The Effect of Ethnic Studies on White Student Populations

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

This study examined the relationships between racial knowledge and emotions as predictors of anti-racist behaviors. We analyzed responses of 135 White MSW students from a cross-sectional survey conducted in May 2018. Regression was used to analyze the relationships between colorblind attitudes, empathy, guilt, shame, and anti-racist behaviors. Results indicated that colorblind attitudes and White shame, after controlling for other factors, were correlated with fewer anti-racist behaviors; empathy and having taken an ethnic studies course were related to more anti-racist behaviors. These results provide evidence that racial emotions affect anti-racist behaviors, above and beyond what is accounted for by knowledge about racism. The results encourage educators preparing students for anti-racist practice to develop interventions that target racial emotions among White students.

Multicultural education (MCE) is a foundation of curriculum studies with an extensive history of debate and progress that harkens back to the earliest formations of public education in the United States. MCE can be viewed as both a philosophical and a pedagogical concept. As a philosophical concept, MCE is rooted in the ideals and values of democracy, social justice, equality, equity, and the affirmation and equal recognition of human diversity. MCE critiques the monocultural curriculum and ethos of the current and prevailing Eurocentric system of education and other racist structures in the United States. As a pedagogical philosophy of democracy, MCE advocates inclusion and promotes equal educational opportunity for all. MCE considers diversity to be one of the greatest strengths of the United States and regards free association and communication as valuable to human development. As a pedagogical philosophy of democracy, MCE is not static, and, although the ideology and conceptual lenses—equality, equity, social justice—remain firmly in place, the framing of MCE has been modified to welcome concepts other than race, socioeconomic status, and gender, and to facilitate deliberate discussions of power and privilege. MCE as a pedagogical philosophy of democracy seeks a fair playing field for all students and does not advocate the superiority of one culture or one group of students over the others. Although Black scholars at the turn of the 20th century consistently discussed the need for greater curriculum diversity and the recognition of contributions by people of color, forms of MCE in K-12 and higher education primarily evolved from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. During the Civil Rights Era, advocates challenged the primacy of whiteness in textbooks and argued for accuracy in reporting the history and culture of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics. In addition, ethnic studies courses became a part of the curriculum at numerous high schools and colleges, and ethnic studies departments and programs were established at several universities. It was during this period of social reform that the K-12 MCE movement began to emerge. Multiculturalists argue for a curriculum that takes the child’s experience into account: a culturally relevant curriculum that is fluent and authentic in the design to meet the needs and interests of students and to prepare them for citizenship and the workforce. A multicultural curriculum should include content, multiple perspectives, visuals, critical questioning, and the practice of democracy. The field of education research and practice has evolved to a focus on social justice as curriculum. Social justice education reframes the curriculum to concentrate on past and present political events and societal perspectives that highlight issues of oppression and marginalization from institutional and structural positions, moving away from a focus on the interrelated nature of individuals and groups embedded in the foundations of MCE. Similarly, the revival of K-12 Ethnic Studies is a notable outgrowth of critical multicultural spaces. Ethnic studies courses attempt to bridge students’ lived experiences and the historic and current experiences of Americans to deconstruct and reconstruct school content, teachers’ pedagogical practices, and the hidden curriculum of whiteness and white privilege. As MCE continues to evolve, the related philosophy, concepts, and outcomes remain a vital component of the American curriculum.

15 Getting Over Ourselves Mimi Thi Nguyen (bio) I enrolled in my first ethnic studies course as an undergraduate in 1993, and it was, to put it mildly, disappointing. Punk had given me my first radical education in US empire, the police state, and the riot, and gender and women's studies my second radical education in postcolonial and women of color feminisms. But what I remember most about that first ethnic studies course was the professor telling crude jokes about balls (specifically the correspondences between the relative heft of sports balls and testicles) and holding court about his arrests some thirty years ago, and that halfway through the semester I began skipping both the lecture and discussion sections except for exams. For a young woman of color feminist who understood herself as an activist, and had also become interested in what theory could diagnose about the failures of movements, the course was a wash. Even at twenty years old, I knew something about the obstacles of radical self-aggrandization. Even as I write this now, a white lesbian "superstar" intellectual stands accused of abuses of power made possible by her entrenched position within a structure and an enterprise, and her supporters twist themselves to justify these abuses through appeals to the radicalism of their own intellectual labor.1 As a number of us have said to each other throughout this latest debacle, everything is terrible. Here, then, is where I want to begin: where radicalism (an uneasy referent, as any student of social movements—or a predatory professor—knows), race, and the institutions of knowledge elaborate each other as objects of profound investment for both political capital and capital accumulation. What can we make of the machinations that anoint the radical intellectual as foundation and arbiter of radical knowledge, which is both the premise of their claims to "outsider" [End Page 343] status to the institution, but also to those goods that the institution provides to some and not others, including healthcare, tenure, and a paycheck? And how do we as scholars of power, in both senses as critics and as agents, narrate the crises we purport to resolve? There are questions I learned to ask and begin to answer through the interdisciplines that are my intellectual genealogies, including gender and women's studies and ethnic studies; these same interdisciplines that are my institutional "homes" reproduced and even amplified some of these conditions. So here I rehearse two modest proposals. First, we must account for the material conditions that support—or not—our labor. Second, our scholarship need not (and sometimes cannot) be commensurate with an identifiable activist project or form of resistance to be "properly" political. To put it another way: How does the valorization of certain intellectual labors foreclose possibilities for future collectivities, and necessary accounts of power? I For those of us in or from interdisciplines such as ethnic studies and gender and women's studies, our institutional histories as fields of inquiry and administrative academic units are often related (though in no straightforward manner, despite the conventional story) as histories of student upheavals and popular demands. From these histories arises the fiction that produces "the people" as an object of knowledge that claims and hails the radical intellectual as their interlocutor, translator, arbiter, or representative otherwise within the institution. This relation between "the people," "the community," and the old-fashioned "masses," and the radical intellectual has long been the occasion for reflecting upon the affinities and fault lines between forms (and categories) of movement work. In a still-crucial essay—one I read as an undergraduate, and which likely informed my bad attitude in that ethnic studies course—Trinh T. Minh-ha troubles the theoretical formation of "the masses" and the author or artist as their avatar, writing, "One invokes them and pretends to write on their behalf when one wishes to give weight to one's undertaking or to justify it."2 Or as Nick Mitchell observes in his schematic history of the "(critical ethnic studies) intellectual," the presumptive inseparability of representation in knowledge and representative in politics valorizes the intellectual as a figure of fantastical investment, especially for the intellectual herself.3 Both...

Increased interest in anti-racist education has motivated the rapidly growing but politically contentious adoption of ethnic studies (ES) courses in US public schools. A long-standing rationale for ES courses is that their emphasis on culturally relevant and critically engaged content (e.g., social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes, contemporary social movements) has potent effects on student engagement and outcomes. However, the quantitative evidence supporting this claim is limited. In this preregistered regression-discontinuity study, we examine the longer-run impact of a grade 9 ES course offered in the San Francisco Unified School District. Our key confirmatory finding is that assignment to this course significantly increased the probability of high school graduation among students near the grade 8 2.0 grade point average (GPA) threshold used for assigning students to the course. Our exploratory analyses also indicate that assignment increased measures of engagement throughout high school (e.g., attendance) as well as the probability of postsecondary matriculation.

This study uses photovoice to examine the ways in which Chicanx youths hone their critical and multimodal literacy skills in a secondary ethnic studies course. While the institutionalization of secondary ethnic studies courses swiftly expands in school districts across the United States, more research is necessary to understand the nature of these courses. This inquiry examines student photovoice compositions, participant observations, and in‐depth semistructured interviews to ascertain some of the affordances of an ethnic studies course from the perspectives of participating students. The following question guides this paper: How do students articulate the importance of ethnic studies in their lives? Students’ creations of photovoice compositions allowed them to communicate ideas around ethnic studies in authentic ways that valued their cultural practices and resources. Findings highlight student literacies of social action across three domains: individual, community, and structural.

White teacher education students often distance themselves from racism (Sleeter, 1995a; Tatum, 1992b, 1994). White people can easily say, Racism has nothing to do with me; I'm not racist (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 6). Wellman's (1993) case studies of White racism support this view. The White women and men he interviewed tended to believe that racism was synonymous with personal prejudice, and because they did not feel prejudiced, racism must be someone else's problem. Whites can seem to remove themselves from racism, but they cannot escape their Whiteness. It is impossible to say, as Frankenberg (1993) notes, Whiteness has nothing to do with me, I'm not White (p. 6). The concept of Whiteness, like the concept of race, is socially constructed and can have several layers of meaning. One layer, Whiteness as description, encompasses the characteristics of light skin and Western European physical features. Another, Whiteness as experience, describes the state of being race-privileged, the daily experience of receiving unearned privileges from which Whites benefit. A deeper and more influential layer, the ideology of Whiteness, refers to beliefs, policies, and practices (often unarticulated) that enable Whites to maintain power and control in society (Thompson & White Women Challenging Racism, 1997). Many White college students readily recognize themselves as White by description but often fail to acknowledge or understand the privileges their white skin grants them. Their White privilege is often invisible to them; so is their participation in the ideology of Whiteness. Some teacher educators and teacher education programs have responded to White students' need for greater understanding of race-related topics by providing opportunities for learning about multicultural education (Gollnick, 1995; Grant & Tate, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Research involving White undergraduates in antiracist teacher education courses suggests the courses can help students recognize racial oppression in schools (Bennet, Niggle, & Stage, 1990; Bollin & Finkel, 1995; McCall, 1995) and help them gain insight into their Whiteness (Lawrence, 1996; Lawrence & Bunche, 1996; Tatum, 1992b; Valli, 1995). These studies of race-focused multicultural education courses suggest they can be influential in changing expressed attitudes and convictions during the course. They provide little information on whether or how students' new learning or heightened awareness translates into teaching action once that class is over. I wanted to know for my own teaching whether teacher education students' changed attitudes about racism and themselves would carry over into classrooms with their students. Multicultural Education as a Catalyst for Racial Identity Development In a previous study (Lawrence & Bunche, 1996), I utilized interview and writing sample data from five students to illustrate how a multicultural education course was a catalyst facilitating racial identity development of White undergraduates. Data analyzed in accordance with Helms's theory of White racial identity development (1990, 1995) revealed that some students made slight changes from their previously held color-blind views, while others made more profound shifts in their thinking about racial privileging and the injustices of institutional racism. Helms (1990, 1995) theorizes that all persons undergo a process of racial identity development characterized by different statuses extending from those least developmentally mature to most developmentally mature (1995, p. 184). White persons experience a developmental process involving six statuses: contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudoindependence, immersion/emersion, and autonomy. These developmental statuses are not rigid and exclusive; one status may be more dominant during one period of time; others may be also be operating. White students exhibiting dominant contact status characteristics are typically unaware of racism and its effects and often claim to view all people through a color-blind lens. …

Reducing Implicit Bias in Maternity Care: A Framework for Action

Background: In consideration of the central role of motivation to academic (and other) outcomes, the present study is part of a larger two-year project wherein we apply race-reimaged/race-focused perspectives to examine the ways ethnic studies promote motivation outcomes for Latinx youth. In the first year of the project, we examined curiosity as a central outcome in ethnic studies English language arts courses. Here, we focus on findings from the second year, which included social studies classrooms and a focus on self-regulation—a term that describes the behavioral, affective, motivation, and metacognitive processes that play a role in an individual’s efforts to pursue goals. Focus of Study: the research questions we examined in this study focused on the extent to which SDT was related to Latinx high school students’ self-regulation and examined how ethnic studies courses foster self-regulation through support of psychological needs reflected in SDT. We hypothesized that the race-reimaged and race-focused domains of SDT would predict self-regulation and that Latinx students in ethnic studies courses experience enhanced opportunities for autonomy, belonging, ethnic identity, and competence. Research Design: Using a qualitative-dominant sequential explanatory mixed methods design that consisted of two phases, we began with the administration of student surveys (collected in late fall and early spring of the academic year) that reflect the domains of SDT, as well as ethnic identity, for quantitative analyses. We build on the initial findings using qualitative methods that involved a subset of student interviews chosen by purposive extreme-case sampling based on self-regulation scores for students across each teachers’ classrooms during the second phase. Conclusions: Findings revealed significant paths among’ autonomy, ethnic identity, competence and students’ self-regulation. Moreover, both autonomy and ethnic identity were partially mediated by student belonging, which was found to be significantly and directly related to students’ self-regulation. Consistent with self-determination theory, there were medium to large effects in the relationships (r = .28 to .62) among autonomy, ethnic identity, and competence. Qualitative findings corroborated the paths and indicated that aims to promote student ethnic identity is a salient feature of ethnic studies classes that can support students’ motivation. Implications for future research are discussed.

Ethnic Studies education is a promising intervention for promoting anti-racism and decolonization and fostering important developmental outcomes. However, little research documents Ethnic Studies course-taking among Asian Americans, who are particularly understudied despite their advocacy for Ethnic Studies and the implications of Asian American racialization for diversity-related educational policy. In this systematic review, we utilize the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory and Asian Critical Race Theory to examine developmental outcomes among Asian Americans enrolled in Ethnic Studies courses. Across 23 records, Asian Americans (ages 7–39) reported six categories of outcomes associated with Ethnic Studies course-taking: ethnic-racial identity, critical consciousness, community and peer relations, family, psychological well-being and emotional experiences, and academic and professional development. Continued research on Ethnic Studies course-taking is needed to understand how education supports outcomes conducive to anti-racism, decolonization, and social transformation.

Author’s Introduction Over the last 25 years, the environmental justice movement has emerged from its earliest focus on US social movements combating environmental racism to an influential global phenomenon. Environmental justice research has also undergone spectacular growth and diffusion in the last two decades. From its earliest roots in sociology, the field is now firmly entrenched in several different academic disciplines including geography, urban planning, public health, law, ethnic studies, and public policy. Environmental justice refers simultaneously to a vibrant and growing academic research field, a system of social movements aimed at addressing various environmental and social inequalities, and public policies crafted to ameliorate conditions of environmental and social injustice. Academia is responding to this social problem by offering courses under various rubrics, such as ‘Race, Poverty and the Environment, Environmental Racism, Environmental Justice’, ‘Urban Planning, Public Health And Environmental Justice’, and so on. Courses on environmental justice offer students opportunities to critically and reflexively explore issues of race and racism, social inequality, social movements, public/environmental health, public policy and law, and intersections of science and policy. Integrating modules on environmental justice can help professors engage students in action research, service learning, and more broadly, critical pedagogy. This article offers an overview of the current state of the field and offers a range of resources for teaching concepts of environmental racism, inequality and injustice in the classroom. Author recommends Pellow, D. and R. Brulle 2005. Power, Justice and the Environment : a Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. The primary focus of this edited collection is to offer a ‘Critical Appraisal’ of the environmental justice movement. The articles in this book are strong, focused on broad areas of: critical assessment, new strategies, and the challenge of globalization. Downey, L. and B. Hawkins 2008. ‘Race, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States.’ Sociological Perspectives 51 : 759–81 . This article is an effective overview of the current sociological literature on environmental inequality using quantitative methods. L. Cole and S. Foster 2001. From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Ris of the Environmental Justice Movement. New York: New York University Press The primary focus of this book is an overview of the US Environmental Justice Movement. Unique in itself, the authors, an activist lawyer and law professor, offer a well‐written overview of the movement. Taylor, Dorceta E. 2000. ‘The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social Construction of Environmental Discourses.’ American Behavioral Scientist 43 : 508–80. A leading environmental justice scholar discusses the issue of injustice framing. Morello‐Frosch, R. A. 2002. ‘Discrimination and the Political Economy of Environmental Inequality.’ Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 20(2002): 477–96. In a critique that focuses on the political economy of place, geography, and ethnic studies, Morello‐Frosch integrates relevant social and legal theories with a spatialized economic critique to formulate a more supple theory of environmental discrimination that focuses on historical patterns of industrial development and racialized labor markets, suburbanization and segregation, and economic restructuring. Pastor, Manuel, Rachel Morello‐Frosch, James Sadd, Carlos Porras and Michele Prichard 2005. ‘Citizens, Science, and Data Judo: Leveraging Secondary Data Analysis to Build a Community‐Academic Collaborative for Environmental Justice in Southern California,’ in Methods For Conducting Community‐Based Participatory Research For Health , edited by Barbara A. Israel, Eugenia Eng, Amy J. Schulz and Edith A. Parker. San Francisco, CA: Jossey‐Bass. Exemplary reflexive analysis of the power of research as intervention in environmental justice struggles. Online materials 25 stories from the Central Valley: http://twentyfive.ucdavis.edu Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta: http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/ US EPA Environmental Justice: http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/ Environmental Justice of Field Studies: University of Michigan: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/environmentaljusticefieldstudies/home Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment: http://www.crpe‐ej.org/ National Black Environmental Justice Network: http://www.nbejn.org/ Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative: http://www.ejcc.org/ Environmental Justice Project: http://ej.ucdavis.edu/ Sample syllabus Ethnic Studies 103: Environmental Racism Fall 2008 Instructor:

In direct contrast to Arizona’s criminalization of Ethnic Studies in Arizona, the San Francisco Unified School District’s Board of Education unanimously adopted a resolution to support Ethnic Studies in their schools. As schools across the country begin to place Ethnic Studies courses on their master schedules, the lack of preparation and education to support effective Ethnic Studies teaching has emerged as a problem. Therefore, the central questions addressed in this paper are: What is Ethnic Studies pedagogy? and What are its implications for hiring and preparing K-12 teachers? This is a conceptual article that builds upon existing research studies to investigate the pedagogy of effective K-12 teachers of Ethnic Studies. From this literature, we identify several patterns in their pedagogy: culturally responsive pedagogy, community responsive pedagogy and teacher racial identity development. We then tease out these components, briefly reviewing the literature for each, leading to a synthesized definition of Ethnic Studies pedagogy. We conclude the paper by providing recommendations for practice and research in the interest of preparing and supporting effective Ethnic Studies teaching in K-12 classrooms.

When California's Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1460 into law on August 17, 2020, we cheered.1 As educators of color who teach in the California State University (CSU) system and as ethnic studies educators, we celebrated the fact that the discipline of ethnic studies was being recognized for the value it brings to all students' lives. AB 1460 requires CSU students to take one 3-credit unit of any qualifying ethnic studies courses. Almost a year later on October 8, 2021, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 101 making California the first state that requires students to take Ethnic Studies to earn a high school diploma. The approved AB 101 legislation requires that by 2025 all high school students take one semester course in Ethnic Studies. Despite these victories—mandated Ethnic Studies in the CSU and in California high schools—the battle continues as the implementation of Ethnic Studies remains contentious. Nonetheless, we are still hopeful in the transformative possibilities of Ethnic Studies in California.

Over the past five decades, educators have been working to develop authentic Ethnic Studies courses that can be implemented in both higher education and K-12 schools. Ethnic Studies has been documented to be effective in growth in several metrics used to assess student "achievement." Despite its results, there is much debate as to whether or not Ethnic Studies should be a high school graduation requirement in California K-12 schools. This study explores key policies on Ethnic Studies in California, particularly the legislative mandate to develop a K-12 Ethnic Studies model curriculum. Through an exploratory documentary film study, this dissertation investigates the criteria for developing a TK-12 Ethnic Studies model curriculum. As a result, there were five criteria that emerged: 1) curriculum must be defined and written by Ethnic Studies practitioners and scholars who collectively represent the four racialized communities of color, 2) units and lessons must include the guiding values and principles of Ethnic Studies, 3) curriculum must include lessons for each of the four different standard grade level groupings for TK-12 schools, 4) all lessons and selected texts must be written by and must center the histories and experiences of the four racialized communities of color, and 5) pedagogy must be rigorous, culturally and community responsive, as well as reflective.

ABSTRACTWe know little about the challenges districts and teachers face when establishing Ethnic Studies courses. In one school district, variation in teachers’ Ethnic Studies knowledge impeded the production of curricula and its implementation. This study examines how Ethnic Studies teachers responded to the problems of differential knowledge and orientation on race, power, and teacher positionality in the context of high school classrooms. Based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, I argue that a praxis-oriented approach to teacher professional development can play a central role in preparing Ethnic Studies teachers. Through political education and critical race dialogue, teachers developed their critical consciousness, which then led to a collective identity and shared views on major elements of Ethnic Studies’ curricular perspectives and approach. This study holds significant implications for teacher education and professional development as schools, districts, and states create policies to contribute to an equitable and inclusive public education through Ethnic Studies curricula.