       |
 Diversity@UCLA: By Any
Means Necessary
Chapter
4
Making UCLA 'Look Like L.A.' The arguments
surrounding
diversity would be academic but for the fact that UCLA admissions are a
zero-sum game. Or, as UC Regent Ward
Connerly bluntly stated, “People do not understand that when they say
there are
not enough of those people that they are also saying they have too many
of
those (other) people.”[i] Unfortunately, Connerly’s view is in a
literal minority. Radicals do not
recognize individuals or respect individuality. There
are no people, only groups. Identity
politics, one of the kitsch
Marxisms of modern academia, drives
Diversity.
Racial balancing and
reflective demographic representation sound like something out of a
dense
academic study, or a 1970’s court-ordered busing plan.
But the old talk of quotas didn’t die
out
when affirmative action was ended. The Daily Bruin, allegedly the home of
UCLA’s finest thinkers and writers,
has
editorialized no less than three times in past years about the need for
UCLA’s
racial composition to mirror that of the city at large, complaining
that “UCLA
admits a shamefully low number of minority students each year.”[ii] Los Angeles may be “one of the most diverse
cities in the nation, yet its own university continues to be
unreflective of
the population”[iii]
and “diversity of the public.”[iv] The idiocy of the idea that UCLA must look
like L.A. is evident in simply reviewing the university’s title. The name is “University of California, Los
Angeles,” not “Los Angeles University.” The
UC and its branch campuses are
tasked with serving all the citizens
of California, not the residents of any particular city.
But even if we
entertain
this notion of demography dictating admissions, we find that the
Diversitistas
are again advancing a selective argument. They
are pushing, as always, for the
admission of more ethnic
minorities. And it is true that if UCLA
did “represent the diversity” of Los Angeles, blacks would rise from
their 2004
undergraduate enrollment of 3.48% to 11.2%. Hispanics
would receive a similar boost
from their current 15.38% to
46.5%. But imagine for a second, the
howls of protest that would accompany a secondary effect of this
scheme: a
massive increase in white admissions. To
wit:
Undergrad % drawn from 2004 University of California Office of the President report: http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/uwnews/stat/statsum/fall2004/statsumm2004.pdf The chart makes
abundantly clear several facts:
- Whites are underrepresented in every city and county context, and even state-wide. - The Diversitistas were wise to target UCLA with this argument, since the percentage gap between white city population and white school population is the smallest of all the UCs. But even here, whites are underrepresented by 42%. - If the University of California were to adopt the plan in question, it would require the acceptance of 37,591 more white undergraduates. Unstated along with the fact that demographically matched diversity would lead to a massive white influx, is who would be sacrificed on the altar of “representation”: Asian students who are vastly overrepresented on every campus. In a track race, we don’t start a successful sprinter later and later when he’s winning. The burden of improvement is on the trailing runners. It is this philosophy – not the absurd idea of representative admissions – which should form the core of UCLA admissions policy. Rather than bemoaning the “overrepresentation” of Asian students, let us say more power to them, and may the best applicant win. Besides “reflecting Los Angeles,” UCLA diversity proponents also make the specious argument that diversity’s outcome, the classroom presence of students from different backgrounds, produces the benefit of teaching “majority” students how to relate with minorities in a peaceful, productive manner. There is no acknowledgement that basic human decency could possibly be an alternate source of teaching peaceful interracial relations. To the Diversitistas, we are poised on the precipice of a collegiate Lord of the Flies, saved only by racial homogeneity. Ironic for a political movement so deeply secular and dismissive of religion in any form, the Left has adopted the characteristically Christian precept of original sin. We are all born racists, their argument goes, and only through Diversity shall we be saved. Or as Reynaldo Macias, the former chairman of the UCLA Cesar Chavez Center for Chicana and Chicano Studies stated in 1999, “the value of diversity lies in being able to live in a society without conflict based on race, of which recent high school violence and random acts of terror have had their roots based in ethnic intolerance.”[v] [sic] Daily Bruin columnist Mitra Ebadolahi hyperventilated on this theme in 2000, gasping, “If our university becomes racially homogenous, or reflective only of a particular class or personal background, our education suffers and our awareness of the experiences of others is profoundly hindered. Ignorance can breed uneasiness, fear and misunderstanding, which can lead to intolerance, oppression and, ultimately, violence.”[vi] In other words, but for the grace of Diversity, UCLA could be the next Kosovo. The last, and most sourly amusing argument for diversity, is encapsulated by the comments of Marky Keaton, the only black male accepted to the UCLA Law School in the post-affirmative action admission year of 2001: “We want people to understand that this issue, the issue of a diverse student body at the law school, is one that affects actual living people. Every time that the law school doesn't enroll a diverse student body, that represents actual lives that are being affected. It's not just something in a scholarly paper. Those are students who are missing out on an opportunity – actual human beings who are being affected.”[vii] Keaton’s views characterize the myopia and the stupendous egotism of the diversity movement. There were no lamentations or rending of clothing when affirmative action was rampaging through UCLA. “Majority” students who lost out to vastly lesser-qualified minority students were “actual living people,” too. But no tears were shed on their behalf. After all, Keaton and his ilk were getting what they wanted – a “diverse student body.” As with most of the ‘logic’ which characterizes the diversity movement, the argument is a selective one. And like the scheme to engineer UCLA’s racial composition to reflect Los Angeles, it is only meant to serve the underlying purpose of diversity: more for their groups and less for others. More tellingly, Keaton’s ideas emphasize what “majority” students were, and are, to the Diversitistas – un-persons, nobodies, not “actual living people.” [i] www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/archivedarticles.asp?ID=3422&date=3/15/2001 [ii] http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=29316 [iii] http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/articles.asp?ID=3907 [iv] http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/articles.asp?ID=3655 [v] http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/issues/99/09.27/news.diversity.html [vi] http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/issues/00/04.13/view.ebadolahi.html [vii] http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/archivedarticles.asp?ID=2666&date=1/30/2001 |
