The State Board of Education voted unanimously on Wednesday to dump a proposed Mexican-American Heritage textbook deemed racist and rife with factual inaccuracies. Former right-wing SBOE member Cynthia Dunbar, who has called public education a tyrannical “tool of perversion,” heads the book’s publishing company. Earlier this year, scholars found more than 140 errors in the book, which describes Mexican-Americans as “lazy” and Chicano activists as a “threat to society” (“Teaching Truthiness,” Sept. 16). A new report shows more than 400 factual errors in the book author’s responses to the committee’s previous findings. SBOE member Ruben Cortez Jr., D-Brownsville, said the book would only serve to “perpetuate the hatred” already being directed toward minority school students in a post-Trump climate. “This book offers one thing: It offers hate toward Mexican-Americans,” he said. Senators Sylvia Garcia and José Menéndez said they plan to introduce bills that would allow the SBOE to offer optional ethnic studies courses. And UT-Austin history professor Emilio Zamora plans to submit his own Mexican-American studies book for consideration by 2018. The SBOE will take a final vote Friday, Nov. 18.
This article appears in November 18 • 2016.