Ethnic Studies: What is it and Who Benefits From it

Ethnic Studies
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Department of ABC, University – Whitewater
ABC 101: Course Name
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Ethnic Studies
It is common for a majority in a society to impose their values and ideals on the minority to strengthen and further hegemony. In the United States, for instance, minority groups are compelled to abandon their roots, values, and ideals to align with the demands of the majority of White Americans. According to Maglalang et al. (2020), the education system is among the most effective ways such hegemony is achieved in that history is only understood through the lens of the majority group. However, what such efforts do is that they suppress the roots, history, and cultures of minority or underrepresented groups and, therefore, open up ways to the continuation of their oppression. In this view, ethnic studies refer to the study of ethnicity and race as understood through the lens of minority groups (Anguiano, 2021). Ethnic studies allow students to comprehend the intellectual, historical, and sociocultural experiences that inform racism and racial, cultural, & gender identities.
The key beneficiaries of ethnic studies are all American students, regardless of their racial or ethnic background. This is because, for a long time, the American curriculum was designed from the prism of most white Americans. This means that knowledge about minority groups like Native Indians or African Americans was either left out, whitewashed, or told from the oppressor's point of view. At the same time, the voices of the oppressed were silenced, a design that furthers discrimination and ideas of segregation (Alexander, 2010). When education is structured or designed in this manner, students from minority groups grow up without knowing or appreciating their own culture, history, and identities.
In contrast, those from the majority group view the rest as inferior (Maglalang et al., 2020). This is particularly important in a society that carries stereotypes that demean or make underrepresented groups appear as not belonging or not deserving to be treated equally as everyone else. Thus, for White American students, ethnic studies are important because it tells them how and why minority groups like African Americans lament racism daily. It shows that racism is rooted in history and manifests when minority groups are silenced in the education system. The call for decolonization of education, for instance, shows that indigenous knowledge, though important, is continuously excluded in American education, which furthers the wrong idea that Native American communities' knowledge is inferior and their history and culture irrelevant. Ethnic studies also help explain why the United States holds only 5% of the global population yet has 25% of the global prison population (Netflix, 2021). Within this population, minority groups like African Americans face the highest incarceration rates.
Thus, the first reason ethnic studies is important is that it allows American education to be inclusive. In this case, inclusivity does not only mean that all Americans, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender or ethnicity, also have access to education. Rather, inclusivity here refers to the content of education where what is covered is not only from the point of view of the majority in society. In essence, it means that the voices of the minority must be included in what is taught in classrooms (McKenzie, 2020). This ranges from history, culture, indigenous knowledge, and, most importantly, the inclusion of minority authors and their points of view. An ideal example of this form of inclusion is at ...