What is Liberated Ethnic Studies?
Liberated Ethnic Studies (LES), which often goes by the name "critical ethnic studies" or "critical race theory," is an ideological teaching framework which categorizes certain groups of people (ethnic minorities in America) as “oppressed” and others (white and “white-adjacent” people including Asian Americans, Hindu Americans and Jewish Americans) as “oppressors.” There is no neutral category.
In this arbitrarily dichotomous worldview, the two groups are held to different standards. Where they conflict, the “oppressed” are assumed to be in the right, even incapable of wronging their supposed “oppressors”. Members of those “oppressor” groups are made to feel guilty for the purported wrongdoings of their ancestors’ ethnic group – whether real or imagined.
The inevitable outcome is to teach young children that immutable characteristics like skin color determine worthiness, and to deemphasize hard work, personal responsibility, and meritocracy. This rigid hierarchy is inherently exclusionary, opposing rather than promoting the acceptance of diversity. LES’s dogma cannot accommodate the nuance necessary to acknowledge prejudice based on factors other than skin color and ethnic identity. LES hyperfixates on the struggles of groups including Black and Native Americans, but ignores or denies other prejudices like antisemitism and viewpoint discrimination. For LES, so much is about race and ethnicity, and it often employs educational choice as a political tactic.
According to LES ideology, American history is not a slow march toward a more perfect union, but rather a tale of ongoing oppression. LES centers the U.S. and other western democracies and elements of those societies (including market-based economies, national defense, and law enforcement) as the origins of society’s ills.
In LES curricula, there is little acknowledgement of the progress the U.S. has made in ensuring that every American enjoys the same set of cherished rights and freedoms. LES practitioners lionize The New York Times’ deeply problematic 1619 Project precisely because it posits that America has always been a centrally racist enterprise since before its founding, ignoring the Americans of all backgrounds who worked to end slavery and discrimination.
In LES, population-level disparities in wealth, health, crime, and more can only stem from racism, which can only be perpetrated by “oppressor” groups. The LES model cannot explain how nonwhite ethnic minorities like Asian Americans and Indian Americans have been successful, so it labels them “white-adjacent”.
Under LES doctrine, American Jews of European descent are also “white-adjacent” purely because of their appearance – regardless of the persecution Jews have suffered for millennia or the current antisemitism crisis.
LES proponents also consider Israel an extension of Jewish privilege, obsessively and disproportionately maligning the world’s only Jewish state. Most Israeli Jewish citizens would ordinarily be deemed “people of color” in the LES worldview since they or their ancestors immigrated from Arab, Central Asian, or African countries, but Israel is nevertheless deemed a white, settler-colonial power. The Jews’ millennia-old ties to the land and Israel’s history as a decolonization project following centuries of rule by different imperial masters are denied or ignored. Zionism, the belief in Jewish self-determination, is singled out for vilification; there is no analogous treatment by LES of any other movement of self-determination, or of any other foreign country.
LES does not seek to educate but to indoctrinate. Its proponents are open that their goal is to motivate students into being radical activists.
The content of the LES curriculum – “what” students are being taught – determines much of “how” they see the world and how they think. Students will naturally use the context and schema of previous learning to build new knowledge. It takes tremendous energy for children or parents to recognize a contradiction and navigate school classrooms, administrations, and school boards to address falsehoods and make necessary corrections.
A Better Way
Thankfully, there is a better way to teach Ethnic Studies. The U.S. is a mosaic of ethnic, national, and religious groups, all of whom have contributed to the American story. Each should be given their due in our education system, not through propaganda but by teaching about their histories and cultures in an honest and constructive manner.
In this “Inclusive Ethnic Studies” approach, students are taught to respect intercultural difference and to be able to engage positively with people of all backgrounds. This creates an important foundation for students to think for themselves and be productive members of a pluralistic society.
Inclusive Ethnic Studies prepares children to meet the world with open minds. Liberated Ethnic Studies breeds only suspicion and division, and should be rejected by every school, parent, and member of our society.
