Mission of multiculturalism has lost its true meaning

  Michael Weiner Weiner is a fourth-year
history and political science student. His column analyzing issues
of interest to the UCLA community runs on Mondays. E-mail [email protected]

February is Black History Month, a time when we should pause to
recall the specific contributions and unique historical experience
of African Americans. It is also a good example of the
multicultural ethos that has made such a huge impact on college
campuses over the last 40 years.

Multiculturalism is a difficult term to define, but more than
anything else it is an academic movement that seeks to incorporate
traditionally marginalized minority experiences into the social
sciences and humanities. The idea is that in an
increasingly-diverse society, we will not be able to make progress
without a full and integrated understanding of this country’s
often tragic and oppressive history.

The issue is particularly salient for African Americans. Indeed,
any contemporary policy debate about affirmative action, about
discrimination in housing and education, about racial profiling or
about institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system is
incomplete without an accurate understanding of the unbroken
narrative of the black experience in the United States, a narrative
that started with slavery.

The ideological conservatives who oppose multiculturalism are
afraid for this very reason ““ in their view, a more
inclusive, less triumphalist story of this country’s history
threatens the cohesiveness and blind patriotism that contributed to
America’s rise to superpower status.

In many ways, UCLA is ground zero for the multicultural
movement. At a public university, inclusiveness is not just part of
the academic curriculum, it is an essential facet of the campus
mission. Diversity in the student body doesn’t just provide
for a multicultural dimension in classroom and in the campus
culture. It also marks the extension of multiculturalism from the
arena of academic theory to the arena of public policy.
Specifically, ensuring minority student representation in public
universities is a step toward reversing years of race- and
class-based educational inequality.

Narrow debates about whether UCLA should have a general
education diversity requirement or whether ethnic studies
departments deserve equal standing with other academic disciplines,
or even whether affirmative action is valid or not, often mask the
larger theme of multiculturalism as a means for constructing a more
accurate and inclusive rendering of our nation’s history.

For example, fully independent ethnic studies departments, which
many campus activists have called for over the years, do little to
advance the cause of integration in the social sciences.
Sociologists who study the black experience should not be
marginalized into African American studies departments.

Only by being part of mainstream sociology departments can they
effect changes in mainstream academic curricula, which is the
central purpose of multiculturalism.

This is not to denigrate the existence of interdisciplinary
ethnic studies centers that promote multicultural research and
sponsor degree programs. Clearly, these centers ““ such as
UCLA’s African American studies, Asian American studies and
Cesar Chavez centers ““ can only help to advance the cause of
a more inclusive and accurate American narrative by highlighting
the importance of multicultural academic research and
curricula.

At UCLA, we sometimes lose sight of the nobility of the
multicultural mission. The racial divisiveness at this university
has become little more than a silly cliché. Whether it’s
self-segregation on campus or meaningless posturing by student
politicians, narrow ethnic group self-interest and bland political
correctness have largely replaced the serious intellectual dialogue
that multiculturalism was meant to spur, at least within the
institutions of student life.

Throughout this month, there will certainly be events on campus
and in the community celebrating and promoting African American
history. If these events are in line with the true mission of
multiculturalism, they will attempt to integrate the experience of
black Americans into the broader narrative of this country.

If multiculturalism morphs into a divisive ideology of academic
fragmentation, in which students and professors are forced (or
choose) to marginalize themselves in order to study the historical
and cultural experiences of their ethnic communities, then the
movement will have completely failed.

If that’s the case, we will all suffer for our ignorance
and we will be hard pressed to solve the continuing social problems
that stretch into the present from the dark backwaters of
history.