As Ethnic Studies gains traction at the K-12 level, debates about what it is have been heating up. The most difficult debates center around whether Ethnic Studies should emphasize culture or power. Obviously, both constructs are a part of Ethnic Studies, but which should drive the curriculum?

















For example, writing in





EdSource





on November 7, 2020,





Fensterwald reported





that many had criticized California’s draft model Ethnic Studies curriculum as being “too polemical in presenting racial struggles and omit[ing] the achievements and history of various ethnic and religious groups. . . .Ethnic and religious groups, including Sikh, Armenian, Jewish and Korean Americans, felt left out. Others, including some Jewish organizations, said the curriculum was slanted in minimizing racial progress, opposing capitalism and favoring Palestinians in their fight with Israel over independence.” Debates swirled around the kind of story Ethnic Studies should present. Should it be a story of people with diverse cultural heritages making progress in learning to live together, or should it be a story of how it had been institutionalized and the kind of work necessary to dismantle racism? As Fensterwald put it, the debate was largely “between those who view ethnic studies as a complement to the state’s history and social studies curriculum framework and those who believe it should serve as an alternative, critical view of traditional history and encourage political action.”














I believe it is imperative that we not lose sight of why Ethnic Studies came into being during the late 1960s. At that time, even though Jim Crow laws were gradually being dismantled, it had become obvious that racism was thoroughly ingrained in U.S. society. The university curriculum was almost entirely white, taught by white professors who gave little or no attention to concerns of communities of color. To the relatively small numbers of Black, Latino, Indigenous and Asian American students in higher education, much of the curriculum was irrelevant. In the words of the late Manning Marable, writing in







How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America







, the demand for Ethnic Studies on white campuses was “a call toward the systematic reconstruction of American learning” (p. 196).














Fifty years later, although as a society we are much more diverse and the proportion of students of color on college campuses as well as in K-12 schools is much larger, the overall situation has changed only somewhat. Racism is still deeply institutionalized, which can be seen in the ongoing police killings of unarmed Black people, the mass incarceration of Black and brown men, U.S. government intrusions into Indian lands, an upswing of attacks on immigrants from south of the U.S. border, disproportionate COVID deaths in Indigenous and communities of color, and so forth.

















A systematic analysis of the curriculum at both K-12 and higher education levels will continue to reveal its biased Eurocentric underpinnings. The entire curriculum needs to be revamped to admit a wider diversity of stories, perspectives, and narratives. Within any such revamping, diverse cultural groups should be part of the curriculum, and should be celebrated. Uplifting stories should be told.












But this





cannot





happen at the expense of Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Asian American communities who have fought for a “systematic reconstruction of American learning” for the last fifty years. Ethnic Studies came from struggles against racism. Those struggles continue. Eliminating racism was the central purpose of Ethnic Studies in 1969, and needs to remain its central purpose today.