UC Merced

In the summer of 2017, Gonzalez vs. Douglas overturned the ban on ethnic studies in the state of Arizona. Although law ARS 15-112 prohibited ethnic studies as an area of study, only the Mexican American Studies program in Tuscon Unified School District was investigated and discontinued. The present study utilizes 21 in-depth interviews with teachers, students, parents, lawyers, expert witnesses and community members who were involved in the litigation. Their counterstories (counter to the majoritarian narrative) reveals the importance of what I term transformative historical capital which refers to the transformation that occurs internally when one learns of the tools, epistemologies, networks, and determination extant in the Chicana/o community (as well as other communities of color) due to a long history of social movements that sought civil and human rights. The research question that guided my research was: 1. “What forms of community cultural wealth were drawn from in order to win Gonzalez vs. Douglas?”. I found three of Tara Yosso’s forms of community cultural wealth (aspirational, social and navigational) recurrent in participant’s accounts of how they won the case and the emergent transformative historical capital.