Are Ethnic Studies Programs in Danger?
by Latoya Peterson
Over the weekend, I received two email bulletins about recent events surrounding ethnic studies programs, one focusing on Asian Americans in Maryland and one focusing on Latin@s in Arizona.
Lee Fang wrote in with an Action Alert: Save Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland:
Asian American University of Maryland Students Mobilize To Save Asian American Studies
(COLLEGE PARK, MD) — Students at the University of Maryland are stepping up to demand Asian Americans are included in the future of the University. The current draft of the University “Strategic Plan” – a document which governs future resource allocation and academic affairs policy for the next 5 to 10 years – completely ignores Asian American Studies and does nothing to address meeting the needs of Maryland’s growing Asian American student population.
Outrage has been vented at several recent meetings of Asian American student organizations and activist groups. Given forecasted fiscal shortfalls for the state of Maryland, many students fear Asian American Studies, as well as other academic programs dedicated to the study of race, gender, sexual orientation and issues of identity, face elimination or severe cut backs in the case of a budget crisis.
“Without inclusion in the Strategic Plan, you don’t exist,” lamented Pi Delta Psi President Scottie Siu.
As the deadline nears for community input, several Asian American groups are preparing to lobby and write letters demanding that the Provost add provisions to ensure that Asian American Studies be protected and promoted one day into a Major. Other demands include that there should be more needs based assessment surveys so counseling services can be improved, and that there should be a space on campus for Asian American cultural events.
Take action now! Call Provost Nariman Farvardin at (301) 405-5252 and ask that Asian American Studies be in the Strategic Plan!
(You can also contact Lee Fang at Lhfang@gmail.com).
I also received an email from Aaminah with an opinion piece from the Arizona Daily Star. The piece was written in response to a proposed bill in the Arizona State Legislature to target courses of study that they perceive as anti-American:
Some state lawmakers are again sticking their noses where they don’t belong and trying to tell educators what should or shouldn’t be taught in public schools.
The Legislature is attempting to usurp the decision-making responsibilities of local school boards and is perpetuating lies and creating divisions among Arizonans by pushing a bill that seeks to end programs like Raza Studies in the Tucson Unified School District. The bill would deny state funding to schools whose courses “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.”
Whatever that means.
Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services reported in Thursday’s Star that the bill, SB 1108, is aimed at MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, a student group that state Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, describes as racist.
Raza Studies has also drawn the ire of anti-immigrant-rights activists and last year was criticized by state schools superintendent Tom Horne, who said the program was promoting “ethnic chauvinism.”[...]
SB 1108 was approved 9-6 by the House Appropriations Committee and goes to the full House.
The measure should be rejected because it goes against the concept of academic freedom — letting local school boards decide what is best for their students.
The bill is vague and subjective.
The measure would give the state superintendent the power to decide when schools “overtly encourage dissent” from values such as democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration. It’s too much power to give one person.
We wonder whether learning about communist China in history class or discussions about the Middle East and current events would fit into the “teachings of Western civilization.” Mexico is in the Western Hemisphere and thus, part of Western civilization.
SB 1108 would encourage propaganda, not education, in our public schools.
I wonder if these are two isolated incidents of school administrators and legislators being short-sighted? Or, alternatively, is this part of an emerging trend against ethnic studies in schools?
Your thoughts?
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Phrone wrote:
I am appalled at the language of the second bill. Anti-American?! Didn’t we get past that with McCarthy?!
Besides that, however, I think there’s a larger problem in that states are having difficulty funding schools — and the federal government is not helping — so schools are forced to make cuts. Then programs like ethnic studies, women’s studies, etc. are the ones most easily cornered as not being “necessary” and thus the most vulnerable to cuts and being removed.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 9:59 am ¶
Rob wrote:
Shouldn’t European history also be considered ethnic studies as well?
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 10:07 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
I think European history should be more accurately classified as “Northwest Asian Ethnic Studies”.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 10:33 am ¶
Paul wrote:
Ethnic studies programs were necessary in the 1970s and 1980s. These ethnic studies departments have become academic ghettoes which allow the overwhelmingly white administratuion/trustees to assauge their guilt. The white power structure can point to these programs when questioned about diversity. That allows them to keep POCs out of the more traditional departments. If these programs were merged with the other disciplines, then maybe we would have more diverse history, poli sci, and literature departments.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 10:41 am ¶
Joan Flores wrote:
Paul, that debate has been raging for a while. Why create a Black Studies Department? Why not teach in the history department? (And this could apply to other ethnic studies as well as gender and queer studies).
The first reason is, as cynical as it sounds, that it just would not happen. In a lot elite colleges, the literature and poli sci departments are commanded by a certain group of people. Old-school professors used to teaching about the Western canon. It’s not only about ethnic studies– new material in general takes a long while to get established in academia. In high school, few teachers are prepared to teach new material– especially material that has no official, approved textbooks.
If they did hire professors or teachers to teach those subjects, they might be relegated to the same kind of ‘academic ghetto’ you speak of, lost inside another department.
Another important reason is that most ethnic studies are inter-disciplinary. History, sociology, literature, psychology, anthropology, etc. must all come together, not be separated in the ‘token ethnic sociology class’ or the ‘token ethnic history class.’ In many colleges, ethnic studies departments are at the forefront of revolutionary academic work simply because they take a completely different approach to the separated disciplines tradition of education.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 11:07 am ¶
Paul wrote:
Joan,
The entire concept of ethnic studies reeks of tokenism. It implies that studying the history, culture, et al. of PoCs is not worthy of inclusion in the official canon.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 1:24 pm ¶
Joan Flores wrote:
These departments grew because they weren’t accepted. But nowadays, they’ve grown into their own. I think it would be suffocating to try to fit into the scholarship of other departments.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 2:27 pm ¶
SVT wrote:
Paul, I get what you’re saying, but I disagree. In my experience, it’s meant that the topic is so understudied that we need to move it to the centre of the curriculum in its own department, where we have room to interdisciplinary in our approach to the material. It may seem like tokenism, and I’m sure in some places it is just that, but I would suggest that’s more to do with the administration than with the individual departments themselves.
Are people of colour routinely left out of the tenure process or “expected” to teach topics related to people of colour? Yes. But the solution is certainly not to scrap the only places in academia where scholarship around the intersectionality of oppression is being done.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 2:42 pm ¶
McJumpguez wrote:
I was an Ethnic Studies major at the University of Oregon. I know there was a lot of controversy surrounding it: white blame, self-segregation but just as SVT said:
“the topic is so understudied that we need to move it to the centre of the curriculum in its own department, where we have room to interdisciplinary in our approach to the material.”
I’m a lover of history. I love US history but it was never enough for me. I am also a person of color and I know that US history has more to offer us than a bunch of dead white dudes. That’s where Ethnic Studies came into. It taught us not only that Thomas Jefferson was the president of the United States, but he also had slaves, and slave children and it delved deeper into that, their life, and society at the time. It also went into the different POC’s history within the United States. It think it’s important for all of us to learn this type of history so that we can begin a dialogue of understanding and acceptance, rather than one of accusation.
I never felt that my major was “token”. I felt that my major was a saving grace for my emotional well being. I also majored in Journalism just to make my parents happy since Ethnic Studies is never quite considered a “real” major. Heck, sadly enough, even the History department scoffed in my face when I was considering getting my master’s in History.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 3:52 pm ¶
Jennifer wrote:
The issue of ethnic studies is complicated, particularly in thinking through curricular issues (is this a program or a department?).
As someone who teaches “ethnic” material in a “traditional” department, I can say that the issue of “tokensim” is a larger university problem and a complex one at that.
I think that Paul puts things a bit too simplisticly.
First of all, being a person of color and researching ethnic studies are two different things. I happen to be an Asian American woman who researches and teaches on Asian American (and gender) issues, but I would absolutely resent someone who told me I wasn’t able to teach Jane Austen or Shakespeare. And I would resent anyone who expected my African American medievalist colleague to teach African American literature just because of his racial identity.
Do we need more faculty of color in universities and colleges? Absolutely–and they should be teaching a variety of subjects and disciplines, but we should not automatically expect that every faculty of color will want to teach ethnic studies or be qualified to teach ethnic studies.
Do we need ethnic studies in our universities and colleges and are they under attack? Yes. And I am glad for my white faculty allies who teach ethnic studies and practice anti-racist pedagogy.
What we especially need is to acknowledge the complicated politics of all of this–and the complicated history of race relations in the U.S. And to understand that an attention to race and white privilege is NOT the same as institutional racism.
In the case of Maryland, I think it’s hard for institutions to even acknowledge that Asian Americans are a subject that should be studied as a separate entity–as part of a larger conversation about race. For Arizona, I think it’s a case of simplistic understanding of race and a certain amount of jingoism.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 6:03 pm ¶
Paul wrote:
The whole “Raza” idea strikes me as strikingly similar to the assumptions that underlie white supremacy. Calling one’s ethnic group “The Race” implies a sort of superiority complex that harkens back to the Klan, White Citizens’ Councils, etc.. Putting one ethnicity above another only divides people based on arbitrary lines.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 8:47 pm ¶
DivergentDana wrote:
Um, isn’t “the race” just a variation of human groups’ tendency to name themselves “the people”? And you’re assuming that said arbitrary lines weren’t there to begin with… they’ve been there for a very long time. It doesn’t make it a good thing, but it doesn’t make someone wrong for acknowledging the presence of the lines. And trust, if a group proclaims “We have no lines!” that’s all well and good, but it historically results in an epic land grab or the nearby groups drawing bolder lines.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 10:51 pm ¶
sfsinger wrote:
I remember going to my mom’s Swahili language class a few times when she couldn’t find a babysitter for me. I was eight years old and it was part of a larger African studies program in the 70’s. That course isn’t offered anymore and I felt like such a grown up reciting the alphabet of another language.
Posted 22 Apr 2008 at 12:52 am ¶
G.D. wrote:
Paul:
Um,no—the Mexican-American students calling their group “The Raza” is nowhere near the same thing as the Klan or White Citizen’s Council–for one thing, they do’t have a long history of burning crosses on people’s lawns, or spying on people they percieve to be a threat to the then-racial status quo (like the WCC used to do–I just rented out and saw a doc made by the History Channel on them recently.) Keep in mind, it was white people who started putting themselves above all other ethnicities and drawing arbitrary lines between in order to benefit themselves—they started that whole ridiculous mess, which screws up people’s lives even today. So, no, you can’t even compare the two–that’s really stretching it.
Also, the whole idea of the legislature determining what classes are a threat to American values—I see an even bigger mess coming out of that if they process with it.
Posted 22 Apr 2008 at 8:24 pm ¶
Legos wrote:
Coming from a “traditional” department but working closely with Faculty from “ethnic studies” departments, there is a very clear academic reason why we should have ethnic studies departments. They force innovation. Not just diversity, but innovation. Ethnic studies forces the traditional fields to take into account issues that are ignored elsewhere. Without Ethnic studies, histories of Empire, colonialism, our basic understanding of how power works in America and the world would suck. Suck ass even. Ethnic studies forces us to question assumptions that reinforce power hierarchies and the academy is intellectually poorer without them.
Of course it’s also much more powerful without them since the academy is a participant/beneficiary of those same power inequalities.
Posted 23 Apr 2008 at 9:09 am ¶
YellowPearl wrote:
Paul,
The main problem with your arguments is that you are equating the experiences of people of color to those of whites. People of color require independent ethnic studies because we need dedicated people who can develop a voice for the colored community. Whites have had the entire past to develop their exclusive material and POC are only beginning to have the chance to speak up.
If ethnic studies were included in traditional courses, it would be assumed that minorities and whites have equal representation in education. This is obviously false; therefore, the existence of ethnic studies itself provides evidence for the inequality within our education system.
About criticizing the term “The Raza,” you are suggesting that the world should be color blind, and that is why this term should not be accepted. Whites often claim to be color blind as if they were above racism, but this is obviously not true. In fact, as a person of color, I do not want to blend into a ‘melting pot’ and assimilate into one culture. Instead, I want diversity to be recognized and respected. As pointed out earlier, pride in one’s race and culture does not always mean stepping on other races. Of course, this is the difference between “The Raza” and the KKK. It is really ridiculous to compare the two. Like when people call ‘affirmative action’ reverse racism.
There were really many more flaws in your argument, but I’m sure everyone else who commented already know. I just wanted to give support to those who spoke up. I am really happy to have read all comments encouraging ethnic studies in our schools. Thank you for making me feel the strength in our community.
Posted 02 Mar 2009 at 2:03 pm ¶