"Staging encounters": The educational decline of U.S. Puerto Ricans in [post]-colonial perspective

Harvard Educational Review

Volumn 68, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 218-243

  Walsh, Catherine E ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0032368512     PISSN: 00178055     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17763/haer.68.2.6v122352421538k1     Document Type: Review

References (78)

1. Sonia Nieto, "A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Mainland Schools: Losers, Outsiders, or Leaders?" in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, ed. James Banks and C. McGee Banks (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 388-411.
2. The term "metropolis" as it is used here refers to the imperial character of the United States as a colonizing power and as a "mother" nation.
3. Catherine E. Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice: Issues of Language, Power, and Schooling for Puerto Ricans (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1991); Ana Maria Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997).
4. Catherine E. Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice: Issues of Language, Power, and Schooling for Puerto Ricans (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1991); Ana Maria Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997).
5. Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles, "Subject People" and Colonial Discourses: Economic Transformation and Social Disorder in Puerto Rico, 1898-1947 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
6. Santiago-Valles, "Subject People," p. 10.
7. "Neocolonialism" can be described as the influence advanced nations maintain over developing countries, as well as the extension of this influence within the advanced nations themselves over indigenous peoples and people of the nation's colony(ies), often within the sphere of social institutions such as education. For a detailed discussion of neocolonialism and education, see Philip Altbach. "Education and Neocolonialism," in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 452-456.
8. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, "Education: Introduction," in Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, p. 427.
9. Clara Rodriguez, Born in the U.S.A. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991).
10. Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual.
11. While a number of studies have emerged in recent years that afford a post-colonial perspective, many of which are discussed in this article, Santiago-Valles's description in "Subject People" gets at the heart of the significance of post-colonialism as it is considered here: "A post-colonial perspective ... designates the political, economic, and cultural efforts to uproot and dismantle colonialism altogether - particularly its Western underpinnings" (p. 7).
12. "Coloniality" is different from "colonialism" in that it refers to the condition colonialism has engendered. My use of brackets around "post" is meant to highlight the anomalous nature of Puerto Rican's postcolonial condition - a modern colony that may have transcended the colonial system but not "the ubiquity and primary significance of coloniality" (Williams and Crisman, cited in Agustín Lao, "Islands at the Crossroads: Puerto Ricanness Traveling between the Translocal Nation and the Global City," in Puerto Rican Jam: Essays on Culture and Politics, ed. Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Ramón Grosfoguel (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 169-188, 174.
13. The concept of "staging encounters" is taken from the work of Ruth Frankenburg and Lata Mani, "Crosscurrents, Crosstalk: Race, 'Postcoloniality' and the Politics of Location," Cultural Studies, 7, No. 2 (1993), PP, and Stuart Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'? Thinking at the Limit," in The Post-Colonial Question, ed. Ian Chambers and Lidia Curti (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 242-260 .
14. The concept of "staging encounters" is taken from the work of Ruth Frankenburg and Lata Mani, "Crosscurrents, Crosstalk: Race, 'Postcoloniality' and the Politics of Location," Cultural Studies, 7, No. 2 (1993), PP, and Stuart Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'? Thinking at the Limit," in The Post-Colonial Question, ed. Ian Chambers and Lidia Curti (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 242-260 .
15. While Puerto Ricans were endowed with U.S. citizenship in 1917, it was not until ten years later that their Puerto Rican citizenship was recognized by U.S. la w.
16. Frank Bonilla, "Migrants, Citizenship, and Social Pacts," in Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico, ed. Edwin Melendez and Edgardo Melendez (Boston: South End Press, 1993), pp. 181-188.
17. Bonilla, "Migrants, Citizenship and Social Pacts."
18. Sanchez uses the metaphorical image of la guagua aérea (the flying bus or airbus) to describe the mobile nature of Puerto Rican identity. See Luis Rafael Sanchez, La Guagua Aérea (Río Piedras, PR: Cultural, 1994).
19. Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 394.
20. Until a few decades ago, New York City served as a kind of Puerto Rican territory within the metropolis. "New migration patterns, however, are destabilizing these spatial correlations, thus making the migratory experience increasingly deterritorialized/reterritorialized." Ramón Grosfoguel, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, and Chloé S. Georas, "Beyond Nationalist and Colonialist Discourses: The Jaiba Politics of the Puerto Rican Ethno-Nation," in Negrón-Muntaner and Grosfoguel, Puerto Rican Jam, pp. 1-36.
21. Discussion of the transnational nature of Puerto Rican identity has assumed an increasingly central place in recent academic works. For example, see Lao, "Islands at the Crossroads"; Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1994); Carlos Antonio Torre, Hugo Rodríguez Vecchini, and William Burgos, eds., The Commuter Nation: Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Rio Piedras, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994); and Duany's review of five recent texts: Jorge Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation: Recent Works on Cultural Identity," Latin American Research Review, 31 (1996), 248-267. A citation from Duany makes evident the significant shift that transnationalism affords away from earlier nationalist perspectives: As literary critic Efraín Barrados argues [in The Commuter Nation], the island's nationalist discourse has traditionally excluded Puerto Rican migrants from its definition of the nation because of geographic, linguistic, and cultural differences. This discourse has been charged with an ideological essentialism that assumes the nation to be an immutable, homogenous, and sacred entity rather than a social and historical construct, as a community imagined by its members as a network of horizontal comradeship (to employ Benedict Anderson's terms). In this context, the metaphor of the flying bus captures the current state of flux in Puerto Rican culture, floating between the two islands of Puerto Rico and Manhattan (p. 263).
22. Discussion of the transnational nature of Puerto Rican identity has assumed an increasingly central place in recent academic works. For example, see Lao, "Islands at the Crossroads"; Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1994); Carlos Antonio Torre, Hugo Rodríguez Vecchini, and William Burgos, eds., The Commuter Nation: Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Rio Piedras, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994); and Duany's review of five recent texts: Jorge Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation: Recent Works on Cultural Identity," Latin American Research Review, 31 (1996), 248-267. A citation from Duany makes evident the significant shift that transnationalism affords away from earlier nationalist perspectives: As literary critic Efraín Barrados argues [in The Commuter Nation], the island's nationalist discourse has traditionally excluded Puerto Rican migrants from its definition of the nation because of geographic, linguistic, and cultural differences. This discourse has been charged with an ideological essentialism that assumes the nation to be an immutable, homogenous, and sacred entity rather than a social and historical construct, as a community imagined by its members as a network of horizontal comradeship (to employ Benedict Anderson's terms). In this context, the metaphor of the flying bus captures the current state of flux in Puerto Rican culture, floating between the two islands of Puerto Rico and Manhattan (p. 263).
23. Discussion of the transnational nature of Puerto Rican identity has assumed an increasingly central place in recent academic works. For example, see Lao, "Islands at the Crossroads"; Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1994); Carlos Antonio Torre, Hugo Rodríguez Vecchini, and William Burgos, eds., The Commuter Nation: Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Rio Piedras, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994); and Duany's review of five recent texts: Jorge Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation: Recent Works on Cultural Identity," Latin American Research Review, 31 (1996), 248-267. A citation from Duany makes evident the significant shift that transnationalism affords away from earlier nationalist perspectives: As literary critic Efraín Barrados argues [in The Commuter Nation], the island's nationalist discourse has traditionally excluded Puerto Rican migrants from its definition of the nation because of geographic, linguistic, and cultural differences. This discourse has been charged with an ideological essentialism that assumes the nation to be an immutable, homogenous, and sacred entity rather than a social and historical construct, as a community imagined by its members as a network of horizontal comradeship (to employ Benedict Anderson's terms). In this context, the metaphor of the flying bus captures the current state of flux in Puerto Rican culture, floating between the two islands of Puerto Rico and Manhattan (p. 263).
24. Discussion of the transnational nature of Puerto Rican identity has assumed an increasingly central place in recent academic works. For example, see Lao, "Islands at the Crossroads"; Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1994); Carlos Antonio Torre, Hugo Rodríguez Vecchini, and William Burgos, eds., The Commuter Nation: Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Rio Piedras, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994); and Duany's review of five recent texts: Jorge Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation: Recent Works on Cultural Identity," Latin American Research Review, 31 (1996), 248-267. A citation from Duany makes evident the significant shift that transnationalism affords away from earlier nationalist perspectives: As literary critic Efraín Barrados argues [in The Commuter Nation], the island's nationalist discourse has traditionally excluded Puerto Rican migrants from its definition of the nation because of geographic, linguistic, and cultural differences. This discourse has been charged with an ideological essentialism that assumes the nation to be an immutable, homogenous, and sacred entity rather than a social and historical construct, as a community imagined by its members as a network of horizontal comradeship (to employ Benedict Anderson's terms). In this context, the metaphor of the flying bus captures the current state of flux in Puerto Rican culture, floating between the two islands of Puerto Rico and Manhattan (p. 263).
25. Discussion of the transnational nature of Puerto Rican identity has assumed an increasingly central place in recent academic works. For example, see Lao, "Islands at the Crossroads"; Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1994); Carlos Antonio Torre, Hugo Rodríguez Vecchini, and William Burgos, eds., The Commuter Nation: Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Rio Piedras, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994); and Duany's review of five recent texts: Jorge Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation: Recent Works on Cultural Identity," Latin American Research Review, 31 (1996), 248-267. A citation from Duany makes evident the significant shift that transnationalism affords away from earlier nationalist perspectives: As literary critic Efraín Barrados argues [in The Commuter Nation], the island's nationalist discourse has traditionally excluded Puerto Rican migrants from its definition of the nation because of geographic, linguistic, and cultural differences. This discourse has been charged with an ideological essentialism that assumes the nation to be an immutable, homogenous, and sacred entity rather than a social and historical construct, as a community imagined by its members as a network of horizontal comradeship (to employ Benedict Anderson's terms). In this context, the metaphor of the flying bus captures the current state of flux in Puerto Rican culture, floating between the two islands of Puerto Rico and Manhattan (p. 263).
26. Grosfoguel, Negrón-Muntaner, and Georas, "Beyond Nationalist and Colonialist Discourses," p. 19.
27. For a discussion of the status question and issues of identity, see Ramón Grosfoguel, "The Divorce of Nationalist Discourses from the Puerto Rican People: A Sociohistorical Perspective," in Negrón-Muntaner and Grosfoguel Puerto Rican Jam, pp. 57-76.
28. Bonilla, "Migrants, Citizenship, and Social Pacts," p. 183.
29. See Boricua First! National Puerto Rican Agenda (electronic version distributed by the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, March 29, 1996).
30. See, for example, Tony Baez, Puerto Ricans and the Public Schools: A Critical Commentary (Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States, 1980); Nieto, "A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students"; Clara Rodríguez, "Puerto Ricans in Historical and Social Science Research," in Banks and Banks, Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, pp. 233-244; Rodriguez, Born in the U.S.A.; Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice.
31. See, for example, Tony Baez, Puerto Ricans and the Public Schools: A Critical Commentary (Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States, 1980); Nieto, "A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students"; Clara Rodríguez, "Puerto Ricans in Historical and Social Science Research," in Banks and Banks, Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, pp. 233-244; Rodriguez, Born in the U.S.A.; Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice.
32. See, for example, Tony Baez, Puerto Ricans and the Public Schools: A Critical Commentary (Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States, 1980); Nieto, "A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students"; Clara Rodríguez, "Puerto Ricans in Historical and Social Science Research," in Banks and Banks, Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, pp. 233-244; Rodriguez, Born in the U.S.A.; Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice.
33. See, for example, Tony Baez, Puerto Ricans and the Public Schools: A Critical Commentary (Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States, 1980); Nieto, "A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students"; Clara Rodríguez, "Puerto Ricans in Historical and Social Science Research," in Banks and Banks, Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, pp. 233-244; Rodriguez, Born in the U.S.A.; Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice.
34. See, for example, Tony Baez, Puerto Ricans and the Public Schools: A Critical Commentary (Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States, 1980); Nieto, "A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students"; Clara Rodríguez, "Puerto Ricans in Historical and Social Science Research," in Banks and Banks, Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, pp. 233-244; Rodriguez, Born in the U.S.A.; Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice.
35. See Juan Flores, "Latino Studies: New Contexts, New Concepts," Harvard Educational Review, 67 (1997), 208-221; and Gayatri Spivak, "Teaching for the Times," in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 468-490.
36. See Juan Flores, "Latino Studies: New Contexts, New Concepts," Harvard Educational Review, 67 (1997), 208-221; and Gayatri Spivak, "Teaching for the Times," in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 468-490.
37. Nieto, "A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students," p. 394.
38. I am using "truths" here to signify what Michel Foucault referred to in "Truth and Power," in Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 109-134, as the "regime of truth" - truth as "linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it" (p. 133), i.e., universal truths.
39. For a study that does help afford such understanding, see Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice.
40. See, for example, Arif Dirlik, "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism," in McClintock, Mufti, and Shohat, Dangerous Liaisons, pp. 501-528; Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'?; J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "The Postcolonization of the (Latin) American Experience: A Reconsideration of 'Colonialism,' 'Postcolonialism,' and 'Mestizaje,'" in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyon Prakash (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 241-275; Spivak, "Teaching for the Times"; Williams and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory.
41. See, for example, Arif Dirlik, "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism," in McClintock, Mufti, and Shohat, Dangerous Liaisons, pp. 501-528; Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'?; J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "The Postcolonization of the (Latin) American Experience: A Reconsideration of 'Colonialism,' 'Postcolonialism,' and 'Mestizaje,'" in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyon Prakash (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 241-275; Spivak, "Teaching for the Times"; Williams and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory.
42. See, for example, Arif Dirlik, "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism," in McClintock, Mufti, and Shohat, Dangerous Liaisons, pp. 501-528; Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'?; J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "The Postcolonization of the (Latin) American Experience: A Reconsideration of 'Colonialism,' 'Postcolonialism,' and 'Mestizaje,'" in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyon Prakash (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 241-275; Spivak, "Teaching for the Times"; Williams and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory.
43. See, for example, Arif Dirlik, "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism," in McClintock, Mufti, and Shohat, Dangerous Liaisons, pp. 501-528; Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'?; J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "The Postcolonization of the (Latin) American Experience: A Reconsideration of 'Colonialism,' 'Postcolonialism,' and 'Mestizaje,'" in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyon Prakash (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 241-275; Spivak, "Teaching for the Times"; Williams and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory.
44. See, for example, Arif Dirlik, "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism," in McClintock, Mufti, and Shohat, Dangerous Liaisons, pp. 501-528; Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'?; J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "The Postcolonization of the (Latin) American Experience: A Reconsideration of 'Colonialism,' 'Postcolonialism,' and 'Mestizaje,'" in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyon Prakash (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 241-275; Spivak, "Teaching for the Times"; Williams and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory.
45. See Anne McClintock, "The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term 'Post-Colonialism,'" in Williams and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, pp. 291-304.
46. Hall, "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'?" p. 246.
47. Santiago-Valles, "Subject People" and Colonial Discourses, p. 7.
48. See, for example, Spivak, "Teaching for the Times"; bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Marie Helene Laforest, "Black Cultures in Difference," in Chambers and Curti, The Post-Colonial Question, pp. 115-120.
49. See, for example, Spivak, "Teaching for the Times"; bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Marie Helene Laforest, "Black Cultures in Difference," in Chambers and Curti, The Post-Colonial Question, pp. 115-120.
50. Clara Rodriguez, Born in the U.S.A.
51. Flores, "Latino Studies." p. 214.
52. Lao, "Islands at the Crossroads," p. 174.
53. Francisco Rivera-Batiz and C. Santiago, Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Changing Reality (Washington, DC: National Puerto Rican Coalition, 1994).
54. As do most school districts, this city counts students as "Hispanic" without designating their specific ethnic/cultural background. While virtually all of the Latino students in the schools are Puerto Rican, use of the term Puerto Rican/Latino allows for those few students who might be of other Latino backgrounds.
55. This suit, filed under the Voting Rights Act, challenged at-large components of the city's election system for city council and school committee. In March 1995, the U.S. District Court (Civ. A, No. 92-30052-MAP) held that: (1) evidence established existence of sufficient Hispanic voter cohesion and White majority bloc voting in elections for at-large positions to meet threshold requirement to show violation of Act; (2) totality of circumstances established that electoral system for at-large positions on city council substantially undermined Hispanic opportunity to participate in local political process; (3) proportionality considerations supported conclusion that at-large system for electing 8 of 15 city council seats violated Act; and (4) city's system of electing two of ten school committee members by at-large election did not violate Act.
56. With the influx of state education reform dollars to the schools in the mid-1990s, White students began to trickle back to the public schools at the secondary level. While this gradual return is not evidenced by changes in racial/ethnic percentages, it has, according to school officials, triggered a slight decline in the student poverty rate, from 75 percent in 1992 to 71 percent in 1996.
57. The implication of this declaration is that Puerto Ricans' "home" is neither in this city nor in the United States. As such, it serves as evidence of the complexity and problematic nature for Puerto Ricans of "belonging."
58. Civ. A, No. 92-30052-MAP, p. 919.
59. See, for example, Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalties: Children in America's Schools (New York: Harper, 1991); Roger Rice and Catherine E. Walsh, "Equity at Risk: The Problem with State and Federal Reform Efforts," in Education Reform and Social Change: Multicultural Voices, Struggles, and Visions, ed. Catherine E. Walsh (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), pp. 7-19; Alan Rom, "School Finance and Equal Education Opportunity," in Walsh, Education Reform and Social Change, pp. 21-29.
60. See, for example, Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalties: Children in America's Schools (New York: Harper, 1991); Roger Rice and Catherine E. Walsh, "Equity at Risk: The Problem with State and Federal Reform Efforts," in Education Reform and Social Change: Multicultural Voices, Struggles, and Visions, ed. Catherine E. Walsh (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), pp. 7-19; Alan Rom, "School Finance and Equal Education Opportunity," in Walsh, Education Reform and Social Change, pp. 21-29.
61. See, for example, Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalties: Children in America's Schools (New York: Harper, 1991); Roger Rice and Catherine E. Walsh, "Equity at Risk: The Problem with State and Federal Reform Efforts," in Education Reform and Social Change: Multicultural Voices, Struggles, and Visions, ed. Catherine E. Walsh (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), pp. 7-19; Alan Rom, "School Finance and Equal Education Opportunity," in Walsh, Education Reform and Social Change, pp. 21-29.
62. The Desegregation and Lau Compliance Plans were the result of legal actions filed by Puerto Rican parents seeking equal and quality education. The Lau Case was filed in 1979 and the Lau Plan was written and adopted later that year. The Desegregation Case was brought in Federal Court in 1980. The Desegregation Consent Decree, negotiated in 1981, came to incorporate the Lau Plan as well as a 1980 Bilingual Special Education Consent Decree. These legal actions, along with that of the complaint filed in response to the budget cuts, represent an unwillingness to passively accept subordination and inequality; the use of the metropolis' system to challenge this system, i.e., a form of internal, anti-colonial struggle.
63. The data that follow are taken from school department and state Department of Education documents cited in my 1992 report to the Federal Court on consent decree implementation.
64. 1991 report by state Board of Education, cited in U.S. District Court, Civ. A, No. 92-30052-MAP, March 27, 1995, p. 918.
65. The continued educational decline of conditions for Puerto Ricans in the schools and their continued exclusion from the educational process illustrates the problems inherent in legal actions and consent decrees. Dependence on these documents alone, particularly when constant monitoring and vigilance is not included, can create a false hope for real educational improvement that often results in a drop off of parent concern and involvement. This in fact has been the case in this city; after the signing of the consent decree, parents' organization and critical attention to the schools dropped off, not to be resurrected until recently.
66. Richard Margolis, The Losers: A Report on Puerto Ricans and the Public Schools (New York: ASPIRA, 1965).
67. Such treatment is reminiscent of what Said referred to as the colonial practice of turning "native" populations into, in part, "... something one judges (as in a court of law), ... something one disciplines (as in school or prison) ..." See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 40. It also reflects what colonizing powers have long claimed about their "subjects" - that they are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves, the "apathy" and "inertia" that Fanon so aptly describes. See Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963).
68. Such treatment is reminiscent of what Said referred to as the colonial practice of turning "native" populations into, in part, "... something one judges (as in a court of law), ... something one disciplines (as in school or prison) ..." See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 40. It also reflects what colonizing powers have long claimed about their "subjects" - that they are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves, the "apathy" and "inertia" that Fanon so aptly describes. See Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963).
69. "Accountability" seems, as the responses of the administration and parents suggest, to be a new code word in the present cultural wars signifying, on the one hand, increased hegemonic control under the guise of "standards" and, on the other, established mechanisms that might insure educational justice.
70. Evidence of this concentration can be found in school department reports that show increased percentages of Whites and poverty rate declines in "uptown" schools. It was also mentioned as a concern by several administrators in interviews.
71. Bilingual Parent Advisory Councils (PACs), mandated by the state's Transitional Bilingual Education Law until just recently, have provided the only organized mechanism in this city (and in most cities) for the involvement of non-English-speaking parents. The purpose of the PAC is to involve parents in various aspects of the bilingual program, including decisionmaking and program evaluation.
72. The March 1996 Accreditation Report did in fact comment on this need. As it noted, The pace of change at _ High School, particularly with respect to the school's demographic make-up, requires ... that new initiatives be undertaken to address the needs of the current student body. The addition of another assistant principal/administrator of Hispanic ethnicity would help to increase the community's confidence. The hiring of an additional Hispanic administrator would also provide an openness and flexibility which is necessary as _ High School continues its efforts to meet increasingly high expectations from parents, students, and the population as a whole.
73. For a discussion of the internal colonization of Native Americans, African Americans, and Chicanos in the United States and the varying degrees to which these groups have emerged into postcoloniality, see Spivak. "Teaching for the Times."
74. Such treatment recalls that administered by U.S. government officials in Puerto Rico shortly after their invasion in 1898, the purpose of which was to "create docile minds: and to mold what were considered to be the 'passive and plastic' Puerto Ricans"; see Walsh, Pedagogy and the Struggle for Voice, p. 6.
75. Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation," p. 266. For a discussion of the challenges transnational identities present to the traditional notions of nation-state, see, for example, Michael Peter Smith, "Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroot Politics," Social Text, 39 (1994), 15-34; Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1994).
76. Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation," p. 266. For a discussion of the challenges transnational identities present to the traditional notions of nation-state, see, for example, Michael Peter Smith, "Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroot Politics," Social Text, 39 (1994), 15-34; Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1994).
77. Duany, "Imagining the Puerto Rican Nation," p. 266. For a discussion of the challenges transnational identities present to the traditional notions of nation-state, see, for example, Michael Peter Smith, "Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroot Politics," Social Text, 39 (1994), 15-34; Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1994).
78. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, "Education: Introduction," p. 427.