But Some of Us Are Wise: Academic Illegitimacy and the Affective Value of Ethnic Studies (Viewpoint Essay)

WRITING for Forbes.com, journalist Melik Kaylan defends Arizona s anti-Ethnic Studies act (introduced as House Bill 2281) by asserting that Ethnic Studies underestimates students of color. He writes, "It is insulting to assume that minorities must he coddled with ethnic cheerleading as a substitute for knowledge." (1) Contrasting the supposedly separatist agenda of Ethnic Studies with a more acceptable non-partisan multiculturalism, he characterizes the bill's author, the former Arizona Superintendent of Education Tom Home (recently elected as the state's Attorney General) as "at pains to point out that he is all for a variety of cultures being taught, but just not in a spirit of resentment or grievance." (2) Kaylan's concerns echo familiar complaints of the privileged mainstream over recalcitrant people of color, who seem to be only "united, if at all, in the endless struggle to empower their own kind." (3) Whereas Kaylan belittles Ethnic Studies for providing "feel good" classes to people of color, Horne describes those same classes as part of a curriculum that teaches "resentment," "grievance," and "hatred"--in other words, he sees Ethnic Studies as courses that make people "feel bad." Ethnic Studies is often delegitimized as a discipline that to some seems more concerned with evoking "feelings" than explaining the "facts"--especially when non-white empowerment is the "feeling" thought to displace and replace historical and contemporary "facts." Underlying Arizona's anti-Ethnic Studies act and the multicultural philosophy of its staunch supporters is the problematic premise that knowledge is incompatible with emotions; as if feelings discredit the act of learning, undermine analysis, and cloud critical thinking. Although Ethnic Studies is also (but not only) logical, factual, empirical, and scientific, I am suspicious of politicians, journalists, and legislation that dare Ethnic Studies supporters to demonstrate the discipline's legitimacy as "real" knowledge not just worth learning but also worthy of taxpayers' money. I fear this enlists each of us to become the institutional gatekeepers to unconventional evidence, interdisciplinary methodologies, and alternative epistemologies. When HB 2281 proponents try to delegitimize Ethnic Studies scholarship and pedagogy, they simultaneously determine and normalize the requirements we would have to meet in order to re-establish our legitimacy. Inevitably, this means that the legitimacy of Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline is contingent upon how well it conforms to mainstream notions of objectivity, neutrality, and credibility. Striving for academic legitimacy, rather than critique, redirects the focus of our political projects from changing institutions to accommodating them, so that we are conforming to, rather than challenging dominant ways of knowing and hierarchies of value. My focus in this essay maps the centrality of "feelings" to Ethnic Studies debates and policies that similarly exhibit what I will refer to as "neoliberal antiracism" by drawing upon Arizona's anti-Ethnic Studies act, Home's 2007 open letter to Tucson citizens, and Kaylan's defense of HB 2281. I consider these texts representative of the way conservative politics has monopolized "legitimacy"--from determining the criteria for credible scholarship to ascertaining the authenticity of racist experience. Within these confines, establishing legitimacy is a battle we lose even when we succeed.