Access as a Liberatory Principle of Ethnic Studies: Supporting Multiply-Marginalized Black and Brown Youth

• In Event: Attacked Because It Works: Defending the Power of Ethnic Studies in California

Abstract

Purpose: The PI’s prior research with 50 Black youth who had been suspended in general and special education in San Francisco Unified School District noted the power of Ethnic Studies to reconnect them to school. Concurrently, they described consistent challenges in some culturally-sustaining courses, where the amount of work and the way it was taught became a barrier to success. Based on the voices of these multiply-marginalized Black youth, we conceptualized Accessible Ethnic Studies (AES)–instead of inclusion as simply a spatial arrangement or differentiation as an afterthought–one in which liberatory access is central. We, the PI and master Ethnic Studies teacher, then spent one year designing and teaching AES with freshmen students who were selected because of their experiences with suspension; over half the class was identified by SFUSD’s early warning indicator system as needing extra support to graduate. In this paper, we explore Accessibility as a principle of Ethnic Studies.
Theoretical framework: To conceptualize AES, we weave the work of Disability Justice scholars into Ethnic Studies (Figure 1).
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The goal is not to erase Ethnic Studies Principles that Tintiangco-Cubales et al, (2015) have conceptualized, but to add Accessibility as a foundation to strengthen the framework.
Methods & Data sources: Our research design draws on an axiology of humanizing research that engages building of relationships of care and dialogic consciousness raising with youth (Paris & Winn, 2014). To align our axiologic commitments with our methods we engage AES Education Journey Map creation that are “co-examined with participants during the creation, followed by participants’ reflections on the interpretations” of their work (Clark, 2011, p. 142). Our first stage of data analysis was In Vivo coding, using the direct language of participants as codes rather than researcher-generated phrases (Saldaña, 2013) to further center student voice. We apply Bhattacharya’s (2017) Data Analysis Cycle to 21 interviews of AES students, along with over 90 observations and classroom work as secondary data sources.
Results: Accessibility in Ethnic Studies is multifaceted relational, pedagogical, and curricular work. In our full paper, we operationalize and discuss each of these components. For this proposal, we focus on curriculum. Students reported that the most impactful units of our class were Building an Ethnic Studies Community, Dismantling Hegemony through Drag Pedagogy and Teaching Palestine. Students noted that these units allowed them to both witness themselves reflected in the curriculum and helped them understand why and how to build solidarity with other marginalized communities.
Significance: Ethnic Studies was imagined as a transformative education space for Black and Brown young people to counter the dispossession of traditional history classes (Sleeter 2011). However, when Ethnic Studies is taught as a traditional lecture, hyper-focused on assignment production, or imagined inclusion only as a spatial arrangement, the most marginalized Black and Brown students can be further dispossessed by the very space that was meant to empower them. Accessible Ethnic Studies is one where multiply-marginalized Black and Brown Youth are at the center of teaching about our community’s histories and futures.

Authors

• Subini Ancy Annamma, Stanford University

• Aimee Riechel, San Francisco State University