Until We Begin Listening,There Can Be Little Hope for Understanding One Another: An Interview With Dr. Philip C. Chinn

Dr. Chinn has long been dedicated to diversity issues, equity issues, and social justice in education and beyond. His voice has been strong and consistent within our field, and this consistency has evolved from his rich and varied private and professional life experiences. Dr. Chinn always asks educators to “look behind the veil of history” for answers to social justice questions and to inform culturally sustaining practices as educators work to move education forward into the third decade of this century.

INTERVENTION:

Tell us how an undergraduate student at Baylor University goes on to earn a master’s and a doctorate in special education from the University of Northern Colorado?

CHINN:

In the early 1960s, I taught special education in Louisville, Kentucky, with an emergency teaching certificate. After doing volunteer work at the Kentucky School for the Blind in Louisville, I was invited to serve as the evening study hall supervisor and was provided housing on the campus. After 2 years of teaching during the day in a class of special education students, and in the evenings working with students with impaired vision, I moved to Waco, Texas, where I became one of the state’s first vocational adjustment coordinators for the Waco Independent School District. The position called for teaching high school–age special education students with mild intellectual disabilities in the morning and placing them in work situations in the afternoons. I was given the responsibility of finding work placements for them and helping the employers understand the needs and abilities of the students. I worked with the state vocational rehabilitation office and placed the students in various work experience situations such as a dry-cleaning establishment, a cafeteria, a bakery, an auto service station, as a grocery store bagger, a line worker in a soda bottling plant, and a mechanic’s assistant in an auto repair shop.

The program was referred to as the Texas Cooperative Program, which was a cooperative agreement between the local school district, the State Special Education office, and the State Vocational Rehabilitation office. All three entities contributed to the functioning of the program.

Gary Clark was the vocational rehabilitation counselor in Waco I was assigned to work with. Gary went on to Peabody (Vanderbilt) to continue his graduate studies while I went to Colorado State College (University of Northern Colorado) for my graduate work. Gary went on to a distinguished career at the University of Illinois and later the University of Kansas. We have remained lifelong colleagues and friends through the years, and while I was division chair at California State University, Los Angeles, Gary Clark spent a year with us as our Guiglielmo Endowed Chair in Special Education.

INTERVENTION:

Your career has involved you working in tandem in the areas of special education and multicultural education. How has one field of study fed the other?

CHINN:

In 1973, the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) held its first conference on Cultural Diversity and the Exceptional Child. My involvement in that conference was the major turning point in my professional career and the beginning of my commitment to culturally diverse and social justice issues. Five years later, in 1978, I was offered the first permanent position as Special Assistant to the Executive Director for Multicultural Concerns at CEC. The year prior to my arrival at CEC, Robert Fuchigami, who had been the graduate dean at Sonoma State University and a member of the CEC Executive Committee, took a year leave of absence from his university to set up the CEC Multicultural Affairs Office, and to conduct a national search for a permanent person to lead that office. I was fortunate enough to be selected to fill that position.

INTERVENTION:

Who influenced you early on to have a multidimensional career in education focused on both diversity issues and special education?

CHINN:

During my formative years in special education, and in my years at CEC, I was privileged to work with some outstanding individuals who helped shape my perspectives of multicultural education and social justice issues. Several colleagues such as Leonard Baca, University of Colorado; Jeanette Misaka, University of Utah; Robert Fuchigami, Sonoma State University; Arthurlene Towner, San Francisco State University and later California State University Hayward; Jim Green, who has spent years devoted to Indigenous American groups; Alba Ortiz, University of Texas at Austin; and Donna Gollnick, at the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) and later the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) were always available to provide me with their sage advice. Dr. Stanley E. Jackson, Assistant Executive Director at CEC mentored me and was my confidant and most influential person during and after my years when we worked together.

INTERVENTION:

Early in your career, you organized the first national conferences on “the exceptional Black child” and the “exceptional bilingual child” for the Council of Exceptional Children. Tell us a bit about the impetus for these conference foci and the impact of the conferences on the field of special education.

CHINN:

In one of my early years at CEC, Ricardo R. Fernandez, who eventually became president of the National Association for Bilingual Education, invited me to a conference at his bilingual center at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The conference brought both special educators and bilingual educators together to address the needs of linguistically diverse students with special needs. During that conference, Dr. Fernandez and his bilingual education colleagues pledged their support if CEC would move forward with a national conference on linguistically diverse children. With their emphatic assurances, we began making plans for the conference.

As I began moving forward with conference planning at CEC, members of the CEC Black Caucus expressed both a strong interest and a need for a comparable conference focused on exceptional African American children. This was also approved by CEC, and we scheduled our first conferences on these two topics back-to-back in New Orleans in February 1981. The response was so overwhelming, that we required three overflow hotels to meet our needs.

INTERVENTION:

Your textbook Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society (2020) is in its 11th edition, and you are working on the 12th edition. For a book to be in publication for 40 years speaks to its ability to continue to tell “truth to power.” What do you believe are the important components of diversity and pluralism as we move into the third decade of this century?

CHINN:

In the 1970s and early 1980s, most multicultural education texts focused on ethnic studies, primarily addressing four primary racial/ethnic groups: African American, Hispanic American, Asian and Pacific American, and Native American. However, in 1979, NCATE released its new multicultural standards emphasizing socio-economic/class issues and gender issues in addition to issues related to race.

About that same time, I began working with and exchanging multicultural concerns with Donna M. Gollnick, who was at that time one of the primary staff members at AACTE working on multicultural education issues. Donna became known in her later professional years for her work at NCATE, where she was an integral part in establishing national accreditation standards.

When Donna and I considered collaborating on the development of a multicultural education text, we decided that any work we did should not only include race/ethnicity, social class and gender issues, but also other subcultures that are an integral part of our everyday life, such as our religious, language, exceptional, geographical, and age cultural groups. These subcultures or microcultures significantly influence the students we see in our classrooms and play a role in how they perceive themselves and how they behave. In 1983, the first edition of Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society was released. Since then, there have been 11 editions of the text spanning a period of over 40 years. A 12th edition is now being considered.

These subcultures were adopted by NCATE as part of their accrediting standards. Eventually, sexual orientation was added to both the multicultural text and to the NCATE standards. Many of the state accrediting boards followed by adopting these subcultures as part of their education standards.

INTERVENTION:

You have spent much of your time in higher education in training teachers concerning the issues of social justice. What are the issues of social justice on which the field of education needs to focus in the 21st century?

CHINN:

As we continue to move forward into the 21st century, issues related to social justice have become increasingly critical in teacher education programs. Nearly every day, another attack against an individual or institution provides another shock against our sense of social justice. During the last few years, all of the “isms” have come into full focus. Racism has unfortunately been a continuous stain on our country’s history. From our days of slavery and segregation, our country passed laws that fostered racism such as Jim Crow laws, laws to exclude the immigration of specific racial/ethnic groups, and anti-miscegenation laws. Racist laws and practices were often justified from church pulpits. Although most of the racist laws have been rejected and removed, racist policies and behaviors continue. Laws can demand certain behaviors, but we are not able to legislate attitudes. Changes in attitudes are often slow and may take generations to see significant change. However, schools are a good and logical place to start.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began being referred to as the “Chinese virus,” attacks against Asian Americans in the United States increased into the thousands, leaving a third of Asian Americans fearful of their own safety, and eight in 10 saying that violence against them is rising (Ruiz et al., 2021). More than 9,000 incidents of anti-Asian violence have been recorded since the pandemic began in 2020 and through mid-2021. In presumably progressive Los Angeles, anti-Asian hate crimes soared 76% in 2020 (Shyong, 2021). In November 2021, Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Suni Lee reported that she and a group of Asian women were verbally attacked with anti-Asian slurs and sprayed with pepper spray while waiting for their ride share (Roscher, 2021).

The United States has had a long and painful history of violence against Asian Americans. Somehow, the Los Angeles Chinatown massacre of 1871, resulting in 18 violent deaths, was almost eradicated from the written and oral history of our country. The most lethal of attacks took place 14 years later in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where White miners slaughtered 28 Chinese miners. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers into the United States. The earlier Page Act of 1875 had barred Chinese women from entering the country. These were not the only laws implemented to target a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating into our country.

In another example, Executive Order 9066 was signed and issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. It authorized the Secretary of War to incarcerate almost 120,000 Japanese Americans into concentration camps located primarily in isolated regions in the western half of the country. Two thirds of the incarcerated were American citizens, born and raised in this country. The incarcerated Japanese Americans represented nearly all of those living on the West Coast of the United States. At the outbreak of the war, there were more than an additional 150,000 Japanese Americans living in Hawaii. However, being physically isolated from the U.S. mainland, fewer than 2,000 of the Japanese in Hawaii were interned.

In contrast, there were tens of millions of German and Italian Americans living in the United States at the outbreak of World War II (WWII). There were more than 1.2 million foreign-born Germans and 600,000 foreign-born Italian Americans living in the country at the war’s outbreak. However, only a total of 11,500 individuals of German ancestry, and 3,000 of Italian ancestry were incarcerated during the war. German American, Italian American, and Japanese Americans all suffered from attacks and harassment during the war. However, the Japanese American population was singled out and suffered the greatest indignities and unprecedented levels of attacks of any racial or ethnic group in the country during those times.

Likewise, from the time that slave ships arrived on our shores, African Americans have been victimized in our country, which has boasted equal opportunity for all. Between 1865 and 1950, there were nearly 6,500 lynchings of Black individuals in the United States (Fox, 2020). Even in recent times, Americans watched in stunned silence and then protested as they watched George Floyd, a Black man, murdered before their eyes on television. They saw Ahmaud Arbery, another Black man, shot and killed while jogging. These were but two incidents that have led to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and throughout the world.

Although most Americans dread the sound and flashing lights of a police or highway patrolman’s vehicle, most anticipate a traffic ticket at the worst. As we know that law enforcement officers are present to protect us, it is unlikely that such a presence would evoke a feeling of fear. Yet for a segment of our population, this is precisely what it does. I recall watching television coverage where a White woman was accompanying her African American husband as he drove north out of their Northeastern U.S. city. When she told him that she had forgotten to get their annual license tag renewal for the car, he became very upset. At first, she was shocked by his outburst, then he explained that an expired license was reason enough for a traffic stop. Traffic stops for Black men too often have had a way of escalating into violence. In April 2021, just a few miles from where the George Floyd murder trial was taking place, Daunte Wright, an unarmed Black man, was killed following a routine traffic stop. In addition to Wright, Philando Castile, Walter Scott, and Sam Dubose were Black men who were shot and killed following traffic stops in which they posed no danger to the law enforcement personnel (Stern, 2021). While a majority of our nation’s law enforcement officers are diligently risking their lives to provide for our safety and well-being, it is critical for us as educators, our students, and the law enforcement community to understand the perspectives of African American individuals and why some if not many have an inherent concern and distrust of authority figures.

As with African and Asian Americans, Mexican American and other Latinx groups have been subjected to decades of discriminatory practices. Even the public schools were complicit in their discrimination toward these students. Some educators in years past discouraged Mexican American students from advancing their education, in support of local farm owners and other employers who believed that an undereducated group of individuals provided a greater likelihood of unskilled workers for their labor pool (Takaki, 2008). In 2018, the U.S.–Mexico border zero tolerance policy was implemented, which resulted in a forced separation of parents seeking asylum from their children. In late 2021, the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union were still trying to identify and reunite 270 children with their families. In 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported 51 hate motivated killings in the United States. Of that number, 23 of the victims were killed in the August 2019 massacre in El Paso, Texas, by a gunman who had posted a hate-filled statement against Latinx individuals as he decried the invasion of Mexican immigrants at the U.S. southern border.

The Pittsburg Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in 2018, which claimed 11 lives, including several Holocaust survivors, may have been the deadliest attack against American Jews, but it was by no means the first. Fattal (2018) suggested that antisemitism is as old as the country itself, with Jewish individuals and Jewish institutions, including religious sites, experiencing both social and physical attacks. From the Reconstruction era and especially in the early 1900s, the Ku Klux Klan did not limit their attacks to African Americans. Jews and Catholics were frequently the target for their attacks. Since 2016, reported attacks against American Jews have risen significantly. One in four American Jews reported that they had experienced antisemitism in the past year (Hernandez, 2021).

Although the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning) community has made significant gains in the past decade, the United States has continued a long history of discrimination and violence against this group. Both legal and political victories have been won, including the right to marry and to adopt children, but discrimination persists in housing, employment, access to services, and often social and religious acceptance. With the condemnation of some of the dominant religious groups, physical and verbal attacks continue, and suicide is too frequently a result of children and youth in these groups unable to gain acceptance. There were 13 countries in 2019 where being homosexual was punishable by death (Byrnes, 2019). Five United Nations member countries are among those with these draconian laws. Same-sex activity is a crime in 70 countries. LGBTQ individuals in the United States are under continuous attacks by some religious leaders who use their pulpits to condemn this group of individuals.

Since the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center, there have been numerous incidents of attacks against Muslims and their mosques as well as attempts to limit the construction of mosques and Islamic centers in the United States. President Obama, a Christian, was falsely reported and denigrated as a Muslim. Should being a Muslim disqualify an individual from holding public office? Legally, the answer is no. However, whereas Jews and Catholics (e.g., Alfred Smith and John F. Kennedy) were once attacked as unsuitable for holding public office, Muslims are now often the target group for these religious biases.

INTERVENTION:

Why is the continued enforcement of the Separation of Church and State clause still so important today?

CHINN:

The establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution have become known as the “Separation of Church and State” clause stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or exercising the free exercise thereof . . . ,” resulting in a separation of church and state. However, school boards and state legislators sometimes believe that it is their duty to infuse their own perceptions of morality and ethics into the curriculum of the public schools. Over the past 60 years, school districts and state legislatures have attempted to circumvent the principle of separation of church and state. These attempts have forced the courts to rule on their appropriateness. Several of these attempts ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which has responsibility on ruling on the appropriateness and legality of these attempts. For example, the Court ruled in 1962 that any type of prayer in the public schools, even if non-denominational, is an unconstitutional government sponsorship of religion (Engel v. Vitale, 82 S. Ct.1261 [1962]). A 1968 Supreme Court ruling found a state statute banning the teaching of evolution was unconstitutional. The state cannot set a course of study to promote a religious point of view (Epperson v. Arkansas, 89 S. Ct. 266 [1968]). Yet, with the court rulings that have been handed down over the years, challenges continue as individuals are determined to circumvent the law and force their views of morality on others.

INTERVENTION:

Where is the impetus to challenge the principles of the separation of church and state coming from?

CHINN:

Parents and local community activists have become increasingly more vocal in articulating their demands for a say in their children’s education. Educators should realize that parents can be valuable partners in developing quality educational programs. They live in the community, they know their community, and believe that they know what is best for their schools. However, educators should balance the needs, values, and preferences of the parents with appropriate school policies. For example, if the school population is homogeneous and belongs to a specific religious group, they may believe that their numbers translate to strength and into what is right. Parent and community leaders have attempted to reinstate religious content into the curriculum, or even prayer, when they know that these actions would be a clear violation of the principles of separation of church and state. With the composition of the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, parents may feel emboldened in their attempts to infuse their own religious beliefs into the schools.

INTERVENTION:

You have been very active in the NAME Organization (National Association for Multicultural Education) since its inception. And, the organization has the Philip C. Chinn Multicultural Book Award. Describe the importance of books, films, or other media focused on diversity and multicultural issues in the field of education today.

CHINN:

We are all aware of the importance and the influence of the media on the perceptions and behaviors of individuals. A large segment of the population watches the conservative news media, while another large segment watches the liberal media. Talk show hosts continually provide their version of truth, and the audiences often accept these as the true versions of the state of the country. Never in recent years have we seen the country so polarized. With all our efforts to eradicate biased laws targeting racial, ethnic, [and] religious groups and those based on sexual orientation, we have made significant progress. Most state education boards require a curriculum infused with multicultural education and social justice.

Recently we have heard the term critical race theory commented on by the news media, school board members, and politicians. A recent gubernatorial candidate successfully ran on a promise that critical race theory would not be taught in his state. However, there is little or no evidence that critical race theory is taught in our nation’s public schools. What is critical race theory? With the risk of oversimplification of a complex concept, critical race theory is an academic concept more than 40 years old. Africans were enslaved and brought to this country to do the bidding of American plantation owners. Asians were viewed as cheap labor in plantations and in the building of the railroads. Mexicans were also viewed as a cheap source of labor for ranches and farms, provided meager compensation and deplorable living conditions. Native Americans had their lands taken from them, and many were condemned to live on reservations. These groups were viewed as heathen, as they were neither White nor Christian. Critical race theory suggests that they were subjugated by a dominant group with laws created to protect and promote the well-being and interests of a chosen race. It was, in fact, legal scholars (e.g., Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, Mari Matsuda) who initiated discussions about institutional racism, leading to the concept “critical race theory.”

Conservative dominant group individuals are fearful that critical race theory promotes division among groups leading to resentment and demanding social justice for groups based on race, gender, religious, and political affiliation. State legislatures have or are considering bills that would ban race or sex scapegoating. Some of the conservative state lawmakers appear to be trying to keep proponents of critical race theory from discussions of racism. Critical race theory should not be a vehicle to create racial division. Instead, it should be a means to create honest dialogue and examination of how some groups have been systematically disenfranchised from their given rights as U.S. citizens for full participation in the benefits to which they are entitled. Critical race theory should not be a condemnation or an attack against our country, which many if not most would agree is the best and the greatest of nations. With the lessons learned in acknowledging mistakes, the United States, like all other countries, has had a history of good and greatness. Many of these flaws have been addressed, and others are works in progress. Annually, the numbers of individuals worldwide seeking entry into the country is evidence of how favorable the world perceives the United States. We can look to this with pride as we continue to promote equity and social justice.

Those who were opposed to multicultural education, to diversity, and social justice have not gone away. Some have been silenced as they were seemingly overwhelmed by the laws and court rulings supporting the other side. However, a change in leadership enabled them to again become vocal, to demonstrate, and to gain legitimacy in the eyes of their fellow believers and in some instances to take up arms and violence. Conspiracy theories became common place and what seemed to be a small group of fringe group individuals began growing and gaining acceptance or at least tolerance by some mainstream political groups.

Although most of us are aware of the power of the media, some individuals get most of their information from conservative news sources while others get theirs from liberal sources. Unfortunately, television and radio commentators do not always report the truth. At times, deliberate and well-calculated lies are fed to the American public (LaFrance, 2020).

While media has clearly been utilized to spread falsehood to the detriment of society, it can also be used to educate and provide truth to the public and to students. However, in a very divided climate, educators must be cognizant that any attempt to provide their version of the truth could be considered a falsehood by parents on the other end of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, there are some excellent documentaries developed by both the mainstream media and by independent film makers.

Earlier, I noted the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans interned in concentration camps during WWII by order of Presidential Executive Order 9066. As an aftermath of this injustice upon many loyal Americans, the U.S. government formally apologized, and financial reparations were paid to all surviving individuals who were incarcerated. However, years later, careful examination of documents related to Executive Order 9066 found that much of the justification used to send these individuals to the camps was based on falsehoods. A documentary, Alternative Facts: The Lies of Executive Order 9066, provides a step-by-step legal accounting of how facts were distorted to justify what we now consider an illegal incarceration of U.S. citizens. This documentary and a panel of experts in the area [was] part of the opening general session of the National Association of Multicultural Education in March 2022. In addition, a film theater at the conference [provided] some of the newest documentaries released addressing social justice issues. In our country’s politically divisive state, documentaries, although an effective means to educate and provide truthful information to our students and parents, must be chosen with extreme care. Before showing documentaries or recommending their viewing, they must be carefully screened to ensure that they are factually correct and that they will not be offensive to the parents and the community.

Individuals in the field of special education may not realize that the fight for social justice within our field has been taking place for decades and continues today. In my earlier days in special education, there was no Education for All Handicapped Children law (i.e., P.L. 94-142), which guaranteed the free and appropriate education for all children. I was involved with parents of children with moderate disabilities who had no educational rights in the state where I resided. We were in a continuous battle with legislators to gain these rights. Even during my CEC years, a new federal administration considered a move to repeal the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Those attempts were abandoned when parents and children’s rights activists made it known that parents of many of the children with disabilities were members of the same political party as the new administration. Advocates for children with disabilities cannot stop their fight for as long as there are children for us to continue fighting for. The promised full federal funding for special education programs is long overdue. We continue to shortchange our programs for the gifted and talented. Those of us who were among the old guard of special education and multicultural education have already passed the torch to the bright and competent newer generations of educators and champions for social justice.

INTERVENTION:

Do you have any recommendations on how to move the conversation forward?

CHINN:

We live in a polarized world right now. As we teach, we must present the facts and research and let the students think about issues seriously—serious consideration to the facts and research. I have always told students that they don’t have to agree with me, but I want them to think in an unbiased manner: “listen to the facts and make an informed decision.”

INTERVENTION:

What advice or words of wisdom do you have for those studying special education with a focus on social justice or those studying social justice with a focus on special education?

CHINN:

We are all deeply aware that we are now living in a very politically and religiously polarized country. Religious denominations are facing schisms, and some law makers denigrate and refuse to work with individuals for the other political party. Individuals are personally affected by the loss of friendships and family relationships over political and religious differences.

Until we begin listening, there can be little hope for understanding one another. We must listen actively and empathetically. We must not only hear what the other person is saying but try to understand what they are feeling. We cannot be so wrapped up in the righteousness of our own cause that we are unable to even attempt to understand what and why our friends, relatives, and colleagues believe differently from what we do. With understanding and a willingness to work together for the good of our children, our schools, and our country, we can continue to have hope.