Texas Textbook 'Dripping With Racism' Opposed at Hearing, Awaits Vote

Just as the U.S. is about to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, the Texas' elected education board is facing whether to send to its schoolchildren a Mexican American studies textbook that has been called "dripping with racism" and has been found by a state committee to have many mistakes. 

The Texas State Board of Education gave the textbook a full hearing, putting it through the same process as other state textbooks, a process that lacks any earlier filter for a problematic book. The board held the hearing on the book on Tuesday, taking public comment including that of Mexican American studies scholars, legislators and a couple of young people. About 100 people signed up to speak and the book drew a busload of protestors to Austin. 

The book, Mexican American Heritage, published by Momentum Instruction, was found to have 68 factual errors and 73 interpretive and omission errors by an ad hoc committee of scholars assembled by board member Ruben Cortez Jr.