In Black America; Ethnic Studies Program, Part 2 with Dr. Otis L. Scott

Hope you liked this art so much. Thank you for watching! From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. There's still another consideration that I believe that we must understand and that we must accept.

That is those of us who are involved in this multi-cultural project. There's still another consideration. Most programs include, in their litany, a program of objectives, their missions and goals if you will, a statement, a statement of commitment to social responsibility. And that's good. That's right. That's just, it's proper. It's what we would expect of programs that are intended to bring a vow of my own social transformation. A commitment of commitment to social responsibility. Typically, these kinds of statements involve building bridges throughout communities and particularly communities of color, reaching out, closing the gap between drones and drones. Dr. Otis L. Scott, Chairperson of the Ethnic Studies Department, California State University, Sacramento. The generation of Black American who established African American Studies Departments and Programs at major colleges and universities, also witnessed the coming of age of the civil rights

and Black power movements, the legal desegregation of our society, and the growth of the modern middle class. African American Studies program's primary objective is to provide students an opportunity to examine the multi-cultural experiences of African Americans and their responses to the blending of an African heritage and American culture. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Ethnic Studies, Curriculum Transformation for Multicultural Society with Dr. Otis L. Scott, part two in Black America. Ethnic Studies programs in short, if they're on the job, must seek to establish a helping relationship with people whose social status is maybe proved and most certainly not harmed by our scholarship and our activism.

The practical involvement of students in service to communities of color, communities in general is a defining feature of most Ethnic Studies project. And I would urge those of you who are in this audience who are involved in this kind of an activity or this kind of an activity characterizer program to keep on doing this. It should be, it must indeed be a hallmark of our program. Last November, Florida A&M University held the 13th annual Higher Education Conference on Student Retention and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The five-day conference brought together college and university administrators, academic counselors, faculty students,

and leading experts on student retention. The brainchild of Dr. Cornita A. Ford, this year's conference was truly multicultural. Attendees included Hispanics, Native Americans, Anglos, and African Americans. Participants had an opportunity to discuss issues of concern that influenced the retention of minority students. Dr. Otis L. Scott was one of this year's keynote speakers. He is vice president, National Association for Ethnic Studies, and a professor at California State University Sacramento. On this week's program, we conclude his presentation. I also bring you greetings from California, a state reeling from backlash politics, the politics of 187, 209, and the next clear divisive issue, the issue over bilingual education. Indeed, there's one pre-proposition, the uns bill is being referred to that is floating around one of its provisions, if it is indeed passed or accepted by Californians next year, will make it illegal for teachers to teach.

In any other language, but English. I appreciate the honor of being invited here by Dr. Ford to participate in plays without a doubt one of the premier retention conferences in the United States. I hope that the subject that I am addressing in some way adds to the body of information and perspectives and insights that you have gained as far from this conference. And I trust that some of what I will provide will be of assistance to you in your respective professional capacities as you return to your campuses. The title of the working title of my presentation is Ethnic Studies Curriculum Transformation for a Multicultural Society. There are four points that I wish to cover in this presentation.

Initially, I want to give a brief but I think important historical context for understanding the origins of the academic programs and courses that address the historical and cultural experiences of people of color in the United States. Secondly, I want to give some attention to what I mean by the transformative objective of Ethnic Studies. I also thirdly want to identify and comment on some of these objectives. And lastly, assuming that you are still here, I want to talk about some of the very important, in my opinion, some important challenges facing Ethnic Studies and those of us who are involved in this important project of Multicultural Studies in general. There are some challenges I will contend that we must rise and meet.

Let me begin. My experience with applied Ethnic Studies is that both the community and students benefit from this kind of an association. The community-based organization, for example, can draw on the research and writing talent of students for the purposes of grant writing. A community-based organization can benefit from the expertise of students with respect to developing presentations to city councils or boards of supervisors or other deliveries bodies. Students can gain first-hand knowledge of how the real world challenges, what they learn and what we teach them in their classes. Students can gain knowledge and experience with respect to applying theoretical and other content that they've learned in their history courses or their social experience courses or their humanities courses.

Students can take this information and apply it to real world problems all over. My experience, and I'm sure that I'm not alone in this, that the work of eager and committed and talented students and faculty can have and indeed have had positive effect on the lives of people. I am urging the heightened commitment of service and a quickening pace of the transformative role of Ethnic Studies at this moment in our social history. I take this position and I will confess that there's a certain amount of alarm while I'm attempting to control it for this particular forum.

I am alarmed at what is happening politically and socially and culturally in this nation. I am urging a heightened recommitment of service and a quickening pace of a transformative role for three reasons. There may be more probably are, but let me just identify and briefly elucidate on three reasons. From where I sit as an Ethnic Studies scholar, as a political scientist, I am concerned that there has been a virtual abandonment in national political arenas of progressive strategies. To help improve the social welfare status of poor people, of men, women, and children.

I'm not indicting all public officials for abandoning the needs of those most vulnerable in our communities. That would be irresponsible and reckless on my part. But as a national policy commitment, the welfare status of people most in need of advocacy in my opinion has been abandoned. Secondly, and this is related to our second point, I believe it is related to the first, there is a seeming inability or unwillingness on the part of public policy makers to translate the ever increasing plight of marginalized people into policy initiatives designed to bring relief and uplift to people who dire economic and social and political straight are becoming even more dire.

Thirdly, and I make no bones about it, and I'm certain you will excuse or better understand my passion with respect to this last point. There is an outright bold audacious assault against the political gains, the civil rights gains by people of color by African American since the 1960s. There is an outright assault against the gains that we have made. California is a laboratory, a social and political and economic laboratory for understanding this last point. It is not the purpose of my talk to exhaustively explore these three points and their impact on the lives of people in general and people of color in particular.

There is simply not enough time, and I don't want to beg your indulgence anymore than I have. There is a role that ethnic studies and multicultural projects having a clear commitment to service, there is a role that we can play. I am convinced that should we not accept the challenges of this role, we betray the highest idealism that most of us believe is a rightful part of our academic or scholarly and our teaching mission. Let me speak to how I see this role and challenges as I move towards a conclusion.

Before I do that, let me just go back and revisit briefly the context of my remarks this morning. I have attempted to place a social and historical context, a framework if you will, around some of the contemporary, the here and now challenges that I believe we must rise and meet. Earlier I noted that an important component of the transformative mission of this multicultural project is contained spoken to in the objective of providing service outreach, if you will, to communities of need, to people in need, to communities of color. And most of my colleagues in this enterprise of ethnic studies readily acknowledge the importance of this objective.

Namely, to use the resources, our native genius, whatever money that we have, the information that we have that we are able to bring to bear as a result of our research and teaching. We can and we should, I'm suggesting, use the resources available to us to change or at least to attempt to change, that is to improve the circumstances of people in need. Ethnic studies must become more of an advocate for people in need. It is clear that communities of color all across this nation, for example, are in vast, are in need of vast kinds of assistance. And I won't take your time to detail all of those. But some of these needs, as I've suggested, can be provided by ethnic studies, scholars and teachers and our students.

We can provide, and I know this might seem mundane, but it is not so for people who are in need of tutorial interventions to help with writing and reading and thinking. In the beginning of Sacramento City and County, our students are involved in teaching Ukrainians, Russian, immigrant, and Hmong, and me, and Latinos, Guatemala, and English, helping them to develop their writing skills, their language arts. We can assist community-based organizations, as I mentioned, a few moments ago with developing proposals, funding proposals. We have the expertise to provide that kind of assistance.

We believe that this is a proper role for our program, in addition to the tough, the necessary roles of teaching and researching and publishing. I believe this is a proper role for ethnic studies programs. Because, in my opinion, we have the responsibility at this juncture in our social history to be the articulators of the issues that are important to our people. This is what I refer to. This is what I mean when I make reference to this contemporary challenge and responsibility of ethnic studies programs. By drawing on our resources, by using our resources, when and where possible, forming collaborations with various groups, community groups, for example, ethnic studies programs can do the tough and necessary intellectual work.

Yes, we can do and must do the research work, and we must do the work necessary to clearly identify the issues deserving attention by communities of need. We must do the work, the advocacy work, of bringing these issues to the attention of public policy makers. How can we do this through position papers? By disseminating the results of our research, by offering to hold community forums for the purpose of disseminating information regarding a wide range of public policy issues, welfare reform, so called, is a key one. I believe that those of us involved in this multicultural project and ethnic studies could do a valuable performance, valuable service, by holding reform or holding for us that look at this matter of welfare reform or other kinds of so called reform measures and initiatives.

But in Sacramento last Saturday, a number of us, a faculty and students convened a forum on welfare reform and brought to bear on the people who visited and participated in forum, various kinds of information, respecting the intent of the law. That impact on residents in Sacramento City and county. And we brought to the forum participants suggestions and ways by which they need all respond to the implementation of welfare reform from work to welfare as it's used, you've domestically referred to in Sacramento County.

And that kind of activities that increasingly we must become involved in. And I'm suggesting that we do this. I'm urging that we do this because in my opinion, not enough public policy makers are taking the bold upfront stand on behalf of our people. And finally, I believe as I move to a close here, that in this space and place and time, ethnic studies must become more active as a mechanism for creating social change. I have no bones about it. And I am criticized oftentimes by my colleagues and by my students for being too political, too involved in political struggles and political change.

And I say guilty for I understand that the discipline in which I work and serve is indeed a political is a political project. It was born out of political struggle and it will continue to be involved in political struggle. Most of us in this discipline never questioned this defining feature of ethnic studies. And many of us and don't start me to talk and have paid a price. It is hard to convince retention and promotion and tenure committees of the value of working in the community.

It is sometimes hard to convince your senior faculty that you deserve to receive credit for tenure and promotion and retention because you are serving the community. But those are struggles that we, it will be an overstatement indeed a lot to say that we willingly accept these are struggles that we understand are a part and parcel of this political project. The fact remains that the spirit and praxis of social activism that were the attending midwives of our morning shepherd us through this day. We cannot avoid this essential fact of our existence, whether we like it or not, politics, politics are an ever present part of what we do. The transformative role of ethnic studies is one that acknowledges and responds to the obligations of working for social change in a multicultural society.

As mentioned before, ethnic studies cannot do this alone nor is ethnic studies intervention a cure-all, a be-all, it is clearly no panacea. And yet, even with these important provisels I contend, they're still remains an essential role for ethnic studies programs. Ethnic studies is a transformative project. It is critically important that we both remember this and accept its challenges. The scholar activist friends ask me to warn you that word coddley is coming to a city or a state near you and maybe yours be prepared. We were not as prepared as we should have been in California and we're paying the price.

So thinking as I flew in here last evening that this is an important conference and Dr. Ford and her colleagues who have worked so assiduously over the years to stage this kind of a gathering where we can share information, hone our skills, obtain new sets of information and new skills that will enable us to do what we do well at our respect. This is an important setting. Reflecting back on what we understand to be some of the bad data with respect to enrollment, certainly in the University of California institutions, particularly the professional schools at UC Berkeley, for example, the law school. It is clear to us that Tool 9 is having already a deleterious effect on the numbers of enrollment on the part of Latino and African-American students in the professional schools. My point by bringing up this bit of preface is that it probably will not be too far fetched to suggest that in the very near future, we will be convening in places like this to discuss strategies, the share strategies for admitting students to institutions of higher learning.

Dr. Otis L. Scott, Vice President, National Association for Ethnic Studies, speaking at the 13th annual National Higher Education Conference on Student Retention in Apple Curkey, New Mexico. I would like to thank Florida and M University for their assistance in the production of this program. If you have questions or comments or suggestions asked to future in Black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week.

Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America Cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. This is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America. Most programs include in their litany of program objectives, their missions and goals if you will, a statement, a statement of commitment to social responsibility. With mixed studies, curriculum transformation for a multicultural society with Dr. Otis L. Scott, part 2 this week on in Black America.