Ethnic Studies Get Personal : Future California Will Require Smooth Interaction
The freshmen entering UC Santa Barbara this fall will make history. They will be among the first University of California students to be required to take either a comparative course focusing on such issues as racism and cultural diversity or a historical course studying the experiences of Chicano/Latinos, blacks, Asians and Indians in this country.
Why ethnic studies? We are accustomed to course requirements in such subjects as English composition and U.S. government. There is a clear mandate for equipping students with the basic tools to become good citizens and productive members of society. But requiring them to learn about something as specialized as the experience of ethnicity in America suggests to some that the university is merely following the latest educational fad or caving in to pressure groups.
Not so. The ethnicity requirement falls within the forward-looking mandate that colleges and universities have always had. In educating students for success in the 21st Century, we need to anticipate the future. Minorities will soon become the majority in California, and the fabric of our society depends on our ability to prepare everyone to work together.
Crucial to such preparation is a concerted effort to learn more about the diverse heritage of this dynamic new majority. I use the word dynamic advisedly: American history is richly endowed with examples of how all citizens have profited from interaction with people of different backgrounds. They range from the Scandinavians, Germans, Poles, Jews and others whose collective skills helped quicken the pace of westward expansion, to the Asian Americans whose insights help guide us today as we face the challenges of a new frontier: the Pacific Rim. By opening our minds to the cultural experiences and capabilities of others, we multiply the opportunities before us, including the opportunity to learn more about ourselves. Ethnic studies broaden the scope of the comparisons we make. Without standards of comparison, we cannot know who we are.
Ethnic studies requirements also constitute another milestone on the road to equal opportunity. But milestones work both ways. They show us how far we have to go, as well as how far we have come. I hear from concerned parents, wondering why their sons and daughters are denied admission when minority applicants with apparently equal credentials are welcomed with scholarships. I hear from concerned students, who stage hunger strikes and accuse the university of “institutional racism.”
The common thread is that no one is satisfied with things as they are, and this is not necessarily a discouraging sign. Unhappiness with the status quo historically has been an engine of progress in America. We have made considerable progress toward equal opportunity, but the pace of progress has been slowing. We must take stock of what we have done, what we are doing and how we might do it better.
In higher education, as in business, programs aimed at promoting cultural and ethnic diversity have tended to be defined in terms of numbers. At UC Santa Barbara, for instance, since 1976 we have doubled our percentage of minority faculty members, and minority students will make up one-third of this fall’s entering class. While such figures are useful for gauging progress, they tell us less than we need to know about the human beings they represent.
How are they coping? How well have they been prepared for the realities of life in our community? How many can be expected to stay the course, and why or why not? In many cases, the answers to these questions reveal the shortcomings of opportunity programs.
Efforts to promote cultural and ethnic diversity at the administrative level provide an example. Too often we have felt that if we could recruit members of minority groups or women we could then relax. We are only now realizing how much preparation is required every time we hire someone who has not previously occupied such a position. Adequate preparation is essential not only for the individual who is expected to perform better than the average person, but for all employees and co-workers.
One group that pioneered this kind of preparation was a banking women’s association, which sponsored programs for newly promoted women supervisors. At first, the women and the men who would be working with them were brought together and urged to air their concerns. The sponsors quickly learned that the men needed a few sessions alone before they felt comfortable expressing their real attitudes toward working with women.
The program worked because it got those attitudes out in the open where people could discuss them. Until we recognize that unfortunate stereotypes and unfortunate sensitivities must be confronted personally, not just institutionally, the beacon of equal opportunity will remain a distant light at the end of a too-long tunnel.
We also need to recognize that often we have been concerned with the technicalities associated with equal opportunity at the expense of its spirit. We have devised elaborate forms, rigid processes, complex mechanisms that must be followed when we recruit, review salaries or recommend promotions. I am reminded of a dean who was doing a good job of recruiting minorities and women. But when one more directive was imposed on him, he said, “Enough! I don’t care if I ever do this again.” He felt that the emphasis on forms and procedures destroys the real efficacy of the program.
Similar scenes have undoubtedly been played out all across America. The focus of attention should not become, “How do we fill out a form saying that we’ve interviewed so many minority members and so many women?” Rather, it should be, “How can we actually get members of this group to be a part of our group, and how can we inspire their professional development?”
Achieving that focus requires an individual commitment to the democratic values that have long made America a shining example to the downtrodden and disfranchised--from 18th-Century Paris to 20th-Century Beijing. For the majority, those values are too often and perhaps too easily taken for granted, and ethnic studies are one way of laying a foundation for such a commitment. The important thing to remember is that the courts, Congress or ethnic studies requirements at every university cannot, by fiat, make equal opportunity a reality in our lifetimes. But each and every one of us, by assuming personal responsibility for creating the community we wish to become, can.
