Voices of Change: Oral Histories of Ethnic Studies Leaders in Racialized Organizations

This study of implementing California Assembly Bill 1460, or mandatory Ethnic Studies (ES) in the California State University System (CSU), investigates the leadership decisions made within a set of self-governing campuses with varied institutional resources and responsibilities. This research uses an Oral History methodology, which situates personal experiences in history to illustrate how Ethnic Studies staff, faculty, and administrators navigate a racialized organization as they institutionalize a critical race curriculum and mandate within the context of individual campus histories, cultures and governances. I reviewed the literature and documented the history of the first College of Ethnic Studies, the movement's impact, challenges with sustained implementation in P-20 education, and the Ethnic Studies task force that advocated for the bill to become law. Because AB 1460 requires systemic change, I combined two organizational theories to understand these leaders' navigational efforts and to create a grounded theory for this deductive study. Ray's (2019) theory of Racialized Organizations (RO) calls in the assumption that Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) employees bring culture to organizations. The theory of Distributed Leadership explores the benefits and implications of collective leadership. This research is unique in that it captures and preserves the Oral Histories of Ethnic Studies Leaders who have implemented the policy because they are connected to a longer arc of the history of the Ethnic Studies struggle. The findings contribute to an essential archive of narratives from ES leaders. They are helpful for educators, administrators, and policymakers seeking to understand how to implement an Ethnic Studies curriculum successfully.