^{The Bottom Line} A Remedy for California’s Destructive Ethnic Studies Curriculum

The state of California passed a law in 2021 requiring all students graduating from high school in the 2029-2030 school year to take at least one semester of ethnic studies. The intent, per the state’s California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, is to encourage cultural understanding of the struggles of equality, equity, justice, racism, ethnicity, and bigotry that have been prevalent throughout the history of America.

Even though the state offers a model curriculum, it allows school districts to develop their own curriculum, or they can adopt an existing ethnic studies course. The Independent Institute’s Center for Education Excellence, led by Dr. Williamson Evers, has created the turnkey Comparative Cultures Ethnic Studies curriculum that school boards can evaluate and adopt. It stands in relation to another alternative, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, which I strongly oppose due to its highly controversial and divisive content.

The Comparative Cultures curriculum, by contrast, provides a balanced perspective on American ethnic history which is not found in either the official California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum or the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. It rightfully recognizes America’s sordid past of slavery and Jim Crow segregation for Black Americans, broken promises to Native Americans, poor treatment of early Asian immigrants, and the historical patterns of antisemitism against Jewish Americans, but also recognizes that over the past six decades, America has actively sought to live up to its creed of equality for all.

The Comparative Cultures curriculum maintains an appropriate balance of being clear-eyed about the often-sad moments and struggles we experienced as a country over centuries, while also acknowledging and celebrating our march of progress. Consequently, the curriculum serves to bring students together in understanding our shared humanity, focusing on how unity can flow out of our diversity.

This unifying principle is lacking in both the California or Liberated model curriculums, which focus not on progress, but on how ethnic groups continue to be marginalized through systems of power, and oppressed by ongoing white supremacy, white nationalism, institutional racism, and imperialist/colonial beliefs.

The reason for this divisive focus is that both curriculums are deeply tied to critical race theory (CRT). Indeed, the instructional guidance section of the California curriculum encourages teachers and administrators to familiarize themselves with CRT as a lens through which to approach ethnic studies. A key tenet of CRT is its assertion that the law has been historically complicit in upholding white supremacy. CRT maintains that though the law has worked to suppress explicit forms of white racism, everyday social practices of racism have been and continue to be “pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained,” as a permanent part of American culture.

It is an unfortunate fact that in the past, laws were sometimes explicitly written to discriminate against blacks and other people of color, and even neutral laws were often intentionally and purposefully abused. However, these discriminatory laws have largely been struck down by the courts. While color-blind jurisprudence has its limitations, the argument that racism continues to be supported by law is unconvincing, particularly when virtually all urban districts have a high degree of ethnic diversity in leadership.

The Liberated Studies curriculum is, unfortunately, explicit in its promotion of CRT, which is incorporated into every aspect of the curriculum. What’s worse, the curriculum begins as early as Pre-K, exposing very young children to concepts they are not mature enough to critically evaluate. For example, consider the following language taken verbatim from a unit titled “What’s Normal?”, intended for grades Pre-K to second grade:

We understand and critique the relationship between white supremacy, racism, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, xenophobia, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, ageism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression.

This is a taste of the language of division and indoctrination of CRT concepts that pervade the document, which begins at a stage when children are most impressionable. It is not language that seeks to bring people together in unity. It demonizes those with more traditional or religious views and makes the child of European descent the natural enemy solely based on what their ancestors may or may not have done.

Neither the California nor Liberated curriculums promote the purported values of empathy and healing among ethnic groups but, instead, lionize certain ethnic groups while casting all fault on one. Further, there is no recognition of the important historical context that the mistreatment of ethnic groups in our country over the past two and one-half centuries is an unfortunate feature of the human condition that has existed for millennia. All ethnic groups have, at some point, subjugated others within or outside their own.

The key to racial and ethnic reconciliation, moving forward, is to acknowledge our past while forging ahead in unity out of our diversity. I believe the Comparative Cultures curriculum will provide California students with a diverse set of ethnic studies views and resources that will guide them into a greater appreciation of our history and a celebration of how far we have come as a nation.