Ethnic Studies is expected to be a required class for every California student in a public or charter school. The intent of Ethnic Studies was to empower students, to build bridges of inter-ethnic understanding, and to foster "an appreciation for the contributions of multiple cultures.”[1] 

Ethnic Studies can play a valuable role in combating racism and bigotry. However, this objective has been subverted by a field called Critical Ethnic Studies (ES), which aims to "bring into conversation the ways that concerted efforts and collectivized resistance to US imperialism ground our approaches for dismantling the (neo)colonial schooling apparatus.”[2] This is a stark contrast to the Ethnic Studies goal of combating racism and highlighting the experiences, obstacles, and accomplishments of marginalized people of diverse backgrounds.

As the authors of the rejected first draft of California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), Critical (or “Liberated”) ES activists created a curriculum that:

• defines and judges students based on skin color rather than character or behavior

• divides students into victims and oppressors, pitting them against each other

• equates capitalism with racism and describes capitalism as a "form of power and oppression"

• glorifies Communist and Maoist governments, never acknowledging their oppression of speech, religion, and opportunity

• includes Antisemitic concepts and language

This first draft of the ESMC was so offensive that Governor Newsom, dozens of political leaders, and almost 20,000 citizens called for “a substantial redesign” and citizens were promised that it “would never see the light of day.” However, based on this very draft, Critical/Liberated ES activists have created the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (LESMC), which they are actively propagating throughout school districts. In fact, school districts across California are using taxpayer money to hire the LES organization as consultants to develop local curricula. The LESMC, by its own admission, has retained the overall approach and controversial material found in the original ESMC and its politicized orientation.

The principles of LESMC are based on those of Paolo Freire, who teaches that "The oppressors [White people] who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves."​ (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)  In fact, the LESMC specifically states that its objective is to “connect ourselves to past and contemporary resistance movements that struggle for social justice on global and local levels to ensure a truer democracy.” (“Truer democracy” is a Marxist term for the abolition of private property.)

The LESMC promotes a specific political ideology and insists on this ideology's call to militant resistance as the ONLY way for students to be socially responsible. LESMC, as did the initial ESMC drafts, glorifies Marxist militant "role models," such as Oscar Lopez Rivera, the leader of a paramilitary Marxist organization responsible for over 130 bombings in US cities, and Lolita Lebron, who led an armed group of Puerto Rican nationalists in an attack on the US House of Representatives, firing 30 bullets and wounding five congressmen. Omitted from those ESMC drafts are peaceful civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, who are dismissed as "passive" and "docile.”

Recognizing the risks of infusing political dogma into classrooms the final approved ESMC clarifies that “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.”