Beyond Affirmative Action: Reframing the Context of Higher Education

2. The Latino Study: Reconceptualizing Culture and Changing the Dynamics of Ethnicity

2 The Latino Study Reconceptualizing Culture and Changing the Dynamics of Ethnicity The Spanish colonial origins of the United States have yet to be woven into the fabric of American history. Although the United States has always been a multiethnic society, in American popular culture and in most general histories, the American past has been understood as the story of English America rather than as the stories of the diverse cultures that make up our national heritage. David J. Weber, “Our Hispanic Past” Very little is known about Latinos and Latinas in graduate education. We know the total Latino population in the country is growing rapidly, and we have some quantitative data about Latinos in higher education, but are we making the correct assumptions about their progress through graduate school? Are we making accurate interpretations of the data we collect? Graduate programs have little qualitative information about the student experience in general, so are we asking the right questions when we collect data on Latinos, or on any graduate students we study, for that matter? The Latino study, as it was initially conceived for the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) in 1994, revolved around two essential questions: Why are so few Latinos and Latinas entering graduate education or the professoriate ? And, from a variety of perspectives, what are the Latina and Latino students’ experiences both during and after their graduate programs? CGS wanted to find out more about Latinos in graduate school to guide graduate institutions toward improving recruitment and retention programs for minority students, faculty, and staff in general. My part of the study was to collect new information that could determine why Latinos, Latinas, and other ethnic minorities had such chronic difficulties in higher education. For instance, what strategies are helpful in successfully completing an advanced degree? What role does ethnicity play in this process? Are these factors different for subgroups within the Latino population itself ? How do the cultures of academic institutions, disciplines, and departments affect the passage through graduate school and beyond? The pages that follow begin to address some of these issues, first by providing baseline data on the current condition of Latinos in graduate education. This includes a discussion of the Latino study’s research strategies , data collection issues, and an overview of findings by other researchers in the field. The central purpose of this chapter is to establish the concepts of culture, including organizational culture and ethnicity, that are at the heart of the difficulties faced by higher education and Latino graduate students, faculty, and administrators. Latinos in Graduate Education Only a handful of researchers are actually studying Latinos in U.S. graduate education.1 Most researchers focus on specific ethnic populations such as Mexican Americans, or Chicanos (see Cuádraz 1992, 1993; Gándara 1982, 1993; Lango 1995; Solorzano 1993, 1995).2 Research about Latino faculty seems to be more generic and tends to examine statistical trends (see Aponte and Siles 1996; H. Astin et al. 1997; HACU 1996; HERI 1991; O’Brien 1993), or it focuses on broader themes about conditions of employment or status (Anzaldúa 1990; Nieves-Squires 1991; R. Padilla and Chávez Chávez 1995). Overall, research on Latinas and Mexican Americans predominates. Specific studies of Latino graduate students recognize the significance of sociocultural conditions and family-community influences in shaping their cultural perspectives, even within higher education. In her case study of the first affirmative action generation, the sociologist Gloria Cuádraz interviewed forty Chicanas and Chicanos in the doctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley, between 1967 and 1979. She found that, for most of the subjects, “racial, gender, class, and political dislocation personified their experiences” (1993, 170). The Latino Study 21 She shows that the first Chicana and Chicano graduate students at Berkeley were disconnected from majority students in a variety of ways that reflect dislocation or gender and class differences. Most were uncomfortable being the “only one,” or “one of a few,” Chicanos or students of color in their departments (race or ethnic dislocation). Mainly, Chicanas felt uncomfortable “with the break from their traditional family ideology” (gender). Those from low-income families felt educationally underprepared (class). Many others resented the criticism from faculty members who said they were focusing too much on Chicano studies and politics or incorporating this “questionable subject” into their scholarly research (ethnic, political, and scholarship dislocation). Cuádraz notes that...