Ethnic studies, in the United States, is the study of differenceâÂÂchiefly race, ethnicity, and nation, but also sexuality, gender, and other such markingsâÂÂand power, as expressed by the state, by civil society, and by individuals.
Its antecedents came before the civil rights era, as early as the 1900s. During that time, educator and historian W. E. B. Du Bois expressed the need for teaching black history. However, ethnic studies became widely known as a secondary issue that arose after the civil rights era. Ethnic studies was originally conceived to re-frame the way that specific disciplines had told the stories, histories, struggles and triumphs of people of color on what was seen to be their own terms. In recent years, it has broadened its focus to include questions of representation, racialization, racial formation theory, and more determinedly interdisciplinary topics and approaches.
As opposed to international studies, which was originally created to focus on the relations between the United States and Third World countries, ethnic studies was created to challenge the already existing curriculum and focus on the history of people of different minority ethnicity in the United States. Ethnic studies is an academic field that spans the humanities and the social sciences; it emerged as an academic field in the second half of the 20th century partly in response to charges that traditional social science and humanities disciplines such as anthropology, history, literature, sociology, philosophy, political science, and area studies were conceived from an inherently Eurocentric perspective.
"The unhyphenated-American phenomenon tends to have colonial characteristics," notes Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera in After American Studies: Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism: "English-language texts and their authors are promoted as representative; a piece of cultural material may be understood as unhyphenatedâÂÂand thus archetypalâÂÂonly when authors meet certain demographic criteria; any deviation from these demographic or cultural prescriptions are subordinated to hyphenated status."
In the United States, the field of ethnic studies evolved out of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and early 1970s, which contributed to growing self-awareness and radicalization of people of color such as African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and American Indians. Ethnic studies departments were established on college campuses across the country and have grown to encompass African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Raza Studies, Chicano Studies, Mexican American Studies, Native American Studies, Jewish Studies, and Arab Studies. Arab American Studies was created after 9/11 at SF State University. Jewish Studies and Arab Studies were created long before 1968, outside of the U.S., apart and separate from the 1968 Ethnic Studies Movement.
The first strike demanding the establishment of an Ethnic Studies department occurred in 1968, led by the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a joint effort of the Black Student Union, Latin American Students Organization, Asian American Political Alliance, Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor, and Native American Students Union at San Francisco State University.This was the longest student strike in the nation's history and resulted in the establishment of a School of Ethnic Studies. President S. I. Hayakawa ended the strike after taking a hardline approach when he appointed Dr. James Hirabayashi the first dean of the School (now College) of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, and increased recruiting and admissions of students of color in response to the strike's demands. In 1972, The National Association for Ethnic Studies was founded to foster interdisciplinary discussions for scholars and activists concerned with the national and international dimensions of ethnicity encouraging conversations related to anthropology, Africana Studies, Native Studies, Sociology and American Studies among other fields.