How Presentism Impedes Historical Analysis and Critical Reflexivity

• In Event: 63.081 - Teaching History in a Racially Diverse Democracy

Abstract

This paper examines how Latinx students use historical inquiry and their experiences with race/ethnicity and language to analyze Mexican American discrimination in the past. I argue that students use historical thinking and their personal experiences as cultural tools to interpret the past (Wertsch, 1998). Historical thinking encourages students to construct evidence-based historical claims (Reisman, 2012; Wineburg, 2001). Students’ experiences with discrimination may make them more critical of U.S history (Almarza & Fehn, 1998; Epstein, 2009) or less critical (An, 2012; Terzian & Yeager, 2007). As such, historical thinking, students’ and experiences function as cultural tools that can help or impede how students analyze the past.

The findings from this paper draw on a three-day lesson on Mendez v. Westminster School District, a case about 1940s Mexican American school segregation. The observations took place in two 11th grade U.S. history classrooms in a predominantly Latinx California school. In addition to field notes, data collection also included 177 student work samples and fifteen 40-minute student interviews.

Following a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), the data was open coded, then triangulated across three data sources. I identified two group codes that the three data sources shared in common: racial/ethnic experiences as cultural tools, and language education as a cultural tool. These guide my findings and analytical discussion.

The data analysis revealed that during the historical inquiry process, students’ experiences with English Language (EL) education impeded their analysis. Overwhelmingly, students imposed presentism onto 1940s language segregation. The Latinx participants thought language segregation occurred within the same schools, similar to how EL students in their school are pulled from class for additional instruction. Thus, students assumed that Mexican Americans who were segregated in the 1940s were being accommodated with additional instruction to help them learn English. Surprisingly, the Latinx participants agreed with the practice of language segregation, sharing their own experiences of how EL students in their classes slowed down instruction.

The consequence of this presentist interpretation is that the students misunderstood who was being segregated. The Latinx participants assumed that it was Spanish speaking Mexican immigrants who were segregated, not U.S. born citizens of Mexican heritage who spoke English.
This misinterpretation impeded participants from understanding that the argument that Mexican American students did not speak English was a loophole for upholding discriminatory practices. In this sense, students’ experiences with language education are cultural tools that can pose barriers to understanding how language functioned as a proxy for racial/ethnic segregation.

This paper offers implications for the teaching of race/ethnicity in U.S. history classrooms. It challenges the assumption that Latinx students are more likely to empathize with Latinx in the past because of presumed shared experiences. It calls attention to how Latinx students have their own set of biases against recent immigrant students, one that needs to be further examined in research and confronted in classrooms. It highlights the importance of considering the role of language in the racial/ethnic history of the U.S., as it too has been used as a vehicle of exclusion.

Author

• Maribel Santiago, Michigan State University