Texas education board to vote on controversial Mexican-American textbook

AUSTIN, Texas - The State Board of Education will vote Wednesday on a textbook that critics have called racist and inaccurate.

The book is for an elective course on Mexican-American studies. It was slammed by professors and teachers who were appointed to review it. In one example, the book characterized Mexican-Americans as lazy.

The publisher has already made hundreds of revisions, but opponents say it’s not enough.

“We can learn from the past. The past is hard sometimes. But you can deal with it in a scholarly, and civil and respectful way,” said Trinidad Gonzales, a history professor at South Texas College.

“There is no intention to go after an entire people group. We simply wanted to have a textbook that could be used that was fully vetted,” added Cynthia Dunbar, who represents the textbook publisher.

Part of the issue is a lack of options. The board put a call out to publishers two years ago and this was the only ethnic studies textbook submitted for review.

On Tuesday the board approved a second call to publishers, which could mean the board plans to reject the current option.