California

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• 10/17/2021
  

  The Fantasy of Hispanic Heritage Month

  by Frank P. Barajas

  Conceived by a Congressman to honor the contributions of ethnic Mexicans to American society, Hispanic Heritage Month is based in a mythical Spanish past that obscures the indigenous history of the west and legitimates the succession of power from Iberian to Anglo elites. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/10/2021
  

  How a Black Family Got Their Beach Back

  The historic Bruce's Beach case is inspiring social justice leaders and reparations activists to fight for other Black families whose ancestors were also victims of land theft in the United States.

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• SOURCE: San Diego Union-Tribune
  9/19/2021
  

  Local Professor Building History of San Diego's Japanese Americans

  San Diego City College professor Susan Hasegawa describes a public history project detailing the story of San Diego's Japanese Americans before and after internment, and a librarian who supported interned children with books and messages of support.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/15/2021
  

  Looking for the Gold Rush Town of Chinese Camp

  "Sucheng Chan, a retired historian and the author of more than 15 books on Asian American history, notes that this region, called the Southern Mines, was home to almost half of the Chinese in California in 1860," but that history is poorly preserved for visitors today.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  9/14/2021
  

  California Ski Resort to Change Racist, Sexist Name

  "In modern usage, the word "squaw" is considered to be "offensive, derogatory, racist, and misogynistic," the resort, formerly known as Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, said as it explained its reasoning."

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  9/5/2021
  

  The Recall is a Test: Has California's Direct Democracy Experiment Failed?

  It's difficult to swallow the idea that Progressive era governor Hiram Johnson would have countenanced the idea that the recall system he championed could allow a minority of voters to throw out a governor who recently was elected with 62 percent of the votes cast.

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  8/27/2021
  

  New History of Chicanos in Ventura County

  Historian Frank Barajas discusses his new book on Chicano activism in California's Ventura County with columnist Gustavo Arellano.

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• 8/29/2021
  

  Bigler's Gambit: How the California Gold Fields Gave Rise to Global Anti-Chinese Politics

  by Mae Ngai

  The Chinese Question and Chinese exclusion policies that circumnavigated the Anglo-American world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries grew in local soils, and shifted and evolved as it crossed the Pacific world and supported the consolidation of British and American power over global emigration and trade."

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• 8/22/2021
  

  In California Recall, a Tiny Minority of Voters Could Choose the Governor

  by James Thornton Harris

  The particularities of California's recall process create a dangerous situation where a minority of voters can choose the state's chief executive. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  8/4/2021
  

  East LA Bid for Independence Could Achieve a Key Victory

  by Eric Avila

  "The campaign for special district status would allow East L.A. to inch closer to the right of self-determination afforded to so many other Southland communities."

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• SOURCE: Vox
  7/23/2021
  

  Revisiting the 1976 Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping

  The ordeal of 26 children and their school bus driver in California's San Joaquin Valley highlighted the conflicts between rural California and the state's urban centers, class conflict, and the rising fear of crime in 1976. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  7/11/2021
  

  The Fires This Time: The Climate View from California

  by Rebecca Gordon

  This month's heat emergencies signal that the catastrophic effects of climate change are definitely here and will hit the disadvantaged the hardest.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/27/2021
  

  California’s Novel Attempt at Land Reparations

  Los Angeles County will return title to land that once was "Bruce's Beach," one of the only Southern California oceanfront resorts welcoming Black visitors, to the descendants of the owners from whom the property was taken by eminent domain in 1927.

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• 5/23/2021
  

  What's Controversial about California's Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum?

  by James Thornton Harris

  At its root, the controversy over California's ethnic studies model curriculum (which no school district is compelled to implement) is whether the lived everyday experiences of people, including Californians of color, are a worthy subject of study. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/13/2021
  

  The Trouble With the Gavin Newsom Recall

  by Ron Brownstein

  California's Recall law can allow a relatively small number of petitioners to initiate a recall of an elected official, and for that official to be removed even if he or she gets more votes than any alternative candidate. This isn't what the Progressive Era architects of the law intended, says San Jose State historian Glen Gendzel. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  5/2/2021
  

  L.A.’s History is Often Whitewashed, Romanticized and Censored. A New Push to Tell the Truth

  Christopher Hawthorne leads a Civic Memory Working Group convened by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, that works to reverse the city's tendency to boost myths in the place of public history. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/2/2021
  

  What Manhattan Beach, Calif., Says About Reparations

  "When a wealthy, liberal California town can’t bring itself to even apologize for seizing land from Black residents a century ago, it underscores what a long road lies ahead for justice and reconciliation."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/15/2021
  

  A Gold Rush Town Removes a Noose From Its Logo

  Council members said objections to the noose element of the logo, designed in the 1970s, had been made before.

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• SOURCE: JStor Daily
  4/19/2021
  

  How the LAPD Guarded California’s Borders in the 1930s

  Los Angeles's conservative establishment used tropes of cultural inferiority to justify efforts to stop poor white Dust Bowl refugees from entering the state in the 1930s, 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/8/2021
  

  What the Election of Asian American GOP Women Means for the Party

  by Jane Hong

  The success of Asian-American Republican women candidates in Orange County suggests that the parties' efforts to appeal to a multiracial electorate must focus on the distinct histories and concerns of ethnic communities.