This essay considers the institutional status of Ethnic Studies in California’s state university system by considering two seemingly unrelated developments: (1) the establishment of a minor in Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University in 2019; and (2) the codification of Ethnic Studies as a graduation requirement for California State University system (Assembly Bill 1460) in 2020. While the minor in CMRS is a seemingly innocuous addition to the College of Ethnic Studies at SF State, this essay suggests its institutionalization serves as a heuristic for thinking through Ethnic Studies’ broader institutional status in California. CMRS is constituted by a political history of identity-based claims for state recognition converging with auto-critical commitments to better engage in critiques of white supremacy and settler colonialism. I examine how this convergence is instructive for thinking about how Ethnic Studies’ political commitments toward anti-racist, anti-colonial critique have recently become entangled with its official recognition through California’s recent mandate of Ethnic Studies. This article argues that the CMRS minor at SF State and the Ethnic Studies mandate represents, at differing scales, the yoking together of Ethnic Studies practitioners’ political and procedural desires, desires which advance California’s ongoing capacity to incorporate the language of radical activism whilst disavowing the material realities of racial capitalism.

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