In 1958, Acuña began teaching at San Fernando Junior High, transferring later to Cleveland High School, where he taught social studies until 1965, when he received a tenured position at Los Angeles Pierce College. He also taught adult high school to pay for his doctoral studies at the University of Southern California, during which time he was active with the Latin American Civic Association and the Mexican American Political Association. He was the founding chair of the California State University, Northridge's Chicano/a Studies department, and he began teaching at the university in 1969.
In 1989, Acuña was a founding member of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, a civil rights advocacy group. Two years later, he traveled to El Salvador as a correspondent for the Texas Observer covering its presidential elections. He had sought to know "how accurate were the interpretations of historians of the past". His books and lectures analyze this query.[2]
Acuña calls himself a Chicano. The Chicana/o Public Scholar argues that the word Chicana/o best describes the area of studies called Chicana/o Studies.[3][better source needed]
At a 2003 lecture celebrating the release of his book US Latinos: An Inquiry (Greenwood Press, 2003), he addressed U.S. Latino Issues and the Latino label or identity. In his book, he wrote about the "mistaken trend" of describing a large and heterogeneous group like people of Latin American descent in the U.S. under labels like Latino:[4]
When and why the Latino identity came about is a more involved story. Essentially, politicians, the media, and marketers find it convenient to deal with the different U.S. Spanish-speaking people under one umbrella.
However, many people with Spanish surnames contest the term Latino. They claim it is misleading because no Latino or Hispanic nationality exists since no Latino state exists, so generalizing the term Latino slights the various national identities included under the umbrella.[5]
In 2008, Acuña and his wife, Guadalupe Compeán, edited a three-volume anthology titled Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience (Greenwood Press). The work is the basis of his history of Chicana/o Studies at CSUN entitled In the Trenches of Academe where Acuña—based on over 2000 documents on Latinos living in the United States—concludes that as yet there is no Latino History. He loosely builds on the points raised in Marx's National Question. His 2007 Corridors of Migration: Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933 (Arizona, 2007) used documents on both sides of the border.[6]
During a lecture titled "Is Antonio Banderas Latino?" at Swarthmore College, his studies of the race, age, history and class of the Chicano identity were compared and contrasted to the definition of the alleged Latino identity of U.S. His question of "should a Spaniard get affirmative action for Latinos without the life experience?"—where life experience meant that one needed to suffer discrimination—was answered no.[7] In 2002, Acuña opposed the nomination of Miguel Estrada, a Honduran immigrant, to the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court.[8]
In 1992, Acuña sued the University of California, Santa Barbara, for 'discrimination'; the judge dropped the race discrimination cause of action; the political cause of action had previously been dropped because it missed the statute of limitations filing. A jury stated that Acuña had been discriminated against on the basis of his age, but Federal Judge Audrey Collins refused to compel the university to hire him, instead awarding him a monetary compensation of $325,000, which Acuña states that he and his wife will use to help the victims of employment discrimination in higher education. The For Chicana Chicano Studies Foundation recently launched a web site. The foundation gives an average of $7,500 annually in scholarships.[9]
^Fitzgerald, David. (2009) "Review: Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933." Bulletin of Latin American Research 28(2), 321.
^"Nominacion de Estrada: Un latino contra los latinos," La Opinion, May 10, 2002. Also published in Miami Herald, San Diego La Prensa, Los Angeles Daily News, and various other newspapers.
^Quiñones, Ben (April 19, 2006). "A Liberated Chicano". L.A. Weekly. Archived from the original on April 25, 2006. Retrieved April 20, 2006.
2004 Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th edition. New York: Longman. ISBN0-321-10330-0.
2000 Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 4th edition. New York: Addison, Wesley & Longman.
1998 Sometimes There is No Other Side: Essays on Truth and Objectivity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 291. Honorable Mention for Gustavus Myers Award for an Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America. ISBN0-268-01763-8.
1997 Truth and Objectivity and Chicano history. East Lansing: Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University. ISBN0-8165-0370-2.
1996 Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles. London: Verso Press, 1996. 320. Recipient of the Gustavus Myers Award for an Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America. ISBN1-85984-936-9.
1988 Occupied America: A History of Chicano. 3d Edition. New York: Harper and Row. pp. 475. Recipient of the Gustavus Myers Award for an Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America.
1988 Sound Recording: Occupied America a history of Chicanos. Publication: Salt Lake City, Utah : Utah State Library Division for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Cassette tape.
1984 Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945-1975. UCLA. pp. 560. ISBN0-89551-066-9.
1981 El Caudillo Sonorense: Ignacio Pesqueira y sus tiempos. Mexico D.F.: ERA. pp. 191.
1980 Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 2nd Edition. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 437.
1976 America Ocupada. Ediciones ERA. pp. 342.
1974 Sonoran Strongman: The Times of Ignacio Pesqueira. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. pp. 179. ISBN0-8165-0370-2.
1972 Occupied America: The Chicano Struggle Toward Liberation. New York: Harper & Ro., pp. 282.
1971 The story of the Mexican Americans; the men and the land. Sacramento: California State Dept. of Education.
1970 Cultures in Conflict: Case Studies of the Mexican American. Los Angeles: Charter Books. pp. 140.
1970 A Mexican American Chronicle. New York: American Book Co. pp. 210.
1969 The Story of the Mexican American. New York: American Book Co. 140 pp.
