Carissa Explains It All

Of our textbooks 1,192 pages, fewer than 100 pages are dedicated to people of color. That's less than 10% of our history curriculum, in a district where 91% of students are people of color .-Providence student Afaf Akid.       This quote is a testament that there is an inherent need for students to learn about their culture in academic institutions. Ethnic Studies should not be an elective on a transcript, but embedded in all classes. The film Precious Knowledge begins in Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). Here, there are 32,500 Latinos, a majority, not minority. The nationwide dropout rate at the time of the documentary for Mexican-Americans was 50%. That means if a Mexican-American looked to their classmates on their left and right, one of those classmates would not see their graduation. This staggering statistic is the reality for many of our students of color. Furthermore, disallowing students to study about their culture as seen in the...

I can conclude that I am not a person of color, however I am a proud educator to students of all colors. This weeks readings and film The 13th , really hit home for me. This was my second time revisiting the film, after showing it to my Ethnic Studies class last winter that was not shocking to many of my students of color, but created a great discussion in my class. Many of my Black and Latino students  were overtly against policing and some who opened up about their personal experiences with the American penal system. Many of their family members had become products of "mass incarceration" that was heightened by Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill. Even after watching the documentary a second time, that opening statistic of incarceration's stared at me through the screen. The US has 5% of the world's population, but 25% prisoners. Insert head shaking GIF here. Furthermore, in 1972 incarcerations were 300,000. In 2020, it is almost 2.3 million. We talk about funding fo...