Why Do Critical Ethnic Studies Matter? And Why They Should Matter to Sociology Sirma BILGE La critique des formes d’accumulation du savoir est au moins aussi importante que la critique de l’accumulation du capital. (Michel Foucault) In the spring of 2010, the state of Arizona passed a bill banning the funding of all ethnic studies programs in public schools, with the explicit exemption of the teaching of the Holocaust. 1 Its primary target was the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program of the Tucson Unifed School District (TUSD), where 63% of student population share a Mexican- American descent. 2 Te House Bill 2281, notoriously known as the anti- ethnic studies act, prohibited the use of a long list of books, 3 many of them aiming to teach U.S. history and literature through the prism of a particular group of people: minorities. After the rejection of its appeal on December 2011, the TUSD was forced to dismantle its 13-year-old, highly popular and successful 4 MAS program, which was found “guilty” 1 Te history and impacts of slavery, the near extermination of American Indians and the U.S. expansionism (e.g. the annexing of half of Mexico, with Arizona and Texas) were not entitled to such a nominal exemption. 2 In a 51 000-student body, the White student population is 25.4%, and the African- American population is 5.8%. Te Native-American population is 3.5% and Asians are 2.4% (Hing, 2012). 3 Te list of prohibited books includes even Shakespeare’s Te Tempest. Most books deal with Mexican-American history and aim to foster critical thinking over the impact of colonialism, such as Rethinking Columbus: Te Next 500 Years by Bill Bigelow, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña, Chicano!: Te History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales, and 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, by Elizabeth Martinez. Tere is also a classical of critical pedagogy, Te Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, and a Critical Race Teory textbook by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (Rodriguez, 2012). 4 Te programme boasts a 97.5% high school graduation rate (Rodriguez, 2011). Engaging with Diversity : Multidisciplinary Reflections on Plurality from Quebec, edited by Stéphan Gervais, et al., P.I.E. - Peter Lang SA Éditions Scientifiques Internationales, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umontreal-ebooks/detail.ac Created from umontreal-ebooks on 2020-11-14 16:27:58. Copyright © 2018. P.I.E. - Peter Lang SA Éditions Scientifiques Internationales. All rights reserved.