Racism Is Not an Art Form : Tax-Funded Schools Must Draw the Line

Some of our white liberal friends have criticized us for protesting the making of a racist and sexist film at UCLA. They argue that such actions promote censorship and curtail artistic freedom in our democratic society. They wonder how we, a university professor who relies on academic freedom to discuss controversial issues in the classroom, and a civil-rights attorney who has consistently defended First Amendment rights, can reconcile our views with the demand to stop using public funds for the making and showing of such films.

Our friends’ criticisms do cause us to stop to consider the issues, especially in light of the increasing retrenchment of support for the civil rights of women and minorities.

Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by calling on the university to exercise social responsibility to prevent public funds from being used to promote racial stereotypes, sexism and bigotry? We think not.

The argument that we should remain silent because we might be doing damage to freedom of expression is actually reminiscent of Orwellian “newspeak.” It turns us, the victims of racism and discrimination, into the culprits. An injustice is committed against our community, and when we object and call for its correction and implementation of preventive measures, we are further victimized by being labeled “anti-democratic.”

The issue is not exclusive to the United States. Variations of it have arisen throughout the world, especially since the 1950s. As Third World peoples won national liberation they had to confront racist literary, artistic and academic expressions of the remnants of the European and American colonialists whom they had defeated in the political and military battlefield. And, indeed, they put a stop to some of it.

Historically, the white West has labeled those moves as “anti-democratic.” The same argument was used by the Reagan Administration as it suspended its financial obligations to the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization when its predominantly Third World member nations began challenging U.S.-based multinational corporate control of their electronic and print media, which they viewed as cultural imperialism replete with racial stereotypes.

The case in point today in Los Angeles is the making and showing of a film, “Animal Attraction,” at UCLA, a publicly supported university. In this purportedly satiric film, the main character is Dula, a Mexican woman who performs sex with a donkey. Her parents are proud of her donkey act. A high-school drop-out, her main aspiration in life is to become a porn star in the United States. She has a child by her intellectually dull boyfriend who works at a Taco Bell. The audience views the characters through the eyes of a white male researcher from the United States who is doing investigative work on bestiality in Mexico. The film was made by a white, male graduate student who was advised by six faculty members of UCLA’s film and television department.

UCLA must be questioned about its respect for educational ethics that prohibit the use of resources to promote bigotry. No matter what their source, racism and sexism in whatever form are anti-democratic. They promote discrimination, inequality and white male supremacy, one of the main obstacles to full democracy in the United States. Our protests, and those of an outraged Mexican community in Los Angeles, are just and intended to promote equal rights and democracy. Protests like ours are part of what sustains the civil-rights dream of a society that exercises social responsibility and prevents the misuse of societal institutions as vehicles to promote bigotry. In fact, our protests serve to remind us that the “Ugly American” grows out of our midst.

Perhaps the fundamental contradiction is that, given the separate and unequal social histories of all of us, “democracy” and that which best promotes it has a different meaning. We Latinos are fond of the saying, “Everything is according to the color of the crystal through which you see.”

For the oppressed, full democratic rights mean freedom from racism and discrimination and those expressions that effectively promote racism and discrimination, whether they come from universities, police departments or the White House.

Academic and artistic freedom are essential instruments of democracy. But they are not absolute. Few would argue that artistic freedom should allow the use of public funds for the making and showing of films that make a mockery of the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust and apartheid.

We hope our friends would agree that artistic freedom does not shield the use of our tax dollars for university films that promote racism and sexism, and that they would support our demand for a halt to the practice. We intend to continue pursuing it.