From the ASTC website: “Found throughout Himalayan Asia, mandalas are symbols that represent the universe. Their intricate patterns are beautiful and have strong meanings in Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Join us for our last family project of the summer and create your own mandala, learn about its importance, and explore your artistic talents.”

Go to the Asia Society Texas website to make your RSVPs.

That’s a shame, because “A Night in Old Mexico” deserves its time on the big screen. “We’ve been trying to make this film for years. At one point, Dennis Hopper was going to direct,” Robert Duvall told Free Press Houston in an interview before the film’s world premiere last March at SXSW. “This went on for years. At one point, I thought it was cursed, and then Emilio came along and it was a reality.”

Bill Wittliff who’d also written scripts for “Lonesome Dove,” “Legends of the Fall”, and “The Perfect Storm” among others wrote the script for “A Night in Old Mexico”. Literally decades passed before the production got a green light.

Director Emilio Aragón met Duvall after an L.A. screening of Aragón’s previous film “Paper Birds,” a film from Spain set during the Spanish Civil War. “Bobby always wanted to do this script,” said Aragón, “It was a lot of work, a lot of energy. You have to understand, we shot the film in 23 days. You’re always moving.”

Duvall added that Wittliff had been honing the script for over 30 years and that it was as good as it could possibly be. In the movie, Duvall plays a rancher who is ousted from his home and about to be moved to a nursing home. A fortuitous visit from his estranged grandson changes things and the pair take off for what seems like a last road trip to Mexico. They pick up some hitchhikers only to dump them by the side of the road when the passengers start to act unruly. Only the hitchhikers have left a large sum of money in the car. Arriving in Mexico, Duvall and his grandson commence to party in bars and whorehouses, all the while avoiding the men looking for their money, as well as drug cartels thugs also looking for the loot. The Variety review stated: “Scripter Wittliff and Spanish helmer Emilio Aragón hit the sweet spot between galloping and sauntering while unfolding the movie’s plot, an interlocking chain of coincidences, encounters and colorful supporting characters that often recalls the twisty storylines of Elmore Leonard.”

“Initially we were going to shoot in New Mexico, they have better rebates for shooting films than Texas,” explained Duvall. Aragón added, “It was such a low budget that we ended up saving money by shooting the entire film in Brownsville, the town had our back and opened up to us. We shot in and around a 15-block area. We would just move from street to street. You can imagine shooting in Brownsville in August. It was so hot at times that a couple of the crew members fainted from the heat.”

Duvall also wants to direct and star in a film about the Texas Rangers that he’s been developing. “We have a couple of ranches outside of San Antonio that we would use as locations, but it’s easier to raise 100-million than it is 5 million,” laughed Duvall. In addition to being an Academy Award winning actor, Duvall has directed the documentary “We’re Not the Jet Set” (1977), and the narrative features “Angelo My Love” (1983), “The Apostle” (1997), and “Assassination Tango” (2002). The latter film also starred Duvall’s wife Luciana Pedraza. “My wife would play one of the Texas Rangers,” Duvall said. “There have only ever been three female Rangers. She grew up horseback riding. We went shooting the other day and she got six bullseyes at 100-yards, and five out of six at 300-yards.”

Duvall has worked with some of the greatest directors around including Sam Peckinpah, Francis Coppola, Tony Scott, George Lucas, Robert Altman, Ron Howard, and Sidney Lumet just to name a few. Duvall has won four Golden Globes and won the Oscar as Best Actor for “Tender Mercies.”

Talking about Peckinpah and Scott, Duvall said, “They weren’t geared so much for performance as they were for action.” About Altman, Duvall noted: “Altman was another guy who was willing to turn it around. Some of the old directors were like dictators, but modern day directors want to turn it around and not be like that. That’s how Altman was back in the ‘60s. He wanted to see what you could do.” About Lucas and “THX 1138” Duvall recalled, “It was his first film, he did something with the film stock. I was doing ‘The Rain People’ with Coppola, and Lucas shot a documentary about the making of it. He was a very innovative guy; more of a mogul now.”

Duvall has also worked extensively with Billy Bob Thornton who he calls “the hillbilly Orson Welles. He put Tennessee Williams in the backseat; he’s a very talented guy. His mother was a seer, a clairvoyant. Billy’s a character. I said to his six-year-old daughter ‘Tell your Daddy not to get anymore tattoos, he’s got tattoos all over the place.’ ”

Duvall’s next appearance is in “The Judge” alongside Robert Downey, Jr., Vera Farmiga and Thornton. “We had 60 days to shoot on that one–all the money in the world. But you know, I prefer the smaller films a lot of the time because you can focus on the performance.”

All About Ann: Governor Richards of the Lone Star State is obviously playing to an appreciative audience as far as many Texans and readers of Free Press Houston are concerned. Maybe you’re in your Twenties and were hardly a tadpole when she made her groundbreaking speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention. All About Ann starts with the highlights of that keynote speech and then tracks back to the bullet point accomplishments of her life.

Topics covered include Richards’ becoming the first distaff state treasurer and getting the state’s coffers flush, her hard drinking and eventual treatment at Hazelden, and the particularly nasty 1990 Texas gubernatorial race. Richards’ Democratic opponents, Jim Mattox and Mark White, threw fastballs aimed at her head with allegations of cocaine use and the death penalty stance of all involved. After taking them off the list Richards faced Republican “good old boy” Clayton Williams who basically lost his conservative support by making unwise comments regarding rape and not paying taxes.

Richards’ victory was not the first time a woman was governor of Texas – that would be Ma Ferguson who served two terms over a ten year period starting in 1925. Perhaps oddly up until that point Texas had not voted Repubs into the head state office with any regularity for over a century. Only one Republican governor was elected in the 20^th century (Bill Clements served two terms in the 1980s) previous to Richards’ term; and the last one before that was 1870. Of course we’ve since had Bush and Perry (three terms). If anything All About Ann is a subtextual tract about the upcoming race between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott. The filmmakers never have to mention Davis and Abbott but you think about them all the way through.

All About Ann also covers the 1994 Texas gubernatorial race between Richards and George W. Bush and her battle with esophageal cancer. Talking heads include Bill Clinton, Henry Cisneros and reporter Wayne Slater (whose book Bush’s Brain chronicles Karl Rove’s part in the ‘94 election). Some 1990s-era Bill Maher clips with Richards show what a tough talker she could be when faced with ignorance.

All About Ann premieres on April 28 on HBO (8 pm. CST) and plays through the rest of this month and next. Previously All About Ann played at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival.

I briefly met Ann Richards (for about five seconds) twice at movie events in the ‘90s. Once was at a daytime screening of Schindler’s List with Richards and Steven Spielberg held for high school students at the now defunct River Oaks Plaza. The other time was at the Austin Film Festival in the late-90s when Richards and Dennis Hopper were sitting in front of me at a retro showing of Easy Rider. Richards’ life was certainly as diverse as the subjects of those two films.

The album itself is an interesting blend of the group’s, and primarily songwriter and singer Chris Seymore’s, fascination with contradictory genres like metal and folk, and the duality in that blend is the edge that differentiates the band from their contemporaries. Calling themselves a “folkabilly” band is not far off, as their music and lifestyle (both in apparel and appearance) harks the same passionate and anachronistic stylings of rockabilly, in that they’ve chosen their period, have contradicted the complicated morality of the era, and are living in a timeless bubble that both embraces and shrugs off the pretense that often saddles the folk scene. They are having a great time, laughing at themselves and with us, but you’d better take them seriously,  because their abilities in both songwriting and performing are no joke. Surely, a band that calls themselves Son of Bitch understand the complexity of the fine line they walk, and it is up to their audience to decide on which side they sit.

The songs on Venus and the Cat show a lot of maturity and growth from their first EP, as you’d expect with a solid year in between the releases. The album is full and rich in the material it presents, and the production is top notch. Things kick off with Evil Mind, and on your first listen you have to make the decision to either continue or move on, in that the vocal stylings of Seymore, while not for everyone, are certainly what makes or breaks the group. The band stands their ground, and if you enjoy Seymore’s voice, which is akin to a long lost Hank Williams, then the journey they provide remains impressive and thoroughly enjoyable throughout the album. The lyrics, which I wish were provided, come across as insightful, often times dark, but exploratory and intriguing in the same way that Glenn Danzig or Roy Orbison have clicked with generations.

However, the point of this story is to acknowledge and embrace the bold move that Son of Bitch is undertaking in saddling up for Houston. As someone who is well traveled, but has yet to forsake this city, I can understand the desire to be here: Houston is where it’s at. Or, at least TEXAS is the reason… If a band like Son of Bitch doesn’t do well deep in the heart of Texas, then I would say I don’t know this place as well as I thought, which I highly doubt. We wish them the best of luck in their migration, and hope they capitalize on the move. They plan on being here sometime towards the end of the summer of 2024, and we look forward to giving them a big ole’ Texas hello!

You can find their music here, and follow them on Facebook.

The beauty of being an American, living in America, is the art of laws crafted to include the rights of all.  One of our most prized possessions in law, is the separation of church and state.  This means that the ideals of religion cannot make their way into state institutions.  When it does, it opens the door for other religions to lay claim to their beliefs being represented.  Such a claim is being prepped for Oklahoma, and it could just as easily happen here as well.

Back in October, I wrote about the attempt to include creationism into Texas’ science textbooks.  Certain members of the board felt that the separation of church and state did not exist, due to the fact that such language isn’t actually written into the law.  Well, since that time, a New York based group, The Satanic Temple has formally submitted a request for a Satanic statue to be erected at the Oklahoma state capitol.  This is in response to a statue of the Ten Commandments that was erected on the site in 2012.   The door has been opened, and the state of Texas should ready itself for any and all forms of religion to have a say in what children are taught via textbooks; and furthermore, what they are presented as fact.  This can include Satanist beliefs of how the world was formed, alongside every other recognized religious belief; as per the U.S. constitution.  It makes one wonder, if those that are so vehemently pushing for this, have even considered the consequence of their actions.

According to recent reports, our Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, and Houston’s own Baltimore native Senator Dan Patrick are both huge proponents of creationism in our public school system.  To quote Dewhurst, “I believe that in fairness we need to expose students to both sides of this,” he said. “That’s why I’ve supported including in our textbooks the discussion of the biblical account of life and creation, and I understand there are a lot of people who disagree with me, and believe in evolution.”  Apparently, no one clued Dewhurst in on the fact that creationism was ruled unconstitutional to be taught in our public schools back in 1987.  The same could be said for Senator Patrick who was quoted as stating, “Our students … must really be confused. They go to Sunday School on Sunday and then they go into school on Monday and we tell them they can’t talk about God,” said Patrick. “I’m sick and tired of a minority in our country who want us to turn our back on God.”

The belief that such things could be taught, that the minority is against “God,” is ludicrous.  Perhaps someone should clue Patrick in on the fact that not all of us are Christian?  Some of us are a completely different religion, some of us are not religious at all.  And, some of us, are worshipers of Satan.  Once creationism and accounts from the bible begin to be taught, the state of Texas is opening a huge can of worms.  To follow the constitution, our schools would also legally have to offer accounts from the Torah, the Koran, and every other recognized religion in the US.  That includes Neopaganism, Wicca, and Druidry; as well as Scientology.  In a nation made up of many faiths, these candidates for LT. Governor, are asking for Texas to receive their own statue of Satan, literally.

We have reached an ethos in this country.  We are at a place where the hateful and mysoginism that most americans would consider a fringe part of Christianity in the US, have become much broader and wider ranging group.  It seems as if the ideas that are omnipresent throughout the bible like, Genesis 1:27 are not what some christians want to follow anymore.  The denial of the Boys Scouts by over thirty churches in Houston, the lack of rights on how women can govern their own bodies, and the lack of scientific truths when teaching children are just the beginning.  In a time where Texas is running out of water and is a gateway to the cartel war in Mexico, we are having to debate why religion has no place in public education.  We can do better, we should strive to do better, or start hiring those who can erect the best depiction of Satan for our public schools.

By Rob McCarthy

Harbeer Sandhu is a smart guy, but he knows that you don’t have to be a smart guy to appreciate art. In fact, if you even enjoy art, you are miles ahead of the average neanderthals amongst us.

Herb, as he is affectionately known amongst his colleagues and friends, is more than passionate about art, he is the writer of the blog Texphrastic, which aims to “give long-form criticism and independent ekphrastic reponses” to art installations, artists, and particular pieces.

Although he has his MFA in creative writing, he has little to no formal education in visual arts, art history, or art criticism. We had the pleasure of speaking with him, and getting to know more about him, art, and Texphrastic.

Why is this blog so special?

I write it.

Aren’t there a million other blogs that do the same thing too?

No. Zero, actually.  (There are other good art blogs, all with their own strengths and interests, but mine, I would say, is specific to my voice and my interests, so it is singular in at least those respects.)

What specifically do you hope to do that no one else does?

I am neither an academic art historian nor a journalist reporting on art events, covering who was seen on the scene for the society pages, or regurgitating press releases and artist statements.  I contextualize contemporary art by relating what I see to literature, film, current events, sociological concerns, and other art. I do this with a close attention to language.

Another thing I try to do is to make contemporary art accessible to the layperson.  There are definitely others doing that, too, so I don’t claim any exclusivity on that tip — but expressing complex ideas in simple language is of paramount concern to me as a writer.

Without having a who’s who on the arts, do you feel that people can still appreciate the techniques, the history, the theory, and the approach to art?

Absolutely yes, but it requires work on the audience’s part.  Ask a foreign visitor to watch a game of American football and see how much they get from it.  Art (in all media) is, above all, a conversation, that is sung, so, just like you can enjoy music in languages you don’t understand, there are many other levels at which it may be appreciated if you speak the language.  (And this is a sloppy metaphor, because things are expressed graphically and not verbally for a reason, but visual art is nonetheless a “conversation” that employs “languages.”)

How do you approach a new style or artist without having been versed in the work that may have influenced that art? Does that hinder your ability to relate to it or to write about it?

I look at it, I think about it, and then I ask myself if it’s worth thinking about more.  If I decide it is (based entirely on my own subjective viewpoint) then I spend some time with it.  Not knowing too much about it does not necessarily hinder my ability to relate to works, because can I learn more if I feel so inclined, or I can go with an impressionistic, ekphrastic approach.  It all starts, however, with looking closely at the work and spending some time with it, then asking questions.

Apart from Houston, you have spent significant time living in both New York and San Francisco. How did those environments shape your outlook on both art and literature?

I’ve heard it put this way (though I would say it’s dated, because SF is over):  In SF, people have talent but no ambition; in LA, people have ambition but no talent; and in New York, people have both ambition and talent.  Where Houston fits in to that, I’ll let you decide.

That said, in Houston, the conversation among art professionals is that we need more arts funding to make real our claim to be a cultural capital/destination.  That’s all they ever want to talk about — funding (most of which goes to non-profit administrators, anyway).  While I agree that funding is crucial, and the arts do have social benefits so they are worthy of public funding, I think another crucial ingredient that never gets mentioned is a good audience.

In New York I saw a very educated, discriminating, diverse and engaged audience.  (Diverse among professions, in particular — in Houston the art audience seems to be composed almost exclusively of other artists.)  I learned a lot from those people, and being around smart people talking about cool things made me want to educate myself, more, too.

In both SF and Houston, I feel like audience expect much less, and consequently, artists feel justified in tempering their own ambitions, and that really holds the culture back.

Explain the portmanteau of “Texphrastic” to our readers.

Ekphrasis (or ekphrastic writing) is an Aristotelian term describing writing which is done in concert with visual art.  This is what I aim to do in my art criticism — to write stand-alone works of literary quality which use visual art as a point of departure for my own impressionistic creative writing.  My blog is focused on Texas art, so I combined the words “Texas” and “ekphrastic” to make TEXPHRASTIC.  (I probably should have chosen an easier to spell URL, but now I’m stuck with it.)

What makes your website different from typical art journalism? Why avoid the norm?

As I said above, typical art journalism usually does one of three things:  1) paraphrases the curatorial statement or the artist’s statement; 2) describes the work in very literal terms with some discussion of materials and process and its place in art history; or 3) presents a bunch of photos of the opening with captions describing who’s who.

In the first case, that style of art writing does not challenge or question or otherwise engage the press release/curatorial statement/artist’s statement.  In other words, it adds nothing to the discussion or audiences’ understanding of the work.  In the second case, that’s kind of what art historians do, and it’s somewhat meaningless to the layperson.  And the third case, that’s just vapid, meaningless bullshit that nobody should care about, and if they do care about that, then I hope they stub a toe like right now, maybe even bust a shin on their coffee table.

In any case, there are enough people already doing all those things, and I bring a unique talent to the table (that of my freewheeling associations — bringing literature, film, music, etc — into the discussion), so I would be doing myself and my potential readers a disservice to forego doing something unique in favor of doing that which others are already doing.  If readers want “typical art journalism,” they have places they can go for that.

What has inspired you down this Texphrastic path?

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I’m going to answer this with a quote from Dorothy Parker’s Paris Review interview:

Interviewer:  What, then, would you say is the source of most of your work?

Parker:  Need of money, dear.

The first piece I wrote that might be called “art criticism” was a piece I wrote for CITE magazine about Dean Ruck and Dan Havel’s piece in the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston’s “No Zoning” show.  After that, I wrote a few more articles for various publications about local art that struck a chord with me, and when I found out there was a grant available for people writing about visual art, I figured I should apply because I do something unique which would have a good chance of winning the grant.

Inspiration has nothing to do with it; it comes from having a need to eat and pay my bills.  It’s a job, though oftentimes I can’t tell the difference between work and play.

What do you see yourself doing with it in the future? What were the goals for the blog out of the gate, and have those changed at all?

I see myself continuing to do it indefinitely, although I think the blog format is not really well-suited for what I do.  I put too much research into my blog posts (I read three whole books for one post, and I’m working on another one that’s incorporating at least five books) which makes it hard to hard to update even on a weekly basis, and they’re too long for online reading, I think, too.  I want to move in to writing exhibition catalog pieces and long-form magazine articles.

Why shouldn’t art be propaganda?

I think it is.  All of it — including all the billboards we’re forced to look at.  Look at those before-and-after liposuction billboards.  Look at TV commercials:  Super Bowl commercials are some of the best art and some of the best propaganda, but they’re not inducing people to do or contemplate anything worthwhile.

I think you’re asking me about “political art,” though, and about that I’ll say this:  I think art that is emotionally manipulative, simplistic in terms of “good vs evil” (or other dualistic constructs), or privileges political content over nuance, subtlety, complexity, and craft is boring, at best, and dangerous, at its worst.  I also think that “commercial art” (like billboards and television ads) is destroying our bodies, our psyches, and our ability to live on this planet.  I would like to see more ambitious and successful art (in all media) that effectively pushes people to question many of the things we accept as a given under capitalism (competition > cooperation, for example), and maybe even helps organize communities, as in the “social practices” form of art.

Why should anyone care about art in this day and age? Are not our instagram feeds and graphic tee’s enough to convey to people that we are still “artsy?”  Is art dead?

I’m going to answer that with an exchange from A.R. Ammons’s Paris Review interview:

Interviewer:  Do you think poetry has any future?

Ammons:  It has as much future as past — very little.

Iterviewer:  Could you elaborate on that?

Ammons:  Poetry is everlasting. It is not going away. But it has never occupied a sizable portion of the world’s business and probably never will.

That said, there are ideas and emotions and aspects of human life that cannot be captured or expressed on instagram or t-shirts.  (That’s why bumper stickers were invented.)

The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.  – Kurt Vonnegut

A proposed new law would redefine what counts as history in Texas universities.  Early in March, Texas State Senator Daniel Patrick introduced bill SB 1128 that reads, in part:

A college or university receiving state support or state aid from public funds may not grant a baccalaureate degree or a lesser degree or academic certificate to any person unless the person has credit for six semester hours or its equivalent from courses providing a comprehensive survey of American history.  A student is entitled to submit as much as three semester hours of credit or its equivalent from courses providing a comprehensive survey of Texas history in partial satisfaction of this requirement.

Did you get that?  Only “a comprehensive survey” of U.S. history and/or Texas history will count toward graduation requirements–no more choosing among women’s studies, African-American studies, labor studies, Mexican-American studies or other such allegedly “Un-American” activities.  If this bill passes, students will be required to take dull, broad survey courses very similar to courses they took in high school, with the only choice being whether the student would take a) two semesters of U.S. history or b) one semester of U.S. history coupled with one semester of Texas history.

Usually, such survey courses are broken up into two semesters: the first semester skims over tens of thousands of years of indigenous migration, history, and culture, but gets to Columbus’ arrival in 1492 within the first week.  The Age of Exploration is likewise glossed over without getting into gory details about the brutal and dishonorable ways in which native people were subjugated and eliminated (which gave rise to the “necessity” of slaves for labor) under European colonialism.  That all goes very quickly, because “American” history in such courses really doesn’t start in earnest until the English arrive and the Pilgrims have their nice little foodie gathering at Plymouth Rock.  Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and candied yams–you know, the works.

The rest of the semester covers stuff about George Washington and cherry trees, Ben Franklin and his lost keys, the French and Indian War, the Stamp Act, maybe something about Crispus Attucks and Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention, names, dates, etc., etc., blah blah blah.  This is how they want to define “American history.”  The semester ends some time right before or right after the Civil War, then the next semester picks up with Westward Expansion and the Spanish-American War, gets into some of the robber baron stuff (but not too deeply into labor movements), and fortunately (for the teacher) the semester ends with time running out at about the Civil Rights Movement.  Another semester has gone by with no need to cover contemporary issues–which might inspire controversy and which might require the teacher to speak to why some people, today, still hold the short end of the historical stick while others inherit the benefits of their ancestors’ land and labor.

That is what you call a “survey course.”  They teach a very broad, general mythology of “America.”  (I put “America” in quotes because America is a hemisphere, not a singular, 237-year-old nation-state.)  The emphasis is on wars and external conflicts and big personalities (i.e. dead white men)–like in your typical high school history class.  Not much time is spent learning about the lives of small landowners, tenant farmers, slaves, Indians, women, workers, and immigrants, and how the lives they led affect our lives today.

But college is supposed to be different. Higher education typically provides students with a more focused and specialized curriculum. Since the 1960s, scholarship has dug deeper into the lives of these “common” people–people more likely to be our ancestors than Ben Franklin or James Madison–and therefore an examination of these “common people” has the potential to teach a greater number of students about their place in today’s society than the study of “great men” ever could.

Supporters of this change seem to think that we all need to attend the same classes to be considered “educated” or qualified for a job or something.  I consider myself a pretty cosmopolitan, worldly, well-qualified person, but the private university I attended in New York allowed me to take courses such as “The Evolution of Scientific Thought,” which covered medieval Arabia, Europe, and classical Greco-Roman topics to fulfill my history requirement.  Did I suffer for that?  No.  On the contrary–it was enriching, and it took nothing away from the children’s storytime version of  “American history” I got in high school, either.

So what’s really going on?  Why is Dan Patrick, a second-term state senator representing the likes of Spring, Tomball, Cypress, and Jersey Village, who introduced a bill trying to ban abortion within his very first month in office, attempting to rewrite the college core curriculum?

Critics say this bill is the beginning of an attempt to eliminate fields of scholarship such as women’s studies, African-American studies, labor studies, and Mexican-American studies.  (Mexican-American studies has already been banned in Arizona schools.) I would add that Dan Patrick’s SB 1128 is perfectly in line with the Texas Republican Party’s mission, explicitly stated in their 2024 party platform, that they “oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills . . . critical thinking skills and similar programs      that . . . have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs.”

The bill is inspired by a report issued from the National Association of Scholars, a right-wing think tank founded in 1987 to take on affirmative action and “liberal bias” in academia. It is funded by a number of conservative backers including the Adolph Coors Foundation and the Koch brothers. Their recent report, called “Recasting History:  Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?” looks at the reading lists from history courses at UT and A&M and rates books on their content relating to race, class, and gender.  (According to this report, both “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” are too fixated on race. Go figure!)  Among the report’s recommendations:  “Depoliticize history. Historians and professors of United States history should counter mission creep by returning to their primary task: handing down the American story, as a whole, to future generations.”

Basically, the report is recommending the impossible—it calls for the “depoliticization” of history even as it politicizes history. Needless to say, the report’s methodology has been called into question, but who needs valid methodologies when you ain’t got no Higher Order Thinking Skills?  Check and mate!

Patrick has stated in a Facebook post that the bill is intended “to be sure that our core curriculum in history represents a comprehensive understanding of our history in areas of the economy, politics, war, and other significant events that have helped shape our past and who we are today.”  The report’s author, Richard Fonte, says he, “found that all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class, and gender social history, an emphasis so strong that it diminished the attention given to other subjects in American history (such as military, diplomatic, religious, intellectual history).”

So there you have it–they want to rewrite the past (or unwrite what’s been uncovered about the past since the 1960s) to maintain the economic, political, militaristic status quo.  What’s strange is that nobody is suggesting that race, class, and gender can’t still be studied in the same context as war, diplomacy, and religion.  The UT Department of History has issued a really great response which claims that, “The report attempts to isolate race, class, and gender as something distinct and separate from other areas of study, when in fact they are intrinsic to these other areas.”

The Arizona law that Dan Patrick’s SB 1128 appears loosely based upon prohibits schools from offering courses or classes that “promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”  That sounds pretty reasonable, but I am here to tell anybody who alleges that “ethnic studies” and “ethnic literature” promote societal fragmentation has got it all wrong, and their plan is going to backfire.  Respecting our diverse backgrounds brings people together–it promotes inclusiveness through mutual respect–whereas the bleached, sanitized, whitewashed version of history they want to promote doesn’t fool anybody and only drives students away from school because they know they’re being lied to.

Similar to Jan Brewer, Russell Pearce, and others I’ve written about surrounding the Librotraficante Caravan to Arizona, these individuals are just afraid of the USA’s inevitable demographic shift.  They are afraid of the browning of America, that they’ll lose power and control–that when students are taught the truth about their history they learn pride, and when they learn pride they gain self-respect, and when they gain self-respect they’ll stay in school and won’t let the bosses push them around and exploit them.  Honestly, I can’t blame the bosses for being scared, but we must not let this bill pass.  It will be much easier to prevent its passage than to challenge it in court or repeal it after the fact.  Please, call your state legislators today and tell these “small-government” Republicans to stop meddling in collegiate affairs.

By Amanda Hart
Illustration by Blake Jones

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Our history matters. And silence will not do when it comes to demanding that everyone’s history continues to be included in our school curriculum. FPH caught up with Librotraficante member Lupe Mendez to find out about the upcoming battle over SB 1128.

What impact will SB 1128 have on our community?

This bill and its companion in the House, TX (R) Rep. Capriglione’s HB 1938, would serve to limit the kinds of history classes undergraduates can take. Patrick and Capriglione want more “comprehensive history survey classes” that deal less with race, class, and gender. This bill, in the long run, filters out major players and parts of history, such as Frederick Douglass, the Grapes of Wrath, Cesar Chavez and Rosie the Riveter – all of whom we deserve to know more about. Currently, we don’t get to learn these stories, even before college, and now the bill will ensure that we don’t ever get to hear about them at all.

Why is there a push from people like Senator Dan Patrick to pass legislation that would marginalize our community’s history?

Both Capriglione and Patrick are major players in the Texas Tea Party – members who want a more conservative stance, especially in education. They and their constituents want a much more controlled idea of “American History” – one that moves and thinks and acts like them – devoid of a diverse population and cultured thought. This is a party scared of a population that is changing, growing past their “Americana.”

What sort of reaction and feedback did you receive when you traveled to Austin to meet with Senator Patrick about the bill?

Ha!!  Well, to be honest, aside from a meeting with one of his staff members (will get to that in a second), nothing much but a Facebook post as a status about my group of Librotraficantes coming to his office. In his post, he says that we didn’t meet with him, as if we didn’t try to schedule a meeting (we did and since he couldn’t meet with us, we had to settle for his staffer). When we asked for a second meeting, she said, “We’ll let you know.”

In the meeting with his staffer, we asked what the purpose of the bill was and as she explained it, “I remember taking a class in Rock & Roll History”… and she goes on to say that she didn’t think that should have been a class, so she withdrew and that for her, that’s what this bill was about – focusing the law so that better classes and education could prevail. When we made the point clear that this bill, if passed, would serve to marginalize courses that do speak of race, class, and gender, she played naïve and said the senator didn’t have that in mind. When we spoke of AZ HB 2281 and the ending of the Mexican-American Studies K-12 program, she said that she didn’t even know about HB 2281. I didn’t buy it.  No one buys it. And even if it were true, then that speaks volumes as to the misguided attempt to micromanage college education.

I only bring up the term “micromanage” because that’s what Rep. Capriglione admitted it was.

Oh yeah, did I mention we went to his office, too – on invitation? He claimed that he could make us see why this bill, (his version) HB 1938, was in no way jeopardizing ethnic studies. He started off with a long diatribe trying to explain to us how he “gets” our position, how he understands our ethnic concern sort of speak. He explained how he is of mixed heritage, his father being Italian and his mother being a Venezuelan-born Columbian.  He said it as if to clear the air a bit, to make everyone understand his perspective. He said he has to make a move because his constituents in the North Dallas area are “concerned about the type of college education their children are receiving.” He even went as far as saying that he had a background in physics and engineering and that he didn’t have a good handle on books.

He explained the bill with a math analogy, “Say you have a calculus class and you had professors teaching trigonometry instead, right. Wouldn’t you want them to teach calculus?” I responded that using his analogy, then, that the bill would need to be much more direct, so that classes with a lens of ethnicity, of gender, and of class wouldn’t be removed. He brushed off my point and the points made by many others.

We came to talk, to find out what the intentions of these legislators were and, in fact, though we are grateful for the opportunity to speak with several senators and representatives (many of whom support us), it was Patrick and Capriglione who gave us the runaround. So you won’t hear us in your office, no importa. Then you leave me with no other choice than to be the loud, Ramon Ayala-playing vecino across the street and when the public comes to my door to find out what all the noise is about, I will inform them, intelligently. We are the new face of Americana.

How can people in our community join the fight to stop SB 1128?

Read, read, read. It’s what all rebels do. Sign every petition going around. Read all the articles. Log online and find out the timeline of the bills themselves. Keep informed. Attend the hearings for the bills. Call your state representative. Call your senator. Tell them to say NO to SB 1128 and HB 1938. Read the research they are using to write this stuff.  Here is a good start: look up the National Association of Scholars and the report they put out that Patrick and Capriglione used to create the bill.