An African-American group of citizens were on today’s Fresno Bee regarding concern that FUSD hired a white instructor to teach cultural studies at the newly built Rutherford B. Gaston Jr. high School in west Fresno. The Teacher they refer to is Peter Beck who is formally an instructor of Cultural Studies at Hoover High. Those who expressed concern and captured on the media were all African-American and voiced their concerns on behalf of all people of color, emphasis were made that African-American, Latino and Southeast Asians were the dominate students on this campus. The projected attendance at this school will be predominately Latino. The assumption then is our community has a most major stake in this decision and obligation to express our views on this decision. The points made by these concern citizens were as follows: “We are still are at the racial fault lines, and we want someone who will be able to think critically about those racial fault lines and how do we help heal, to restore the problems that have existed.” So how do we place one full time instructor into three categories of cultural studies? Do we hire an instructor who meets one of the ethnic backgrounds and is culturally sensitive to the remaining ethnic groups? Do we hire three fulltime instructors reflective of those dominate cultures on campus? Do we divide the position into three part-time instructors to cover, these dominate cultures on campus? Since Latino students will largely dominate the campus do we hire a Latino instructor who is culturally sensitive to the other cultural groups? However, do us want to perpetuate and emphasis that the current instructor is “white” and therefore cannot be culturally sensitive to our students? .This is a very complicated scenarios but it is a question we must come to grips with and if not we then will become what have resented for centuries, racism. Mr. Beck has had a number of years teaching cultural studies in the FUSD and to this date I have not heard that he is culturally incentive in fact it’s been quite the opposite. Perhaps in the hiring process he stood out the strongest. I would like to point out that those Chicano students at FCC when they first started out with their demands which led to the start of a Raza Studies Program and other services, it wasn’t Chicano Instructors that supported our cause it was a “White” instructor who walked-out with us, supported our cause and we then hired our own Raza Studies facility. Dr. Charles Wattles” taught us our own history and culture on Aztec and Olmec Civilizations, his teaching included our Nahuatl language, which he spoke quite fluently, a civilization that that we had never known and for that we were grateful that we eventually acknowledge his efforts and honored him with an Honorary Chicano Award. So the question remains…is Mr. Beck culturally sensitive to Latinos?
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 16:21:09 +0000
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