Broad cultural study will enliven diversity

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Back when you were applying to college, you saw brochures with
photos of blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos sitting in small
circles talking together and laughing on the Royce Hall steps.
We’re all great friends at UCLA. Come have a multi-cultural
experience.

But then you got here.

You met people on your floor in the dorms. You thought
you’d be friends but then you never saw them again. They
disappeared into the Korean Christian Club, African Student Union,
MEChA and Sigma Chi ““ and never came back.

Students at UCLA, like everyone else, are self-segregating
““ they gravitate toward people who are like them and share
common beliefs. But if we continue to try to live in racial or
ethnic seclusion, the end result will be a society of racists.

The university offers ethnic and cultural studies courses, but
virtually all members of the classes are part of the community
being discussed. It’s time we think about ethnic and cultural
education more broadly ““ and take it more seriously.

On Friday, students presented Chancellor Albert Carnesale with a
petition for a South Asian studies department. While it’s
important to study individual ethnicities and cultures, a separate
department is not the solution this campus needs.

Not only would it be difficult to fund a separate department for
the study of each ethnicity and culture ““ especially at a
time when the university is making substantial budget cuts ““
it would also contradict the purpose of these programs.
There’s a danger these individual departments will become
exclusive and narrowly focused. Rather than working toward racial
understanding, such departments will create separatist students by
denying them much needed academic and social diversity.

UCLA needs a comprehensive ethnic and cultural studies
department, where students can concentrate on a field of their
choice, but also engage in cross-field analysis, including the
study of white ethnicity and culture. This would help students
escape the exclusiveness of current ethnic studies classes and
eliminate the “us vs. them” mindset many of them
propagate.

Some may object to such a department because it lumps minorities
together. But ethnic and cultural groups should not waste so much
time battling each other. In racial politics, groups occasionally
form superficial coalitions to achieve goals, but at the core they
are “looking out for their own.” There is no room for
this in academia; these politics are holding back ethnic and
cultural curricula.

Such a department would give a reinforced legitimacy to the
subject and would provide funding for the study of particularly
small minority communities, like Native Americans ““ funding
they might not otherwise receive.

It’s important to study our culture or ethnicity, but not
when we fall under the false assumption that it’s the only
one.