Texas Republicans Say They’ll Save Diversity on Campus by Killing Diversity on Campus," by Brant Bingamon

Friends:

Besides its clever title, this piece by Austin Chronicle's Brant Bingamon is important because it makes explicit the absurd rationale today to eliminate DEI and Ethnic Studies. Sen. Brandon Creighton, who is leading the charge, recklessly appropriates the language of civil rights and diversity to justify policies that dismantle diversity programs. He redefines “diverse voices” and “unity” to mean the removal of explicitly racial, ethnic, or gender-related curriculum, reversing the meanings of these terms without acknowledging their historical or contextual specificity. This rhetorical ploy is used to distort the truth and mislead the public.

He also misrepresents Ethnic Studies to make it easier to attack, referring to them as “discriminatory” or “divisive” without engaging their actual content or pedagogical goals. Sherry Sylvester with the Texas Public Policy Foundation provides no evidence that DEI or Ethnic Studies cause unproductive outcomes. Both Sylvester and Creighton suggest that keeping such programs leads to educational or societal collapse. Geez, where is the evidence, and why such animus?

As someone who testified in a Arizona District Court case on the dismantling of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District—and who, in preparation, reviewed more than four decades of rigorous scholarship—I categorically reject Sylvester's claim. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. The research is clear: Ethnic Studies programs foster academic achievement, critical thinking, and civic engagement. To suggest otherwise is not only misleading, but a profound disservice to the educational integrity we should be upholding.

 I urge readers to read this piece published by the National Education Association and authored by Dr. Christine Sleeter titled, What the Research Says About Ethnic Studies so that readers can learn for themselves what I am saying.

The research is further in line with Izabella de la Garza's testimony quoted herein, who offers a direct rebuttal, expressing how “Inclusivity is the antithesis of discrimination.” She then speaks powerfully about how there is nothing to fear and how Ethnic Studies was one of the most enriching experiences of her life. Great job, Izabella. We need many more voices like yours with ringing clarity in our legislative battles.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas Republicans Say They’ll Save Diversity on Campus by Killing Diversity on Campus
Higher education Senate subcommittee aims to double down on DEI ban

by Brant Bingamon, Fri., Nov. 15, 2024 Austin Chronicle

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe (photo by Jana Birchum)

In the last legislative session in 2023, Texas Republicans outlawed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at public universities across the state. Now, they’re getting ready to kill what they call “DEI-related curriculum” – the courses taught under the umbrella of Black studies, Latina/o studies, LGBTQ studies, and other fields.

The new crusade was unveiled at a Senate subcommittee hearing on higher education held on Nov. 11 and dedicated to “stopping DEI to strengthen the Texas workforce.” Such hearings are usually the first step in the creation of future laws.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, the author of 2023’s anti-DEI law, opened the hearing by appropriating the language of the civil rights struggle, referring to ethnic studies courses as “discriminatory.” He also appropriated the principles that underpin DEI programs and turned them upside down to support ending DEI. “Our public institutions of higher education have a duty to uphold campus culture that encourages diverse voices, viewpoints, and to build trust among administration, faculty, staff, and students, not to divide them,” Creighton said.

With that, Creighton introduced President Jay Hartzell from UT-Austin, professor Holley Love from the University of Houston, and President Mark Welsh from Texas A&M. Texas A&M recently provided a model for how to eliminate diversity-focused programs on a university campus. On Nov. 7, the university’s board of regents voted to end 52 minors and certificates – including the LGBTQ studies minor – which administrators decided had low levels of enrollment. Changes to curriculum are traditionally proposed by faculty but, in this case, A&M’s provost developed the process which identified the programs to cut. The changes are proceeding despite sustained faculty protest.

Hartzell, Love, and Welsh took turns trying to placate Creighton. Welsh assured the senator that his university has instituted a revolving schedule to examine which courses to abolish. Creighton asked whether degree tracks at A&M have any “political leaning.” Welsh denied it. “I’m hoping what our students are getting out of this is the idea of nonpartisanship,” he said. “It’s having your own political views but to keep them to yourself and learn about everybody else’s.”

“They won’t be able to do that with these misguided and frankly pathetic worldviews.”– Anti-DEI advocate Sherry Sylvester of the Texas Public Policy Foundation

Next up, Creighton brought on an anti-DEI warrior, Sherry Sylvester of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a far-right think tank that has been aggressively working to alter Texas education policy for three decades. Sylvester congratulated the committee for passing what she called the strongest and most effective anti-DEI legislation in the country, but said that campuses “continue to revolve around identity politics, gender, and race theory.” She said Texas taxpayers fruitlessly spend billions trying to help students lead productive lives.

“They won’t be able to do that with these misguided and frankly pathetic worldviews,” Sylvester said. “That’s why it’s critical that this committee look deeply into what is being taught in university classrooms.”

Eventually, the actual teachers and students who sit in those classrooms had a chance to speak. Not a single one supported the subcommittee’s mission. Many were Hispanic students, or recent graduates, of UT. Their overwhelming message was that the studies programs they have taken teach critical thinking, communication skills, and a deeper understanding of history and politics.

Izabella de la Garza, a recent UT grad with degrees in government and Mexican American studies, told Creighton that the courses are not discriminatory. “Inclusivity is literally the antithesis of discrimination,” de la Garza said, describing the courses she took as one of the most enriching experiences of her life. “If anything is going to strengthen our workforce, it is cultural awareness,” she continued, “and the curriculum you’re concerned about provides that cultural awareness. There is nothing to fear in diversity and interdisciplinary studies, and it is concerning that you’re framing it as an issue.”

Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, Stanford researchers find

Friends:

To know why Ethnic Studies works, read these articles that explain why. I'm so glad that Dr. Eliza Epstein shared it with me and others while reminding us of our own struggle in Texas to advance Ethnic Studies citing, "'Never Without a Fight': How Texas Has Stood Up for Ethnic Studies, by Maribel Falcón.

Dr. Epstein also shares this in-depth, authoritative piece published by the National Education Association authored by leading scholar Dr. Christine Sleeter titled, What the Research Says About Ethnic Studies that is also great for the college classroom, together with works cited herein.

Why does it work? The short answer to this question is that all of these pieces collectively speak to the importance of a curriculum that not only fosters positive pro-social and communitarian values but as importantly, speaks to the situated experiences of the children and youth in the classroom.

The jury is in. Ethnic Studies changes lives and promotes college-going. The reason we have to struggle for it is therefore less about evidence than it is about politics. This is the story for quality, well-funded, and staffed Bilingual Education, too. Yet both offer such potential and richness to culture and society.

I remain encouraged by the ongoing activism around it.

This morning I read a Bible verse that says, "God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied." (Matthew 5:6)

Regardless of religion, faith, or creed, this is who we are in the Ethnic Studies struggle. We hunger and thirst for justice. We advocate for our children, youth, and communities. We care deeply about the future. This shouldn't even be a struggle to begin with. 

It's a lifelong quest that will most certainly continue until we are satisfied. In some sense, for those of us knee-deep into the movement, it already is. We love the work we do in our communities like we do at Academia Cuauhtli, our Saturday school in Austin, Texas, to offer a nurturing, culturally resonant pedagogy and vision for the future. At this school, we combine Ethnic Studies, Bilingual Education, and Indigenous pedagogy into a beautiful curriculum for elementary school youth that motivates and inspires. There needs to be more Academia Cuauhtlis in the world.

I've always said that someday, Ethnic Studies will just be called a "good education." Thanks, Dr. Epstein. I always appreciate a fresh reminder of why we do what we do.

-Angela Valenzuela


Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, Stanford researchers findSeptember 6, 2021

A new study shows that students assigned to an ethnic studies course had longer-term improvements in attendance and graduation rates.


A ninth-grade ethnic studies class has a remarkably prolonged and strong positive impact on students, increasing their overall engagement in school, probability of graduating and likelihood of enrolling in college, according to a new study of a curriculum offered at the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD).

A new Stanford study found that students assigned to an ethnic studies course had longer-term improvements in attendance and graduation rates. (Image credit: Getty Images)

The findings, which follow up on earlier research by two of the authors indicating short-term academic benefits of the course, appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 6.

The study provides “compelling and causally credible evidence on the power of this course to change students’ life trajectories,” said Thomas S. Dee, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

Dee co-authored the study with former GSE doctoral student Sade Bonilla, now an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emily K. Penner, an assistant professor at the University of California at Irvine and former postdoctoral researcher at the GSE.

Lasting gains

The study was done in collaboration with SFUSD as part of a research-practice partnership with the GSE that began in 2009. In 2010, SFUSD launched a pilot program in which students were automatically assigned to an ethnic studies course as their first-year social studies requirement if they had a GPA of 2.0 or less. About nine in 10 were Hispanic, Black or Asian.

In 2017, Dee and Penner published a study showing academic gains at the end of ninth grade (e.g., higher attendance, grade-point averages and credits) among students encouraged to take the course. The researchers weren’t sure the gains would last over time, as countless promising academic interventions fade quickly.

But this one stuck. For one thing, attendance improved: Students who participated in the course came to school more often during their remaining time in high school, for a total of one additional day of school every two weeks.

By their fourth year of high school, the students had also passed six more courses than a comparison group. More than 90 percent graduated within five years, versus 75 percent of their peers. They were also 15 percent more likely to enroll in college within six years. (At the time of the study, they were not yet old enough to graduate college.)

Parallels with psychological interventions

How could one class in ninth grade have such a large effect? While there are many theoretical perspectives on the academic impact of ethnic studies, Dee underscored its parallels with recent insights from social psychology. Targeted psychological interventions that promote a sense of belonging in school, affirm personal values and forewarn about stereotypes have all shown promise in improving student engagement and motivation.

Dee noted that ethnic studies share these features and resemble “an unusually sustained and intensive social-psychological intervention.”

In SFUSD’s ethnic studies class, for example, students examine the role that their ancestors played in history, getting into the experiences of groups that have been literally pushed to the margins of textbooks. They study, in-depth, discrimination against various groups of people based on their race, social group, ethnicity or country of origin.

“The biggest thing that happens in an ethnic studies course, I believe, is that students get to approach an academic course from the perspective of their own experience,” said Bill Sanderson, assistant superintendent of high schools at SFUSD. “Everything is approached in the course from the experience of the students.”

Though the principles of the class remain set, teachers tailor the content to the ethnic and racial communities at their school in order to “to bring relevant curriculum that these students can identify with,” Sanderson said.

Critiquing history cultivated students’ analytical abilities across classes, and the focus on anti-racism catalyzed their idealism. But the work of the course goes far deeper than that, the researchers said.

“There’s long-standing evidence that many historically underserved students experience school environments as unwelcoming, or even hostile,” said Dee. Those in this pilot, particularly, hadn’t done well academically and didn’t feel like they belonged. And ninth grade can be a nerve-wracking, transitional year.

Ethnic studies gave students “the opportunity to see their community reflected in the curriculum,” said Bonilla. Learning about their ancestors’ contributions made them feel proud and made school feel relevant, contributing to a sense of belonging. Learning about oppression and stereotypes in action reminded students that not every failure is an individual’s fault. Students conducted research projects out in the community and connected school with their lives.

Beyond ethnic studies

From there, once a student starts doing well, you’re “starting a stone rolling downhill,” Dee said, catalyzing greater motivation.

“There’s a basis in the science of learning for why courses like this can change students’ learning trajectories,” Dee said. “And if the mechanisms we’re describing are really valid, then this goes well beyond ethnic studies,” encouraging schools to make their teaching culturally relevant across subjects.

Education policymakers have focused recently on “curricula as the low-hanging fruit of education reform,” or something comparatively simple to change, Dee said.

Nevertheless, the results might not be easy to replicate. The district honed the curriculum over several years with faculty at San Francisco State University, home of the nation’s first ethnic studies college program. Many of the initial set of teachers had studied in that department and learned how to manage debate on sensitive subjects, Sanderson said.

Efforts to replicate this success without similar teacher supports and careful implementation are unlikely to be successful, Dee said, and may even trigger unintended and negative consequences. “Consider the potential educational and political fallout of asking teachers to discuss unusually sensitive topics in the classroom without the proper training to do so effectively.”

This is an especially pertinent consideration now, in the middle of a new wave of political controversy about history curriculum. While states and school districts are increasingly adopting requirements and standards for K-12 ethnic studies, some state legislatures are debating bills to ban the 1619 Project or critical race theory, a scholarly academic analysis of structural racism.

SFUSD, for one, isn’t going back. Its board voted this spring to make ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement.

“Ethnic studies is an important part of every young person’s education,” SFUSD board president Gabriela Lopez said in a statement issued by the district in March, which pointed to research showing the curriculum’s impact on GPA across disciplines, high school graduation rates, college-going rates and sense of belonging.


Media Contacts

Thomas S. Dee, Stanford Graduate School of Education: tdee@stanford.edu

Carrie Spector, Stanford Graduate School of Education: cspector@stanford.edu

Report Searches for “Wokeness” Terminology to Justify Deregulated School Choice," by Drs. Christine Sleeter and T. Jameson Brewer

For those wanting to draw a connection between wokeism—or the "anti-woke" movement and school choice, read this downloadable assessment of a Heritage Foundation manuscript titled, Empowering Parents withSchool Choice ReducesWokeism in EducationJay P. Greene, PhD, and Ian S. Kingsbury, Ph.D. 

Drs. Sleeter and Jameson Brewer critique this as relying on cherry-picked data and bias. In short, it is a, in their words, a "shoddy advocacy report."

-Angela Valenzuela

Report Searches for “Wokeness” Terminology to Justify Deregulated School Choice

Key Review Takeaway: Shoddy advocacy report attempts to justify deregulation of the charter school sector for the purpose of decreasing “wokeism” in charter schools.

Find Documents:

Publication Announcement: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication-announcement/2023/01/wokeism
NEPC Review: https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/wokeism
Report Reviewed: https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/BG3735.pdf

Contact:

Alex Molnar: (480) 797-7261, nepc.molnar@gmail.com
Faith Boninger: (480) 390-6736, fboninger@gmail.com
Christine Sleeter: (831) 915-3876, csleeter@gmail.com

Learn More:

NEPC Resources on Politics, Policy, and School Practices

BOULDER, CO (January 24, 2023)—In one of the more unusual reports NEPC has ever reviewed, Heritage Foundation authors recently argued for school-choice deregulation by comparing the amount of “wokeness” terminology in parent/student handbooks in U.S. charter schools with the level of charter school regulation in their states.

Christine Sleeter of California State University Monterey Bay and T. Jameson Brewer of the University of North Georgia reviewed Empowering Parents with School Choice Reduces Wokeism in Education and found significant flaws in reasoning, even beyond the report’s disconcerting premise.

The Heritage report finds that increased manifestations of “woke” terminology are associated with higher state levels of charter school regulation. On this basis, the report concludes that while charter schools represent a safe space away from “woke indoctrination” in public schools, further deregulation and less bureaucracy will allow the charter sector to truly respond to parent desires to avoid “leftist” curriculum.

Notwithstanding its provocative thesis, apparently intended to tap into current turmoil, the report has at least five significant weaknesses. It assumes that parent/student handbooks are good proxies for curriculum; it completely ignores the diversity of parents and relevant research about what large proportions of parents actually want; it conflates correlation with causation; it relies on undefined conceptions of what constitutes “wokeness”; and it possibly uses cherry-picked data and methods that suit ideological bias.

These shortcomings render the report useless for understanding or developing policy. Instead, the report serves merely as an example of strategically employing dog whistles and fear, embedded in shoddy methodology for the sole purpose of affirming a solution (school choice) in search of a problem (“wokeness”).

Find the review, by Christine Sleeter and T. Jameson Brewer, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/wokeism

Find Empowering Parents with School Choice Reduces Wokeism in Education, written by Jay P. Greene and Ian S. Kingsbury and published by the Heritage Foundation, at:
https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/BG3735.pdf

NEPC Reviews (http://thinktankreview.org) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. We publish original research, policy briefs, and expert third-party reviews of think tank reports. NEPC publications are written in accessible language and are intended for a broad audience that includes academic experts, policymakers, the media, and the general public. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

"Rethinking Ethnic Studies" wins 2019 GOLD WINNER, Foreword INDIES Awards

Congratulations to editors R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Miguel Zavala​, Christine Sleeter​, and Wayne Au​ for receiving the 2019 GOLD WINNER, Foreword INDIES Award, education category, for their anthology titled "Rethinking Ethnic Studies."  

Dr. Emilio Zamora and I are proud to say that we have a piece in this volume titled, “Ethnic Studies and Community-Engaged Scholarship in Texas: The Weaving of a Broader ‘We.'” 

Many of these pieces work for both the high school and college classroom. Plus, they grow out of the Ethnic Studies Movement that has gained significant traction in recent years.  So happy for the editors, as well as all the contributors (see Table of Contents below).  

It was a lot of hard work, but it has all paid off.

Felicidades!

-Angela Valenzuela

Section 1: Framing Ethnic Studies

• “The Movement for Ethnic Studies: A Timeline” By Miguel Zavala, R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Wayne Au, and Christine Sleeter
• “Multicultural Education or Ethnic Studies?” By Christine Sleeter, Joni Boyd Acuff, Courtney Bentley, Sandra Guzman Foster, Peggy Morrison, and Vera Stenhouse
• “Ethnic Studies: 10 Common Misconceptions” By Miguel Zavala, Nick Henning, and Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen
• “What Is Ethnic Studies Pedagogy?” By Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Rita Kohli, Jocyl Sacramento, Nick Henning, Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, and Christine Sleeter
• “Ethnic Studies Pedagogy as CxRxPx” By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin
• “Counter-Storytelling and Decolonial Pedagogy: The Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing” By Anita E. Fern‡ández
• “The Matrix of Social Identity and Intersectional Power: A Classroom Resource” By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin
• “Creating We Schools: Lessons Learned from Critically Compassionate Intellectualism and the Social Justice Education Project” By Augustine Romero and Julio Cammarota
• “Six Reasons I Want My White Child to Take Ethnic Studies” By Jon Greenberg
• “Revisiting Notions of Social Action in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: One Teacher’s Critical Lessons from the Classroom” By Cati V. de los Rios
• “The Ethnic Studies Framework: A Holistic Overview” By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

Section 2: Indigeneity and Roots

• “Collective Healing: Release the Tears, Confront and Bypass the Fear” By Rose Borunda
• “The Kids ‘n Room 36: Cognates, Culture, and the Ecosystem” By Jaime Cuello
• “‘My Family’s Not from Africa—We Come from North Carolina!’: Teaching Slavery in Context” By Waahida Tolbert-Mbatha
• “Barangay Pedagogy: Teaching as a Collective Act” By Arlene Sudaria Daus-Magbual, Roderick Daus-Magbual, Raju Desai, and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales
• “Do I Need to Mail in My Spit?: The Importance of a Teacher’s Roots in Teaching Ethnic Studies” By Dominique A. Williams
• “Our Oral History Narrative Project” By Aimee Riechel
• “Rethinking Islamophobia: A Muslim Educator and Curriculum Developer Questions Whether Religious Literacy Is an Effective Antidote to Combat Bigotries Rooted in American History” By Alison Kysia
• “Hmong Club: Empowering Us” By Pang Hlub Xiong
• “Critical Family History” By Christine Sleeter

Section 3: Colonization and Dehumanization

• “Burning Books and Destroying Peoples: How the World Became Divided Between ‘Rich’ and ‘Poor Countries'” By Bob Peterson
• “Genocide of Native Californians Role Play” By Aimee Riechel and interview by Miguel Zavala
• “The Advent of White Supremacy and Colonization/Dehumanization of African Americans” By Deirdre Harris
• “Challenging Colonialism: Ethnic Studies in Elementary Social Studies” By Carolina Valdez
• “Cherokee and Seminole Removal Role Play” By Bill Bigelow
• “Sin Fronteras Boy: Students Create Collaborative Websites to Explore the Border” By Grace Cornell Gonzales
• “The Color Line” By Bill Bigelow

Section 4: Hegemony and Normalization

• “Connecting the Dots” By Stephen Leeper
• “History Textbooks—’Theirs’ and ‘Ours’: A Rebellion or a War of Independence?” By John DeRose
• “Learning About the Unfairgrounds” By Katie Baydo-Reed
• “Whose Community Is This?: The Mathematics of Neighborhood Displacement” By Eric “Rico” Gutstein
• “Reclaiming Hidden History: High School Students Face Opposition When They Create a Slavery Walking Tour in Manhattan” By Michael Pezone and Alan Singer
• “Teaching a Native Feminist Read” By Angie Morrill with K. Wayne Yang
• “Teaching John Bell’s Four I’s of Oppression” By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin
• “Ethnic Studies Educators As Enemies of the State and the Fugitive Space of Classrooms” By Tracy Lachica Buenavista, David Stovall, Edward R. Curammeng, and Carolina Valdez

Section 5: Regeneration and Transformation

• “Reimagining and Rewriting Our Lives Through Ethnic Studies” By Roxana Due–ñas, Jorge L—ópez, and Eduardo L—ópez
• “Regeneration/Transformation:Cultivating Self-Love Through Tezcatlipoca” By Mictlani Gonzalez
• “Happening Yesterday, Happened Tomorrow: Teaching the Ongoing Murders of Black Men” By RenŽée Watson
• “We Have Community Cultural Wealth!: Scaffolding Tara Yosso’s Theory for Classroom Praxis” By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin
• “Standing with Standing Rock: A Role Play on the Dakota Access Pipeline” By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
• “Tipu: Connections, Love, and Liberation” By Curtis Acosta
• “Teaching Freire’s Levels of Consciousness: A Lesson Plan” By Jose Gonzalez
• “Chicana/o-Mexicana/o Resistance and Armation in the Post-Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Era: Curriculum Unit Narrative” By Sean Arce

Section 6: Organizing for and Sustaining Ethnic Studies

• “Moving Ethnic Studies from Theory to Practice: A Liberating Process” By Guillermo Antonio G—ómez and Eduardo “Kiki” Ochoa
• “Missing Pages of Our History” By Kaiya Laguardia-Yonamine
• “The Emergence of the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition in Yangna (Los Angeles) and Beyond: Two, Three, Many Tucsons” By Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona and R. Tolteka Cuauhtin
• “The Struggle for Ethnic Studies in the Golden State: Capitol City Organizers and Activists” By RubŽén A. Gonz‡ález, Maribel Rosendo-Serv’ín, and Dominique A. Williams
• “Ethnic Studies in Providence Schools” By Karla E. Vigil and Zack Mezera
• “We Don’t Want to Just Study the World, We Want to Change It: Ethnic Studies and the Development of Transformative Students and Educators” By Kyle Beckham and Artnelson Concordia
• “Ethnic Studies and Community-Engaged Scholarship in Texas: The Weaving of a Broader ‘We'” By Emilio Zamora and Angela Valenzuela
• “For Us, by Us: Ethnic Studies as Self-Determination in Chicago” By Noem’ CortŽs, Jennie Garcia, Stacey Gibson, Dua’a Joudeh, Lupita Ramirez, Cecily Relucio Hensler, Cinthya Rodriguez, Maraliz Salgado, David Stovall, JohnaŽ Strong, Jessica Suarez Nieto, Aaron Talley, Lisa Vaughn, and Asif Wilson
• “Victory for Mexican American Studies in Arizona: An Interview with Curtis Acosta” Interview by Ari Bloomekatz

"White people in Ethnic Studies" by Dr. Christine Sleeter

Very interesting piece here by Dr. Christine Sleeter titled, "White people in Ethnic Studies."  It offers much food for thought, especially for the Ethnic Studies classroom.  The readings on white ethnicity are certain worthwhile and informative.  One of my favorite texts from the past was The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America by Stephen Steinberg.

Do read this piece in its entirety and do visit her website.  Dr. Sleeter, a nationally-renowned scholar and friend, who has spent decades researching Ethnic Studies and her suggestions for the classroom are more than helpful.

-Angela Valenzuela

"White people in Ethnic Studies"

December 18, 2016 By Christine Sleeter

Ethnic Studies is experiencing a vibrant growth at the K-12 level. I am sometimes asked what place there should be, if any, for white people in Ethnic Studies. This is an important question. Simply leaving white people out of Ethnic studies will alienate them. In addition, Ethnic Studies is invaluable for helping white people see ourselves within rather than outside a multicultural democracy, and as potential racial justice allies. 

But it is important to use lessons from past experience and research to inform what including white people in Ethnic Studies might look like.

Roots too?

Recent history provides an example of how white people’s attempt to be part of Ethnic Studies can go wrong. Writing in his 2006 book Roots Too, Matthew F. Jacobson analyzed the Euro-American ethnic revival movement of the 1970s – 1990s. He argued that, in the absence of a critique of social class, following the Civil Rights movement and rapid diversification of the U.S. population, descendants of eastern and southern European immigrants found the language of ethnic identity and collective rights to express their own concerns. Euro-Americans worked to reclaim history and immigrant heritage; part of this work involved tracing ancestors to European homelands. At the same time, they dissociated themselves from racism by pointing out that ancestors immigrating after the latter 1800s had not owned slaves nor taken land from Indians. Stories of immigrant ancestors’ hardships glossed over forms of racial discrimination that did benefit them in areas such as housing, hiring, and unionizing. Jacobson argued this attempt to be included in ethnic discourse became less a process of remembering history than of re-writing it.

Ironically, in a search for ethnic roots, white people used narratives from diverse ethnic histories to construct a homogenizing narrative of heroic and downtrodden, not quite white, European immigrants who triumphed through hard work. This narrative dismissed specificity and privilege while drowning out the Civil Rights narrative that challenged racial dominance. Jacobson observed that, “The ethnic contributions model of American nationality may have been a significant departure from the homogenizing model of the melting pot, but did share . . . an almost absolute erasure of power relations that made for a fairly sanitized and happy national narrative: diversity as feast, the nation as smorgasbord” (p. 56).

The use of white ethnicity to create a national mythology that denies racism asserts racialized power. As we think about how to include white people in Ethnic Studies, it is crucial that we not create a contemporary version of the same thing.

The conundrum of culture

Historically, as diverse European American immigrant groups submerged their own cultures and languages in order to claim racial power, most lost a sense of ourselves as cultural beings, as well as knowledge of our own ethnic origins. As a result, a growing proportion of white Americans see ourselves as “culture-less,” culture as unimportant, and race as a version of ethnicity that will wither away. For example, in interviews with Ruth Frankenberg (1993) about race, racial dominance, and white identity, white women expressed awareness of and discomfort with racial inequality, but had few concepts with which to examine it other than “long-established modes of cultural description” (p. 196). They could describe “others” as cultural, but not themselves, and they had no other language with which to understand racism. Similarly, Pamela Perry’s ethnographic study of white middle class youth in two high schools (Shades of White, 2002) found them dismissive of culture and ignorant about race. Those in a predominantly white school never had to think about race, ethnicity, or culture, and had difficulty interpreting the question of what white culture means. Those in a multiracial school viewed culture as an attachment to the past, and were simply not interested in that past.

Sociologist Stanley Lieberson (1985) reported a link between how many generations removed people are from their immigrant pasts, and awareness of ethnic roots. While about half of white Americans in his study saw themselves as “un-hyphenated,” this was true of about two-thirds of those in the South, particularly in the Southeast where 80% were at least fourth generation. The rate of intermarriage among Euro-Americans rises with distance from immigration, and that distance, combined with intermarriage, prompts disinterest in ethnicity. Yet, many white people assign symbolic value to ethnicity, perhaps as a counterbalance to a sense of lacking culture.

Richard Alba and Mitchell Chamlin, writing in the American Sociological Review in 1983, found that ethnically mixed white people often claim a single European ethnic ancestry (such as German-American or Norwegian-American), particularly those in inner cities and suburbs outside the South, and those with more education. That ethnic identity seems symbolically important. Richard Alba, in his 1990 book Ethnic Identity, found white people to view culture as something static that “other people” brought from somewhere else, and ethnicity to be a source of enrichment and uniqueness, experienced mainly through cultural expressions such as food, customs, family celebrations, festivals, and words or phrases from a heritage language. Ethnicity also provided a language with which to talk about extended family.

So, when white people take up multicultural education or ethnic studies, their interpretations of what that means stems from their understandings of culture and ethnicity, and lack of understanding or avoidance of race and racism. These are areas that Ethnic Studies involving white people should directly address.

White people in Ethnic Studies

I suggest four areas that should be part of Ethnic Studies that involves white people.

1. What culture means; self as a cultural being. White students commonly see culture as quaint or colorful practices brought from elsewhere, which people of color seem to have much more of than white people. This huge misunderstanding of culture positions white people as nostalgic for something lost, while failing to recognize how everyone is culturally constructed, and how the normalization of white people’s culture maintains power relationships.

Anthropologist Ward Goodenough (1976) defined culture as “the concepts, beliefs, and principles of action and organization that . . . could be attributed successfully to the members of that society” (p. 4). By this, he meant all of the knowledge and principles that guide shared behavior and understandings. Understood in this way, everyone is a cultural being; we all participate in shared behaviors and understandings. White people are fully cultural, but use power to make what is cultural appear natural or normal. I do not find it particularly helpful, by the way, to hand students a list of white cultural traits, as such lists sometimes cause defensiveness and do not help them learn to see with a cultural eye.

I do find it very helpful, however, to teach students to read their own everyday lives through a cultural lens. There are many ways of doing so. For example, since much culture is learned in the family, I have had students analyze how things are done in their own families through a cultural lens, using questions such as: What is your family’s structure?  What roles do family members play? How is affection communicated? How are disagreements handled? How is time structured? What kinds of behaviors are rewarded and how; what kids are punished and how?  How are meals handled – what is a “proper” meal, who fixes, it, and when and with whom are meals eaten? Such questions begin to get at cultural practices we learn while growing up. When students compare their descriptions, often they see similarities and differences among their peers, which begins to make culture visible.

With respect to Euro-American ethnic culture, rather than attending only to what was brought from Europe, learning how culture developed in the U.S. can be very interesting. A particularly interesting example is Appalachian culture. Research on Appalachian culture dates back to the early 1900s, but was given a considerable boost in 1977 when the Appalachian Studies Association was formed by group of “scholars, teachers, and regional activists who believed that shared community has been and will continue to be important” (Appalachian Studies Association). (My mother’s mother was of Appalachian descent, a term I never heard growing up probably because of the stigma applied to Appalachia.)

2. Remembering rather than re-writing history. Students usually encounter textbook history as boring, and few (including white students) see themselves in that history. At least white students, however, see widely varied representation of people who look like them; students of color do not get even this much.  In contrast students find family history to be a highly interesting and viable entree into national history. However, people often interpret their family history within dominant national narratives rather than using family history to create new (and more accurate) narratives.

I developed Critical Family History specifically as a framework and methodology to disrupt dominant narratives. For example, if one asks what other sociocultural groups were in the vicinity of an ancestral family, and what the power relationships were among groups (a question white people rarely ask when doing family history), one begins to situate one’s own family story within larger and sometimes conflicting conversations about our pasts. For example, a past involving homesteading is also a past taking up settler colonialism and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. What does it mean to both acknowledge hardships and challenges of one’s ancestors as well as their participation in land theft?

When I work with Critical Family History with students, I encourage them to attend carefully to historical records, including those that are unsettling. There will be ancestors that one comes to admire and others one may dislike. Most, if you get to know them, were complex people that you cannot simply venerate or abhor (just like the people in our lives today). But in addition to whatever feelings this research may generate toward one’s forebears, the point is to get to know history in a much more personal and nuanced way, and one in which you can situate yourself and your family.

3. Historical construction and current workings of racism. Whiteness studies interrogates the position of power that Euro-Americans occupy within the context of racism. Whiteness studies focuses on invisibility of racial power to whites, social privileges associated with white supremacy, and relationships between whiteness and identity. Whiteness studies examine the historical processes through which people of European descent constructed race as a concept to justify conquest and exploitation, then gradually submerged their own ethnic identities in order to claim power, trading in power for a sense of themselves as cultural beings. Study of the historical construction and current workings of racism is in many ways no different for white students than for students of color, except that white students typically bring much more defensiveness and denial than do students of color, which may have implications for how it is taught.

In addition to grappling with how race works, it is very important to help students see how multiple forms of inequality are linked. In the U.S., we maintain a mythology that we are a fairly classless society. As a result, people often use race to explain class inequalities, or, conversely, reduce racial inequalities to economic poverty. Ethnic studies, in its unpacking of race and racism, should attend to social class as well, including probing historic and contemporary tensions between the white working class and people of color.

4. Becoming allies. Ultimately, including white people in Ethnic Studies should help students envision themselves as allies in work for racial justice. There are various ways doing this, such as involving white students in multiracial YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research) activities addressing racism locally. Another way is by identifying white moral ancestors, in the words of Linda Christensen — white people who worked for justice. When I began doing my own family history research, I hoped to find at least one anti-racist activist in my family tree. I didn’t, but I did bump into some white moral ancestors along the way, such as Benjamin Butler, for whom an ancestral family seem to have named one of their children. A Union general during the Civil War, Butler helped to free slaves and bring literacy to Blacks in New Orleans after the Civil War. While one can critique other things about him, his work challenging slavery in notable. For white people, learning about white moral ancestors provides a set of racial justice ally role models.

I hope these ideas help in thinking about how to include white people in the growing Ethnic Studies movement.