UC’s Proposed Ethnic Studies Requirement Is Seriously Flawed
On July 1st, The University of California’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) will meet for a third time in as many months to discuss a proposed amendment to its admissions requirements. If adopted, every incoming UC student would be required to have completed an ethnic studies course that meets the narrow criteria outlined in the amendment.
Rather than ensuring that ethnic studies education is academically rigorous, the criteria being considered would force California high schools to teach a version of ethnic studies that is overtly political in nature, and thus illegal under California law. This proposal should concern Californians of all backgrounds and political beliefs, but it should also concern Americans everywhere. The University of California system is one of the most reputable in the country; if it adopts this proposal, it won’t be long before other universities throughout America follow suit.
The proposed criteria stipulate that all ethnic studies courses must “embody the foundational values of ethnic studies”—“holistic humanization” and “critical consciousness”—the latter of which the criteria’s authors define as “the ability to recognize and understand racialized oppressive social and political conditions and to act to change those conditions.” But what are “racialized oppressive social and political conditions?” Would this only apply to societies like the Confederate or Jim Crow south, in which people were legally denied certain rights based on the color of their skin? Or would it also apply to the United States today, and specifically to issues such as inequitable average income or incarceration rates between racial groups? These dueling interpretations reflect the often-visceral debate—generally, but by no means entirely, between conservatives and liberals—over the very meaning of the word “racism” and the extent to which it defines the United States.
Even if we all somehow agreed on what constitutes “oppressive social conditions,” how do we “act to change those conditions?” Should we rely more on the government or on the free market? Should we pay more attention to racial categories or less? And how will students be taught to “act” on these issues? Should they attend street protests? Should they write to their elected officials? Should they seek out common ground with peers who disagree with them? What about students who aren’t sure how they feel about a particular issue: is it acceptable for them to choose not to participate in activism at all? None of these questions are answered or even acknowledged in the proposed criteria.
The same issue arises with another requirement: that ethnic studies courses must “critique histories of imperialism, dehumanization, and genocide to expose how they are connected to present-day ideologies, systems, and dominant cultures that perpetuate racial violence, white supremacy, and other forms of oppressions.” This implies a virtual consensus on how these histories and ideologies are “connected”; but, in truth, no such consensus exists. Indeed, reasonable people—from ordinary citizens to elected officials and distinguished historians—frequently and passionately disagree on this question. The proposed amendment gives no indication that its authors recognize these disagreements or see them as legitimate.
These are just a couple of lines from the criteria, but hardly any of it is immune from this same objection. Requiring ethnic studies teachers to “challenge traditional Western educational approaches,” to assume that values like “color-blindness” and “meritocracy” are harmful to communities of color, that all of California is “stolen, unceded land of Native Peoples,” and numerous other directives are all inherently political. By presenting these one-sided positions as fact, it also necessarily discourages the free expression of students who hold a dissenting opinion, while simultaneously depriving students who do agree of the benefit of hearing new perspectives and testing their beliefs through civil discourse.
Ethnic studies education should broaden students’ understanding of American history and the important contributions that have been made by people of all ethnic backgrounds. It should be a space where students are encouraged to have honest and difficult discussions about our nation’s historical failure to live up to the ideals articulated in our founding documents, as well as the ways in which we have successfully attracted people from every part of the world and integrated them into the largest and most powerful multi-ethnic democracy in human history. As one of the founders of the field, James A. Banks, has explained, ethnic studies should foster “unity within diversity.” This is the approach we take in the forthcoming FAIR Introduction to Ethnic Studies, a high school ethnic studies course developed by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR).
The history of ethnic groups in the United States is far too complex to be limited to a single, narrow political perspective. The University of California should recognize that the best way to give students a solid foundation for understanding ethnicity in America is through an ethnic studies curriculum that celebrates not just our country’s ethnic diversity, but also its diversity of thought.
