By Álvaro Huerta,
Ph.D.
Now that I have your attention, allow me to explain. In
California, while we’ve done a relatively good job of enforcing home isolation
(for those with homes) and social distancing during this crisis, a debate is
ongoing in the state Legislature and higher education about whether or not to
mandate an ethnic studies course for undergraduates. More specifically, a state
bill, Assembly Bill 1460, introduced by Assembly Member Shirley Nash Weber and
co-authored by other members, is pending. If passed by the Legislature and
signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, it would make the 23 California State University campuses require all students to take one course of three units in
ethnic studies to graduate. (The CSU represents the “nation’s largest four-year public
university system.”) As approved by the CSU Board of
Trustees in early 2013, CSU students need
a minimum of 120 semester units to graduate for most bachelor’s degrees. Hence,
if a student is required to take one three-unit ethnic studies course, it only
represents 2.5 percent of the total to graduate.
“So why is it racist to oppose ethnic studies, Dr. Huerta?”
I’m glad you asked. To answer this question, let’s consider the demographic
composition of CSU students. In fall 2018, the CSU system enrolled 481,210
students, including postbaccalaureate and
graduate students, of which only 110,570, or 23 percent, were white. That
means that the majority, or 77 percent, of the university system’s
students were nonwhite. While 76,386 students were Asian/Pacific Islanders,
African Americans represented 19,301, or 4 percent, of the student body.
And Latinas/os were the largest ethnic/racial group, consisting of 199,521
students, or 41.5 percent, of the total. Moreover, 21 of the 23 campuses meet the criteria for
Hispanic-serving institutions. Thus, why
would the opponents of ethnic studies deny a majority of racialized (or “otherized”) CSU students the opportunity to learn about their histories, struggles
and successes in this country with its dark past and dark present?
Speaking of America’s dark past, in terms of structural
racism in higher education, the struggle for ethnic studies dates back to the
late 1960s. In fact, student organizers and others at a CSU campus, San
Francisco State University, played a key role in demanding and establishing
ethnic studies not only in California, but also throughout the nation. Founded in fall of 1969, SFSU’s College of Ethnic Studies’ website sheds light
on this important movement:
In 1968 and
1969, the Black Student Union, Third World Liberation Front, select staff and
faculty, and members from the larger Bay Area community organized and [led] a
series of actions against systematic discrimination. Protestors spoke out
against lack of access, misrepresentation, and the overall neglect of
indigenous peoples and people of color within the university's curriculum and
programs. Their specific demands included the establishment of four
departments: American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Black Studies,
and La Raza Studies within a College of Ethnic Studies. These demands reflected
a respect for the diverse intellectual traditions and cultural expressions of
scholars, activists, and artists of color and indigenous people throughout the
United States.
It took 50 years for another CSU campus, California State
University at Los Angeles, to follow in SFSU’s footsteps to establish a College
of Ethnic Studies, going beyond a department or series of ethnic studies
courses. Its mission statement also shines a bright light on the importance of ethnic
studies:
The College
of Ethnic Studies is the first such college to be established at a university
in the U.S. in 50 years. We will develop leaders who engage in rigorous,
self-reflexive study that motivates critical engagement, self-determination and
decolonial understandings of the world. The college provides an
interdisciplinary intellectual space that centers the histories, traditions,
cultures, experiences, struggles and accomplishments of diasporic communities
of color, making connections between the local and transnational.
As an interdisciplinary scholarly field, ethnic studies is
about self-respect and self-determination. It’s about racialized groups --
workers, students, scholars, organizers and others -- refusing to be viewed or
gazed upon from a Eurocentric paradigm as inferior or less than. It’s about
rejecting the scholarly practice of being objects of studies. Instead, we
demand to be the subjects in this equation. As subjects, we don’t need
outsiders writing our stories, narrating our histories and planning our
futures.
As subjects, we, too, create and consume knowledge!
Today, as we confront the dire consequences of the COVID-19
pandemic, especially given the inept and negligent federal response from the
White House and GOP-controlled Senate, racialized/marginalized communities are suffering disproportionately in
terms of rates of infections and deaths,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes
Latinas/os, African Americans and Native Americans, among others. It especially
includes immigrants; the Trump administration is wreaking havoc among los de abajo (those on the bottom) with its draconian and xenophobic policies. Moreover, we are witnessing an increase in racism and
hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in this country due
to COVID-19, which is fueled in large measure by President Donald Trump and his
Republican lackeys referring to it as the “Chinese virus.”
¡Ya basta!
The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic clearly and strongly
demonstrate the need for ethnic studies. But as those of us who support such
studies make the case for them, we must also reject being tokenized. It will
not be progress if a minority of brown scholars (and other racialized groups)
“make it,” while the majority of brown and black kids in America’s barrios and
ghettos are denied quality K-12 schools and equal access to higher education,
limiting their opportunities to get ahead. And let’s not forget about Native
Americans on reservations and beyond.
“College isn’t for everyone!” Yeah, I’ve heard that line
before while growing up on the mean streets of East Los Angeles and pursuing
higher education. Now that I’m a Chicano scholar-activist and survivor of white studies with undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University
of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. from the University of California,
Berkeley, I often contemplate if white students from privileged backgrounds are
also told (or conditioned to believe) this anticollege message that’s primarily
aimed at racialized and working-class groups. It’s yet one more reason why I
continue to say, “Viva ethnic studies!”
[Álvaro Huerta, Ph.D., holds a joint faculty appointment
in Urban & Regional Planning and Ethnic & Women’s Studies at California
State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Among other publications, he’s the author
of Defending
Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond. He holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UC
Berkeley. He also holds an M.A. in Urban Planning and a B.A. in History from
UCLA. This article was originally
published in Inside Higher Ed / Conditionally Accepted.]
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