The following remarks were taken from the comment section of a Huffington Post article about “ethnic studies”, back when the controversy over Arizona’s immigration policy erupted. It is a splendid example of how to carve up the politically correct giant with sarcasm humor and facts.
Author unknown.
‘Without exception, “ethnic studies” at every institution (from Ivy to Big 10) that I have personally witnessed, are little more than rabidly racist, hate-whitey, anti-hetero-sexist, anti-American sewers that get backed-up occasionally when news of America’s rapidly shifting racial demographics sends seismic tremors through the otherwise predictable faculty meeting dynamics of said same.
At one Ivy, I personally witnessed the grotesque mobbing and bullying of an “ethnic studies” graduate student; himself, of an “Hispanic-culture” background.
He refused to identify himself with the “1-size-fits-no-one” label of “Latino”. On numerous occasions, he reminded the department members that in the ENTIRE history of man, there has never been a “Latino” race. However, the bully departmental pulpit had long ago been commandeered (if only with passive consent of the larger home departments of American Studies, Creative Writing, Sociology, Law School and even the Medical School) by a “west coast Chicano poet/activist” whose only contribution to the department was that he could always be counted on to enter (late of course, in recognition of “latino” time) the faculty meetings with the latest Prada boots coordinated with his latest farmer’s market purchase of authentic (made-in-Korea) “Peruvian” llama wool shoulder bags. His braided leather head bands were also very fetching, especially those with “authentic” plastic beads.
The graduate student who only cited the obvious was hounded, excluded, harassed and otherwise made the department pariah. When it became abundantly clear that he was not going to EVER be “tolerated” by these like-minded intellectually bankrupt buffoons of faux-egalitarian, fake-democratic, not-so-totally-rad, hardly-progressive politics, he was faced with the decision to stay (and NEVER be “accepted”) or abandon all his work and keep his sanity, and his personal and academic integrity.
These personal and professional tenets were not of much value in the “ethnic” studies department that had long ago been hi-jacked by feel-good, nonsense “minority” politics of exclusion toward anyone who did not join the political fiction of “people of color” goose-step nor chirp the “diaspora” parrot-speak.
The student, a European-descended (white) doctoral student in Hemispheric Colonial Studies from the Caribbean continued to run up against the typical American gibberish of “latino/hispanic” as a “race” brainwash that had totally infested the “ethnic” studies department. Whenever he would be confronted with this special kind of cultural/historical/social mind-morph stupidity, he would AGAIN explain that in the history of man there has NEVER been a “latino/hispanic” race regardless of the popular stupidity of this ignorance in the USA.
No appeal of his to their academic or, dare I say, “intellectual integrity” would change their “ethnic studies” mantra of color; and he continued to be shunned by the majority AND minority-status faculty who REALLY did promote the offensive and ignorant rubric of the “latino/hispanic is a race” brainwash. And of course, the culturally prostituted “chicano” clowns in the department who spent most of their time complaining about their oppression from behind the tie-died gauze skirts of their blonde prom queen wives, continued to preach the accolades (self-designated) of their totally “inclusive” ethnic studies fraud.
At one point he, the student, proposed that the department include an undergraduate emphasis on Mennonites in Latin America & Canada, Amish the USA, and Basques in the Rocky Mountain region, but was shot down by the departmental vipers as “too white to be really ethnic”, which we all knew was hypocrisy-speak for “we ain’t goin’ down that whitey road, no matter what you say”.
Today, he is a tenured faculty member in a London-based Iberian university-recognized, Euro-Caribbean Studies program focusing on Canary Island settlement in Pre-Louisiana Purchase Spanish/French colonial expansion in North America; and Corsican & Mallorcan immigration to the new world colonies, and the linguistic legacy of the Canary Islanders in Puerto Rico Spanish pronunciation.
To his credit, he kept his intellectual integrity, didn’t drink the “latino/hispanic as a race” departmental love potion and lives a life of authenticity, academic success and recognition, unlike his American counterparts who fill their semesters racking up “room service” tabs at national conferences and waiting for their fat honorariums to arrive via (of course) Priority Mail.
UPDATE…. the department is still mired in its sad, cheap, predictable “latino as a race” politics and still swatting at the departmental pinata of “color” nonsense, without any acknowledgment fact that “hispanic/latino” has NEVER been a race and is not likely to become one outside of this incestuous post-adolescent romp they call a “department”.
And since when did “ethnic” become a race?
More stupid American cultural myopia served up as utopian, “we-gonna-get-whitey-now” ethnic studies clap-trap.
Really now, don’t we all deserve better than this tired, predictable, provincial racist crap?
And has anyone done a mitochondrial DNA analysis of Sotomayor or is she now a “colored” person because some moron in the CHE blog said so, who couldn’t find Puerto Rico on a map without help from the dancing Chihuahua. Oh PLEASSSSSE, the stupidity is endless here!
Please be embarrassed for yourselves already. YOU are the laughing stock the world over with your precious ethnic studies ignorance and you just make it worse by the day.
Now scurry off to Starbucks and be sure to ask for the “ethnic” Malaysian cinnamon sprinkles picked by 10 year old virgins…I am sure it will make you feel better in your “oppression”.’