Constructive Ethnic Studies:

• Empowers students to dream big, overcome challenges, and be motivated, engaged community members
• Builds mutual respect, self-confidence, awareness, intergroup understanding, and empathy
• Elevates ethnic groups, their backgrounds, and contributions without denigrating others
• Openly and honestly addresses racism and discriminatory treatment
• Presents a range of political perspectives and approaches to bringing about change, including strengths and weaknesses of each
• Equips students with the skills to understand and analyze multiple points of view on relevant topics, so that they can develop their own opinions and present well-articulated, evidence-based argument

Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies (ES) divides students into victims and oppressors, and pits them against each other based on skin color. This type of ES is based on neo-Marxist ideology that glorifies violence and militant leaders, advocates for separatist resistance, and frames ideas and groups in all-or-nothing terms. The ideology also ignores social justice leaders who work "within the system," dismissing seminal leaders such as MLK and John Lewis as "passive" and "docile."

The greatest challenge in confronting the division and hatred sown by the Liberated ES movement is that the vast majority of both Californians and Americans - parents, teachers, administrators, board members, voters - are unaware of the existence of this movement and curriculum, much less its alarming approach.

The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) was passed in March, 2021, after a record amount of controversy about a narrow, one-sided ideology, explicit bias against various groups, and offensive language.

The original (dismissed) drafters of the ESMC split off to create their own curriculum (Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum), based on the initial controversial drafts of the ESMC.

Absolutely. All students deserve to see themselves in curricula. There are positive models of Ethnic Studies curricula in California schools that educate and build understanding, while tackling challenging issues through an analytic lens. But doing so does not require polarizing students or proselytizing a specific and militant ideology. The guiding principles of positive Ethnic Studies courses specifically guard against political indoctrination. Constructive Ethnic Studies curricula include the wrongs of racism and others forms of hatred without romanticizing violence.

Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies activists have created a false equivalency around Ethnic Studies, insisting that support for the Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies is the same as support for ethnic studies in general. Of course, this is untrue. Many people who do not support the Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies framework do support the idea of ethnic studies and want to fight racism and build understanding among different ethnic groups.

Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies directs teachers explicitly to use Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a key theoretical framework and pedagogy in teaching Ethnic Studies. CRT, the cornerstone of Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies and the most controversial of numerous race theories, is the only race theory taught in CES curricula. CRT, which holds that all white people "further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of colour," is a monolithic framework that lacks nuance and divides students into (white) powerful oppressors and (people of color) disempowered victims. Students are presented with this framework as the only lens through which to see history, racism, and the legacy of minority ethnic groups in the United States. This limits inquiry in favor of forgone conclusions and fails to build empathy and tolerance across our differences.

Absolutely not. Unfortunately, CRT has become quite politicized, and often is mischaracterized, creating a knee-jerk reaction from both extremes. Supporting or opposing CRT has nothing to do with whether one is left or right wing, or whether one opposes racism.

Most opponents of CRT in our schools do not deny the horrors of racism, nor that it should be included in our history and classrooms. Rather, they believe that our nation's complex history should be explored in all its dimensions, the good, the bad and the ugly, without simply blaming all past and present concerns exclusively on racism.

CRT is based on a legal theory, which holds that "the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans." (https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory)

It is one thing to teach and examine CRT in law schools, where it is taught among many others, including other race theories. It is quite another to push this very specific theory into K-12 schools and make it THE LENS through which other subjects are taught. Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies makes CRT the sole ideological framework of the curriculum.

The problems with CRT in K-12 schools is that it sees all of society's ills through a single filter - a racial one. It ignores all other root causes of problems and undermines systems of change that have worked to improve equity and justice.

At this time of divided partisanship, some have painted CRT as a right vs. left issue. In reality, it is about HOW we teach our students. CRT forces students to view history and society through one lens and accept all its assumptions without question. Opponents of CRT, and supporters of Constructive Ethnic Studies, support presenting students with a range of perspectives and lenses which enable them to broaden their perspectives, form educated opinions, and develop empathy and understanding of others.

Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies is based on the ideology of the Third World Liberation Front. This movement drew inspiration from polarizing leaders such as Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh. The curriculum reflects this ideology, which instills communist and anti-American biases into young students' minds under the guise of educating children on racism and multiculturalism.

In teacher training sessions, instructors admit that, while the Marxist underpinnings of Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies can "scare people away," teachers must be "grounded in the correct politics to educate students." In teaching his middle school students, Pacheco equates capitalism and racism with genocide.

At the college level, Liberated Ethnic Studies is an openly politicized subject. While college students have the option to take these courses, public school K-12 students taking a mandated Ethnic Studies class have no such option, nor the background in US or World History.

This is why the ESMC draws the important distinction: “At the college and university level, Ethnic Studies and related courses are sometimes taught from a specific political point of view. In K–12 education, it is imperative that students are exposed to multiple perspectives, taught to think critically, and form their own opinions.” —Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum

Every day parents are seeing their children exposed to a Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies approach to K-12 classroom lessons throughout our state. Documented examples of this include:

• a Cuban boy not allowed to say ""we fled communism and socialism"
• a biracial child coming home to ask if her dad is really oppressing her mom
• a math teacher instructing her class of third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their "power and privilege"
• an Asian girl wanting to voice her differing opinion and the teacher put her on mute
• a Black first grade student, crying after watching a video on police violence, telling his father that he wants to grow up and "kill cops before they kill me"

Education, including Ethnic Studies, should be based on inspiring inquiry and not promoting political dogma. The acclaimed Ethnic Studies curriculum in the largest California district, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), appropriately states, "The investigation, presentation and interpretation of facts and ideas ...shall be ... a fair and balanced academic presentation of various points of view consistent with accepted standards of professional responsibility, rather than advocacy, personal opinion, bias or partisanship." In contrast, the Critical/Liberatory Ethnic Studies, which romanticizes political, economic, militant, and separatist movements through a narrow political lens has no place in a liberal education system.

Proponents for Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies wrongly assert that calling for balance means inclusion of extreme right-wing, white supremacist groups like the KKK. This is blatantly false and has never been a part of Constructive Ethnic Studies. That argument is a smoke screen to derail the conversation about the neo-Marxist ideology that is the foundation of Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies. Since the goal of Ethnic Studies is, among other things, to address racism and discrimination, lessons should present a range of methods for doing so and bias inherent in the curriculum or on the behalf of the teacher is inappropriate.

The Constructive Ethnic Studies approach adopted by the LAUSD demonstrates that it is possible to honestly address racism while inspiring mutual respect and fostering balanced analysis.