Ethnicity, age, and the feeling of belonging for students can affect their performance in class. A noninteractive or unmingled student who lacks the feeling of belonging to other classmates or a group of students has high potential to perform poorly, especially in classes where teamwork is required and highly desirable. This article surveyed the ethnicity and demographics of 194 students in a fluid power class offered within the School of Engineering Technology at Purdue University. The survey collected the gender, age, and ethnicity of students enrolled in the class at the main campus and at five other remote locations spread over the state of Indiana that are part of Purdue University. All surveyed locations shared the same labs and course learning outcomes. The final scores for the students with different ethnicities, demographics, and ages were analyzed showing the average, minimum, and maximum in each location. The group grades, ethnicity, gender, and age were summarized and sorted into three categories: students enrolled in the main campus, students enrolled at statewide locations while being aggregated in one pool, and students from statewide locations but each location was presented separately. Although “White” students were the dominant group for all considered campuses, statistical analysis of the students’ grades showed that the locations that had slightly more diverse groups had the highest average scores. It was also noticed that the scores and performance of the students depended mainly on their interaction and willingness to mingle with other students. Other factors that can affect the students’ performance such as family background, family obligations and support, school-related factors, and other social factors were not part of this study.

To the degree that Donald Trump represents a disorienting reversal of a supposed state-sponsored promise of neoliberal racial progress typified by the election of the first Black United States president, liberals have been equally committed to reorienting themselves through the explanatory framework of white backlash. This article approaches the white backlash narrative with a healthy skepticism in order to explore its cultural and political uses. Through an analysis of popular discursive representations—a Saturday Night Live sketch, Obama’s first significant political speech since leaving the White House, and two widely read Atlantic articles by Ta-Nehisi Coates—this article critiques the ways in which liberals have sought to rationalize the racially disorienting transition between the Obama and Trump eras through the use of the white backlash narrative. More specifically it argues that in the wake of Trump, the white backlash narrative delimits the Obama era as a period of unfulfilled “post-racial” progress, and the Trump era as a wholly separate, reactionary moment of white supremacy. In so doing, the narrative reaffirms the protection of minoritized populations from formally recognized white supremacist violence in the Trump era, while obscuring neoliberalism’s own regimes of racialized oppression in the Obama era. By revealing such shortcomings of the white backlash narrative, it asks that we envision alternative ways to remember, interpret, and historically index the entanglements between racial neoliberal and white supremacist modalities linking the Obama and Trump eras.

Burial of human beings in houses or within residential premises is a common occurrence in developing countries. Despite the negative impacts it has on the social and economic lives of the people and society at large, particularly on public health, this norm has continued. However, this area has not been given adequate attention in recent scholarship. Against this backdrop, this article traces the development, appropriation, and misappropriation of burial sites and public cemeteries among the indigenous people of Egba land. It also examines the responses of the government to this phenomenon. This study was done through the use of archival sources, extant literature, media reports, pictographs, and interviews. The study reveals that the misappropriation of burial sites and cemeteries is a result of indigenous belief systems, illiteracy, inadequate lands for burial and cemeteries, cost and proximity of burial sites, and insecurity, among other things. It also finds that the few who appropriate burial sites and cemeteries were educated, enlightened, and averagely wealthy individuals, socially placed individuals. It recommends that governments at both state and local levels, particularly local levels that are vested with the maintenance of burial sites and cemeteries, should be strengthened to adequately appropriate cemeteries and burial sites in Egba land, south west Nigeria, like most indigenous people.

Academic and public discourses often oversimplify the complex historical, social, and discursive forces that have created the current realities in Haiti. These discourses ignore or distort the role that foreign governments and international agencies have played and continue to play in the creation of the Haitian state. They portray the Haitian government as singular and static, corrupt and incapable, and fail to acknowledge changes in leadership and the diversity of individuals who exist within the government. This “single story” about Haiti privileges the international community and overlooks the stories from Haitians who are working to rebuild and reimagine their own country. This article examines the personal stories of Haitians in order to better understand the nature of Haitian leadership in a neocolonial, post-disaster context.

This article attempts to answer the question of why ethnic identity rather than national identity is more likely to be salient after an ethnic majority overcomes a dominant minority rule? Does an ethnic majority succeeding a dominant minority pursue an authentic representative government or does it reinvigorate its own ethnic identity through the pursuit of ethnic politics? Ethnic minority governance inevitably raises questions of legitimacy and inclusivity. Even in secular democracies, where courts protect citizen rights, democracy is far from perfect, but in countries that divide along ethnicity, religion, sector, or tribal loyalty, the history of all-inclusive governance is not encouraging. Typically, minority rule in non-democratic countries tends to despotism and autocracy. Therefore, the policies of dominant minority regimes scarcely differ from those of majoritarian governments, and outcomes can also vary dramatically. By comparing dominant minority rule in three cases—Iraq, Syria, and Bahrain 1 —I analyze how ethnic conflict is prevalent and prolonged in countries where ethnic minorities rule and how the outcome ultimately impacts state national identity. I maintain that ethnic identity issues and ethnic conflict do not resolve with majoritarian rule. In fact, if a majoritarian party assumes power after a dominant minority government, it will likely consolidate its own identity and pursue ethnic politics by way of an ethnocultural form of self-determination. Theoretically, this article contributes to the debate on the incompatibility of ethnicity and nationalism on the one hand, and with nation and state building on the other.

The relationship between Fulani herdsmen and farmers has in recent years become hot-tempered motivated by competitive control of land resources, particularly in central and north-east Nigeria. In Taraba State, the ongoing nomadic migration pattern from the Sahel in quest of pastures has led to violent confrontation between Fulani herdsmen and farming indigenous natives. Using a descriptive approach consisting of documented evidence, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions, the analysis revealed that conflicts between Fulani herdsmen and indigenous native farmers have culminated in population displacement and destruction of life and property in numerous rural enclaves in Taraba State. Despite the consequences of the conflicts, the Taraba State government was unable to act proactively because of the centralization of command over Nigerian security agencies. Accordingly, the study suggests decentralization of security agencies in Nigeria, especially the police, as the way forward for effective security governance in Nigeria.

Race, war, and geography remain unmarked domains within the historiography of sexuality. This article analyzes the work of Joseph M. Carrier, a seminal figure who helped develop the study of homosexuality. In this article, we examine the ways Carrier incorporated studies of various populations from the Global South, from Vietnamese refugees to Mexican MSM (men who have sex with men). In his attempt to collect knowledge about subaltern groups—first as a RAND Corporation researcher and later as an anthropologist and epidemiologist—Carrier shows us that the genealogy of homosexuality studies is not clear-cut. It is situated across multiple spaces of (inter)disciplinary power and knowledge. By comparing these trans-regional areas of study, we examine the ways in which Western social scientists can draw research from one social context into another.

The Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, Arizona, was eliminated in 2011. Shortly afterward, a group of teachers organized to challenge the ban on Ethnic Studies, claiming it was enacted with racial animus and violated constitutional protections. While much scholarship has been written analyzing the bill that contributed to the elimination of the program, a lacunae in the literature has been a focus on the litigation. This article utilizes twenty-one interviews with individuals who were involved in the Gonzalez v. Douglas litigation and successfully overturned the ban in the summer of 2017. Their narratives reveal the importance of what the author terms transformative historical capital , which refers to the transformation that occurs internally when one learns of the tools, knowledge, networks, and determination extant in the Chicana/o community (as well as other communities of color) due to a long history of social movements that sought civil rights and self-determination.

The authors provide a collective counter-narrative of the movement at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) to resist educational policies that have negative implications for students, particularly students of color, and threaten Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies. The authors contextualize the movement that erupted in the fall of 2017 at CSUN within the struggles of the 1960s to transform higher education by establishing Ethnic Studies. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and Critical Race Theory in education, the authors maintain that, in its best iterations, Ethnic Studies is praxis that empowers communities to create transformative social change.

This essay includes an interview with Black Student Union co-founders Jerry Varnado and James Garrett in which they reflect on their leadership roles and personal experiences at San Francisco State in the 1960s as well as the events around the student-led strike and subsequent founding of the School of Ethnic Studies. They also discuss their wider activism and community engagement in the field of Ethnic Studies as well as their thoughts on the direction of the field today.

The author reflects on her decades of cultural and political activism in the fight for Ethnic Studies—from her role in the 1969 Third World Strike at UC Berkeley, to her community activism after her graduation, to her participation in the fiftieth anniversary of the strike, including a transcription of her speech at the event.

This is a version of a public talk by Professor Paola Bacchetta of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, which she read at a rally that commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Third World Strike on the same campus. The rally was part of a series of related events and it took place on the steps of Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley on January 22, 2019. The rally speakers and participants included elders from the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) movement, current students and professors, and community members. The purpose of the rally was to bring people together to remember and honor the struggle of the TWLF and to inspire links between the past and present struggles.

Malaquias Montoya describes the journey that led him to UC Berkeley and to participate in the Third World Strike there as an artist. He focuses on making posters to promote the strike of the Third World Liberation Front at UC Berkeley. Montoya discusses select posters of 1969 and aftermath of the Third World Strike.

Jesús Barraza is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers on social justice themes. Jesús provides a brief introduction to his artwork, focusing on posters he created that reflect different anniversary years of the Third World Liberation Front and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.

Jazz Díaz is an activist artist (artivist) who combines Art and Ethnic Studies. She describes her political consciousness and decolonizing process in navigating Western-centric art spaces. She highlights critical themes that her artwork addresses, and the essay includes examples of her work.

In 2017, Oregon passed House Bill 2845 requiring Ethnic Studies curriculum in grades K–12. It was the first state in the nation to do so. The bill passed almost fifty years after the founding of the country’s first Ethnic Studies department. The passage of an Ethnic Studies bill in a state that once banned African Americans and removed Indigenous peoples from their land requires further examination. In addition, the bill mandates that Ethnic Studies curriculum in Oregon's schools includes “social minorities,” such as Jewish and LGBTQ+ populations which makes the bill even more remarkable. As such, it is conceivable for some observers, a watered-down version of its perceived original intent—one that focuses on racial and ethnic minorities. Similarly, one can draw analogies to the revision of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 when it included women as a protected group. Grounded in a socio-political history that otherwise would not have been included, this essay examines the productive and challenging aspect of HB 2845. Framing the bill so it includes racial, ethnic, and social minorities solved the problem of a host of bills that may not have passed on their own merit while simultaneously and ironically making it easier to pass similar bills.