Ethnic studies may become a mandate
SACRAMENTO — Aniyah Story, a junior at Oakland High School, says she’s always felt like an outsider reading textbooks about American history in class.
She rarely sees positive depictions of people who look like her, a person of Black and Filipina descent. What’s more, Story says, the unsavory facts of history are repeatedly glossed over to emphasize a “Eurocentric” viewpoint and minimize the enslavement of people of color.
“We are tired of spending every year learning about one group of Americans and not the rest of us,” she said. “I don’t know what country my people come from. A part of my identity is missing.”
Story is part of a coalition of students and educators urging California legislators to ensure that students learn the history of people of color in America by mandating that ethnic studies be taught in public schools.
They are rallying support for AB331 by Assemblyman Jose Medina, DRiverside, which would add a onesemester ethnic studies course to the state’s high school graduation requirement, starting with the 202425 academic year.
The bill was shelved last year due to a backlash over a draft of California’s “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum,” the manual on which the course would be based. Critics said the draft had a leftwing bias and antiSemitic content.
But the bill is on the verge of passage this session, aided by a revised curriculum draft and a national reckoning over racism in America. It faces its first committee vote of the year Thursday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a related bill Monday that requires every undergraduate in the California State University system to take an ethnic studies course, also starting in the 202425 year.
Supporters say the killing of George Floyd, who died in Minneapolis police custody as an officer knelt on his neck, and subsequent protests over racial inequality showed that students in high school and college need a deeper understanding of race.
“This is our time,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, DSan
Diego, a coauthor of AB331. “We can’t wait another year, as we’ve been asked to do so many times in the past.”
Controversy surrounding the bill dwindled after the California Department of Education released a new draft model curriculum July 31.
The new draft removes some content that critics said was leftwing jargon. Gone, for example, is “hxrstory” — a term, pronounced “herstory,” that aims to redefine history to emphasize the perspectives of women.
Another edit: Several references to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, including some that encouraged support for boycotts of Israel, have been removed.
Last summer, hundreds of Jewish people and 16 members of the Legislative Jewish Caucus criticized the first draft because they said it evoked antiSemitic stereotypes, in particular a reference to Israel controlling the media.
“Certainly (state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond) has kept his word to us about taking antiSemitic material out of the curriculum,” said state Sen. Ben Allen, DSanta Monica, chair of the Legislative Jewish Caucus.
“That makes me more comfortable about this whole discussion,” he said.
Still, the effort faces pushback from critics who argue that the curriculum is too politically charged or that it leaves out the history of some marginalized ethnic and religious groups, such as Armenians and Muslims.
The revised curriculum also encourages teachers to add lessons that emphasize the history of ethnic groups that are prominent in their community. But it keeps the focus on four groups that ethnic studies courses traditionally emphasize: African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
“Our recommendations are to stay true to the fidelity of the ethnic studies movement, which has been fighting for this type of curriculum for decades, and which remains urgently relevant today,” Thurmond said in a statement.
The ethnic studies movement began in the late 1960s, when students at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley led Third World Liberation Front strikes. They demanded courses about people of color in America and their historic oppression and exploitation.
Courses on race have spread to many high school and college campuses in the years since, but educators say the effort has failed to reach all of California’s 6.2 million public school students.
Angie Fa, chair of the Asian American Studies Department at City College of San Francisco, was among the first to earn a doctorate in ethnic studies in the 1980s. She helped write a draft of the state’s new model curriculum, and said critics need to understand the goal is to teach students about America’s history of racial inequality, not all forms of diversity or multiculturalism.
“It’s so difficult for people to have that conversation (about race), that if it’s not required, people will talk about other things,” she said.
Fa, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, said that when she was a young woman in the 1970s, a few high school teachers taught her that history, putting her on a path that changed her life. She said the state needs to deliver that empowerment to all students of color.
“A race analysis is critical, so that they can feel like they can succeed in this country,” Fa said.
“They’ve got to understand why there are barriers,” she said, “and they have to understand that those barriers have nothing to do with them and their families.”