Awesome video! So proud of this young woman, Alexis Gonzales, a first-generation, recent Latina college graduate from CU Boulder 2020! Her talk is on the power of, and necessity for, socially just, anti-racist curriculum, calling for a radical policy shift. 
This, of course, is less a technical matter than an ideological and political one. It means up-ending white supremacy, beginning with breaking one's silence to preserve the status quo, while also disrupting systems of oppression, including what we have come to know and experience as the oppressive, violent, assimilationist "official curriculum," as University of Wisconsin Professor Michael Apple (2014) has researched and theorized throughout his numerous writings. If you have any question as to either its origins or violence, look no further than American Indian Boarding School experience (see "America Reframed: Blood Memory," a powerful documentary in this regard).
In this magnificent EdTalk, Alexis models how this gets done. We liberate ourselves by speaking and writing our truths, sharing our testimonios of injustice while unapologetically declaring our dreams, wishes and desires for a better world. To this, I would add that we engage in policy struggles, even as we enunciate new values-based, redemptive realities into existence, mapping on to Alexis' "If-I-Could-Change-the-World" vision of a new society.
What you hear and see in this presentation is what needs to happen everywhere. Oh, wait. It is happening everywhere—that is, everywhere you have an Ethnic Studies classroom that is culturally sustaining, inclusive, nurturing, and edifying. For example, this recently-published piece by Maribel Falcón titled, "'Never Without a Fight': How Texas Has Stood Up for Ethnic Studies," one learns of the profound and sublime impact of Ms. Celinda De La Fuentes' teaching on students in her literature classroom at John Jay High School in San Antonio. A must-read. It is all so very moving.
As we think of "white supremacy," a way to process this concept—that can at times, shut down conversation, and thusly, thought—is through the lens of research-based, Ethnic Studies, socially just curricula. There are different approaches, so knowing the history and background to this field of study is important. I have blogged many such posts in that regard.
With young people like Alexis, our future is in excellent hands. Alexis calls for what we have been calling for in the Ethnic Studies Movement for at least 50 years. This is abundantly documented, theorized, and historicized. I am with Alexis and very hopeful that we can embark on significant, meaningful change to scale.
I am hopeful that we can someday in the future look back on this moment and interpret this groundswell of advocacy for racially just, culturally sustaining education as one of demanding an education that gave every single child access to their full humanity in a world where this is consistent with the right to difference in a democracy. Don't we all want this precious knowledge that democratizes and breathes new life into our schools?
As minoritized peoples, here in these United States, we have a long history of calling for racial justice curriculum and pedagogy in our schools. This is a an imagined future where our identities, cultures, languages, discourses, and contributions to society get substantively recognized, respected, and represented in art, history, literature, media, books, the sciences, curriculum, television, technology, and so on.
However, we cannot get there unless we heed Alexis' and our University of Texas students' call—in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement—to re-think not only our public school, but also our college-level curricula by fully incorporating what we are calling for here in Texas, namely, well-resourced, "Comprehensive Ethnic Studies." Someday, I trust, this will just be called "a good education."
Congratulations both to Alexis and her professor, Dr. Margarita Bianco, for nurturing the clear, cogent voices of our youth through the Pathways2Teaching, life-saving work that you do, Dr. Bianco.
We all celebrate Alexis' stellar accomplishments! 💗💗💗
-Angela Valenzuela
References
Apple, M. W. (2014). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. Routledge.
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