* RADIO RANT: Ward Churchill Redux

[Since the discourse of race and racism has come to the fore now with the Imus controversy—but as exclusively a black-vs.-white photograph of society, as it were—we Indians/mixed-bloods feel rather left out! So I offer here a revision of a few paragraphs from a 2005 panel talk on the Ward Churchill controversy:]

[. . .] I want to begin by putting Ward Churchill and his specific utterances in brackets, and consider ["Ward Churchill"] as an empty signifier, a mere placeholder in what has come to be called the Culture Wars. What I am interested in is the mainstream reaction to [Mr. Bracket], on the airwaves and Internet, for again, he has but served as an incidental spark, or even a Rorshach Test, if you will, through which some long-held misconceptions—even prejudices—still alive in American culture have been allowed to surface: attitudes, by the way, that are inimical to the values spelled out in most university mission statements on cultural diversity and inimical to the very raison d'être of Ethnic Studies.

Indeed, in the words of Emma Pérez, the attacks on Ward Churchill "are essentially targeting the scholarly legitimacy of the entire field" of Ethnic Studies. How can this be?—one might ask in all good sense. Well, in the immediate wake of the [bracketed!] controversy this February, I listened to popular talking heads like Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage. The personal attacks weren't surprising, of course: [Mr. Bracket] was a "rat communist" who should be tried for "treason and sedition" for "aiding and abetting the enemy." Business as usual on the polemical talk show circuit, I thought, but then I was surprised to learn from Mr. Savage that I was a card-carrying fellow-traveller in this cabal, as an Ethnic Studies person myself. Savage wasn't alone in calling for—what?—the abolishment of Ethnic Studies programs throughout the country, as "fraudulent" enterprises that are mere outlets for "leftist propaganda." Worse yet, Ethnic Studies professors are mere "unqualified" lackeys of color, benefiting from a liberal academia that would turn "janitors into professors." (Where's my broom? . . .) In sum, the controversy has rekindled old (and obviously welcome) stereotypes. And the irony is this: if Ethnic Studies as an academic unit was established in good part to foster the tolerance of difference, then, in the light of such recent expressions of intolerance—er, misunderstanding—the importance of Ethnic Studies has never been so clear. [. . .]