I teach American Ethnic Studies, an academic discipline which gave rise to the current bugaboo, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. DEI unfortunately is grossly misunderstood. Those three letters are enough to scare lots of people. Because it's perceived as un-American and dangerous, the Trump administration has banned DEI. The ban has made Trump even more popular than he was before January 20. Trump, of course, can infallibly read the public mood. When DEI is proposed the reaction goes like this: People run for the exits, screaming, "The Russians are coming! The Chinese are coming! The Marxists are coming! The Communists are coming!" Does this sound like I'm too harsh on concerned Americans? No, I don't think so. Based on what I read in the newspapers I don't think I'm unfair, and I'm not exaggerating.
I've been in the human relations field for a long time. I started teaching us how to get along with each other back in the early 70's when I was fresh out of the Army and looking to make positive contributions to society. My motivation was to focus on the gentle side to balance all the brutal things I had seen and done fighting the war in Vietnam. That's a normal thing for many ex-soldiers. We want to build instead of tear down. And that's how I got to be an American Ethnic Studies teacher. American Ethnic Studies is about all the diverse races, cultures, and ethnic groups that make up the wonderfully complex human mosaic of America. It's about including everyone in the huge tent that shelters all of us, and learning how to interact peacefully. It's about the reality that we are all equal, black and white, Asians, Native Americans, Latinos and Anglos (Euro Americans). It means women and men, gay and straight, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, immigrants and asylum seekers. This is why Ethnic Studies in part evolved into what we now call DEI. American Ethnic Studies provides the theory and DEI provides the practice. Coming out of an American oriented discipline makes DEI a very American thing.
There is nothing Marxist about DEI. How this misunderstanding got started I don't know, because most of us don't know what Marxism is. It's a loaded word, inspiring fear, because in our rudimentary way we know only that it is an evil doctrine that advocates the destruction of our way of iife. But maybe it was Marx's emphasis on the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletarians that led some to believe that "equity" was about poor people stealing from the middle class. That's ironic because American Ethnic Studies is all about the natural and inevitable upward mobility of the myriad diverse ethnic groups who make up our nation of immigrants. The American story is how we achieve success and the American Dream. In other words, the proletariat (workers) becoming the bourgeoisie (property owners, capitalists). Anyway, that's how I teach it. In my classes, we follow one principle: the attainment of the American Dream. I teach that success in America is our guiding light. That means economic upward mobility, winning against poverty, racism, discrimination, prejudice, and all of the obstacles thrown in front of struggling groups in our idealistic but imperfect society. And it's not only about people of color. I always cover in great detail the discrimination directed against later-arriving European-descended groups by the powerful host group, the English Americans. If you don't know about white-on-white racism, read about the terrible experiences of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish, Scandinavian, and Slavic immigrants when they came to America. And how they overcame it all.
Joe Barrera, Ph.D., is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches American Ethnic Studies, U.S. Military History, and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.
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