Are ethnic studies relevant?
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2010/jun/05/are-ethnic-studies-relevant/
June 5, 2010
by JOSE DE LA ISLA
SAN ANGELO, Texas Inferring "ethnic chauvinism," racial resentment,
and ethnic solidarity, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill on May
11 placing restrictions on the teaching of ethnic studies.
I wonder what the bill is really all about.
My experience with ethnic studies began my senior undergraduate year
at the University of Houston in the mid-1960s. No ethnic studies
courses were yet offered, even though the civil rights movement
occupied a lot of our thinking and activities. A new faculty member
and recent Harvard graduate, Carl Akins, offered the university's
first graduate seminar on black politics.
Akins invited me to join, which I did, even though he knew (1) I was
much younger than the average student in his advanced class, (2) his
course was very demanding, with a required reading list of one book a
week or more and a 50-page original paper at the end, and (3) I was a
research assistant at Rice University doing work in a Hispanic
neighborhood, that seemed hardly compatible with the demanding course.
From the copious reading, one revelation after another unfurled
about human migrations, historical events, community building and the
role of politics. A picture emerged about how people have struggled
against fragmentation and displacement. (Yes, I also read the
"Autobiography of Malcolm X" and Eldridge Cleaver and Stokely Carmichael.)
But what mostly came out was how policy and public attitudes can help
or hinder. Race prejudice, when it is a reality, can be abated. When
the powers-that-be neglect matters or are wrongheaded, things can get worse.
Akins suggested I write a paper on "The Negro Family," authored by
then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who became
a leading intellectual and later U.S. Senator from New York.
Among his many points, the most controversial was that, after three
centuries of perseverance, many black families were experiencing a
"pathology" of interrelated factors leading to the breakdown of the
family structure, female-dominated matriarchy (male alienation) and
unemployment. Civil-rights legislation helped, but it was the
beginning, not the end point.
Moynihan said the way out of the dilemma was through a social
assimilation (bringing in, instead of repelling), recognizing the
interrelated problems. Public understanding was not easily penetrated
with simplistic answers or one-line issues and answers.
"We must first reach agreement on what the problem is, then we will
know what questions must be answered," said Moynihan.
My paper was about how family stability could be a focus where blacks
and Hispanics had a mutual policy interest. A policy course of action
could help minimize the relationship between unemployment and family
instability, family instability and educational advancement.
In current times, the same basic proposition still holds, as James T.
Patterson recently wrote in The New York Times. He points out how
Moynihan still applies today because of the need to see the
interrelationships between policy, politics and the social fabric.
Later, as an anthropologist, I researched how an economy that
marginalizes some people destabilizes family culture. This was as
true on Native American reservations as in the hollers of Kentucky.
Family life (the primary support group) is disrupted and becomes
unpredictable when it lacks economic stabilizers that are also
dependent on stable families. And the durability of economic
stability is formal education.
If the objective is to build a better society (and not social
promotion through political games), passage of the bipartisan Dream
Act, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Richard Durbin,
D-Ill., is one example. This measure would allow approximately 65,000
youth who have lived virtually their entire lives here, but who are
technically illegal immigrants, to enroll in college.
In Arizona, if the policy objective had really been to solve
problems, Gov. Brewer would have promoted a bill to put the state's
eligible young people in college instead of sowing seeds of
dissension by trying to curb ethnic studies.
Which makes me to wonder whether any of the public officials voting
for the bill ever took uncensored ethnic studies in Arizona. Without
it, how can a public official serve all of the people, when 40
percent are non-majority-ethnic populations (Hispanic, Native
American, Black, Asian and others)?
--
Jose de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News
Service. Contact him at [email protected].
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