Page 219 - Contribution To Phenomenology

212 STANFORD M LYMAN & LESTER EMBREE

essay. (The encyclopaedia entry has been distilled from this longer and
more conversational version.) Stanford M. Lyman leads off in the first
part of the following exposition and I follow, my prompts and reactions
being expressed in italics. This pattern, including the significance of italics,
is reversed in Part II. Dr. Daniel, who also has deep interests in Ethnic
Studies, agreed to our including this unusual text in the present volume.
Lester Embree

I. Ethnic Studies as a Multi-Discipline

Stanford, how might we generally characterize Ethnic Studies? I would say
that Ethnic Studies arose in response to the American racial situation
and reflects changes and shifts in orientation within the consciousness of,
as well as the attitudes toward, certain racial and ethnic groups in the
United States. Are these the so-called 'minority groups'? Yes. Essentially,
Ethnic Studies arose as a counter to what had come to be seen as the
marginal utility of assimilation theory. Whereas, especially in the discipUne
of sociology, virtually all previous theoretical work had been narrowly
devoted to studying the processes associated with assimilation, and to
assuming that assimilation was both the likely and the desirable outcome
of racial contact in America, alternative projections of the character as
well as the solution to the "American Dilemma"^ had been relegated to
subterranean arenas of thought and scholarship. Recently, however, the
assimilation thesis has come to be recognized as less than valid, a
desideratum rooted more in hope than in a positivistic science's
requirement of predictabihty. Ethnic Studies arose less from inside the
academy than from responses to academic orientations by Black, Asian
American, Hispanic, and Amerindian students and interest groups
primarily concerned about American history and culture and their
presentation in the university. This sounds to me like the Civil Rights
Movement Did it follow the integration of the schools in 1954? Yes, a few
multi-cultural academic programs did begin after the early successes of

^ Gunnar Myrdal, with the assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose,
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modem Democracy (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1944). See also David W. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-
White Relations: The Use and Abuse of An American Dilemma 1944-1969 (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987); and Walter A. Jackson, Gunnar
Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-
1987 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).