       |
 Diversity@UCLA: By Any Means
Necessary
By Andrew Jones Chapter 1 An Exquisitely Devious Plan University of
California
Regent Ward Connerly did two utterly inexcusable things in his lifetime. He committed his first sin in 1995, when he
led the Regents in ending, throughout the UC system, affirmative action
in
admissions, hiring and contracting. He
sinned again the next year, spearheading the successful passage of
Proposition
209, which altered the California Constitution to outlaw affirmative
action in
all state business. Student radicals,
most with a personal stake in a system of racial preferences, were
outraged,
and expressed their displeasure in typical fashion – protests, building
takeovers, and violent confrontations at Regents meetings.
While the students
raged,
the race lobby went back to the drawing board and returned with the
concept of Diversity. “Diverse” classrooms
populated by people of
different backgrounds, they argued, were an inherent good for all
students. Minority students would earn a
well-deserved
leg up in society, while white students would learn how to live and
interact
with minorities – a most useful skill in an increasingly non-white
world. The concept was exquisitely
devious, allowing
diversity proponents to argue that they cared for all students (because
all
sides supposedly benefited from the system), while still pursuing the
old
affirmative action goal of managed admissions outcomes.
Diversity, in short, had artfully spun its
selectively
beneficial outcomes as serving the interest of all society.
The concept
of diversity has had a long and respectable history in the
United States – which is the primary reason that it was adopted (and
perverted
to partisan ends) by the race lobby. No
reasonable person objects to the idea of people from different
backgrounds
coming together in a common setting. Diversity
also leeches on the concept of equal
opportunity, the
traditional American belief that, absent outside control, a group of
applicants
selected through a meritocracy will naturally be diverse.
Several common
social
assumptions also help drive the public acceptance of diversity. The public takes as a given that through
social interaction black people have things to teach white people,
whites can
teach Hispanics, Hispanics can teach Asians, and so on around the
circle. But most Americans don’t have a
full
understanding of the leaps of logic inherent in the way that diversity
is
practiced today, or the Faustian bargains it makes in the goal of
assuring the
diversity in a group of participants. When
the reality is successfully communicated
to the public, such as
with Proposition 209, truth inevitably wins out. Affirmative
action was about ensuring a
diverse pool of applicants, but in its zeal to assure equal opportunity
it
violated another American fundamental, the third-rail of equal access. Affirmative action was successfully put down
once the truth was told. The challenge
is before us to do the same with the concept of diversity.
Don’t expect UCLA
leadership like Chancellor Albert Carnesale to admit diversity’s
fraudulence. Carnesale insists diversity is a complex concept
which emphasizes the presence of students from varying “racial, ethnic,
economic, social and geographic” backgrounds. Only occasionally
do UCLA’s diversity proponents go off message. Raymund Paredes,
one-time UCLA vice-chancellor of academic development, admitted in 1999
that diversity “certainly includes affirmative action.”[i]
Paredes’ candor belies Carnesale’s insistence that diversity is about
more than affirmative action’s characteristic fixation and
discrimination against the white male.
Further evidence
against Carnesale’s claim of a “complex” diversity is found on the
webpage of Carnesale’s own Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on
Diversity. It complains, “UCLA's faculty is still overwhelmingly
white (81%) and male (78%).”[ii] This black vs. white, us vs.
them argumentation stands in stark contrast to Carnesale’s cheery
emphasis on a multifaceted, mainstream diversity. That’s because
at base, affirmative action then and diversity both make a scapegoat of
the white male. The name has changed to “diversity,” but the
underlying motives of class and race war remain the same.
Chancellor Albert
Carnesale’s rhetoric apes the illogical, Orwellian doublespeak of the
UCLA diversity lobby. Carnesale presided over the inauguration of
an entire website dedicated to the topic, Diversity@UCLA,[iii] and has
given at least three public addresses specifically praising this
philosophy. Carnesale’s characteristically agreeable rhetoric
masks the unstated racism of Diversity, its desire for managed
outcomes, and the fact that at UCLA, the only diversity that matters -
diversity of thought - does not matter at all. In his “Statement
on Diversity,” Carnesale posits that “Diversity of the student body has
long been a hallmark of UCLA’s excellence, and that diversity is
essential to producing graduates who are capable of leading a
multi-cultural society… Diversity – including racial, ethnic, economic,
social and geographic – remains a core institutional value for UCLA and
is particularly crucial to the success of this institution...”[iv] Carnesale also
notes
that “education is markedly enhanced by a diverse student body, largely
because students learn so much from each other. Diversity of
backgrounds, beliefs and experiences is among the most valuable of
educational assets.”[v] Carnesale sums up the mission of the
Diversitistas: “Our challenge at UCLA in the post-affirmative action
era is to make sure we sustain our tradition of excellence and
diversity.” Unstated in all of Carnesale’s bloviation is that the
presence of students from different “racial, ethnic, economic, social
and geographic” backgrounds – Carnesale’s self-stated formulation of
diversity – does not a good education make. He is of course
correct in stating that “students learn…from each other.” But
typical of diversity proponents, he confers a pedagogical rank on
student interaction approaching that of the professor himself.
It’s unlikely that Carnesale really believes that student interaction
is all that central in the totality of a university education.
But it sounds nice. And it keeps him out of trouble with the
diversity lobby. [i] http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/ issues/99/09.27/news.diversity.html [ii] http://www.senate.ucla.edu/committee/codeo/CODEO.htm [iii] http://www.diversity.ucla.edu [iv] http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu/gasaa/admissions/diversity.htm [v] Ibid. |
