Dr. David G. García
I am an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. I am one of only a handful of historians across the country documenting Chicana/o community histories of education. I earned my Ph.D. in U.S. history while developing an interdisciplinary research trajectory following three main lines of inquiry: (1) Chicana/o teatro (theater) as public revisionist history, (2) the pedagogy of Hollywood’s urban school genre, and (3) Chicana/o educational histories. Each of these areas addresses the interconnectivity of history and education in relation to Chicana/o, Latina/o communities in the United States and examines how the constructs of race, culture, and class shape educational experiences for Communities of Color across time and place. I have been awarded Ford Foundation and University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowships, and held a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan.
My book "Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence and The Struggle for Educational Equality" (UC Press 2018), unearths the ideological and structural architecture of enduring racial inequality within and beyond schools in Oxnard, California. Based on extensive archival research, the narrative spans 1903 to 1974, exposing a separate and unequal school system and its purposeful links with racially restrictive housing covenants. I conducted and analyzed over sixty oral history interviews with Mexican Americans and African Americans who endured disparate treatment and protested discrimination. The book’s final chapter focuses on one of the nation’s first desegregation cases filed jointly by Mexican American and Black plaintiffs.
In the short time since its publication, Strategies of Segregation has been very well-received among scholars and community members. It is garnering local, national, and a few international citations and attention. It is also being adopted in undergraduate and graduate classes in history, education and Chicana/o Studies. The book was noted on the Scholarly Book List in The Chronicle of Higher Education (February 23, 2018) and on the Legal History Blog (April 16, 2018) and has received several excellent reviews published in scholarly journals including Pacific Historical Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies Review, History of Education Quarterly, Southern California Quarterly, and American Historical Review. It received a 2019 AERA Division F New Scholars Book Award Honorable Mention and won a 2019 Critics’ Choice book award from the American Educational Studies Association.
In Oxnard and Ventura County, I conducted several professional training workshops for teachers interested in incorporating Strategies of Segregation into their curriculum. I was particularly honored to be invited to Richard B. Haydock Academy of Arts and Sciences, to speak with sixth grade students and their teacher who were so angered by Haydock’s racist Anti-Mexican and Black comments in my book that they petitioned the school board to change the name of their school. At their presentation, they quoted from my book, highlighting Haydock’s racism over 30 years as Superintendent of the district and his legacy of intentionally segregating and under-educating Mexican and Black students. The young students demonstrated courage as they presented their case. After some discussion, the board voted unanimously to begin the process of changing the name of the school. This was a powerful reminder of how history can be empowering to young students once they “see” themselves as a part of it. The video of the student presentation can be seen here,
https://oxnardsd.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=74&meta_id=49643
My interdisciplinary research trajectory has also chronicled the evolution of the Chicano-Latino performance group Culture Clash. I argue that their theater functions as a form of public revisionist history, asserting counternarratives, cultural resilience, and community resistance. Their work broadens our understandings of the teaching and learning that takes place in commercial and popular cultural productions around the social constructs of race, gender, class, language, and immigrant status. The University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity recognized this research with a citation as an Exemplary Diversity Scholar.
My book "Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence and The Struggle for Educational Equality" (UC Press 2018), unearths the ideological and structural architecture of enduring racial inequality within and beyond schools in Oxnard, California. Based on extensive archival research, the narrative spans 1903 to 1974, exposing a separate and unequal school system and its purposeful links with racially restrictive housing covenants. I conducted and analyzed over sixty oral history interviews with Mexican Americans and African Americans who endured disparate treatment and protested discrimination. The book’s final chapter focuses on one of the nation’s first desegregation cases filed jointly by Mexican American and Black plaintiffs.
In the short time since its publication, Strategies of Segregation has been very well-received among scholars and community members. It is garnering local, national, and a few international citations and attention. It is also being adopted in undergraduate and graduate classes in history, education and Chicana/o Studies. The book was noted on the Scholarly Book List in The Chronicle of Higher Education (February 23, 2018) and on the Legal History Blog (April 16, 2018) and has received several excellent reviews published in scholarly journals including Pacific Historical Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies Review, History of Education Quarterly, Southern California Quarterly, and American Historical Review. It received a 2019 AERA Division F New Scholars Book Award Honorable Mention and won a 2019 Critics’ Choice book award from the American Educational Studies Association.
In Oxnard and Ventura County, I conducted several professional training workshops for teachers interested in incorporating Strategies of Segregation into their curriculum. I was particularly honored to be invited to Richard B. Haydock Academy of Arts and Sciences, to speak with sixth grade students and their teacher who were so angered by Haydock’s racist Anti-Mexican and Black comments in my book that they petitioned the school board to change the name of their school. At their presentation, they quoted from my book, highlighting Haydock’s racism over 30 years as Superintendent of the district and his legacy of intentionally segregating and under-educating Mexican and Black students. The young students demonstrated courage as they presented their case. After some discussion, the board voted unanimously to begin the process of changing the name of the school. This was a powerful reminder of how history can be empowering to young students once they “see” themselves as a part of it. The video of the student presentation can be seen here,
https://oxnardsd.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=74&meta_id=49643
My interdisciplinary research trajectory has also chronicled the evolution of the Chicano-Latino performance group Culture Clash. I argue that their theater functions as a form of public revisionist history, asserting counternarratives, cultural resilience, and community resistance. Their work broadens our understandings of the teaching and learning that takes place in commercial and popular cultural productions around the social constructs of race, gender, class, language, and immigrant status. The University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity recognized this research with a citation as an Exemplary Diversity Scholar.
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fornia. In their analysis of the 1930s Oxnard Elementary School District board minutes, alongside newspapers, maps, scholarly accounts, and oral history interviews, they argue that school segregation privileged Whites and discriminated against Mexi-
cans as a form of mundane racism. The authors build on previous scholarship documenting the pervasiveness of racism in U.S. society to define mundane racism as the
systematic subordination of Mexicans that occurred as a commonplace, ordinary way of conducting business within and beyond schools. Their findings complicate narratives that emphasize complete segregation in “Mexican schools,” while acknowledging the resistance of parents and the resilience of their children."
of Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory and to analyze Culture Clash’s play Chavez Ravine. The play recounts a decade of Los Angeles history through the perspectives of displaced Mexican American families from three former neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine. Culture Clash’s performance recovers and personifies the community cultural wealth cultivated by these families. This multifaceted portfolio of cultural assets and resources includes aspirational, linguistic, social, navigational, familial, and resistant capital. Chavez Ravine affirms the continuity of Chicana/o communities, utilizing culture as a source of strength that facilitates survival and nurtures resistance.
fornia. In their analysis of the 1930s Oxnard Elementary School District board minutes, alongside newspapers, maps, scholarly accounts, and oral history interviews, they argue that school segregation privileged Whites and discriminated against Mexi-
cans as a form of mundane racism. The authors build on previous scholarship documenting the pervasiveness of racism in U.S. society to define mundane racism as the
systematic subordination of Mexicans that occurred as a commonplace, ordinary way of conducting business within and beyond schools. Their findings complicate narratives that emphasize complete segregation in “Mexican schools,” while acknowledging the resistance of parents and the resilience of their children."
of Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory and to analyze Culture Clash’s play Chavez Ravine. The play recounts a decade of Los Angeles history through the perspectives of displaced Mexican American families from three former neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine. Culture Clash’s performance recovers and personifies the community cultural wealth cultivated by these families. This multifaceted portfolio of cultural assets and resources includes aspirational, linguistic, social, navigational, familial, and resistant capital. Chavez Ravine affirms the continuity of Chicana/o communities, utilizing culture as a source of strength that facilitates survival and nurtures resistance.