Editorial ignores UCLA’s socioeconomic diversity, immigrant students

Freeze graduated UCLA in 2000 with a B.A. in political
science.

By Tamara Freeze

I am writing this as a response to the recently published
editorial by Daily Bruin Editorial Board titled, “Plan
misguided attempt to improve diversity” (Daily Bruin,
Viewpoint, Oct. 12). The article criticizes UC President Richard
Atkinson’s proposal to increase university enrollment of
minority students. While I have nothing to argue against the
reasoning of the article regarding the proposal, I was outraged by
the board’s incorrect use of the term “diversity”
and student “homogeneity.”

It seems to me that by “diversity,” the Board means
the ratio between Latino/African American students and everybody
else. Although I agree that the above groups are underrepresented
on campus, I sharply disagree that our university lacks diversity
and increasingly enrolls a homogenous student population.

I understand the term “student diversity” as an
ethnocultural variety of the overall student population on campus.
The Board’s definition is that if you are not a Latino or
African American, then you must be a white,
“privileged” American from a homogenous ethnocultural
background.

Moreover, the Board’s statement that “UCLA will be
left in the heart of one of the most diverse states in the nation,
but will remain one of the least diverse campuses” if we
refuse to address the need for more diversity is a direct insult to
the present international student community on campus, as well as
the heterogeneous immigrant population at UCLA.

Our university enrolls one of the most diverse student body
groups in the world. I do not know what kind of classes the members
of the Board happen to attend at UCLA, but I personally feel that I
was given the unique opportunity by this university to meet a rich
variety of immigrants and international students. There are
students on campus from virtually every country in the world,
countries many Americans will have a hard time finding on the map
and countries many Americans have never even heard of.

  Illustration by AMY HABER/Daily Bruin Have you not heard
foreign languages spoken on campus? Have you not heard students
speaking with an accent? If this university enrolls immigrants and
international students from Sweden, Serbia, Russia, Bulgaria,
France, England, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Ethiopia, Armenia, Iran,
Israel, India, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Egypt (do I
really have to continue the list?), then how come we immigrants
fail to contribute to the diversity on campus?

It is true that most of us do not fall into the category of
“minority,” but that does not mean that we are all the
same “homogenous” students. In fact, many of us have
quite little in common with each other. How can you claim that a
student immigrant from Iran and an student immigrant from Russia
are identical in ethnicity and culture? There are differences in
culture, customs, language, and religion. It seems to me that the
Board simply takes the international and immigrant community on
campus for granted.

I myself am an international student from Russia, but I can tell
you for sure that even the immigrants from the former Soviet Union
have plenty of diversity between them. I have friends from Ukraine,
Armenia, and Uzbekistan, to name a few. You might hear us speaking
the same language on campus (Russian), but in fact we belong to
different cultures and some of us belong to different religions
(Judaism, Russian Orthodox, Islam). To make my point clear ““
we are hardly homogenous.

Let me elaborate a little bit on the socioeconomic conditions of
a few immigrant groups. Throughout my senior year, I worked as an
immigrant interviewer at the Institute of the Social Science
Research at UCLA. For nine months, I interviewed many immigrants
living in the Los Angeles area regarding their socioeconomic
status. I will start by discussing the immigrant population from
the former Soviet Union.

Many of the immigrant families from the former Soviet Republics:
Russia, Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan, to name a few,
are surviving blue-collar jobs, minimum wage, discrimination in the
job market, language barriers and many other hardships. The
overwhelming number of immigrants are heavily dependent on food
stamps, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Medicaid
programs. Most families residing in the “Russian town”
of West Hollywood are crowded into small apartments and very few
families can afford to buy a house.

Moreover, it is not a surprise to meet an immigrant who was a
Ph.D. researcher in the former Soviet Union, and now mops a floor
for a living. Most of the time, the foreign academic credentials
the immigrants possess are not recognized here. Now, tell me this:
how can you assume that my friend from the Ukraine, whose family
survives on food stamps, and whose mother is unemployed because she
has a hard time learning English is “privileged”? Who
are you to say that, since she is white-skinned, her family
didn’t experience severe economic hardships, and she must
have had an easy get-in at UCLA?

Yes, she is white-skinned, but it does not mean that her
ethnicity is “overrepresented” on campus and that her
experiences and culture are identical (or even remotely similar) to
any other white-skinned student at UCLA.

Furthermore, I believe that the article written by the Daily
Bruin Editorial Board promotes a hostile attitude toward Asian
American students on campus. It seems to me that the Board has a
stereotype that any Asian American is identical to another at UCLA
when in fact the Asian American student body is extremely diverse
at UCLA. There are immigrant students from China, Taiwan, Japan,
Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, to name a few.

In case you have not noticed, these are entirely different
countries with different cultures, customs, and dialects, if not
languages. I just wonder by what criteria the Board claims that
these students are “homogenous.”

Let me also discuss the socioeconomic situation of some Asian
American families. Throughout my work at Institute of Social
Science Research, I also had a chance to interview a number of
Asian American families living in the Los Angeles area. It is not a
secret for anyone that throughout U.S. history, many of the Asian
Americans families that settled in California have experienced
generations of racism, discrimination, and underpaid employment.
Even today, it is sometimes the case for Asian American families in
California to have a challenging time making ends meet. They also,
like many Latino and African American families, survive on food
stamps, live in unsafe neighborhoods, and their kids attend
“at-risk” schools. To make a long story short, there
are many Asian American students on campus whose parents are not
wealthy engineers.

In conclusion, it is important to understand that Latino and
African American students are underrepresented on campus and I
believe that we should do everything possible to increase the
enrollment of qualified minority. But, I strongly disagree with the
Board’s assessment of the “lack of diversity” at
UCLA.

As the Board wrote: “Diversity is an important element of
a college education. It creates a more vigorous learning
environment that fosters tolerance and understanding.”
Excellent point. Let us just hope that the Board will find a way to
be tolerant to the many diverse immigrant cultures on campus.

I sincerely hope that the Board will learn to appreciate the
invaluable experience immigrants bring to UCLA and that the next
time they go to class, they should think twice before judging the
white-skinned students sitting in next to him as
“homogenous,” and wait on classifying them as
“privileged” as well.