SERIES | Stop Performative Politics, Recenter Youth of Color, and Invest in Ethnic Studies Now

by Sophia Hernandez, Semai Hagos, and Kaley Duong

Considering the results from last week’s presidential election, the need for ethnic studies has never been more important.

If parts of Project 2025 are enacted, there will be cuts to the Department of Education. And considering Trump’s pushback against critical race theory, students in Washington State are taking a stand for ethnic studies.

In 2019 and 2020, Washington State passed its first ethnic studies legislation, encouraging its implementation in our 2,300-plus K–12 schools.

Encouraging ethnic studies is clearly not enough. Curricular violence is still happening.

Despite students’ ongoing efforts, legislators, school administrators, and white parents have pushed back by passing performative laws, tokenizing youth, and dismissing our demands for meaningful investments in ethnic studies. More than 50% of schools across the state do not offer ethnic studies.

Our current laws fail to sustainably invest in meaningful implementation, a process that should center communities of color with lived experiences, students, educators, and communities that have been marginalized, excluded, and criminalized by our school system.

That is why we, as student advocates from Washington Ethnic Studies Now (WAESN) and the NAACP Youth Council (N-YC), call on legislators and our school administrators to center youth’s unfulfilled demands this upcoming legislative session and for the years to come.

In this piece, student advocates Semai Hagos, Kaley Duong, and Sophia Hernandez will, respectively, provide a context for our state’s continuous neglect of students of color, detail the experience of organizing for ethnic studies, and explain ways to get involved in our grassroots advocacy efforts. While each took the lead on a specific section, the article was written collectively.

Critical History of a Racist System

Semai Hagos, SPU freshman, N-YC 2022–present

Our current law only “encourages” ethnic studies, leading to harmful consequences for students of color across Washington State.

The State Board of Education’s Annual Basic Education Report shows that 55.8% of schools in Washington do not offer ethnic studies courses in grades 7–12. Current policies provide little guidance for what they consider “ethnic studies.”

Yet, students who participated in the state’s Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee have expressed their disappointment and frustration with the state’s now-disbanded work group. We as students have concerns that educators are not provided the support and training needed to effectively teach our increasingly diverse student population.

The N-YC has fought for the implementation of our demands, which include the expansion of ethnic studies, since our founding in 2018. Youth have given powerful testimonies at school board meetings at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence, produced articles, and hosted events to get our voices heard.

Seattle Public Schools (SPS)  only offers limited access to ethnic studies. Much of the history we are taught is built from a colonial lens, implementing a false sense of racial superiority/inferiority among youth. This lack of implementation shows that communities of color aren’t a priority in education.

The curricula in our classes, especially history, have always been Eurocentric, focusing on oppression rather than liberation of People of Color. Ethnic studies allows us to go into the world with a heightened understanding of the complex perspectives and countless communities of our world, so that students are able to develop an intellectual identity.

History of Organizing

Kaley Duong, UW junior, N-YC

Since 2018, youth organizations such as N-YC have been dismissed year after year by elected officials, from the school board to the state Legislature. We have been forced to constantly repeat and justify ourselves.

We are not here to talk about why ethnic studies is important: Rather, we are calling for change.

In 2017, SPS led the state in adopting ethnic studies, but only after students held protests, collaborated with community organizations, and showed up to board meetings. Despite doing this work with N-YC for the past four years, it is clear our progress has gone backward. We have watched leaders who publicly agree with the idea of ethnic studies, but will not move further with meaningful implementation.

In April 2024, N-YC leaders confronted SPS on the lack of budgeting toward the ethnic studies program and curriculum development. Superintendent Brent Jones dismissed students, telling them to talk to their principals, while he controls the limited budget of our ethnic studies program.

What has changed from the support seen in 2020 when the public took to the streets to show a commitment to racial justice and equity?

Why are lawmakers so scared to teach the truth?

BIPOC students are still facing racism in their curriculum and in their classrooms. Educators are facing investigation, doxxing, and increasing pressure.

Across the country, ethnic studies has been attacked by misinformation campaigns led by right-wing organizations and think tanks. Unfortunately, elected leaders listen to bad-faith actors instead of students, who directly experience the harm of these policies.

We’re here to set the record straight.

Ethnic studies gives us the tools to organize against misinformation, fear-mongering, and rising fascism. Ethnic studies provides space to have nuanced conversations with critical thinking, a skill we do not learn in our classrooms currently, despite our increasingly polarized world. Ethnic studies isn’t divisive; it allows us to meaningfully engage with multiple perspectives as we leave the public schools and enter into what people tell us is “the real world.”

Youth should not be the only ones doing this work, facing harassment, political suppression, and increased hate, all for practicing what we have been taught in our schools: advocating for ourselves. Our school boards, superintendents, and legislators should be standing behind us in our calls for more funding. Otherwise, we risk pitting communities against one another, leaving individual ethnicities fighting for inclusion over others.

We cannot keep relying on the free labor of student organizers and educators who do this important work.

 There is no excuse for our lawmakers’ inaction.

So what should we do?

Priorities for Systemic Change

Sophia Hernandez, UW senior, WAESN

The State Board of Education and the Seattle School Board list ethnic studies as a legislative priority, joining the experts, educators, and students working with WAESN, who center the livelihood of youth and historically marginalized communities in their advocacy work.

These educators and organizers — mostly femmes of color — have gone uncompensated for their work at the forefront of this movement. Legislators must pick up the slack by meeting the people where they are at and by investing in ethnic studies now.

Meaningful investment in ethnic studies means systemic change. We must build a statewide program that centers youth and develops an anti-racist and diverse workforce of teachers by reforming our teacher preparation programs. Teachers need to be prepared in what they teach as ethnic studies and how they teach it, as it is both pedagogy and curriculum.

Pedagogy is the theory of how we teach. Teacher preparation programs should equip all teachers to be anti-racist and culturally sustaining educators. No matter the subject of the classroom, students must feel safe, seen, and supported.

Curriculum must also be developed by people with lived experience. This shouldn’t just be available through a single “ethnic studies” class, but an integrated and accessible part of our basic education. Without revising what we consider “basic education,” we risk further segregating our schools and perpetuating racial injustices.

Ethnic studies calls for a reflection of biases and identity. Educators must be equipped to properly discuss racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression within the classroom. Educators must also recognize their positionality and see themselves as actively involved in the fight to dismantle racist and oppressive curricular harm built into our education system.

Ethnic studies allows us to draw from the long history of the collective liberation movement, joining the intersecting advocacy of climate, sovereignty, anti-racist, economic, and other social justice issues. We want our classes to move beyond teaching textbooks and mainstream news without relevance or broader context for the world we experience in our lives.

Ethnic studies is about collective liberation. This means learning to work collaboratively, setting boundaries, and learning how to care for each other as we fight back against a racist system.

Our schools need a culture and curriculum change. All students deserve to be included and empowered throughout their educational experience. To be empowered as the global citizens our law requires, students must not only see themselves in what they are learning, but also acquire the skills to actively transform our systems through civic engagement and critical discourse.

Youth must not only be at the table, but need to be a driving force in creating ethnic studies legislation.

Youth in public schools across the state need to be informed and engaged in the discussions that shape our school’s policies. Our lawmakers should be coming to us, not forcing students to join performative task forces, unpaid internships, and temporary workgroups whose work is ultimately discontinued or dismissed.

Call to Action

Ethnic studies isn’t something we should be afraid of: It is something we should see as necessary.

In these unsettling times, we must end ongoing curricular harm and mischaracterizations of ethnic studies here in Washington State.

We demand our state lawmakers support ethnic studies legislative priorities that build systemic change through sustainable teacher preparation programs, curriculum development, and more accessible civic engagement opportunities for public school students of color.

We also invite youth, families, and other community organizations to join our coalition of advocates in putting pressure on legislators, by signing on to our legislative priorities and emailing their state lawmakers.

To get involved in our Youth Advocacy Team, sign up with our online intake form.

To learn how to take part in our advocacy efforts during the 2025 Washington State Legislative Session, RSVP for our Youth Advocacy Summit on Feb. 1, 2025.

The South Seattle Emerald is committed to holding space for a variety of viewpoints within our community, with the understanding that differing perspectives do not negate mutual respect amongst community members.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the contributors on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the Emerald or official policies of the Emerald.

Sophia Hernandez (she/her) is a senior at the University of Washington earning her degrees in political science and education, communities, and organizations (ECO). As the current youth advocacy manager at WAESN, she is committed to supporting youth in advocating for educational equity across all of Washington State.

Semai Hagos is a freshman at Seattle Pacific University. She is the vice president of the Washington N-YC and serves as an activist for the mandating of ethnic studies in K–12 education.

Kaley Duong (she/her) is an alum of Washington N-YC, UW junior, and Equity in Education intern at Puget Sound Educational Services District.