Confronting White Supremacy and Cis-Heteropatriarchy: CFA Chicanx/Latinx Caucus Releases Demands

More than a year ago, CFA leaders envisioned Our Way Forward.

It’s a union guideline – the second edition – designed for a better, bolder tomorrow for CSU faculty, staff, and students by challenging systemic racism, confronting white supremacy and cis-heteropatriarchy, and protecting, serving, and informing students and faculty.  

As the world evolves, so, too, do our demands.

The CFA Chicanx/Latinx Caucus, led by valued faculty leaders across the CSU system, released a new set of demands to contest the barriers of systemic oppression within the CSU system, and uplift Chicanx and Latinx students, faculty, and staff.

“Our demands push back against the racist stereotypes that reduce us in our society and that are reproduced in academia, where we are still silenced & where our labor continues to be disrespected.” said Michelle Ramos Pellicia, Chicanx/ Latinx/ co-chair and CSU San Marcos modern language studies and Hispanic sociolinguistics professor

“While the caucus continues its solidarity and advocacy work on behalf of all underrepresented faculty and students, our demands include an increase in the density of Chicanx/Latinx tenure-track faculty going beyond hiring and inclusive of retention, tenure & promotion to full professorship.”

Through months of deliberation, caucus members compiled a list of six pressing needs to better serve and protect Chicanx and Latinx communities in CSU system:

• Contesting Language, Representation, and Chicanx/Latinx Historical Memory
• Protecting Undocumented Students
• Fighting for Abolition and Campus Public Safety
• Becoming Progressive Hispanic Serving Institutions
• Saving Reproductive Justice
• Combating White Supremacy by Renaming Buildings.

Under the undocumented students’ section, the caucus looks at a number of solutions to better serve undocumented students, like protecting all global undocumented students, citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., and support for The VISION Act.

“Our Chicanx/Latinx demands embrace the global complexities and need to amplify our solidarity in creating a more loving and equitable world. This we do for our ancestors, for us, and for all children,” said CSU LA professor, Chicanx/Latinx caucus member and activist Leda Ramos.

Of the 23 CSU campuses, 21 of them are designated as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), a federal designation for colleges and universities where at least 25 percent of the undergraduate full-time enrollment are Hispanic. Unfortunately, CFA Chicanx/Latinx Caucus members understand that most of these institutions fail to serve Chicanx and Latinx students. Members demand that each institution forge a progressive HSI agenda that includes the complexity of CFA’s anti-racism and social justice goals. Additionally, members want campuses to increase the tenure-track density of Chicanx/Latinx faculty, which currently does not reflect student enrollment.

And finally, caucus members demand a reframing of choice and access to abortions to view through the lens of reproductive justice, which would include the organizing legacy centered on race, class, and the sterilization of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American women.

“We also see ourselves as advocates of reproductive rights & the needs of parents and caregivers, as well as the rights of our undocumented community members & loved ones,” said Ramos Pellicia.

“Our identities are complex and ought not to be brushed off as monolithic “Latinx.” Instead, we want our diverse identity, and demography recognized, inclusive of our LGBTQIA+ and mixed-race communities, be it Black, Indigenous, Mexican, Salvadorans, Chicanx-Puerto Rican, among our many possible identities.”

The caucus also demands that “no student mental health counseling and mental health work be conducted with third-party vendors and with states that are anti-choice, e.g., Texas.”

CFA Chicanx/Latinx Caucus demands are being added to Our Way Forward, and we will release the updated version when it is complete.