The recent success of the Chicana/o studies major in gaining
departmental status is not a cause for celebration, but a cause for
reflection upon the meaning of America. The successful drive for
departmental status by many ethnic-American studies majors, such as
Chicano/a studies and Asian American studies, should be viewed as a
failure in our undergraduate education.
In fact, all of these majors should be dismantled because they
are innately irrational. They should not be taught nor understood
outside of the larger context of American society, as each is only
a small portion of the whole of American society. We waste
resources creating these additional majors; every one of them has a
course essentially entitled “Fill-in-the-Blank and American
Society.”
It is not my goal to rid the university of these ethnic-American
studies, but instead to unite them into a more complete major.
Ethnicities do not exist in a vacuum ““ America takes all
sorts of groups and synthesizes them into something more, something
new.
My goal is to provide a holistic undergraduate major ““
specialization should be left to graduate schools. And to create
this comprehensive major would mean the end of specific
ethnic-American majors because they have outlived their
purpose.
Previously, many eastern U.S. universities had American Studies
departments and majors. These majors were very euro-centric and
biased toward Anglo-American culture. While the civil rights
movement did much to correct this bias, the correction has now gone
too far.
The study of different viewpoints is absolutely necessary, but
when these views ignore the existence of the others and of the
society as a whole, it is similar to forcing a biologist to look
through a microscope at a single virus. The biologist may study the
virus, but would have no conception of how viruses and bacteria
interact on the petri dish.
In American history, every immigrant group has been integrated
into the whole of American society. We see this at work every day
““ just walk to Jose Bernstein’s and order a Korean
burrito.
Today we eat bagels with cream cheese, matzoh balls and pasta
with meat sauce. We are influenced by immigrant pop culture, and
immigrant groups are influenced by American culture.
More importantly, marginalized groups are continually integrated
through the political process. The Civil Rights Movement allowed
for the expansion of voting rights, and it is the nature of the
two-party system to incorporate minorities.
Even today, the Republicans and Democrats trip over themselves
to be the ones to provide amnesty to illegal Mexican immigrants to
collect votes, so that these individuals will later vote for their
party.
But when the university breaks down the constituent groups of
American society into discrete majors and departments, it does a
disservice to those who study these groups.
Static ethnic majors can never grasp the full dynamics of
American society.
It is also likely that within a few generations, these marginal
ethnic-American groups will cease to be marginal, and the rationale
for these majors will no longer make sense.
When and if we finally decide to create a new department, it
should take all of the ethnic-American majors and courses and
combine them into a cohesive whole. This department should include
studies of sociology, American literature and American history to
provide a comprehensive view of the dynamics of American
society.
Sometimes what appears naturally to be good is, at closer
examination, self-defeating and pointless. America is unique among
nations ““ it is always in a state of redefining itself.
Most of us are a little bit of everything. Our desires encompass
a little bit of every culture, and our dream is the sum of all
those who came before. When the university divides society into
narrow portions, it fails all those who study it. Like the
biologist, it becomes so intent on staring at a bacterium that it
misses seeing the world.
Corpuz is a fourth-year international development studies
and political science student.