1 Chicana Expression—Later 20th Century Public A

1
Chicana Expression—Later 20th Century
Public Art and the Public Interest1 [Since the 1960s, a
number of artists have engaged in
debates] over the nature of public space and the art that is to be
placed within this space. In the
past in the United States, public art works often functioned as
representations of civic virtues
meant to instill valuable moral lessons. They were also
intended to mark the common values of a
diverse community and nation: heroic military efforts in
defense of one’s country or one’s
freedoms, respect for the laws of the land. The 1960s changed
all that. As people began to march
for civil rights and against the involvement of the United States
in the war in Vietnam, many
began to look at public art and ask: “Whose values are being
represented? Whose traditions and
beliefs? To whom are these works supposed to speak?”
Certainly artists in the 1930s had created

images of working-class Americans in government buildings
throughout the country, but those
murals omitted much—the racism directed at African
Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and
Asian Americans, the struggles to unionize, the labor of women
outside the home. Calls were
issued for a new kind of public art, one that was truly, in the
words of the art historian Arlene
Raven, “in the public interest.”
Walls of Pride: Chicano/a Murals These calls were met most
effectively by a new generation
of muralists, who began covering walls throughout the country
with images of local history or of
the less celebratory side of national history. These artists
argued that a public art could only be
truly public if those who shared space with it were consulted
about its ultimate form and use. In
California in particular, a new and dynamic movement evolved
that took inspiration from both the
murals of Mexico and the struggles of farm workers in the
United States, led by Cesar Chavez
and Luisa Moreno, to unionize under the United Farm Workers
of America (UFW).

The growing political activism of individuals of Mexican
descent around this unionization drive, which
ultimately grew into a full-blown civil rights movement, led to
the adoption by many of the name Chicano,
derived from Mexicano. While it had circulated as an i nformal
term for several decades within
communities whose members described themselves as Mexican
Americans, it was now used publicly
as a form of positive self-identification, indicative of a new
political consciousness and a commitment
to social change. One of the first Chicano murals was produced
in 1968 by Antonio Bernal on the side of
the UFW Center in Del Ray, California. The piece celebrates
modern revolutionary leaders, including
Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata (key figures in the Mexican
Revolution of 1910-20), Cesar Chavez, ,
Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. A companion piece
depicted Pre-Columbian leaders.
Chicana Muralist Judith Baca and The Great Wall of Los
Angeles
[A] cross-fertilization of traditions . . . . infuses the art of
Latino and Hispanic culture in the United

States.2 From the beginning of the sixteenth century, the
Hispanization of Indian culture and the
Indianization of Hispanic culture in Latin and South America
created a unique cultural pluralism. By
the last half of the twentieth century, Latino culture became
increasingly Americanized, and an influx
of Hispanic immigrants helped Latinize American culture.
1 excerpted from: Pohl, Frances K. A Social History of
American Art. (Thames & Hudson), 2002. 491-492.
2 the section below is excerpted from: Sayre, Henry M. The
Humanities: Culture, Continuity, and Change. Volume
6, 2nd ed. (Pearson, 2012). 1334.
2
While some Chicano and Chicana artists joined forces with the
UFW in creating murals and posters,
others turned to local neighborhoods or barrios to create images
they hoped would empower their
communities, creating civic pride and activism through both
celebration and critique. Judith Baca (b.
1946) was born and raised in Los Angeles in a community
whose roots ran deep into the Mexican past,
yet throughout high school and university she was not exposed

to the works of Mexican muralists or of
other politically committed artists or artist of color, or the
history of Mexico in general. This convinced
her that it was crucial for ethnic cultures to be represented
within the country’s educational system. After
completing her undergraduate degree, Baca returned to her high
school, where she organized her first
mural project in an attempt to bring together students from
different neighborhoods. The following
summer, while working for the Los Angeles Recreation and
Parks Department, she organized a team
of twenty youths from four different neighborhoods. In the
process of teaching them how to make art,
she also taught them how to uncover the histories of the ethnic
communities of Los Angeles and how to
make connections between the present and the past. In 1974 she
submitted a successful proposal to the
City Council for a citywide mural program. During its ten-year
existence, 250 paintings were created that
involved the participation of more than 1,000 crew members,
many of whom were young people with an
interest in art as a career. The artists worked with members of
the communities where their murals were
to be located, establishing a dialogue about local histories and

the images to be included. Baca became
director of a second citywide mural program in 1988.
These murals were joined by others created by groups such as
the San Francisco-based Chicana artist
collective Las Mujeres Muralistas, and individuals under their
own initiative…brought into the public
domain an astonishing variety of images to challenge the
stereotypes and the absences in art galleries,
educational institutions, and the mass
media. They commemorated Chicano
community life, religious traditions,
agricultural labor, and history. These
themes are all brought together, and
combined with images of the
contributions of other minority
communities in the Los Angeles area, in
The Great Wall of Los Angeles (right),
which was commissioned from Baca in
1976 by the Army Corps of Engineers

for the Tujunga Wash drainage canal in
the San Fernando Valley, one of the
many “concrete arteries” (Baca’s phrase) constructed to control
the rivers and run-off in the Los Angeles
basin.
The 2,500-foot long work was painted over five summers
between 1976 and 1983, and involved several
professional artists and hundreds of young assistants. Baca
wanted The Great Wall to be an alternative
history of California, one that acknowledged the presence of
ethnic peoples, racism, class conflict, sexism
and homophobia, and that gave a public voice to those who had
been silenced. Its images range from
depictions of the indigenous inhabitants of California and the
arrival of the Spanish to the Depression and
labor organizing of the 1930s, the internment of Japanese
Americans in World War II, the white flight to
the suburbs in the 1950s, with the accompanying displacement
of peoples of color by the construction of
freeways, and the civil rights and gay liberation movements.
3

In organizing the production of the mural, Baca enlisted the
help of scientists, historians, politicians, and
members of local community groups. Her young assistants were
black, white, Chicano/a, Jewish, and
Asian American and brought with them their experiences of
interracial struggle. Through their work,
they began to understand the roots of racial conflict and to
break down some of the barriers that existed
between them. To facilitate this project, Baca, the filmmaker
Donna Deitch, and the artist Christina
Schlesinger founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center
(SPARC) in Venice, California. Over
the years since 1976 SPARC has served as a nonprofit
multicultural arts center devoted to the production,
exhibition, distribution, and preservation of public art works.
Reading continues on the next page > > > >

4
More on The Great Wall of Los Angeles—Overview of Selected
Panels from the Mural3
Pre-Historic California The initial segment begins in 20,000
BC when the animals whose bones were
found in the La Brea Tar Pits still wandered among the plants
and trees native to the area. In their
research, the Mural Makers discovered that many of the trees
we think of as typical of California, like the
Eucalyptus and Pepper, were brought by settlers. By 10,000 BC,
as Indians migrated to the Americas,
perhaps on a land bridge, the Chumash Indian peoples settled in
this region.
They had a special relationship to and respect for the animals,
especially porpoises. These are shown both
in their natural environment . . . . .[T]his section provides an
overview of Chumash practical and spiritual
life as it might have been in 1000 BC. . . . Much of this section
was painted by an American Indian boy
who shares this world view. The peaceful early history of the
region ends with a White hand rising from

the sea, symbol of the destruction of Native American life by
White settlers.
Spanish Arrival The arrival of the Spanish explorer Portillo,
who brought the first expedition from
Mexico to L.A. in 1769, begins the
third segment. The figures in the
clouds of smoke that rise from the
Indian campfires represent the
legendary Black Amazon Queen,
Califia, whom Portillo expected to
find and for whom California is
named.
mural description continues on the next page > > >

3 The following text which tells the story of the Great Wall is
excerpted from the Great Wall Walking Tour Guide
www.sparcmurals.org/sparcone/index.php?option=com_content
&task=view&id=21&Itemid=53
http://sparcmurals.org:16080/store/index.php?page=shop.produc
t_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=93&category_id=16
&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=39
http://www.sparcmurals.org/sparcone/index.php?option=com_co
ntent&task=view&id=21&Itemid=53
5
Further on, riding a mule, Father Junipero Serra arrives (see
image below). Founder of missions
throughout California, he is depicted with the San Fernando
mission behind him. Within a year after the
arrival of the Spaniard, a large percentage of the Native
American population of 150,000 inhabitants died
of diseases to which they had no immunity that the White men
brought. For this reason, the San Fernando
Mission became known to the Indians as the "House of Death."
It is commonly believed that the
founders of Los Angeles were
Spanish. In fact, of the 22 adult

members of the expedition that
founded the city in 1781, only one was
Spanish. The rest were Mulatto4
Black, Mestizo5 [of mixed Spanish
and Indian parentage] or Indian, as
they are in this representation.
Mexico governed California until
1843, the sword and the Bible
marching hand in hand. The fourth segment (below) is
dominated by the figure of a Spanish land baron,
illustrating the "hacendados" who dominated early California.
Over his left shoulder, the mural
depicts the land baron’s serape [a
shawl or blanket worn as a cloak in
Latin America] as formed by the land
and labor of the Indians which he has
taken and used to build the hacienda [a

large estate or planation with a
dwelling house] toward which he looks
and where an elegant wedding is taking
place. The panel begins with soldiers
who raise the Spanish flag and ends with the battle between the
Mexican army and the U.S. cavalry for
the control of California.
. . . Meanwhile, (as depicted in the panel below), in the state
capital at Monterey, ex-Southerners passed
laws--WHITES ONLY--which did not allow people of Mexican,
Black or Chinese descent to make
claims. Biddy Mason, an ex-slave from Georgia who fought
extradition under the fugitive slave laws and
who became wealthy, was known for her charity and was a
founder of the African Methodist Church in
Los Angeles. Joaquin Murieta, a legendary Mexican Robin
Hood, fights for the oppressed: The landless
who "squat" on the state; the "hanging tree" victims of
prejudice; and the Indians who are slaughtered
with the coming of the "Iron Horse" [the railroad].
4 Mulatto: an older term for people of mixed white and black

parentage
5 Mestizo: a term for people of mixed Spanish and indigenous
parentage
6
The "Iron Horse" also brings a wave of Chinese immigration.
The Chinese segment (below) shows the
workers on the transcontinental railroad, which was built
largely by Chinese labor. The faces which
appear in the smoke of the locomotive honor those who died in
the course of this mammoth undertaking.
A surge of racism that accompanied the Chinese immigration
led to the so-called "Chinese Massacre "
when vigilantes hung 11 Chinese in a downtown Los Angeles
street.
The signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which

Mexico ceded "Upper" California to the U.S.,
opened the West to a boom of settlement and development
including the beginnings of the citrus industry.
World War I Emphasis in this section (below) is on women's
role in the war experience. The
"doughboys" leave, kissing their wives and girlfriends goodbye.
In the recruiting poster, woman appears
in her mythic form as the symbol of Liberty. In reality, she
works in the war industry replacing men in
nontraditional jobs like welding, as well as contributing to the
war effort through "women's jobs" like
nursing.
Illusion of Prosperity (1920s) (below) The temperance
movement's axe looses a river of whiskey from
the barrels of booze that the gangsters, symbolized by an Al
Capone figure, used to become rich and
powerful, while flappers dance in an "illusion of Prosperity."
During this heyday of jazz, racial
discrimination against Blacks continued. Black musicians and

their audiences were not allowed in White
hotels; only the now fabled Dunbar allowed them to stay in Los
Angeles. Above the musicians, between
the hotel and a bank beginning to topple in the crash of 1929, a
Black worker drinks from a fountain
marked, "Colored Only."
7
Crash and Depression (1930s) In spite of the efficiency of the
assembly lines, the cornucopias of
prosperity and the fantasies of romance produced by
Hollywood's movie industry, the depression is
inevitable. It cannot be hidden by the Hollywood fantasies,
which only serve as a facade that tries to cover
up the reality of the breadlines behind. While the unemployed
sell apples and warm their hands on a trash
can fire, the marching feet of the unemployed lead directly into
the strikes against low wages.

The strikers symbolize the beginnings of the militant union
movement of the Thirties and show the brutal
repression. Victimized by invalid treaties, Native Americans are
forced to sell two thirds of their land to
developers at 45 cents an acre. Three hundred fifty thousand
Mexican-Americans are rounded up and
shipped across the border in mass deportations.
Dustbowl Refugees At the same time as the Mexicans
are deported, the "Okies," refugees from the dust bowl
whose fields were destroyed by drought, provide a new
source of cheap farm labor. The "Okies," in spite of their
misery, came voluntarily. The next migration, that of the
Japanese forcibly taken to internment camps during
World War I, was involuntar y. The problem of how to
connect these two migrations puzzled the Mural Makers.

Baca remembers asking her assistants, "What did the
Okies and the Nisei have in common?" The answer,
when it came, was obvious. Laundry. Lines of hanging
wash form a visual connection between these two
sections.
The 1940's: The 1940's section . . . begins where the Thirties
section ends: With the role of the Japanese
Americans during this period.
World War II The 442nd Japanese-American infantry division
comes out of the stripes of the
American flag-yet, in the shadow of these stripes, Japanese-
Americans move backward toward the
internment camps depicted in the previous section, forced to
discard their possessions as they go. The
mural continues to explore in turn the contradictory situation of
each of the other ethnic minorities in
California. A Jewish-American family, in the shadow of Hitler's
hand, listens to the news from Europe.
Hitler's other hand is a fist. From it goose steppers lead towar d
an anti-Fascist rally in Los Angeles and
toward World War II. Below, on the home front, is the building
of the California Aqueduct which

transports water from north to south to aid developers, but
creates a desert in the Owens Valley region.
8
Zoot Suit Riots The contradictions in the Chicano experience
are expressed by contrasting the experience
of Chicano servicemen with that of discrimination at home.
David Gonzalez, a local Chicano
Congressional Medal of Honor winner, is shown standing with
his mother, in a collage of photos from a
family album. In the next panel, taxis bring servicemen into Los
Angeles for the Zoot Suit Riots in which
Mexican-American boys wearing Zoot Suits were stripped and
beaten by marines with the consent of the
police. Trains carry "braceros," Mexican farm workers,
contracted to work temporarily in the California
farm fields. The struggle to organize the farm workers and
demands for more humane working conditions
are represented by the portrait of labor organizer Luiso Moreno,
who is wrapped in the flag of the
Congress of Hispanic Groups.

Jewish Refugees Parallel to the train bringing migrant workers
is the St. Louis, the ship filled with
Jewish European immigrants
which was refused entry to the
U.S. because the Jewish
immigration quota was already
met. The spirit of these starved and
suffering Jewish victims of the
Holocaust emerges from the ship
and reaches for American soil.
Behind are depicted the death
camps where the Germans murdered more than six million Jews.
Beyond the death camps is the mushroom cloud of the Atomic
Bomb, another symbol of death, and
beyond that the founding of Israel and the greening of the
desert. The end of the War brings in a spurt of
prosperity tract houses and a baby boom! In the kitchen of a
typical tract house in the San Fernando
Valley (the rest of the development can be seen through the
window) a baby screams. On the television

Ronald Reagan stars in a 1940's era war movie. Outside, peering
through the plate glass windows at the
"American Dream," the Soldiers of Color discover that little has
changed for them on their return.
The 1950's--Farewell to Rosie the Riveter During World War II,
millions of American women left their
traditional roles as housewives and entered the war industries as
manual laborers and managers. But in the
post-war years, "Rosie the Riveter" returned to the kitchen as
the men returned home and reclaimed their
power and position in labor.
Women's access to work
positions traditionally
dominated by men was
postponed. The television set
propagates mass social images
of the housewife and depicts a
working woman being sucked
into the T.V. image. Behind
the televised images of

American womanhood, an all-American family of 2.5 kids (.5
equaling "Howdy Doody") moves into a
new suburb of endless box houses in endless rows, representing
White flight from the Central City.
9
Meanwhile, minorities and poor immigrants move from rural
communities into the city. Rows of orange
trees have been uprooted as suburbs sprawl throughout the L.A.
basin and valleys.
Chavez Ravine and the Division of the Chicano Community
Freeways encircle and dislocate various
areas in L.A., effectivel y dividing minority communities. In this
panel, a Chicano family is separated by
the serpentine thoroughfares as the pillared highway breaks
through the roofs of houses. Resembling a
UFO, massive Dodger Stadium descends from the twilight sky
into Chavez Ravine. A bulldozer and
policemen forcibly
uproot the Chicano
community so that

Dodger Stadium can be
built on land designated
at one time for public
housing. Many
individuals resisted this
forced eviction from
their neighborhood, but
to no avail.
The Birth of Rock and Roll Pop 50's culture is captured in this
scene at a drive-in theater. A huge Elvis
Presley wails his rock songs from the silver screen, but behind
him a smaller image of Chuck Berry
acknowledges the original force of rock's creativity and
inspiration in the Black community. Various
hotrods and lowriders, face the screen, as a starspeckled sky
forms the background. Behind the movie
screen and Elvis, Black musicians again testify
to the spirit and contributi on of the Black
community to popular culture. Jazz saxophonist
Charlie Parker and Blues vocalist-caller Big

Mama Thorton (who wrote "Ain't Nothin' But A
Hound Dog" which Elvis popularized without
crediting her) perform. Behind these Black
musicians, a Charles White portrait of a Black
woman holding up South L.A. portrays the
sustaining community activism of Black women
in volunteer and church organizations.
This scene emerges with another
depicting the interior of a local bus. Paul
Robeson, Rosa Parks, Gwendolyn
Brooks, Ralph Bunche and Martin
Luther King, Jr., are rising from their
bus seats and moving forward for new
destinations (Civil Rights).
10

Origins of the Gay Rights Movement The 1950's witnessed the
emergence of homosexual community
organizing, represented in this panel by the first gay/ lesbian
publications and social change organizations.
As police enter the closet to repress the homosexual community
through violence and entrapment, women
forming the first lesbian rights organization, the "Daughters of
Bilitis," meet in a kitchen and mimeograph
copies of their newsletter, "The Ladder," copies of which float
out of the closet above the heads of the
police. In a gay bar, solitary men sit in front of mirrors,
cautiously glancing at one another, fearing
entrapment by vice officers. Each wears a mask at the back of
his head symbolizing the false front to
society gays had to assume to avoid persecution. In the mirror,
the men see themselves as they wish they
could be—warm, affectionate, caring. The masks also represent
the Mattachine Society, founded in 1950
by, among others, Harry Hay, depicted here issuing his call to
organize. Inspired by the masked
Mattachine male dancers of medieval France, the Mattachine
Society was the first to advocate social
equality for homosexuals.

Jewish Achievements in Arts and Science Just as Jewish writers
like Allen Ginsberg took risks in
developing a new creative movement, Jews in Los Angeles
started out in high risk businesses which, by
the 1950's, had become among the most important in California.
New York garment workers become
recyclers of rags in Los of Angeles and, eventually, the
backbone of the garment industry. Also high risk
in the 20's was the fledgling film industry built by Jewish studio
owners into highly successful
enterprises. Finally a
huge image of Albert
Einstein holding a
diagram of an atom
reveals his concern
that atomic power be
used for peaceful
purposes but not war.
Indian Assimilation In this scene, the forced

assimilation of Indians is depicted by a
government official stripping an Indian boy of
his traditional dress and cutting his hair. Indian
youth were sent several states away from their
homes to boarding schools where they were
taught to give up their traditional culture for
Anglo ways. Concurrent with this program was
the urban relocation off of reservations of
many other Indian adults and children.
11
Asians Gain Citizenship and Property Despite harsh
immigration quotas, Asian Americans made
progress in the Fifties by attaining naturalization and land
ownership rights. A Korean civilian is sworn in
as the first to be granted American citizenship. Behind
the scene, a Japanese farmer stands proud in his newly
purchased field, depicting the gains of Japanese
Americans also to become citizens and to own land.

Olympic Champions 1948-1964 Breaking Barriers In this final
panel, a woman runner carries the
Olympic torch, its flame and smoke swirling into scenes of
athletes who overcome tremendous obstacles
to win Olympic events. Billy Mills, a Dakota Oglala marathon
runner, overcame his repression in
boarding schools to become an important symbol for Native
American pride. Black runner Wilma Rudolf,
overcoming her childhood infirmities (being unable to walk
until her eighth birthday) throws away her leg
braces and wins three gold medals, the first American ever.
Sammy Lee, a Korean American diver, and
Vicky Manalo Droves, a Filipina diver, win gold medals as
well. The symbolic final runner carries the
torch of the 1950’s into the civil rights movements of the
1960’s.
1
What is Multiculturalism?

By Professor Gregory Jay, University of Wisconsin--
Milwaukee1
I. Who Did We Learn About In School Today?
Like most words, "multiculturalism" needs to be understood
from both an historical and a
conceptual perspective. Historically, "multiculturalism" came
into wide public use in the West
the early 1980s in the context of public school curriculum
reform. Specifically, proponents
argued that the content of classes in history, literature, social
studies, and other areas reflected
what came to be called a "Eurocentric" and male bias. Few if
any women or people of color, or
people from outside the Western European tradition, appeared
prominently in the curriculums of
schools and colleges in the United States. This material absence
was also interpreted as a value
judgment that reinforced unhealthy sexist, ethnocentric and
even racist attitudes.
Observers noted that teaching and administrative staffs in
schools were also overwhelmingly white
and/or male (whiteness being pervasive at the teaching level,
maleness at the administrative level,
reflecting the politics of gender and class as well as race in the

educational system). Eventually
parallel questions were raised about the ethno-racial or cultural
biases of other institutions, such as
legislatures, government agencies, corporations, religious
groups, private clubs, etc. Each of these
has in turn developed its own response and policies regarding
diversity and multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism also is directly related to global shifts of
power, population, and culture in the era
of globalization and "postcolonialism," as nations around the
world established independence in
the wake of the decline of Western empires (whether European,
Soviet, or American).
Globalization transformed previously homogeneous cities or
regions into complex meeting
grounds for different ethnic, racial, religious, and national
groups, challenging the political
and cultural system to accommodate this diversity. Many of the
previously homogeneous
nation-states of Europe then experienced an influx of
immigration by people of color and
different cultural and religious beliefs from the areas those
nations had once ruled as colonies. The
children of these new immigrants, like those before them,
presented fresh questions to teachers
who were unfamiliar with their languages,belief systems,
customs, and ways of life. How these
children were to be educated, and how the curriculum was to be
reformed to meet their needs,

became matters of continued debate.
Finally, "multiculturalism" may also have become a popular
term as "race" lost much of its former
credibility as a concept. Scientists agree that, in terms of DNA
genetics, "race" has no significant
meaning as a way of categorizing human differences.
Intermarried families offer the puzzle of a
parent and child considered as belonging to two different
“races”--clearly an absurd idea given that
race was thought of as biologically passed from parent to
offspring. Thus "culture" and “ethnicity”
1 Jay, Gregory. “What Is Multiculturalism?” Department of
English, University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. Revised July
2011.
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/gjay/www/Multicult/ Copyright
statement: “These materials may be used in schools and
colleges; permission to reprint is required for publishers and
other web sites.”
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/gjay/www/Multicult/
2
began to replace "race" as terms for distinguishing among
distinct human groups. [In 2008], in
the U.S., African Americans responded that despite Barack
Obama’s election, we were not yet
living in a “post-racial” world, and that a focus on “feel-good

multiculturalism” that
“celebrates diversity” can become an excuse for not continuing
the struggle against racism.
II. Is There Any Justice in This World?
The concept of “multiculturalism” also has a history rooted in
theories of human rights,
democracy, human equality, and social justice. The concern to
create a more "culturally
diverse" curriculum owed much to the intellectual and social
movements associated with the
U.S. Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s. These included Black
Power, La Raza/Chicano Power,
the American Indian Movement, and the Women's Liberation
movement, each of which
challenged the norms and effects of educational policy.
Perhaps more importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in
Brown vs. Board of Education
(1954) --- which outlawed explicit school segregation --- led to
the admission of large numbers
of non-white students to public and some private schools (also
occasioning the "white flight"
that has largely succeeded in re-segregating schools in most
major cities). Teachers and school
administrators then saw a student body with very different
faces. This demographic cultural
diversity was accelerated by postcolonial immigration from

non-Western European nations
during the last two decades -- especially from Mexico, Latin
America, and Asia. This pattern was
largely caused by progressive arguments leading to the
liberalization of U.S. immigration laws
in the mid-1960s, which had formerly used ethnic and racial
bias to restrict non- European
immigration. Multiculturalism thus also denotes an approach to
“culturally relevant pedagogy” that
takes into account the cultural diversity in the classroom, the
social conditions of the students,
and the differences in their background knowledge and learning
styles.
III. Melt or Get Out of the Pot!
The historical emergence of “multiculturalism” as an ideology
brings with it many complicated
conceptual problems, causing a rich debate over what
multiculturalism is or should mean.
America's traditional conception of itself as a "melting pot" of
diverse peoples joined in a
common New World culture has been challenged by those
multiculturalists who consider the
"melting pot" metaphor a cover for oppressive assimilation. To
them, the only way you were able to
melt into the pot is by assimilating -- becoming similar --- to
the dominant
or "hegemonic"2 white culture. The United States’s

Naturalization Act
of 1789 declared that only “white” immigrants could eventually
become
citizens. In fact, admission to the socio-cultural pot of
acceptance was
restricted at first only to certain European ethnic groups (the
English,
Dutch, German, French, and Scandinavian), so that others such
as the
Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Greeks, and the Slavs all
experienced
discrimination in the process. Hotels, clubs, and housing
developments
routinely advertised ethnic discrimination against these groups,
just as
2 hegemonic: in this context, “hegemony” (heh-GEM-uh-nee)
refers to leadership or dominance, especially by one social
group over others
3
Jim Crow segregation was seen in the ubiquitous “white” and
“colored” signs placed on water
fountains, waiting rooms, theaters, and parks.
Many multiculturalists reject acculturation and assimilation in
principle, as violations of human

rights, as well as out of a recognition of historical truth.
“Critical Multiculturalism” became
a movement insisting that American society has never been
only “white,” but always in fact
multiracial and diverse. The Native Americans had been here
for thousands of years, the Spanish
were the first settlers, Africans arrived as early as 1620,
Mexicans became citizens by the
thousands in 1848 when the U.S. conquered half of Mexico in
the War of 1848, and Chinese and
Japanese emigrated to labor here throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries.
Recovering the memory of this history, critical multiculturalism
seeks to preserve distinctly
different ethnic, racial, or cultural communities without
melting them into a common culture.
Thus this form of multiculturalism is also called “cultural
pluralism,” as it envisions a
society with many different cultures living equally and side-by-
side. Critical multiculturalism
critiques the former culture of white supremacy, a culture of
legalized bigotry and
discrimination, and so advocates an emphasis on the separate
characteristics and virtues of
particular cultural groups.
IV. Islam, Immigration, and the “Failure of Multiculturalism”?

. . . The “melting pot” idealism of cultural pluralism [has
sometimes] appeared challenged by
seemingly unbridgeable and sometimes violent religious
differences. These differences became
sharply public and international in the wake of the attacks of
September 11, 2001 on New
York and Washington, when Saudi Arabian hijackers avowing
an Islamic jihad against the
West flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon,
precipitating a reaction that included
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bombings by Muslims in Europe
likewise started a debate over
whether immigrants from Muslim countries were capable of
assimilation.
On February 5, 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron set
off an international controversy
with a speech at the Munich security conference in which he
condemned “Islamist extremism”
and in part blamed its rise in England to “state multicul turalis
m”: “ Under the doctrine
of state multiculturalism,“ he said, “we have encouraged
different cultures to live separate
lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream.
We’ve failed to provide a vision of
society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even
tolerated these segregated
communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to
our values.” The Islamic

communities of Britain have been a breeding ground for
“terrorists,” according to Cameron,
and to the extent that these communities do not assimilate to the
majority culture’s ideology
of “universal human rights” and secular democracy, Cameron
claimed, their separatism shows
the failure of multiculturalism. Critics of Cameron’s speech saw
it as lending support to
“Islamophobia” and as downplaying poverty, racism, and
discrimination as causes of
dissatisfaction among immigrants and communities of color.
On July 22, 2011 a Norwegian fundamentalist Christian
terrorist, Anders Breivik, launched an
attack in Norway in which he slaughtered over seventy young
people at a youth camp as well as
4
bombing parts of downtown Oslo. Breivik’s online manifesto
used language similar to that of
Cameron and other right-wing leaders as he condemned
“multiculturalism” and the immigration
of non-white, non-Christians to Europe. Debate in the aftermath
led to reflections suggesting that
toleration of right-wing anti-multiculturalism was itself the real
“failure” as Europe struggled, like

the United States, to construct societies that embraced a
diversity of racial and ethnic groups.
In the United States, immigration has always been a powerful
political issue, as “nativists” have
periodically warned against the flow of new foreigners, from
the Irish and Italians and Jews to the
Mexicans and the Hmong [an ethnic group from parts of China
and several countries in
Southeast Asia]. From the 1980s onward, anti-immigration
sentiment increasingly focused on
Latinos, especially Mexicans, although many individuals
targeted in such campaigns were in fact
Mexican Americans whose ancestors had been citizens dating
back to the 19th century. Most
of the tension arose out of an economic contradiction: on the
one hand, American businesses
and households relied on the low-wage and non-unionized labor
of Latinos, particularly the
undocumented; on the other hand, the decline in job
opportunities experienced by many in the
majority culture led them to blame immigration and to call for
stronger measures against it,
including border fences and police document checks. While
some claimed that Hispanics
were refusing, unlike white ethnics, to assimilate, bilingualism
was no stronger among Latino
communities than it had been historically with Poles and
Germans in similar urban settings.
Meanwhile American majority culture continued to borrow from

and incorporate the food, song,
literature, and art from South of the Border.
V. Is Identity Political?
One problem with certain strands of multiculturalism is their
reliance on "identity politics."
"Identity politics" refers to the tendency to define one's
political and social identity and interests
purely in terms of some group category: race, ethnicity, class,
gender, nationality, religion, etc.
Identity politics became more popular after the 1960s for many
of the same reasons that
multiculturalism did. The critique of America's "common
culture" led many people to identify
with a particular group, rather than with the nation --- a nation,
after all, whose policies they
believed had excluded or oppressed them.
People increasingly called themselves by hybrid names: Native-
Americans, African-Americans,
Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, Gay-Americans, etc., in an
explosion of hyphenation.
This movement for group solidarity did in many cases provide
individuals with the resources to
defend their interests and express their values, resources that as
disparate individuals they could not

possibly attain. [In periods of economic slowdown or decline,]
the scramble for a piece of the
shrinking pie increased the tendency of people to band together
in groups that together might
have enough power to defend or extend their interests.
American society [has often been seen]
as a battleground of special-interest groups, many of them
defined by the racial, ethnic, or cultural
identity of their members. [In this view,] hostility between
these groups as they compete for
scarce resources is inevitable. In defense of identity politics,
others point out that these divisions
between cultural groups are less the voluntary decisions of
individuals than the product of
discrimination and bigotry in the operation of the economy and
the social institutions. It is these
5
injustices that divide people up by race, ethnicity, gender,
sexual preference, etc., privileging the
dominant group and subordinating the rest, they claim.
VI. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.
Still, most analysts admit that in practice individuals belong to
numerous different groups and have
complex socio-cultural identities. The theoretical word for
analyzing people in terms of their group

affiliations is "subject position." Each person occupies a variety
of subject positions -- is positioned
socially, economically, and politically -- by virtue of how his or
her subjectivity is shaped by group
identifications. When we analyze our identities, we can break
them up into numerous facets of
ourselves, until it seems that we might never be able to put them
back together again.
A person may think of herself or be treated at one moment as a
woman, at another moment as
Asian, at another moment as upper-class, at another moment as
elderly, at another moment as
Christian, at another moment as a lesbian--each time being
either helped or hindered by the
identification, depending on the circumstances. The various
parts of our cultural identities may
not add up to a neat and predictable whole. Multiculturalism,
then, insofar as it groups individuals
into categories, may overlook the practical reality that no one
lives in just one box. Recent
proponents of multiculturalism, indeed, have emphasized the
mul tic ult uralism within
each individual, as each of us can map our multiplicity through
the many points on
the “diversity wheel.”

WATCH : 10-minute video on The Great Wall of Los Angeles
https://youtu.be/tJRL_AhQ3u4
Name: __________________ HUM 389 at 9:30 Final Exam
(Fall 2021)
Raw Score =
1 question with 2 parts at 12 pts each = _______ / 24 pts + 1
“freebie” pt = _____ /25 pts
x 10 (weighting factor) =
________ /250 points (Weighted Score)
– ______ points (if late penalty) = ________ /250 (Final
Score) Letter Grade: ________
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY STATEMENT
By adding my name and the date to the signature line below, I
affirm that all of my answers represent my own individual work,
which I completed without collaborating with any other
students. I also affirm that if I used any sources other than the
course readings (CP and/or BR pages) and/or assigned
videos/films specified for each question, that I have made that
outside source use clear (whether I have
summarized,paraphrased, or directly quoted the outside source)
by using appropriate MLA-style in-text citations within my
answers and by including a “Works Cited” page at the end of
this file which includes full bibliographic citations (plus
working hyperlinks to each source) for each and every outside
source I used in some way.
_____________________________
___________________
Student Signature (sign or type your name here)
Date

FORMATTING (RR formatting--1 inch margins, 12 point Times
New Roman font):
· add one double space betw. the last line of each question part
(A & B) & the first line of your part A and B answers
· single-space each of your answers (your Part A answer and
your Part B answer)
· you have a choice between 2 questions (each question having a
required part A and part B); once you complete your answers
for the question of your choice, DELETE the text of the
question you are NOT answering, leaving the complete Part A
and Part B text of the question you do answer along with the
text of your part A and part B answers
EVALUATION For each of your answers (Part A and Part B),
you will be graded on:
· the thoroughness of your development (within the length
requirement parameters specified in the question)
· the quality and clarity of the comparative point you identify
(is it related to significant/key points in each reading/ video
rather than minor details or general introductory statements? is
your comparative point a strongly direct one, and is it clearly
explained?)
· the direct relevancy of the quote examples you select to
illustrate the comparative point you identify (and the extent to
which your use of those quotes accurately reflects the larger
contexts of the passages they are taken from and of the
reading/video/film as a whole)
· lack of redundancy between parts A and B of your answers

Answer EITHER Q#1 (Parts A and B) OR Q#2 (Parts A
and B)
(EACH question has 2 required parts that you must answer--Part
A and Part B)
QUESTION #1 Score: ______ /24 pts (12 pts for Part A + 12
pts for Part B)
Q#1, Part A (12 pts): (length requirement: 200-350 words)
Imagine that Dr. Gregory Jay were asked to view and respond to
our assigned video about The Great Wall of Los Angeles (10-
minute video posted to the Oct 26 folder). Based specifically on
Jay’s essay “What Is Multiculturalism?” (BR 1 of 2 in the Aug
19 folder) and on the Great Wall video, explain a significant
area of connection Jay would be likely to identify between a key
main idea from his essay and a key main idea from the
video.First, explain the nature of the connection in your own
words and then use at least TWO well-chosen, concise quotes
from different parts of EACH of the two sources (Jay’s essay
and the video) to illustrate/support that connection (for a
requirement of four quotes total—2 from each source). For each
quote you use from Jay’s essay, use a parenthetical citation for
the BR page number; for each quote you use from the video, use
a parenthetical citation of the starting time marker.
Q#1, Part B (12 pts): (length requirement: 200-350 words)
Imagine that Dr. Gregory Jay were asked to read and respond to
pages 4-11 of our assigned BR on The Great Wall of Los
Angeles (posted to the Oct 26 folder). Based specifically on
Jay’s essay “What Is Multiculturalism?” (BR 1 of 2 in the Aug
19 folder) and on the BR textual description/commentary for
TWO of the specific panels discussed in that reading, explain a

specific point of connection that Jay would be likely to identify
between his essay and TWO specific panels of the mural. First,
explain the nature of the connection in your own words and then
use one or two well-chosen, concise quotes from Jay’s essay
(different from the quotes you used in your answer for Part A)
and TWO concise quotes from the Great Wall BR (one about
each of the two panels you choose) to illustrate/support that
connection (for a requirement of 3-4 quotes total—1-2 from Jay
and 2 from pages 4-11 of the Great Wall BR). Include
parenthetical citations to the relevant page numbers from the
respective BRs for your quotes.

1 Chicana Expression—Later 20th Century Public A

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to 1 Chicana Expression—Later 20th Century Public A

Similar to 1 Chicana Expression—Later 20th Century Public A (16)

More from VannaJoy20

More from VannaJoy20 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

1 Chicana Expression—Later 20th Century Public A