Curricular Countermovements: How White Parents Mounted a Popular Challenge to Ethnic Studies

Abstract

In this critical ethnography, Ethan Chang investigates how white parent-activists organized an oppositional movement to ethnic studies. Drawing on critical whiteness studies, cultural studies, and studies of countermovements, he argues that these parents crafted an oppositional narrative that positioned white, Christian, American boys as victims of ethnic studies curricula. Chang then traces how the parents leveraged this narrative to forge a coalition with disability advocates and to “digitally suture,” or bind, their local ethnic studies countermovement to broader right-wing populist activism. Data includes eleven months of participant observation, 146 public school board testimonies, and twenty ethnographic interviews. The article concludes with a discussion of how studies of curricular countermovements might inform scholarly and activist attempts to divest from whiteness and make ethnic studies available to all students.