A Review of "Rethinking Ethnic Studies": The Gospel of Resentment and the Death of Reason

Let us begin with a simple truth: the West, for all its imperfections, has been the cradle of reason, liberty, and the pursuit of universal knowledge. It is not a perfect edifice, but it is one worth defending against the barbarians who would rather burn it down than understand it. Enter Rethinking Ethnic Studies, a tome so dripping with sanctimonious fervor and ideological claptrap that it could only have been birthed in the fever swamps of modern American academia. This book is not a scholarly endeavor; it is a manifesto for the aggrieved, a rallying cry for those who prefer to wallow in historical wounds rather than rise above them. Its introduction alone—replete with sloganeering students and self-righteous educators—sets the tone for what is less a rethinking of anything and more a full-throated assault on the very idea of education.

The authors, a cadre of activists masquerading as pedagogues, begin with a litany of protests—Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Providence—as if the volume of raised fists and placards could substitute for an argument. “Teach Us Real History,” they demand, as though history were a buffet from which one might pick only the dishes that flatter one’s ego. “Decolonize Seattle Public Schools,” they chant, a phrase so vague it could mean anything from burning the library to replacing Euclid with tribal chants. What is clear, however, is the intent: to dismantle the Eurocentric foundations of learning—those pesky pillars like logic, science, and the written word—and replace them with a curriculum of perpetual victimhood. The book’s poster child, the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program, is held aloft as a miracle cure for “low-achievement/high-push out levels” among Latinx/Chicanx students. Never mind that such claims are propped up by cherry-picked studies; the real miracle is that anyone still believes education should be a tailor-made therapy session rather than a rigorous pursuit of truth.

The authors’ disdain for what they call the “Eurocentric, colonial model” is as predictable as it is tiresome. They lament that this model has “normalized” a “superficial historical literacy” and “decontextualized relationship to history,” particularly for students of color. Translation: the universal standards of knowledge—forged through centuries of Greco-Roman, Christian, and Enlightenment thought—are an affront to those who would rather navel-gaze than engage with the broader human story. The solution? A “holistic Ethnic Studies Framework” that promises “regeneration, revitalization, restoration, and decolonization” through the study of “ancestral, precolonial roots.” This is not education; it is ancestor worship dressed up as scholarship. It is the intellectual equivalent of digging up the bones of the past and demanding they dictate the present.

And then there’s the language—oh, the language! The authors wring their hands over the fact that they must write in English, “a linguistic vestige of settler colonialism and white supremacy.” One wonders why they didn’t pen this screed in Nahuatl or Quechua, if the colonial tongue so offends them. Instead, they twist themselves into knots, inventing terms like “Latinx,” “Chicanx,” and “hxrstory” to “challenge gender binaries” and “move closer to Indigenous identities.” This is not linguistic evolution; it is linguistic vandalism. Words are tools of clarity, not playthings for ideologues to mutilate in the name of resistance. The irony is palpable: a book that claims to reclaim power for the marginalized spends half its energy apologizing for its own existence in a language it deems oppressive. If this is liberation, it is the liberation of a prisoner who refuses to leave his cell.

The framework itself—cooked up by one R. Tolteka Cuauhtin and polished by his co-editors—is a four-pronged assault on reason. First, it asserts that all humans have “holistic, ancestral, precolonial roots,” as if this platitude justifies tossing out the last five hundred years of human progress. Second, it claims that colonization “attempted to eliminate and replace” these legacies with a Eurocentric model—a half-truth at best, ignoring the synthesis and preservation that often accompanied conquest. Third, it accuses this model of damaging students’ “academic identity,” as though self-esteem were the goal of learning rather than mastery of the world. Finally, it calls for a “process of regeneration” through “honest study” of history, which in practice means a selective retelling that elevates grievance over fact. This is not a framework for education; it is a recipe for tribalism, a Balkanization of the mind where every group clutches its own sacred narrative and spits on the rest.

The book’s structure only deepens the farce. Part I promises to “frame” Ethnic Studies, but it’s less a frame than a soapbox for preaching to the choir. Parts II through V—“Indigeneity and Roots,” “Colonization and Dehumanization,” “Hegemony and Normalization,” “Regeneration and Transformation”—read like a liturgy of self-flagellation, each section piling on more guilt for the sins of the West while offering no coherent alternative beyond vague calls for “social justice.” Part VI, on “Organizing for and Sustaining Ethnic Studies,” is a how-to guide for agitators, celebrating the very activism that turned Arizona’s HB 2281 into a national cause célèbre. The authors decry the ban as a right-wing travesty, conveniently omitting that it was a response to a program so steeped in radical politics it alienated anyone who valued education over indoctrination.

What Rethinking Ethnic Studies ultimately reveals is the poverty of its own vision. It mistakes resentment for empowerment, division for unity, and propaganda for pedagogy. Its authors would have us believe that the path to a better future lies in dismantling the intellectual inheritance of the West and replacing it with a patchwork of ethnic hagiographies. But education is not a mirror to reflect our prejudices back at us; it is a window to a world beyond ourselves. By reducing it to a tool for “decolonization” and “anti-racism,” this book betrays the very students it claims to serve, condemning them to a ghetto of the mind where the only history that matters is their own.

In the end, Rethinking Ethnic Studies is less a rethinking of anything than a rehashing of the oldest trick in the revolutionary playbook: divide, inflame, and conquer. It is a work of intellectual cowardice, a retreat from the universal into the parochial, and a slap in the face to anyone who still believes that education should elevate rather than segregate. Let it be relegated to the dustbin of history it so despises—preferably in English, so its errors can be understood by all.

(Written by Grok under the direction of Alfonso Beccar Varela).