Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Hanson Victor Davis

Author:Hanson, Victor Davis [Hanson, Victor Davis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, History, Philosophy
ISBN: 9781594030567
Google: 18P7CwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1594030561
Goodreads: 590435
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2003-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

Such are the whirling images that now surround someone living in California, at the epicenter of illegal immigration. The other day I went up to my office at California State University, then to the library, and at last to the department office. It was late summer and the campus was largely deserted after summer school had ended—except for hundreds of young grade-schoolers, the vast majority of them Mexican and Mexican-American. Race seems the unspoken prerequisite for participation. There are literally dozens of programs for such underprivileged, geared for kids from kindergarten through high school, all well-intended and inspirational: classes and workshops in self-esteem, remedial English, Chicano pride, vocational training, SAT preparation, Mexican history, Mexican grievances. Lunch, tutors, teachers, the use of computers and classrooms are provided free of charge. The message that I glean from the literature describing their efforts is one involving the primacy of self-esteem, a certain obligation on the part of others to accommodate Chicanos, the need for racial solidarity, and a vague notion that the spoils of California, for a variety of sinister reasons, are not being divided fairly.

My classics students, with a good knowledge of two or three languages, European history and Western literature, and with impeccable English, often find tutorial and guidance work in these programs, which all seem to have titles that include buzz words like “Help,” “Pride” or “Diversity.” The irony, of course, is that our assimilated Mexican classics majors make both perfect tutors and imperfect role models for these state-mandated programs. Their commitment to education has given them the skills to impress these young kids and their teachers—and the confidence not to need any of the very counseling, tutoring and self-esteem that they provide to others. In fact, our own students’ worry is how to duck the separate (or, in the euphemism of our administrators, “auxiliary”) Hispanic graduation ceremony in spring. When they have received fellowships for graduate study, for some reason, ethnic counselors and professors whom they scarcely know turn up to prompt them to attend their self-segregated rites to give proof of Chicano success and pride—as if the Greek, Latin, French and German they have mastered could for a single day be the approved curriculum of the Chicano-Latino studies faculty. Recently one of our Mexican-American Latin and Greek students, who entered California illegally wrapped in a blanket, was accepted with full support to the Ph.D. program in European history at Princeton, with additional funding from the Mellon Foundation and a promised slot at Cambridge University in England for a year. Suddenly he was claimed by all the professors whose efforts at “instilling pride,” rather than teaching the hard subjects, were antithetical to the very education and discipline that won him such attention. Professors and activists harp on the notion of blanket racism in admissions, but all of our talented Hispanic students accept that they are being given opportunities and advantages unknown to middle- and lower-class whites—deference in fact traditionally reserved for the legacy-holders among the white Eastern elite.

Whatever we

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