The demand by Blacks for a distinct, ethnic based intellectual space within American higher education resulted in the institutionaliation of African American Studies (AAS) in the 1960s. In the past four decades American American studies has become integral to American higher education. Although a welcome development, this recognition unleashed heated paradigmatic controversies, resulting in a multiplicity of competing paradigms. Different ideologica schools now compete lot recognilion. An even more critical, though not unrelated, challenge is the prioritization of identity politics and ethnicization of the discipline. The growing emphasis on race, ethricity and identity has compromised the intellectual essence of the discipline. Many perceive this development as both a consequence and reflection of the deepening crisis of black alienation in America, Thus African American Studies has developed along parallel and opposition trajectory to mainstream America, and has assumed what many critics see as an essentially ethnic and separatist character. In recent years, this intellectuall alienation has deepened with giobalization, the advent of which has compelled revision of traditional intellectuall paradigms. The focus on identity politics and growing ethnicizaion and racialization of AAS therefore pose serious pedagogical challenge, especially in the context of a growing recognition for cross-disciplinary and intercultural discourses in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This paper examines the implications of the growing ethnicization and racialization of AAS for interdisciplinary/intercultural discourses. How are advocates of etlmicizing AAS responding to the reality of 1oha1ization? What are the likely consequences of the emphasis on identity politics for African American scholarship in the context of globalization? Attempting to answer these questions would unravel the underlying hisiorical, socio-cultural considerations for the growing characterization of AAS a political and ideoogica1 paradigm.