ERIC Number: EJ1359366
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0017-8055
EISSN: EISSN-1943-5045
Curricular Countermovements: How White Parents Mounted a Popular Challenge to Ethnic Studies
Harvard Educational Review, v92 n2 p157-181 Sum 2022
In this critical ethnography, Ethan Chang investigates how white parent-activists organized an oppositional movement to ethnic studies. Drawing on critical whiteness studies, cultural studies, and studies of countermovements, he argues that these parents crafted an oppositional narrative that positioned white, Christian, American boys as victims of ethnic studies curricula. Chang then traces how the parents leveraged this narrative to forge a coalition with disability advocates and to "digitally suture," or bind, their local ethnic studies countermovement to broader right-wing populist activism. Data includes eleven months of participant observation, 146 public school board testimonies, and twenty ethnographic interviews. The article concludes with a discussion of how studies of curricular countermovements might inform scholarly and activist attempts to divest from whiteness and make ethnic studies available to all students.
Descriptors: Whites, Parents, Activism, Ethnic Studies, Christianity, Males, Victims, Political Attitudes, Disabilities, Boards of Education, Parent Attitudes, Neoliberalism
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A