Tuesday, April 14, 1998
Prop. 209 consequences cannot be ignored
ADMISSION: Students must demand that chancellor address decline
of ethnic diversity on campus
By Kandea Mosley
As of October 1994, when the possibility of the total
elimination of affirmative action at the University of California
hit the airwaves, students launched a major campaign to address
this issue and fight for the preservation of educational equity.
Debates on the merits of diversity were hashed out everywhere from
dorm lounges and Bruin Walk to inside our classrooms. Students from
all political persuasions and ethnicities began to grapple with the
complex issues of political and institutional fairness at UCLA.
Both students and faculty were bombarded with the highly divisive
rhetoric of the UC Regents, including Ward Connerly.
This rhetoric in support of Proposition 209 amounted to an open
assault on educational reforms won during the civil rights era.
Students of color, progressive faculty and staff, and high-ranking
university administrators such as our former chancellor Charles E.
Young took a stand against arguments that defended racially
exclusive university policy and Prop. 209.
As students, we were inspired by the legacy of the historic
civil rights movement that produced leaders such as Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., and others who risked their lives to end
institutionalized racism and racist terror. Some of our professors
were part of the civil rights movement that challenged an America
that fought wars abroad to preserve freedom and democracy while
ignoring the cries of its own most disempowered and oppressed
citizens – an America that represented itself as the bedrock of
freedom while enforcing discriminatory educational, political and
economic policies on African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos,
Asians and women.
The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the first
signs that equal rights for all Americans would be legally mandated
and enforced. From this and other victories of the civil rights
movement our government began to concede that African Americans
deserved affirmative action to equalize the socioeconomic playing
field and amend the systemic discrimination that has relegated
African Americans and other oppressed groups to second-class
citizenship and status.
In the 1980s, UCLA was the first UC to launch a major campaign
for the divestment of student dollars from the South African
apartheid regime. Now in the 1990s, UCLA has once again taken the
lead in opposing the racist, anti-immigrant political tide that led
to the passing of unconstitutional legislation such as Proposition
187.
Students took to the streets and organized demonstrations,
educational forums and voter registration drives. As a community of
over 30,000 we proved that we could work together to protect the
moral victories achieved through the civil rights movement.
It has been a little under two weeks since the university
proudly announced its admissions results for the entering
undergraduate class of 1998. The number of admitted African
Americans and Native Americans combined has dropped to less than 5
percent. The number of these same students expected to enroll will
plummet to far fewer, as many students of color fear the erosion of
racial tolerance and respect for diversity at UCLA and are being
actively recruited by other universities that support affirmative
action.
The collapse of the commitment to racial equality in the state
of California is deeply troubling. Proposition 227, which threatens
bilingual education, is the most recent manifestation of this
trend. Attacks on labor such as Proposition 226 and welfare reform
– which far from bringing relief to the poorest of the poor has
dramatically increased the ranks of the homeless population –
further demonstrates the indifference the state of California has
shown for the rights of people of color, working people, the poor
and the homeless.
Only six short years since the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion,
promises made to people of color communities for economic
development and opportunity have gone unfulfilled. And now the
political power structure is attempting to further thwart the
aspirators of our communities by withdrawing the only institutional
mechanism to rectify the injustices of the past and the present and
ensure equal educational opportunity through affirmative
action.
America has yet to overcome the racist legacy of the past and
create a "colorblind" society. People of color still suffer from
racist discrimination in every level of the political, economic and
social structures of our society. UC admissions policies must be
changed to respond to the reality that institutionalized racism
creates a pattern of inadequate and substandard education that
severely impacts African American, Native American, Latina/o and
Chicana/o students. Admissions policies at UCLA must be based on a
grasp of these realities. Moreover when these students are given
the opportunity to enter UCLA through affirmative action they have
the inspiration to academically excel, and develop the vision to
amend many societal ills.
So when UCLA issues a press release that says nothing about
reforming its exclusionary admissions policies and its violation of
the spirit of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, we
know that we are in a state of emergency. When the president of
Princeton University, one of the most prestigious universities in
the United States, speaks out in support of affirmative action and
equal opportunity, and our chancellor evades addressing the issue
publicly, it is past time for students to take action.
As students, it is absolutely essential that we have the courage
to take the morally conscious stance and demand that our chancellor
and our university do the same. Disguised attempts to slowly
eliminate people of color, ethnic studies centers and libraries
from California’s universities must be identified and combatted.
Once we allow racists, xenophobes, sexists and other enemies of
fairness and democracy to dictate the destiny of our state and our
university, there is no telling how far the degradation of our
humanity will go.