Summer Retreat, Part II: What's Decolonization got to do with it?

Note: This post is part two of a three-part series about a mini-retreat we held to discuss the principles of and plans for the Bayan Learning Community. See here for the first entry. Third entry is forthcoming!

During the first part of our Summer 2018  mini-retreat, we agreed on a few preliminary understandings of what it means to have a “dehumanized” class (see link). We took it as axiomatic that Bayan folks want (and deserve!) a rehumanized learning environment. The purpose of this section was to establish, or at least  identify, what about Pinoy/Pinay experience and education is dehumanizing.

We had a brief mini-lecture to review how two other racial/cultural groups experience dehumanization and objectification in the United States. We recalled the objectification that African Americans faced included slavery, slave codes, lynching,  and Jim Crow. Those issues morphed into issues that animate the Black Lives Matter movement. This ongoing legacy of dehumanization is what programs like UMOJA seek to remedy.

We shifted to speaking about Latinx students, served by the Puente Program. Latinx folks also face historic oppression and chauvinism here in the United States. That oppression is  has been based on citizenship and language and that dehumanization manifests in the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies promulgated by our federal government.

The dehumanization faced by both groups are manifestations of oppression. Put differently, African American and Latinx dehumanization is the condition and process that produces inequality.  Both forms of oppression play out in the educational field, in classrooms. The outcomes and success African American and Latinx students - in terms of retention, persistence, graduation, and transfer rates - are not on par with their White counterparts.And think about the times Black folk were prevented from learning to read and write, and the history of segregated schools that separated white students from Black and Latinx students. It is because of this that concerned educators and community folks came together to create programs like UMOJA and PUENTE to address the educational situation facing students of respective groups.

The specific ways  dehumanization plays out is particular to Black and Latinx folks’ relationship with and to the United States and white supremacy (the system that privileges “whiteness” and subordinates people of color - see this link for an interesting article regarding white supremacy).  The USA’s economic desire for slaves turned African humans into objects, keeping them outside the boundaries of humanity and citizenship. For Latinx folks, geopolitical borders, immigration policies, shifting labor needs, and, cultural practices (language, in particular), serve as dividing lines between what constitutes a “real American” and “the other”.

To be sure, our recap was hella basic. Historic and social process of dehumanization is much more complex than can be captured in five-minute lecture! Those topics require their own classes - degrees, even. However, the folks present recognized that dehumanization in the US context plays out differently for different groups. This awareness raised several questions for us: Do Filipino/as face dehumanization caused by social and historical forces? If so, what are the particular contours of that dehumanization? If not, then how did Filipino/as "slip the yoke" of oppression? What, if any, analogy exists between the experiences of  African Americans and Latinx folks and those of Filipino/a? And what might this mean in terms of shaping and co-creating Bayan classrooms?

Lisa Lowe's Immigrant Acts

Imperialism and “immigration acts” are two of the largest engines of “dehumanization” Filipino/a Americans face. As a colony of Spain for 300 years and under the colonial rule of the US for several decades, Filipino/as experienced pressure to serve and emulate their colonial rulers, basically creating a cultural system where Filipino/as began internalize that being Filipino/a was less-than. And the funky relationship with the United States (were Filipino/as American citizens? Colonial Subjects? Nationals, with limited rights?) and the American business concerns hunger for cheap labor, coupled with anti-immigrant sentiments, put Filipino/as in the US in a precarious situation in terms of citizenship, if not humanity. Note: "Immigration Acts" refers to a critical race text by Lisa Lowe of the same name that theorizes they different acts, legal and those taken by Asian American themselves, shape and condition Asian American identity.

So in terms of “rehumanizing” our classrooms, our particular struggle has to to with decolonizing ourselves. We need to recognize the perils of colonial mentality, challenge ourselves and each other when we’ve “inhaled” that we are inferior, and figure out what we can “take up” as we seek to remove colonized visions of ourselves and the world. What might replace colonial mentality and the attitudes and practices that promote putting ourselves - and each other - down?

Before diving into that complex set of issues, we took a moment to get familiar with the values and principles that shape racially/ethnically conscious education programs, to see how they approach humanizing their classrooms fro their perspectives.  We took a few minutes to read short excerpts of founding/constitutional documents from the California’s UMOJA and a Mexican American Studies program from Arizona. Participants scanned two documents, annotating anything that might be useful to Bayan Scholars as we compose our own values/principles/practices statement.

One document was the The UMOJA Practices, an evolving list of fourteen different, interlocking standards of pillars that undergird their programs and classes (link here). These include practices such as  “Ethic of Love - The Affective Domain”, which attends to the aspects learning that has to do with emotions, feelings, habits of heart and mind that deeply affect cognitive learning;  “Language as Power”, recognizing the languages students bring with them, the funds of knowledge they already possess; and “Live Learning”, which sounded to us a lot like the collaborative, responsive, and interactive learning we thought was important in a “rehumanized classroom”.

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Two other practices that jumped out at several of us in the room were “Tapping African American Intellectual, Spiritual, and Artistic Voices” and “Awareness of Connectedness to African Diaspora”.  We liked the idea of finding and highlighting Filipino/a American scholars, educators, and artists - as so many of us rarely see ourselves reflected in those arenas. And the Filipino/a experience is also diasporic - we want to know more about our connections to our land of origin and to those of Filipino/a descent in other parts of the world. This article, "The Filipino Diaspora" published by Inquirer.net, is a good place to explore this issue.

We also examined a passage from  journal article by Curtis Acosta, based in part on his dissertation in Language, reading, and Culture and his experience teaching in the Mexican American Studies (M.A.S.) program in Tucson, Arizona. His article “Dangerous Minds in Tucson” outlines the indigenous Mexican “epistemologies” (ways of knowing) at the foundation of their program. Scholars and community folks studied indigenous values to re-member values and principles that reflected the heritage of the folks seeing to be decolonized. The M.A.S. folks believed that  decolonizing means reclaiming and revising indigenous values for present generations.

Curtis Acosta

According to Curtis and his gente Nahui Ollin, a Nautl word meaning “four movements”, captures the philosophical and practical pillars to revise schooling to decolonize Latinx peoples. These pillars are based on the “spirit” of Toltec and Aztec deities. Tezcatloipoca, also known as “smoking mirror”,  represents self-reflection; Quetzalocoatl, the Aztec deity of learning also known as Kulkulan to the Maya, represents precious and beautiful knowledge; Huitzipochtli, a deity associated with resilience, stands for the will to act, and Xipe Totec, associated with death and rebirth, has to do with transformation. M.A.S. teachers, informed and inspired by the work of scholar like Paulo Freire and bell hooks, re-membered indigenous stories to rehumanize the classroom.

After reading, me reconvened to share our ideas, recording our ideas about what we take away from these two documents and how they might help us as we figure out our particular values and principles. The next entry documents our findings, what we think we need to do next - preliminary as they are.

We would appreciate any feedback you may have, thoughts or feelings about what you’ve read and, if you read any of the links, how might UMOJA Practices and the work of M.A.S. thinkers can help us. Comment below! If you’re a Bayan alum, say so. If you’re a Bayan friend, say so.

Note: Shout out & salamat to S’18 Bayan Scholar Bernice for her assistance revising this post.