Why Ethnic Studies Matters

Ethnic Studies asks us to engage the issues of racism, colonialism, global economic and political systems, ecological devastation, health degradation, cultural vitalities, and our geographies of differentiation and discrimination. At its most basic, Ethnic Studies asks us to think and to act. To ask and to listen. To love and to be responsible for one another.

Although Ethnic Studies embraces the necessity of and right to anger and active resistance, it is rooted in joy and community-building. It is founded by desires for self-determination and collective responsibilities. Community empowerment. It is active and works affirmatively. 

None of its founding concerns have gone away. All of its founding desires for community and health persist. 

Ethnic Studies matters because we are again (always?) faced with twisted words and disingenuous concerns over racism that seek to snap and discard the very tools of liberation and freedom we have crafted over five decades, and across five centuries. The mis-spoken and sneered phrase ‘critical race theory’ is the most current cultural symbol being rhetorically sharpened in order to try and gut Ethnic Studies, to spill its blood in plain sight and call it self-defense. We must refuse. Ethnic Studies saves lives.

Yet, we cannot stay on the path of explaining and protecting our analyses and methods. As others have reflected, we should not limit our outrage to correcting intentional misunderstandings. We need not comfort the discomforted by assuring them – no matter how accurately – that such tools have not yet even entered our systems of education. The resistance (past and present) ultimately reveals the fear, the concern, the nervousness seeking ways to catch the ocean’s waves. Ethnic Studies surges forward, fluid and loud and powerful. Live giving. Ethnic Studies must continue to push our tools of analysis and activism and growth and engagement into the classrooms, churches, organizations, and institutions. 

We must link arms, and march, and sing, and fight. We must read, and think, and question. We must eat, and plant, and heal, and care. We center those cast down and then blamed for every second of their grounding. We stand up together and demand better. 

Ethnic Studies is love. Hard love. Critical love. Love that tells you hard truths and hugs you when you are wrong. Love that dances with eyes closed when you are right and strong and clever and glorious. Love that lights up the streets to save our lives, if needed.

Its principles are equal parts resistance and recovery, creation and dreaming. Ethnic Studies requires that we attend to how we parcel out both privilege and pain. It questions the distance between ourselves and our non-human relations. It requires that we embrace what makes us unique and distinctive without tossing aside how often we transform distinction into razor wire and carved up families, oil spills and poison meals, broken souls and buried babies. 

Ethnic Studies is sometimes about visibility. About being visible and multifaceted where you and your communities are made opaque and flat. More importantly, it is about visibility to self. It helps to remove racist, colonial, and heternormative filters of scarcity and deficit. It reveals abundance. 

Ethnic Studies is one of our best chances for connection. It asks us to connect despite differences. To look to the past and future, to see beyond the dominance of now. While doing so, it demands that we consider the full humanity of one another, to seek alignment where lines are drawn between us. It asks us to watch ourselves draw lines. And then it requires us to ask where and why these lines are being drawn, and attend to who is harmed and who is served by them. It asks if our lines can also be bridges.

Natchee Blu Barnd is Associate Professor and chair of Ethnic Studies at Oregon State University. He serves as the director of the Ethnic Studies Research Collaboratory, and is editor of the Ethnic Studies Review journal of the Association for Ethnic Studies. He earned MA and PhD in Ethnic Studies (UC San Diego), an MA in American Indian Studies (UCLA), and his BA in American Multicultural Studies and Philosophy (Sonoma State University).