GENDER EQUITY FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS

Encoded in the demand for “better education” was not only a request for more access to formal education, but also for what the parents and students of Elsa, Texas, believed education would bring them. First, “better education” would end the segregated school system to which their children had access. Second, “better education” would end the structural as well as individual acts of disrespect toward the Mexican American students and parents by their teachers. And, a “better education” would substitute the existing system of education that provided Mexican Americans in the region with just enough skills to qualify them for farm work and other low-paying jobs (Guajardo and Guajardo, 2004). The first two demands addressed education in the context of community/neighborhoods and school-community relations. The third demand addressed the presumed outcome of education-social mobility through education that enhances occupation and earning potential (Urciuoli, 1996).