Ethnic Studies in an Age of Expansion: An Introduction

ABSTRACT

In an age of Ethnic Studies expansion, how can educators maintain fidelity to the critical, community-oriented center of the field? This is the central question with which this symposium, Ethnic Studies in an Age of Expansion, is concerned. Included are articles focusing on Ethnic Studies teachers’ professional development, Ethnic Studies curriculum and pedagogy, and the continued racial/political struggle over Ethnic Studies. Collectively, the articles chart a bold path forward that begins to address the pressing need for more and better Ethnic Studies-trained teachers throughout the country.

For decades, grassroots activists, students, teachers, and professors have been demanding educational self-determination through the avenue of Ethnic Studies. There is an oft quoted saying attributed to Malcolm X that states, “Only a fool would let their enemy teach their children.” While I am not of the opinion held early in Malcolm X’s life that white people represent the “enemy,” I do think that white supremacy as an oppressive social structure is. There are numerous white supremacist structures and ideologies that continue to inform the way that education is offered to Students of Color, demeaning them and their communities, and ignoring their people’s contributions to society, while leaving them waiting for a white savior to provide them with opportunities (Cabrera, Franklin, & Watson, 2017; Tuck & Yang, 2018; Valencia, 2012). Ethnic Studies was meant to disrupt these trends, returning educational control to the community by centering the histories of the marginalized in schools (Cuauhtin, Zavala, Au, & Sleeter, 2019; Hu-DeHart, 1993; Sleeter, 2011).

Despite persisting since the late 1960s, Ethnic Studies has always struggled with academic legitimacy. All too often, Ethnic Studies classes have been framed as options for minority students who “could not make it” in a “regular class” (Cuauhtin et al., 2019). This racist paradigm was strongly challenged with by what we have seen in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program (Cabrera, Milem, Jaquette, & Marx, 2014) and the San Francisco Unified School District’s Ethnic Studies Program (Dee & Penner, 2017). While the educational benefits of Ethnic Studies had previously been qualitatively documented (Sleeter, 2011), these were the first two times that large-scale, quantitative assessments of Ethnic Studies programs had been completed. Given the successes in Tucson and San Francisco, districts throughout the country began mandating Ethnic Studies requirements for graduation (e.g., LA Unified, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle to name a few).

With these top-down mandates, a difficult truth came into fuller view. There are not enough well-trained Ethnic Studies teachers to meet the current demand because “[o]ne cannot simply take out Shakespeare, insert Maya Angelou, and claim the class is meaningful ethnic studies” (Cabrera, 2019, p. 155). Tucson and San Francisco were extremely fortunate to have a number of well-trained, dedicated teachers who have a deep understanding of what Ethnic Studies means as curriculum, a pedagogy, and a social movement. Ethnic Studies is one of the few academic disciplines that arose out of protracted community organizing and grassroots struggle (Hu-DeHart, 1993). It is rare to witness a sit-in in a college president’s office to create a physics department, but it is (and has been) a common history for Ethnic Studies.

Therefore, there is a pressing question that emerges: How can Ethnic Studies expand while maintaining fidelity to the core of what makes it such a unique educational endeavor? It was this context and question that led this symposium; each of the articles explores a component of Ethnic Studies expansion with depth, creativity, and critical scholarship. creativity. For example, Sacramento (2019, this issue) highlights the potential of a teachers collective to establish and refine their practice of Ethnic Studies skills – in particular, through critical consciousness (Freire, 1973)and critical race dialogue. Complimenting Sacramento’s article, Fernandez (2019, this issue) explores the underlying philosophy and method of the Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO), a non-profit Ethnic Studies training program for teachers. Together, these groups challenge the commonly-held belief that anyone can teach Ethnic Studies (Cabrera, 2019; Cuauhtin et al., 2019). Both Sacramento and Fernandez provide examples that treat Ethnic Studies as a skill set and world view that not everyone has, but that can be developed.

Additionally, Ethnic Studies represents a community-oriented approach to education, and Kwon and de los Rios (2019, this issue) carve new and exciting ground in their curriculum. In “See, Click, Fix,” the authors examine how students use social media to identify and document systemic infrastructure issues within their communities. This documentation became an avenue for the students to become civically-engaged advocates for their home communities. In line with the history of Ethnic Studies (Hu-DeHart, 1993), education did not stop at the school walls but was directly connected to the neighborhood.

Finally, Valenzuela (2019, this issue) returns to the roots of Ethnic Studies and documents the battle in Texas over Mexican American Studies in Texas. Decolonizing the curriculum is a vivid reminder about just how contentious the implementation of meaningful, critical Ethnic Studies can be. That these classes remain controversial is an indication of just how important this anti-racist, liberatory educational project is.

In this symposium, each article is multi-perspectival in its own right. Together, the articles show us a way forward. They are certainly not a panacea for all of the challenges we currently face in an age of Ethnic Studies expansion, but this set of perspectives is a wonderful start!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nolan L. Cabrera

Nolan L. Cabrera, PhD, is an associate professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, and is the author of over 60 scholarly publications. He studies the racial dynamics on college campuses with a particular focus on Whiteness, such as with his new book, White Guys on Campus (Rutgers Press). He also was an expert witness in the federal trial regarding Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program (Arce v. Douglas), and was the only academic featured in the MTV documentary, White People.