America had a vested interest in assimilating German students to testify to the ability of American public schools
—that’s the language that the War Department used—[rather] that they were good people who got sucked up into working for the government, or were compelled to work for the government, basically.They were made to watch footage of concentration camps. My book opens with the memoir of one of the scientists who talks about seeing the films and wondering what to do. He wondered about his own complicity; his own sense of what he called collective guilt.
The [El Paso] school system was over 60% Mexican American at the time—a majority of the city’s public school population. There were two kinds of schools in El Paso, and this was familiar nomenclature throughout the Southwest: what were called “American schools” and “Mexican schools.” American schools were schools to which white children were assigned; Mexican-American students were sent to Mexican schools. The German children were sent to American schools.
There wasn’t the same vested interest in assimilating Mexican-Americans and in educating them. The expectation was conveyed to them very early on that they were a drain, an economic burden, and kind of a social burden. At the same time, they were also seen as competitors; there was this underlying anxiety over these people that [white Americans] saw as inferior, but had the potential to take jobs from them.
It worked to shore up whiteness. It put forth specific models of white heroes—self-reliant, industrious, strong—while it also worked as a pedagogy of erasure. The Cold War hero was this mythic cowboy type figure who was independent, self-sufficient and hardworking, but could work with others when he needed to.
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