The SBOE does its thing.

Marisa Perez-Diaz
Texas advocates for Mexican-American studies classes won a bitter victory Wednesday, gaining approval to move forward with the class they wanted but losing the course title.
The State Board of Education had been debating more than four years over how and whether to offer teachers materials and guidance to teach Mexican-American studies. In a preliminary vote, the board voted nearly unanimously to create curriculum standards for the elective class. But now it will be called “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent.”
A final vote on the issue [was] scheduled for Friday.
The class will be based on an innovative course Houston ISD got state approval to offer in 2015. Texas Education Agency staff will make any needed changes to that set of curriculum standards and then bring it back for the first of two public hearings and votes in June.
Lawrence Allen Jr., a Houston Democrat, was the only member to vote against the newly named course, expressing support for Mexican-American studies but criticizing the new title.
Starting a fierce debate with Democrats on the board, Beaumont Republican David Bradley proposed the new name for the course. When asked why he didn’t want to keep “Mexican-American studies,” he said, “I don’t subscribe to hyphenated Americanism. … I find hyphenated Americanism to be divisive.”
“As someone who identifies as Mexican-American, your experience is unlike my experience,” San Antonio Democrat Marisa Perez-Diaz retorted. “I’m asking you to be inclusive.”
See here for more about the HISD course that was the model for this, and here for more about David Bradley, who has done this kind of crap before. The final approval was given Friday, but not without further controversy.
Tension continued to mount Friday even after State Board of Education members gave final approval to going forward with a new Mexican-American studies high school elective but refused to keep the class’ original name.
“Discrimination.” “Cloaking bigotry.” “Bull.” Those are words Marisa Perez-Diaz of the Texas Board of Education used in a statement to describe the board’s decision to rename a long-sought-after “Mexican-American Studies” elective course “Ethnic Studies,” a decision that has touched off a new wave racial tension.
While members of the board voted unanimously to create a high school elective that delves into Mexican-American studies Friday, nine Republicans on the board insisted on renaming the course “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent” after David Bradley, a member from Beaumont, said he rejects “hyphenated Americanism.”
“Today was not a victory, but a slap in the face,” said Perez-Diaz, a Democrat from Converse who is Mexican-American, said in a statement Friday. “The time has finally come to call this what it is … DISCRIMINATION!”
In a long press release she posted on Facebook, Perez-Diaz said the board’s vote told her and the state’s Mexican-American students to identify themselves as “Americans of Mexican Descent.”
“The time for cloaking bigotry and/or fear of diversity under the guise of ‘patriotism’ and ‘Americanism’ is over,” she said. “My experience is as American as apple pie, because guess what, my ancestors were on this land well before it was conquered and named America.”
You can read her full statement here. Among other things, she notes that the courses African American Studies, Native American Studies, Latin American Studies, and Asian Pacific Islander American Studies were all approved. Just not “Mexican American studies”. You do the math. TFN has more.