How Cultural Domination Happens

It was so perfect, I didn't get it at first. Much of this blog, and my work around Social Justice and Social Studies in our schools, deals with the fact of cultural domination - in our textbooks, in our mass media, in our conversation, the very language we use when we converse and write. We tend to focus on big, very obvious examples - the burning of the Aztec histories and commentaries by the Spanish in Mexico; the destruction, by Christian zealots of the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans; digging up burial mounds to make parking lots, etc.

But I was so fixated on the big and the obvious that I forgot that cultural domination is always happening in thousands of little actions everyday. The insistence on English dominant instruction (an attitude which often views a student's home language as a problem and a drawback) for example, continues the subjugation of Spanish to the dominant culture's English. The thing to recall is that these culture wars are not finished. In order to substantiate itself, the ruling group must continue to subjugate the "other" culture, even long after shooting wars and invasions are over.

Several years ago, a renowned mural artist was hired by my principal to create a mural on the back wall of our cafeteria - auditorium stage. My school is 50% Latino, and about 30% Asian/Pacifca. He involved kids in his work and the result was a park scene with airplanes, smiling kids, swimming kids, balloons, etc. He did very little of the work himself, but let the kids plan and paint it. By adult standards, it wasn't great. It was too sloppy, too...child-like. some people liked it and some didn't, but most of the kids did.

One day, teachers planned a school-wide talent show at the school. A young white woman supervised the preparations, and decided that the mural should be painted over. So, without asking anyone, she had it done. This was not only thoughtless on her part - the destruction of a piece of community art for momentary convenience - but also an act of cultural domination. We might compare it to the wholesale incineration of Aztec literature by the Spaniards; the destruction of classical art by early Christian zealots; Taliban warriors recently wrecking several giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan; US troops standing by while museums in Iraq were looted