Tuesday, May 12, 1998
Administration reveals its hypocrisy
CHANCELLOR: Supporting proposition tantamount
to endorsing segregation
By Scott Kurashige
Chancellor Carnesale’s self-congratulatory statement on
diversity ("Campus effort to sustain diversity commendable," May 7)
was an exercise in extreme hypocrisy. It was obviously released to
prepare the public for the huge decline in enrollment of African
American, American Indian, Chicana/o and Latina/o students which
will be announced later this month. The number of African
Americans, for instance, who enter in the fall will resemble
figures from the era of Jim Crow. This is entirely the
administration’s fault for not foreseeing the problem and taking
measures which would counter the ban on affirmative action. Instead
of an admission of wrongdoing and a sober reassessment of policy,
Carnesale has presented us with little more than a naive optimism
"that cultural and academic diversity will thrive on this
campus."
Carnesale has demonstrated that his administration is morally
bankrupt by vowing to uphold the immoral Proposition 209, while at
the same time, the administration is doing everything in its power
to obstruct just laws and policies like the Public Employment
Relations Board ruling that calls for UCLA to recognize SAGE/UAW as
the collective bargaining representative for academic student
employees. Throughout the admissions debacle, Chancellor Carnesale
has compared his serving as chancellor and adhering to the unjust
Proposition 209 to Abraham Lincoln’s serving as president while
slavery was legal. This is a very telling comparison which should
be explored further.
Coming out of a Whig Party whose anti-slavery sentiments were
coupled with colonization schemes designed to remove African
Americans from the United States, Lincoln further developed his
"racist abolitionism" as president. He ran for president on the
platform that "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing
about social and political equality of the white and black races."
He consistently sought to placate Southern slaveholders by
insisting that he had no desire to end slavery in the South. Though
he clashed with Southern Democrats, Lincoln knew that he shared
more interests with his fellow white elites than he did with
African American slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was a
belated measure from a president on the defensive and forced to
take actions which transcended his moral vision. Its impact was
limited in scope, and it did not end slavery. (The 13th Amendment
did that.)
Had Lincoln truly been in favor of racial equality, he could
have aggressively pursued the progressive abolitionist agenda of
Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner and John
Brown. Carnesale’s comparison of his stand to Lincoln’s helps us to
understand why the UCLA administration has not aggressively pursued
policies which will bring about racial equality. Instead, they give
us comments like, "Our hands are tied … We must obey the law …
Please have faith in us and work with us." We have already seen
dramatic declines in the admission rates of students of color and
the administration’s paltry, foot-dragging efforts at promoting
"diversity" inspire scant confidence that the situation will
improve. Carnesale, like Lincoln, will only take significant steps
when forced.
Lincoln was no hero. Harriet Tubman was a real hero who
sacrificed her individual interests and defied authorities to bring
freedom for others. As Carnesale has already demonstrated, he’s no
Harriet Tubman and he’s not a true leader. Like Lincoln, Carnesale
ultimately answers only to the elites in society – in Carnesale’s
case, those who control the corporate boardrooms and the UC Board
of Regents. People of color can have little faith in a chancellor
who refuses to express moral opposition to Proposition 209.