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Junot Diaz Defends Immigration Reform On The Colbert Report

Latino Literary Giant Appears On Colbert
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National Reporter, HuffPost

The Colbert Report

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz dropped by the Colbert Report Monday night where he spent much of his appearance defending immigration reform.

“Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American,” Diaz said. “That’s just the truth of it.”

The author continued, drawing applause from the crowd when he said:

We have a whole bunch of young people and a whole bunch of families. Are we going to disrupt these families and tear them apart? Or are we going think, like, listen – these people are here. We’ve got to deal with this reality. We’ve got to extend the franchise. And we’ve got to start thinking of the country in a way of how do we pull folks together, not how do we attack them and afflict them.

Diaz sits on the board of Freedom University, a program that offers classes to undocumented immigrants, who are barred from attending public universities in Georgia.

Watch Junot Diaz’s appearance on the Colbert Report in the video above.

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Before You Go

Latino Books Once Banned In Arizona
Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, by Rodolfo Acuña(01 of07)
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The most successful book written by professor Rodolfo Acuña, "Occupied America" represents all that Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne opposed in the Mexican-American Studies program when he launched the attack against it. Horne viewed the curriculum as separatist and ethnically divisive. HB 2281, the law used to ban TUSD's Mexican American Studies program, prohibits courses that "promote the overthrow of the United States government" or "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group." "These people think you're a separatist if you want to teach and include people," Acuña told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. "I don't want to be part of Mexico ... That's a stupid thing to argue." (credit:Pearson)
500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, compiled by Elizabeth Martinez(02 of07)
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This compilation tells the story of Chicano history from before the European conquest of North America, through colonization and into the present day. The book describes the Southwest as "Occupied America" -- a term that Arizona conservatives often view as unjust and disparaging. Actor Edward James Olmos felt differently: "If young people read this book, they will be strong and proud in new ways," he said on the dust jacket to the 1990 edition. "It's a real education, in the true sense of that word." (credit:Southwest Community Resources)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire(03 of07)
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This seminal work by Brazilian education professor Paulo Freire argued that students learn best when treated as equals and engaged on their own terms. Freire argues against the "banking model" of education, in which teachers treat students as passive recipients of knowledge. His work is studied by education specialists throughout the hemisphere.In a 2012 interview, Arizona Superintendent of Education John Huppenthal explained why he viewed the book as problematic:
The title of Paulo Freire's book is 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed,' and so the question is, who is the oppressed? And as we looked at what was going on in the classroom and looked at what was in the materials, we saw they were putting together a Marxian model in the classroom in which the oppressed are the Hispanic students and the oppressors are the white Caucasian power structure. We came to the conclusion that it wasn't O.K. to be preaching that model in the classroom.
 (credit:Continuum)
Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow(04 of07)
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A collection of essays, interviews, lesson plans and other materials, Rethinking Columbus aims to change the way students understand the first interactions between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Europeans. One contributing author, Tucson's own Leslie Silko, boasts a Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. (credit:Rethinking Schools Ltd.)
Critical Race Theory, by Richard Delgado(05 of07)
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The academic field of critical race theory challenges traditional ways of looking at race and racism. The field's theoreticians argue that supposedly neutral concepts and institutions, like meritocracy or the legal system, mask systemic inequality and institutionalized racism. Richard Delgado's books is one of the discipline's classics. Some conservatives view critical race theory as "dangerous" because some of its proponents view the Constitution and the fabric of American democracy as imbued with racism. During the course of several interviews in 2012, Julio Cammarota, a professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona, "You can see the problem, can't you? One side doesn't want to talk about race, the other side wants to talk about race all the time." (credit:NYU Press)
Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings of Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez(06 of07)
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The term "Aztlán" refers to the mythic homeland of the Nahua of Central Mexico. Intellectuals of the Chicano movement adopted the term to describe the southwestern United States. Mexican-American Studies teachers at Tucson Unified School District taught those concepts with books like this one, by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, a writer and political activist who helped found the Chicano Movement in the 1960s. (credit:Arte Publico Press)
Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, by Arturo Rosales(07 of07)
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This well-regarded study of the Chicano movement serves as a companion to the 1996 PBS documentary of the same name. (credit:Arte Publico Press)
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