

Olsen’s Writing Style (Genre)
Olsen’s book is written in a non-academic style, making it an easy read for a large and diverse audience. The writing style has the potential to touch schoolteachers, administrators, policymakers, college students and parents, but also anyone with an interest to read what occurs inside California’s contemporary urban high schools. Despite its non-academic style, Olsen’s book can be used in several academic disciplines such as ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, women studies, immigration studies, education, etc, specifically to convey the treatment, experience and issues affecting immigrant students and the effortless response of schools to serve this student population. Her ethnography is powerful, detailed and simply well crafted, making her story a straightforward read.
Theoretical Foundation that Guides Olsen’s Narrative
I appreciate how Olsen references her theoretical foundation, located in the political and social reproduction theory, class and economic relations, and race relations. These three theoretical foundations guide Olsen’s story to focus primarily on racial and economic theories of reproduction and resistance. She best exerts her theoretical lens by selecting to hone in on the school as an institution attached to larger structures of government, and considering the role of the faculty and administrators that work to hold the structure together. In other words, Olsen uses this theoretical lens to narrate the phenomena (systemic and structural practices) affecting immigrant students at Madison high.
Olsen further opines that although diversity is spoken of as a valued commodity among Madison’s faculty and administration, they see no need to accommodate their structures or practices to serving their immigrant student population. Also, at the core of her narration is the administration’s refusal to cater to "special students" (immigrant students) and their adamant assertion that they must treat all kids equally (i.e. identically). By conveying the administration’s ignorance, Olsen posits that treating all students the same when their needs are different, results in unequal access and outcomes.
Conclusion
The narrative that Olsen takes up is one of great value. She joins a moral narrative on the status of immigrants that argues both that immigrants have a right to be in the U.S., and that “multiculturalism” as a social attitude fails to justly address the needs or desires of immigrants. She provides a critical inside look at the structural inequities immigrant students confront within Madison High as part of a larger educational institution. The book convincingly addresses the myriad problem at Madison high school e.g. the politics of bilingual education, inclusion, exclusion, racial identity, racial tensions, meritocracy, tracking, multiculturalism, affirmative action, gender roles, etc. Olsen lays out countless problems that Madison high and the state of California face. She gives her attention to the failing leadership of the school, district and state as schools accomplish an Americanization project at the cost of “newcomer’s” national identity, language and culture. Her ethnographic methods of interactive participation and in-dept interviews with students, faculty and administrators support the theoretical framework she sets forth. Lastly, the non-scholastic style she takes to tell her story of Madison high is intellectually rich and vividly crafted. My only concern is at the end of her narrative, which leaves the reader in a state of unease, with only a speckle of light in the midst of a dark tunnel. She mentions the power and ideologies of the right wing forces - their anti-immigrant sentiments, not mention their so-called color-blind utopia and their myths that inequities are the result of individual capabilities and efforts. Olsen concludes with little hope that the conditions for immigrant students will begin to take a turn for the better.

Worked Cited

Almaguer, Tomas (1994). Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. University of California Press. Berkeley, CA.

Huntington, Samuel P. (2004). Who Are We? The Challenge to America’s National Identity. New York. Simon & Schuster Press. NY.

Olsen, Laurie (1997). Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools. The New Press New York, NY.

Valenzuela, Angela (1999). Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. State University of New York Press. Albany, NY.

Frantz Fanon and The Violent Route to Decolonization

By Oscar Medina
After ejecting a colonial regime, newly independent countries may take two distinct routes to establish a new government. In Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, two routes and two governments emerge after the colonial regime fails: a national bourgeoisie government and a national liberation government. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of political situations and political struggles, this essay describes how Fanon lays out two possible outcomes that can emerge. Highlighting where Fanon makes note that only through violence can a national liberation movement achieve decolonization, I conclude with Fanon’s argument that a government of the national liberation is the peoples route to decolonization.

Economic Forces of National Bourgeoisie Government

In the national bourgeoisie model, the small elite class will take over the
economy the absence of the colonial regime. However, the national middle class is an underdeveloped middle class (p.149). The national middle class has practically no economic power, and it is in no way equivalent with the bourgeoisie of the colonizer’s mother country (p.149). It lacks economic power because the national bourgeoisie is not involved with the productive capacities of the country (p.149). The economy has always developed outside the limits of the national bourgeoisie’s knowledge (p.151). Therefore, the middle class falls into deplorable stagnation and will seek out financial assistance from the private companies of the mother country for manufactured products and machines under the condition that it keeps the factories in the mother country going (p.104). The economic system of the national bourgeoisie is one that sustains exploitation in the colonized country by exploiting national raw material and the peasantry. The underdeveloped middle class, reduced in numbers and without capital, refuses to follow the path of revolution. The national bourgeoisie of the colonized country identifies itself with the decadence (corruption) of the bourgeoisie of the West because “to [the national bourgeoisie] nationalization quite simply means the transfer of power to the native [elite] class” (p.153).

Economic Forces of the National Liberation Government

Under the national liberation government, economic dependence on the mother country no longer exists. The national liberation government breaks all relationships with the colonizer. The national liberation movement will redistribute wealth and establish a socialist government, free from capitalist exploitation. It will first nationalize the middleman’s trading sector (p.179). It will nationalize trade within the first few hours of national independence (p.180). Under the national liberation government people are invited to partake in the management of the country (p.189). Unlike the national bourgeoisie government, laws are passed in favor of the people who work and till the land (p.191).

Military Forces

Under the national bourgeoisie government, capitalism reigns and the nationalist bourgeoisie is frightened by violence (p.66). Under the national liberation government, the colonized people fling themselves with whatever arms they have against colonialism (p.79). The army and the police force constitute the pillars of the national bourgeoisie regime (p.172). The policeman or the customs officers join the procession of corruption (p.172). Under the national liberation government, the colonized people are very well aware of international political life and act in terms of this universal violence (p.80). Under the national bourgeoisie, “the militants are only called upon when so-called popular manifestations are afoot, or international conferences, or independence celebrations.”(p.171). The national liberation government makes it a national service in civil society or the military, so that every able-bodied citizen can take his or her place in a fighting unit for the defense of national and social liberties (p.202)

Political Forces of National Bourgeoisie Government

Political forces shape the national bourgeoisie government into a single party with a single objective. The single party may govern through a dictatorship that benefits only the national bourgeoisie (p.165). The objective of the party becomes a means of private advancement that creates an economy based on narrow interest (p.171). Inside the new regime there exist an inequality of wealth and monopolization of resources. Hence, privileges multiply, corruption triumphs, and morality declines (p.171). The party of national bourgeoisie government keeps the masses down and immobilized. Fanon adds:
“The bourgeois dictatorship of underdeveloped countries draws its strength from the existence of a leader. We know that in the well-developed countries the bourgeois dictatorship is the result of the economic power of the bourgeoisie. In underdeveloped countries…the leader stands for moral power, in whose shelter the thin and poverty-stricken bourgeoisie of the young nation decides to get rich. The people…spontaneously put their trust in this patriot (p.166). The leader will be of the same racial ethnic group as the colonized masses, claims independence and gains consent from the people to establish nationalist government, a government that reigns no differently than the prior colonizers except under a different flag. In fact, “from time to time the leader makes an effort; he speaks on the radio or makes a tour of the country to pacify the people, to calm them and bemuse them” (p.169). The national bourgeoisie is “unable to bring about the existence of coherent social relations” (p.164). The political forces of the national bourgeoisie, a dictator and party, does not create a state that reassures the ordinary citizen, but rather one that rouses the peoples’ anxiety (p.165).

Political Forces of National Liberation Government

The national liberation government develops a social and political party. However, their “party is not a tool in the hands of the government…on the contrary, the party is a tool in the hands of the people… it is they who decide on the policy that the government carries out”(p.185). The national liberation government sees the party as an organism through which the people exercise their authority and express their will (p.185). The national liberation political party decentralizes. This party avoids centralization in the city and expands to the rural and country regions. The party sees this act as “the only way to bring life to regions which are dead, those regions which are not yet awaked to life” (p.185). The political bureau of the party considers treating the forgotten districts in a very privileged manner (p.187).
The national liberation movement will lead the people not only toward a national consciousness but a social and political consciousness. The party believes that nationalism will not do it alone. “[Nationalism], if not enriched and deepened by a very rapid transformation into a consciousness of social and political needs, in other words into humanism, it leads up a blind alley” (p.204).
The national liberation government will be “by the people for the people”(p.205). The party is the direct expression of the masses”(p187). The national liberation government makes it their duty to create national policies for the masses (p.187).

Two Trajectories: National Bourgeoisie and National Liberation Movement

Fanon describes two possible societies that might emerge based on different class forces that unite and collide during the unstable moment. The independent national bourgeoisie wants to maintain a similar social structure to that of the colonial settlers: to keep the lumpenproliterat and peasant in their place. The peasantry and lumpenproliterat (country people) are spontaneous, they rebel at times, but remain unorganized. The national party is appealing to the peasantry and lumpenproliterat because in their villages the anti-colonial period still echoes in their hearts, they still remember their fight against the conquerors and still have pre-colonial memories (p.114). The nationalist party , because it’s centralized in the inner-towns and city, struggles to organize the peasantry and lumpenproliterat.
Trade-union officials have no idea how to organize the country people, so they step into working class political action to try to establish working links with the peasants (p.123). This working link does not actually work because, “ the peasants confronted with this national middle class and these workers… look on, shrugging their shoulders: they shrug their shoulders because they know very well that both sides look on them as a makeweight”(p.123). In other words, the unions and the political parties use the peasants to push forward their agenda; an agenda that uses the peasantry and the country people. This is the point where the people question nationalism.

Political Education

The national liberation movement works to politically educate the people because the political education of the people is seen to be a historic necessity (p.138). The national liberation movement urges a political education because without it national unity crumbles:
“To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to teach citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens” (p.200). Therefore to educate the masses politically means to teach the masses that everything depends on them (p.197). According to Fanon, “a government which declares that it wishes to educate the people politically thus expresses its desire to govern with the people and for the people” (p180).Fanon and Gramsci posit a similar strategy to organize a counter-hegemony. Gramsci posits that collective political consciousness will unite, politicize, and engage them the social group in political reform that will work to center the general interest of the subordinate group (Gramsci, p.181-182). This collective political consciousness, in Gramsci theory starts with “a critical elaboration… of what one really is… ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process,” in order to understand his or her sociopolitical, historical and global position in international affairs (Gramsci, 324). Fanon is similar to Gramsci in that he believes that through political education (a philosophy of praxis grounded in history) the colonized will move from “common sense” to “good sense” to let the political education and philosophy of praxis guide their actions (Gramsci, 330).

Violence

For Fanon, the national liberation movement requires violence in order for it to be a successful struggle, violence is required. Fanon notes that violence constitutes a terrible menace for the oppressor (p.70). It is through violence that the colonized people find their freedom (p.86). Fanon also posits that in the colonial country the peasants are the first exploited group to realize that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain and realize that only violence pays (p.61). According to Fanon, “violence alone, violence committed by the people, violence organized… makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths” (p.147). At the individual level, Fanon asserts that “violence is a cleansing force that frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect”(p.94). Without violence, “without that knowledge of the practice of action there’s nothing but a fancy-dress parade and the blare of the trumpets” (p.147). Fanon makes violence a fundamental element of decolonization. Violence, for some, appears to be a “backward” method to do away with oppression; however, violence, in this case, is a politically educated method that attempts to humanize the colonized people.
When the people have taken violent part in the national liberation they will allow no one to set themselves up as masked “liberators”(p.94). This is part of the advice that Fanon gives on the transition to a post-revolutionary period. The national liberation government shall not attempt to seek out a leader; rather it shall be a government by the people for the people. Nationalism has to be enriched and deepened in social and political consciousness in order to form hegemony of national liberation. The route to decolonization, in Fanon theory, will need violence. An armed struggle lead by the marginalized peasantry (the wretched) will lead the revolutionary armed forces to do away with colonial oppression.
Fanon’s text is relevant at many levels. His text covers strengthens and weaknesses of the political forces at work after a colonial regime leaves a country. Using his theories and concepts, one is exposed not only to the impact of colonialism and imperialism, but also the complex forces and radical actions taken by the colonized to overthrow such an oppressive system. Both Fanon and Gramsci analyze the situations during an unstable government and the different routes that can emerge. Both authors give insight to the internal forces (social, political and economical) that formulate institutions of power. Ultimately, Fanon sees violence and an armed struggle as a key and justified element to reorganize the masses.

Work Cited
Fanon, Frantz (2004). The Wretched of the Earth (Richard Philcox, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. (Original work published 1963)

Gramsci, Antonio (2005). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, Trans.). New York: International Publishers. (Original work published 1971)

Orientalism and Whiteness - Edward Said and bell hooks

Social and Cultural Theory
Identity, Representation and White Supremacy
By Oscar Medina
Political struggles surrounding race, gender and class differences have constructed identity. Identity is defined by what one is not. For example, I identify myself by what I am not. I am a brown, tall male and not white, short or female. Identity is socially and culturally constructed. Chris Barker in Cultural Studies (2003) says that identity is concerned with sameness and differences with the personal and the social as understood through forms of representation. The issue with identity(ies) is that some identities are represented as superior at the expense of subordinating other identities. This paper focuses on the work(s) of black feminist critic bell hooks and post-colonial theorist Edward Said with the aim to summarizing their work and contribution to our understanding of identity and white supremacy. I first summarize, react and compare their work and how they contribute to our understanding of the construction of racial identities.
Whiteness
In Richard Dyer’s book White (1997) there is an attempt to study whiteness with an interest in dislodging it from its position of power (pg.2). Dyer notes that studying whiteness is about making whiteness strange rather than treating it as a taken for granted touchstone on human ordinariness. Dyer states that whiteness is commonly equated with normality. This normality is what renders whiteness invisible by making one assume that it does not require attention. Nonetheless, the notion of whiteness as being invisible reinforces the power of whiteness in a racial hierarchy. Whiteness stays invisible in the hierarchy while blackness is vividly made visible to all people. I argue that because blackness is made visible, we must also make whiteness explicitly visible! Trying to make blackness “invisible,” holds harmful repercussions for black folks. A color-blind society, which most white people seem to believe firmly in because it works toward their interest, hurts people of color. For example, if we examine the colored population locked up in the prison industrial complex and compare it to the population attending universities, one can see how a particular population is benefiting at the expense of subordinating another population. To not see blackness or whiteness is absurd! Black and brown males are disproportionately convicted of crimes at higher rates compared to white males.

bell hooks
bell hooks, a black feminist cultural critic writes on how blacks perceive representations of whiteness in an essay titled “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination.” hooks articulates this notion of whiteness and its so-called invisibility in the following sentence:
Since most white people do not have to ‘see’ black people…and [white people] do not need to be ever on guard nor to observe black people to be safe, [white people] can live as though black people are invisible, and they can imagine that they are also invisible to blacks (pg.42)
Here hooks notes that white people believe that there is no representation of whiteness in the black imagination. In fact, hooks suggests that white people think black people see them only as they want to appear—invisible and superior. Critically approaching whiteness, hooks states that black people have remain rather silent about their representations of whiteness in the black imagination but are fully conscious of whiteness. However, hooks also states that black people do not know themselves separate from whiteness. In other words, she argues that blacks do not know how to identify outside of the realm of whiteness. The construction of whiteness, hooks posits, came about through hegemonic operations such as imperialism and colonialism, processes that coerced black folks to internalize negative perceptions of blackness. hooks notes that during slavery (and still today) white slave masters controlled the black gaze, which resulted in controlled perception, allowing the rendering of representation of blackness and whiteness (pg.41).
Hooks is concerned with the representations of white stereotypes in the black imagination. She critically and creatively guides us through a black lens on the representations of whiteness in a historical context that is not reactionary to white stereotypes.
"… I want to focus on that representation of whiteness that is not formed in reaction to stereotypes but emerges as a response to the traumatic pain and aguish that remains a consequence of white racist domination, a psychic state that informs and shapes the way black folks ‘see’ whiteness" (pg. 43, hooks)

The representation of whiteness in the black imagination, hooks claims, is one that is terrorizing (pg.43). hooks says that one fantasy of whiteness is that the threatening “Other” (black people) is always represented as the terrorist. This perception enables many white people to imagine there is no representation of whiteness as terror, or terrorizing (pg.49). In her discussion on whiteness and its stereotypes, hooks discusses these representations in an historical context of white hegemony. Historically, hooks argues that blacks have associated terror with whiteness. hooks concludes her discussion about the representation of whiteness in the black imagination by stating that, in contemporary society, white and black people alike believe that racism no longer exists. This erasure, according to hooks, is mythic and diffuses the representation of whiteness as terror in the black consciousness.

Edward Said & Orientalism

Working off Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse, Edward Said’s post-colonial work primarily focuses on the discourse of European racist views of the Islamic and Arab world. Barker writes that “racism is a matter of patterns of cultural representation deeply ingrained within the practices, discourses and subjectivities of western societies” (pg. 266). In his work Orientalism, (1971) Said argues that cultural-geographical entities are historically specific discursive constructions that have particular history and tradition. To Said, Orientalism is a set of Western (Occidental) discourses of power that have constructed an “Orient.” In other words, the Orient, has been Orientalized, made known, in ways that depend on and reproduce the positional superiority and hegemony of the west.
For Said, Orientalism is a general group of ideas impregnated with European superiority, racism, and imperialism that are elaborated and distributed through a variety of texts and practices. Therefore, Said notes that the Orient has been constituted by an imagery and vocabulary that have given the Orient a particular kind of reality and presence with the west. Thus, Orientalism is essentially a western and mythologized perception of the Orient. Said argues this extensively using literary text such as Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, where “Maometto” or Mohammed is represented as an imposter.
What [Western] discourse considers to be a fact – that Mohammed is an imposter…is a component of the discourse, a statement the discourse compels one to make whenever the name Mohammed occurs or [is mentioned] (pg. 33)

Said notes that Mohammed is represented as an imposter through western discourse. Said argues that western discourse presents an inaccurate depiction of Mohammed. Because Mohammed is of the “Orient,” the Orient or anyone of the Orient becomes recognized by Europe as imposters, fraudulent and deceitful beings. Said argues further that its not even so much the language being used to describe the Orient, “but because [the language used to describe the Orient] is not even trying to be accurate” (pg.34). In other words, there is not even an intent from Europe to understand and represent the “Orient” accurately.
Also through literary text, Said examines how in William Shakespare’s Othello, the Orient and Islam are always represented as outsiders despite being inside of Europe. Europe and its discursive practices in constructing the Orient use a particular set of language to inaccurately represent and make sense of the Orient, rendering an imaginative geography of the Orient. I believe this practice of Orientalism continues through western media outlets. The media has a set of practices to convey a story of the Orient. These practices include language, pictures and video. But these practices are not trying to depict the Orient accurately. Western media serves to inform and reinforce its superiority among its constituents in the west.
The “Orient” has been misrepresented through western discourse. As a consequence, identities are given a set of ascribed meaning. For example, the Orient is seen as an exotic, mysterious place where woman are subservient to men. But these constructed identities serve the dominant western narrative because they produce a set of western knowledge of the Orient.
Our initial description of Orientalism as a learned field now acquires a new concreteness. A field is often an enclosed space. The idea of representation is a theatrical one: the Orient is on the stage on which the whole East is confined. On the stage will appear figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed filed, a theatrical state affixed to Europe. (pg. 27). Here, Said argues that the field or the study of the Orient serves to please Europe and its domination. Representations of the Orient have been made by Europe for Europe. Said also suggests that the Orient has an “affixed” relationship with the west, however, a relationship that only serves the west to firmly hold its superiority.

Both hooks and Said are concerned with the construction of representation and identity. For Said a fictitious identity of Orientalism results due to an imagined geography imposed on the Orient by a white supremacist discourse coming from the west. Hooks, on the other hand, focuses on black representations of whiteness, and how whiteness is pervasively made into a false universal identity. Both authors contribute to our understanding of how identity and representation get constructed. They critically examine the processes that create the “Other” and how the Other is used to reinforce and sustain white and western hegemony. How can we move towards dismantling western hegemony and whiteness? How can our understanding of identity and imagined geographies push toward a world where there is no superior identity or superior geographical region?


References
hooks, bell (1998). “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination.” Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to Be White. New York: Schocken Books. pg. 38-53.

Barker, Chris (2003). Cultural Studies Theory and Practice. 2nd Editition. Thousand Oaks. Sage Publication.

Dyer, Richard (1997). White. New York. Routledge Press.

Said, Edward (1978). “Imaginative Geography and Its Represenations: Orientalizing the Oriental.” In Race Critical Theories, D Goldbert and P. Essed, eds. Oxford: Blackwell: 15-37

Hegemony

By Oscar Medina
Although Antonio Gramsci did not write about race, racism, or the colonial experience, his socio-political work is recognized throughout many academic disciplines such as cultural studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and among other fields of studies (Hall 1996). Many praise his thought for its refusal to leave the terrain of concrete historical, social and cultural realities for abstraction, economism and reductionist theoretical models (Forgacs 2000, Hall) that tend to simplify structures of social formation rather than highlight the structural complexity. Gramsci works from a Marxist terrain, however, his critical lens is in the superstructure, where institutions and culture function to uphold the structure. This paper will discuss briefly Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and how his concept(s) help explain the durability of “advanced” capitalist societies. Also, in this paper I will draw from Gramsci concept(s) of hegemony to discuss the culture and practice of white supremacy in education, particularly on the University of California Berkeley campus.
What is Hegemony?
In advanced capitalist societies, the state rules through a combination of coercion and consent. According to Gramsci the state is composed of a political society and civil society (PN 262). By political society he refers to political institutions and legal constitutional control such as schools, courts, and police authorities. By civil society he refers to private institutions and economic systems. Gramsci suggests that the two spheres (political and civil society) are what make the state overlap, making their division purely conceptual. In advanced democratic capitalist societies, for example, business owners (the bourgeoisie) have political power in public spheres because they have the power to influence electoral outcomes. For example, a state retrofit or construction project requires a construction company to supply material and labor. As “public servants,” politicians will seek out a development company that has the potential to provide financial assistance in upcoming elections – thus giving political power to the bourgeoisie economic and political interest. Common scenarios of this sort, I believe make Gramsci define the composition of the state as political society and civil society, two overlapping complex forces that converge to pave the ground of hegemony.
Hegemony is best described as a formula of rule through force and consent primarily through ideology. Ideology is understood in terms of ideas, meanings and practices that purport to be universal truths to sustain powerful social groups. Gramsci himself lays out the formula in the following way,
The maximum of legislative capacity can be inferred when a perfect formula of directives is matched by a perfect arrangement of the organisms of execution and verification, and by a perfect preparation of the ‘spontaneous’ consent of the masses who must ‘live’ those directives, modifying their own habits, their own will, their own convictions conform with those directives and with the objectives they propose to achieve. (Gramsci, Prison Notebooks p.266)

In short, laws control the lives of the masses and the masses obey to the laws that socially control their decisions. For example, if one violates the law, one is forced to settle with the courts and by coerced consent; one has to agree with the courts decision albeit guilty or not guilty. Gramsci states “hegemony [is] protected by the armour of coercion”(PN 263). In other words the masses do not randomly obey authority but obey authority because of a set of organizing and “legitimized” rules and practices are in place. Hegemony, in this case, is the process of making, maintaining and reproducing authoritative sets of meaning and practices by force and consent. Hegemony works toward the advantage of the ruling and dominant social group; in the case of the U.S., I would say it works with capitalist intent as its primary motivation.
Hegemony is creating and maintaining a common conception of the world by feeding popular ideologies to the masses.
…. the dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate groups and the life of the State is conceived of as a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria (on the juridical plane) between the interest of the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups-equilibria in which the interests of the dominate group prevail, but only up to a certain point, i.e. stopping short of narrowly corporate economic interest. (PN182)

For example, neo-liberal economic policies like NAFTA, are sold to the masses with fixed notions of profit and economic development; although, only to benefit the dominant group and further deprive the subordinate groups. The idea of hegemony explains how power of ascendant social groups is maintained. In my view hegemony is basically the terrain we are forced to walk on. Existing laws (policies) imposed by the state and ideologies manifested through censored media, are just two examples of how institutions force our consent and shape the terrain we walk on.
How Hegemony Operates
In advanced capitalist societies, ideology is the fuel of hegemony.
Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously ‘born’ in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, of irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion-a group of me, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality. (PN 192)
Hegemony operates through the consent and coercion of the masses under the dominant group’s ideological parameters (rules, practices and culture). Louis Althusser (1971), in Ideology and the State views the school as the dominant ideological state apparatus because schools inculcate the ideology of the state, a sense of nationalist and liberalist ideas. Nonetheless, the school is the reproductive site of capitalist subjects, where the creation of workers, mangers and leaders are fostered. Schools enable these practices through a set of ideologies established by the ruling class. Hegemony occurs by conditioning students to practice these sets of ideologies, such as language and culture. It is through a combination of consent and coercion that enables ideologies to sustain and reproduce. Elementary schools in the U.S., for example force students every morning to pledge their allegiance to the U.S. flag. Not only are schools inculcating nationalism but they are exercising a set of ideological notions, “one nation, under god, with liberty and justice for all” which paves the hegemonic ground we walk on.

Gramsci’s Elements of Revolutionary Change

According to Gramsci, in order for revolutionary change to occur there must a be a collective political consciousness founded at the economic corporate level . First, workers must identify a struggle; “a tradesman must feel obliged to stand by another tradesman” in unity to identify a common struggle. Second, when the solidarity of interest among all the members of the social class (in this case the working-class) is reached to reform the existing fundamental structures, (thirdly) their corporate interest must transcend the corporate limits of the economic class (those in power) to garner forward the interest of the subordinate groups. According to Gramsci these are the three stages for revolutionary change. For example in the 1960, the Chicano civil rights movement formed through identifying their collective struggle (building alliances) to overcome the dominated landscape of white supremacy to move forward their own perspective on the cultural and political history of the southwest. The three stages for revolutionary change create an agenda for the subordinate group. According to Gramsci, the subordinate group must create a counter-hegemonic force through a “war of position” and “a philosophy of praxis.”
Gramsci states that “a theory is ‘revolutionary’ precisely to the extent that it is an element of conscious separation and distinction into two camps and is a peak inaccessible to the enemy camp” (p462). This philosophy of praxis is, for example, the establishment of ethnic studies on university campuses, a counter-hegemonic movement in opposition to the glorification of white studies in academia. Ward Churchill (1995) writes on whites studies and U.S. university system. Churchill states that a university education “...serves to under pin the hegemony of white supremacy in its other, more literal manifestations: economic, political, military and so on.” In this case, ethnic studies departments across university campuses are a counter-hegemonic force that attempt to penetrate dominant white academia for a more inclusive curriculum, if not establish new intellectual circles of thought.
The establishment of ethnic studies is a revolutionary change in academia, a change that was fought using the tactics of a “war of position,” rather than “war of maneuver.” Through Gramsci lens, I argue that the struggle to establish ethnic studies on university campuses, came through a ‘war of position,’ a political protracted struggle rather than a ‘war of manoeuvre,’ an upfront physical confrontational struggle (Hall, PN 233). Gramsci believed that a counter-hegemonic struggle must seek to gain ascendancy within civil society before any attempt is made on state power.
Scrutinizing the University of California Berkeley Using Gramsci’s Concepts
The University of California Berkeley (UCB) is a colonial site where we can apply some of Gramsci concepts of hegemony. UCB was founded in 1868, shortly after the U.S. – Mexican war (1846-1848). After the war, Mexico lost half of its territory to the U.S. The university today lies on a terrain that was once Mexican soil; yet nowhere on the campus is there a monument recognizing this historical fact. Additionally, not a single place on campus recognizes the extinct Ohlone indigenous peoples that occupied the San Francisco bay area before colonial settlers invaded the territory. The only place on campus that recognizes indigenous life is in Krober hall where white Anthropology department displays Ohlone artifacts on walls of the museum of anthropology for the pleasure of visiting tourist to consume. Krober hall is named after Alfred Louis Krober, a white protestant male anthropologist who was a professor at UC Berkeley from 1901-1946 and is most rewarded for studying the Indians of California . His research focused on studying the last Yahi Indian named Ishi. Ishi resided five years at the UCB’s Anthropology museum where he developed tuberculosis and died in 1916.
It is through hegemony that white settlers are able to colonize the Indian and justify their so-called “savagery” and then display the Indian pictures, language and culture. The university legitimizes this as historical preservation of the Indian. Gramsci would call it a domination by the ruling group over the Indian. Gramsci concept of hegemony helps us understand how UCB can legitimize their occupation, and colonization of indigenous people.
Pushing more on the concept of white supremacy, universities have a critical role to play for the state, which is to uphold and sustain the legitimacy of the state. The state holds its universities accountable to continue producing the knowledge that will legitimize the state’s operation. It is through cultural practices of white supremacy, that whiteness prevails to be the functioning dominant language and culture of the state. Whiteness, then, is the dominant culture on most university campuses throughout the nation (except for historically black colleges in the South) making it an explicit uncomfortable terrain for racial and ethnic minorities. W.E.B Du Bois, one of the first African American’s that obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard in (1896) and shared his experience as being one of the only non-white males on a predominately all white university campus: Du Bois recalls at Harvard, “while attending a commencement social function, a lady seemed determined to mistake me for a waiter…. I was at Harvard, but not of it” (Trumpbour, John, ed., 1981). Historically, universities have catered to the dominant white western groups while excluding and subordinating the racial and ethnic groups from “legitimized” intellectual domains (universities). This is because elite universities like Harvard and Berkeley have a role in operating the hegemonic ideology of the state. This quote best describes the university’s function:
The University serves to socialize and train the next generation of guardians of the extant social, political, and economic order; and minority and Third World students, no less than others, must confront the functions of their education directly (Trumpbour, John, ed p.308)
Students of color on university campuses are forced to think thoroughly of their privileged positions, nonetheless to either establish a counter-hegemony or perpetuate the current hegemonic state.
Conclusion: Complexities with Hegemony

Hegemony is a temporary settlement and series of alliances between social groups that is won and not given. Therefore, hegemony is an end-less struggle of forces emerging to power only to be taken over by another ascending force. Hegemony is not a static entity. Take culture for example, there is no single common dominant culture but rather an array of dominant cultures. In other words, Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is one that is limited to a nation-state paradigm.

Work Cited

Althusser, Louis (1971) Ideology & Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press: 127-186.

Gramsci, Antonio (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare & G.Nowell Smith, ed & trans. New York: International Publishers.

Churchill, Ward (1995). “White Studies: The Intellectual Imperialism of U.S. Higher Edeucation”. Since Predator Came.Aigis Press.

Hall, Stuart (1986) “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.” Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies.

Forgacs, David, ed. (2000) The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. New York, NY: New York University Press.

Trumpbour, John, ed. (1981) How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire. Boston, MA: SouthEnd Press.