Inclusion of anti-racism rhetoric at rallies for education dilutes their focus

Looking at the mainstream media’s coverage of last week’s Day of Action, you wouldn’t know that UCLA was even involved in the protests. It’s estimated that we contributed a mere 300 to the national pool of protesters. That’s 300 out of nearly 40,000 students, 4,000 faculty and 26,000 other employees.

The turnout, though, wasn’t what kept us out of the news. UC Santa Cruz students shut down their campus, and Cal managed to block an entire highway, resulting in 160 arrests. Compared to these bold, selfless acts of civil disobedience, UCLA’s display could only be described as quiet. It’s as if protesters turned out simply to be included in the national movement, unprepared to take the risks that would truly convince budgetary committees to meet their demands.

The lack of solidarity and organization at UCLA was evident in the sheer bevy of demands the protesters made. Not content with a simple annulment of the 32 percent fee hikes, some groups used the rallies to voice discontent with the recent noose and Compton Cookout incidents, bearing signs critical of UCSD and reading “Stop Hate.” These protesters were mixed in with the more prominent “save education” crowd, sending the subtle message that the fee hikes might contain an element of racism.

This conflation of the race and student fee issues became more overt as the day wore on.

Sitters-in hoping to confront Chancellor Block chanted “Si se puede” in support of undocumented students, almost half of whom are Asian. Complaints were levied about the lack of black professors in the department of urban planning. One protester went as far as to tote a sign that read, “Down with the racist purge of higher education!”

A speaker at Bruin Plaza could be heard saying, “The black people here and Latino people, Asian people, white people that are all here today, immigrants with papers, some without, all of us: We’re part of a new civil rights movement in America.”

He seems to have left out a few races.

Protesters claimed that fee hikes have hit minority students the hardest. The racism seems apparent, especially in a university that enrolls black and Hispanic students at half the rate at which they’re represented in California’s general population. But to imply that the university and the state have specifically targeted minorities through budget cuts is foolhardy. Racism and crimes against education are separate issues, and future voices of dissent should treat them as such.

In treating the fee hikes as an issue of race, minority groups deprive themselves of their natural allies; namely, every UC student burdened with unaffordable tuition. What if our low turnout was a result of the white and Asian student majority perceiving the protests as an exclusively black and Hispanic concern?

Of course, the illusion of an exclusively minority protest was fostered by the cruel fact of the matter that white and Asian students simply didn’t show up, at least in the big way they’re represented on campus. This lack of solidarity was disconcerting. And regardless of race, the apathy of the general student body toward their peers suggests a deeper forsaking of the activist passion for which the UC is historically famous.

Protesters did succeed in compensating for this apathy by adding accusations of racism to their charges against the UC and the state. But even if these institutions did operate according to a true, directed hostility toward minorities, the issue should have been avoided on the Day of Action. The goal of the national protests was to make clear to policymakers that students won’t tolerate being denied an education. By bringing race into the public discourse, UCLA’s protesters projected an inability to commit to one issue, as if to say that the fee hikes alone weren’t worth rallying over. The general student body failed to show solidarity with those hurt by tuition hikes and, in turn, distanced themselves from the core of the movement.

Protesters who wanted to address the racism of the fee hikes should have saved their voices for another forum, one dedicated to the issue. The tuition problem is a powerful addition to the list of race-related grievances against the UCs. At the Day of Action, however, anti-racism protesters only added another disparate voice to an already incoherent rally. One expects this kind of event to draw wacky fringe groups. It’s ordinarily the duty of the protesters who turned out for the protest’s central cause to drown them out and ensure that the primary message is delivered.

In a crowd of 300, however, these attention seekers could hardly have been ignored. Anti-racism protesters would have probably liked the LaRouche movement, for instance, to stop waving around its signs depicting Obama with a Hitler mustache. However, though the example is admittedly extreme, LaRouche’s supporters achieved nearly the same end as those who conflated race and fees, which was to render the protest incoherent.

That the fee hikes have the unfortunate possibility of decreasing minority enrollment is undeniable. But the person most directly affected by this policy is the low-income student, not the Middle Eastern, black, white, Asian or Hispanic low-income student. Public education was conceived to grant everyone equal access to a degree, and this mission should be the focus of any dissent against the budget slashing of higher education.

E-mail Dosaj [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].