This episode features podcasters Nellie Herrera-Martinez, Diana Vera-Alba, and Ildi Carrillo as they unpack the long, complicated history of affirmative action through story, data, and lived experience. Beginning with the Civil Rights Act, Executive Order 11246, and the early foundations of educational equity, we explore how affirmative action sought to repair generations of exclusion rather than provide “handouts.” The episode then examines key turning points such as California’s Proposition 209 and the 2023 Supreme Court decision that ended race-conscious admissions nationwide. Through accessible explanations and counterstories, we highlight how so-called “color-blind” policies have deepened inequities and shifted the burden onto community colleges and under-resourced institutions. Ultimately, we call for admissions systems that honor resilience, belonging, and lived experience alongside traditional metrics of merit.

Hosts: Nellie Herrera-Martinez, Diana Vera-Alba, and Ildi Carrillo

Explicit Content Warning: This episode includes mild explicit language (e.g., “WTF”) and brief discussions of racial inequities and systemic discrimination.

In this episode, we discuss how student-led resistance in the 1960s, particularly within the often overlooked context of community colleges, challenged and redefined the landscape of higher education in California. We provide context by examining the policies that claimed to democratize education but actually reinforced exclusion. By examining the activism of students at San Diego City College in the 1960’s and 70’s as a case study, we highlight the crucial role student activism played in demanding inclusive curriculum that led to the development of Black and Chicano studies at San Diego City College and culturally affirming spaces like Chicano Park. The educational transformation we celebrate and fight to protect today wasn't given - it was taken, through organized student power. Finally, we discuss how this power, found in the movements of student activists in the 60’s and 70’s have a far reaching impact well into today.

Hosts: David Crawford, Rebel Saint Lilith, and Shanell Tyus

In this episode, we will discuss key contradictions in California community college’s history, during the periods of 1920 through 1955. Starting with a focus on the countercyclical relationship between The Great Depression in the 1930’s and the boost on enrollment this period generated for junior colleges across the United States, we will argue that the main stock story of this period is told through a white racial frame, erasing challenging experiences faced by Mexican and Mexican American communities. We will offer a counterstory that highlights the scapegoating and mass “repatriation” (deportation) of Mexican and Mexican-American workers and communities during this period, while also honoring the courage and tenacity of Mexican and Mexican American communities exemplified in two key court cases that we argue must be understood as precursors to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education.

Hosts: Lawson Hardrick Cervantes and Julio Soto

In this episode, we speak to how racist politicians hijacked emergent science and then used that information to back social programs aimed at using a person’s genetics against them through eugenics. Specifically, we will discuss how eugenics was not only accepted, but how this movement shaped laws and education policy in California.

Hosts: Ryan Henderson, Christian Johnson, and Hector Solorzano

In this episode we expose the ways settler colonialism, manifest destiny, and eugenics shaped the displacement and genocide of Indigenous people and influenced the development of California’s first public university. We felt it was important to contemplate these foundational events in California history, in order to properly understand the historical and political contexts from which higher education emerged in California. We will start the episode by reviewing some early Indigenous history of the place that became California, then we will discuss the policies of the State of California towards Indigenous people, from the founding of the state in 1850 through the 1880s. Next we will talk about the founding of UC Berkeley and the university’s relationship to native land theft and sovereignty. Finally we will discuss the way the men that created the university viewed Indigenous people, and the connection between UC Berkeley and community colleges.

Hosts: Evan Tucker, Kenia Rendon Guerrero, and Mar-Kell Law

Explicit Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of genocide and may not be suited for all ages or audiences.

Host Dr. Tanya J. Gaxiola Serrano launches Resisting Erasure with a foundational conversation on Critical Race Counterstories: what they are, where they come from, how they function as method and methodology, and where they’re headed. Guests Dr. Daniel G. Solórzano (UCLA) and Dr. Aja Y. Martinez (UIUC) trace counterstory’s intellectual genealogy from law and ethnic studies to education, share family-rooted storytelling lineages, and offer practical pathways for research, pedagogy, and future directions—archival work, visual studies, and beyond. The episode closes with a preview of Season 1’s doctoral student-produced counterstories.

Guests:

Dr. Daniel G. Solórzano — Professor, Social Sciences & Comparative Education, UCLA; foundational scholar of CRT and Critical Race Counterstory in Education and Ethnic Studies.

Dr. Aja Y. Martinez — Associate Professor, Latina/Latino Studies, UIUC; author of Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory.

Produced with support from SDSU’s Digital Humanities Center.

Special thanks to ARP 801 doctoral students in the Community College Leadership Ed.D. program for researching, scripting, producing, and editing this season’s episodes.

Music by sajua, song title habana café.