About Ethnic Studies Interactive
What is Ethnic Studies Interactive?
Ethnic Studies Interactive is a project of Comprometid@s, a United States Department of Education grant at Sacramento State University with Drs. Dale Allender, Jana Noel, and Pia Wong as Co-Principle Investigators; and Drs. Dale Allender and Gregory Yee Mark directing the Ethnic Studies teacher professional development work of this grant. Comprametid@s was incubated at Ethnic Studies Now Sacramento under the organizing and facilitation of Dr. Margarita Berta-Avila.
What is Ethnic Studies?
Ethnic Studies as an impulse calling for ethnic-specific and inter-ethnic solidarity among different colonized communities; cultural renaissance; and political empowerment in this country dates back as far as the 1790s with Tenskwatawa— the Shawnee Prophet of the Ohio Valley along with his brother Tecumseh; or The Ghost Dance Rebellion almost 100 years later led by the Paiute prophet Wovoka.
Ethnic Studies as an interdisciplinary discipline often associates with Carter G. Woodson’s establishment of Negro History Week, and even more so his classic The Miseducation of the Negro as a cultural or ideological origin of Ethnic Studies. Ethnic Studies became an explicit call most famously during the Third World Liberation Front strikes at San Francisco State University in 1968 and University of California Berkeley in 1969. Both schools initially called for a Third World College. In both cases, Ethnic Studies was established through protest, demonstration, and resistance. And in both cases the strikes were met by police violence. In the end, the students prevailed and Ethnic Studies was established in Universities and Colleges.
The most noteworthy contemporary k12 Ethnic Studies activism surfaced when the state of Arizona forced the closure of the Mexican American Studies program at the Tucson Unified School District. Activists, scholars, educators, and students’ resistance to the state ushered in the Ethnic Studies Now movement in California, and related K12 efforts. The Tucson resistance stimulated organizing at school districts throughout California requiring Ethnic Studies electives or graduation requirements. While districts moved at the local level, California State Assembly members moved several Assembly Bills in an effort to establish an Ethnic Studies graduation requirement, and to create a model Ethnic Studies curriculum. Additionally, grass roots efforts by original striker Gregory Yee Mark established a grade 6 through University Ethnic Studies ecosystem.
Ethnic Studies consists of African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Native American Studies, and Chicana/o Latina/o Studies.
What resources are there to help teach Ethnic Studies?
This website contains:
Links to different Ethnic Studies curricula, primarily from Northern California.
Curriculum resources for Our Stories in Our Voices textbook and workbook.
Curated research, and primary source legal and legislative documents on Ethnic Studies policy.
Blogs from Ethnic Studies students, teachers, and advocates.
