Volume 12   Issue 1 

2018  

AMAE Open Issue 

 

Editors  

Patricia Sánchez 
The University of Texas at San Antonio 
 

Antonio J. Camacho 

AMAE, Inc.  

 

Associate Editors  

Julie L. Figueroa  
Sacramento State  
 

Lucila D. Ek  
The University of Texas at San Antoni 

Association of Mexican American Educators Journal 
A peer-reviewed, open access journal 

 



  Martinez 

  178 

A Subtractive Intellectualism 

 

Ricardo Martinez 

Iowa State University  

Ames, Iowa 

 

Learning to socialize—as kids playing tag,  

the game evolves 

to cops and robbers, like sides of a coin, it changes to  

 superheroes versus super villains 

Batman Superman    Wonder Woman She-Ra 

and Captain America; 

  this is who we want to be, 

who we watch on weekends — 

white heroes saving the day. 

 

 Weekdays activate “education” 

  A word that means so much more in Spanish.  

   A word we only know in English. 

In the early grades of school— 

 White students  are 

  Given pens and paper 

 to write their dreams, 

like a mother’s warmth, filled with hope. 

     Letters to the future self 

   

 Latinx students 

  are taught to use erasers –  

 The erasing of a home language, to erase their culture. 



  Martinez 

  179 

Never told of our own blood. 

 Unable to realize 

  it has the power 

 to write and transform the world. 

 

  We are running a race and never told  

 the start or finish line.  

This is what we learn in school: 

 A subtracted identity.   

trying to make a plus out of a minus  

  rarely realizing that school divides us.  

  

 In middle grades, the silence takes hold.  

So like cattle we are tracked— 

 all to make assimilation easier.  

Told the myth of meritocracy and taught cultural hegemony  

every day— 

in history class, in every moment of forced English  

 and every time teachers don’t try to say our names. 

Maybe, no superhero looks like us 

  Because we already have a “super power”: 

 We are invisible, a power we never wanted.   

 

Still we must always remember, we are intellectuals  

though we are discarded as objects by society.  

  

After years of schooling  

 We must unite— 

   We must learn to understand privilege and whiteness 

 As a form of fear and guilt lived by white people 

And 



  Martinez 

  180 

 as a small part of us.  

  Whiteness as a reminder of the colonizer 

 A reminder of our resilient indigenous blood  

      And 

  our connection to the land. 

  

As adults, we must fight injustice and  

  resist through education—  

changing it as we experience it 

 embracing the Latinization of this country, 

       in supporting our seeds.  

 

  We are the future because we are the past.