Arab Americans and Ethnic Studies

Abstract

Historic Background of Ethnic Studies The emergence of ethnic studies in the U.S. academy occurred in the context of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s. In Hawai`i, local struggles of farmers and workers, including retired plantation workers, against land and housing evictions, had been the defining element in the establishment of Ethnic Studies as a field of inquiry at the University of Hawai`i. The fight for Ethnic Studies in Hawai`i has occurred in the context of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) and the struggle against the war in Southeast Asia. Students and local community activists, supported by a few professors, led the fight under the slogan, "Our History, Our Way." By 1970, this local grassroots movement comprising mainly of indigenous Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans and haoles (whites) succeeded in creating an Ethnic Studies Program. The years 1970–1977 had been tumultuous. Against great odds, Ethnic Studies in Hawai`i fought for its existence. Considerable support from the community finally guaranteed permanence for the program. The successful fight paved the way for the future creation of Hawaiian Studies as a separate program at the University of Hawai`i.1 Yet, despite successes such as those in Hawai`i, Ethnic Studies occupied a marginal space in the academy nationally even though there was a proliferation of Black Studies, Native American Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Asian American Studies within that space. Contestation of [End Page 141] the legitimacy of the new field was almost immediate. Unable to go to the status quo ante, university administrations resorted to cooptation strategies that, for the most part, have been effective. The CRM completed the circle of the anti-imperialist struggles that were then occurring on a world scale. Martin Luther King's anti-war stance was a consequence of the realization of the common interests of the oppressed around the world. King even began supporting working-class struggles before he was stopped dead in his tracks, literally. The intersections of race and class have been central to the paradigm of the CRM and in the case of Ethnic Studies, at least at the University of Hawai`i, the intersections among race, class, and ethnicity have been the main pillars of a theoretical framework rooted in Hawai`i's political economy.2 Ethnic Studies has approached inquiry about racial discrimination, stereotyping, and prejudice as problems historically afflicting U.S. society that have been used against minorities by a capitalist society dominated by whites. Hence, Ethnic Studies has looked at the commonalities in the experiences of racial and ethnic groups subjected to capitalist oppression and repression. Race, as an organizing principle, has been analyzed in the context of the capitalist economy. Linkages between international and local factors and their impact on the lives of ordinary people in a particular place, for example, Hawai`i, have been studied.3 It would have been utter folly to study the Chinese in Hawai'i, for instance, without studying plantation society and the relationship of the Chinese to the haole oligarchy that controlled the Islands, to the indigenous population, and to the other ethnic groups that comprised a multi-ethnic, multi-national society. Ethnic Studies' methodology and analyses had been drawn from U.S. (and Hawaiian) history. But, U.S. history is part of world history and both have influenced each other in major ways, an approach that the movement for Ethnic Studies in the Islands had recognized from the beginning.4 To be sure, the trajectory that Ethnic Studies has developed along nationally has had significant shortcomings. Despite the seemingly revolutionary character of its foundational "Third World" philosophy, it has privileged a nationalist, rather than a class-based, outlook. That nationalist outlook has been pivotal to the later development of Ethnic Studies.[End Page 142] Ethnic Studies has been co-opted along two tracks that have reinforced each other: (1) the institutionalization of the field; and (2) the prominence of identity politics within...