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Time to shine a light on the plight of North Carolina’s Latino students

Posted on April 1, 2010April 1, 2010 by Staff

GRAIG MEYER

Will new attention to educational civil rights result in the bright light of justice helping Latino immigrants come out of the shadows? Efforts to resolve North Carolina’s civil rights challenges must include a perspective on what’s happening to Latino students.

Recent controversies in both Wake and Wayne counties have brought North Carolina to the forefront of public discussion on educational civil rights. Unfortunately, these conversations have largely adhered to 20th-century civil rights norms by remaining in a black-white paradigm.

The Obama administration recently announced that it will place more emphasis on the enforcement of civil rights in schools. Action will come through collaboration between the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. In announcing the move, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed concerns about challenges faced by multiple communities of color.

While much of the public discussion in North Carolina has focused on the re-segregation of schools, civil rights enforcement also will focus on specific injustices that impact students within school settings. Progressive education advocates have most recently focused on suspension, expulsion and dropout rates.

Recently, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction released 2008-09 data that shows that black and American-Indian students are still the most disproportionately impacted by suspensions and expulsions. Hispanic students also are suspended or expelled at a rate higher than their presence in the population, and Hispanic students drop out at the highest rate, 5.71 percent, of any ethnic group.

In schools, the most pervasive civil rights abuses are often micro-aggressions that lead to students dropping out or being suspended and/or expelled. The types of challenges Latino students face would be no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of educational civil rights in this country. In particular, Latino students face challenges for access to education on multiple levels.

It is hoped that North Carolina is close to resolving the question of whether to allow undocumented (Latino and otherwise) students to attend our community colleges. But these students still face the giant hurdle of paying out-of-state tuition to attend community colleges and public universities.

Latino students and their families are sometimes subject to intimidation even when they have full legal access to educational opportunities. In our public schools, Latinos often face a racist assumption that every Latino student is undocumented. Their rights to enrollment and services are questioned or denied by school administrators. Students who speak proficient English are relegated to English-as-a-second-language classes that withhold a sound, basic education by limiting their access to the standard curriculum. Suspensions and criminal charges brought by schools intimidate the students and their families and have even resulted in families voluntarily migrating back to their country of origin.

Wherever schools perpetrate such injustices on students of color, their actions are easiest to see when you examine the experiences of Latino students. Schools rarely even try to hide what they do to intimidate and restrict access to Latino students.

Schools can perpetrate these injustices on undocumented students and other Latinos because they face little resistance to doing so. Students and families often fail to advocate for themselves because they lack knowledge about their rights and how to address grievances within the educational system. Perhaps more importantly, they are afraid to advocate too strongly because there is too much evidence that our educational and justice systems just want them to leave.

There also is no one with institutional or structural power who will stand up for these students. Our governor will not. Our General Assembly will not. Our local county commissions and other elected officials will not. In too many cases, public officials have demonstrated their hostility rather than support.

My request to the departments of education and justice is that whenever the federal government shines its light in North Carolina, please shine it on the Latino students in those communities as well. The bright light of justice will reduce the intimidation these students face and increase possibilities for true inclusion in our educational systems.

Further, all defenders of civil rights can be instrumental in helping entire communities understand that an inclusive, just educational system has benefits for all local residents. In truth, some injustice will never stop until whites see that their interests converge with those of Latinos, blacks and other people of color.

Graig Meyer is coordinator of the Blue Ribbon Mentor-Advocate program in Chapel Hill and a member of the Adelante Education Coalition.

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