Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin
By Bethelwel Wilson
I am responding to Andrew Jones and his article, “Racially-based politics hinder
progress“ (Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, Oct. 9). First, I
would like to clarify that the citing of Professor Victor
Wolfenstein’s quote was taken completely out of context and
distorted to support the status quo: “Those who benefit from
an existing social order don’t voluntarily surrender their
advantages. They use all means possible to retain them, including
masking of their interests” (“An Unfinished Revolution,”
Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, Sept. 25).
Wolfenstein, a radical and a product of the Civil Rights
Movement, is not delineating a power differential where minorities
dominate, while whites are clamoring for political equality;
rather, he is contending the polar opposite stands as the true
condition. Wolfenstein unequivocally states that the gains won by
the Civil Rights Movement (affirmative action, free choice) are
slowly being usurped.
Regressive social policies, legislated by institutions of power
that have no interests in buttressing the upward mobility of
minorities in America’s educational, political and economic
arenas, have negated the hard-won gains people like Martin Luther
King, Jr. and Malcom X died for. To say that King would be
disenchanted by the implementation of affirmative action is to
repudiate and confound everything that he stood for: equal
opportunity, racial progress and the eradication of poverty.
It must be conceded that we do not live in a color-blind
society, and the onus is on society to mitigate the historical
atrocities that have cemented certain groups in irrevocably
impoverished social and economic conditions.
One way to provide restitution to these groups is through the
implementation of affirmative action, a reparation that not only
levels the playing field, but gives minorities, coming from an
environment that proscribes educational advancement, a chance to
attend competitive universities like UCLA.
Jones’ preposterous mention of “free rides” is
incongruous with the minority experience, a cumbersome uphill
battle most privileged groups do not have to climb. If these
obstacles are conquered, some costs were indubitably incurred and a
mighty price was paid on the part of that minority student who got
into UCLA or any other academic institution.
Should those who have been marginalized be denied by academic
institutions because their scholastic achievements are not
meritorious enough? Can merit even compare to a lifetime of
economic deprivation, social upheaval, and the struggle to
survive?
Where we grow up is determined by biological fiat and we cannot
control the environment in which we are raised. In consequence,
some start off handicapped by social maladies and others start with
their futures already sealed due to more congenial
circumstances.
Give a student who wakes up 4 o’clock every morning to
attend a good high school 30 miles away, lives a precarious
existence in a single-mother household, and survives violent
episodes, admission into UCLA via affirmative action and it still
would not be enough to recompense that student’s suffering.
Society is long delinquent in the reparations it owes minorities.
Now these racial groups are demanding full payment, and ineluctably
they are being called avaricious, no different from what racist
’60s America said about blacks.
People like Jones who minimize the burdens of people of color
facilitate and reinforce the misconceptions that already prevail in
the minds of privileged groups towards disadvantaged minorities. To
ignore the grievances of minority groups is to disparage their
experience as students of color on a campus that is increasingly
conveying a message to them that they are not wanted.
If racism on college campuses did not abound, then the need for
racial politics would be obviated, racial solidarity would not be
so unattainable, and there would be no need for universities to
employ race-sensitive admission policies.
Racial groups exist on this campus because the racial
polarization in this university reflects that of general society,
and students identify with those whom they share similar life
experiences and congruent realities.
Undeniably, minority groups do trigger conflict, but I think
this perturbation is more amplified when directed at a large
congregation that does not want its complacency and picturesque
view of the world disturbed.
Protracted deliberation is almost futile due to the racial and
experiential chasm that dichotomizes the groups into haves and
have-nots, an equation that complicates the process of conciliation
between the two. I firmly believe one’s fervor to effecting
social change is gauged by personal experience.
If one never experiences oppression, how can one fully empathize
with the burdens of the oppressed except through enlightenment and
interaction with the afflicted? When minority students remonstrate
against what seemingly appears to be fabricated persecution to
outsiders, well-off collectives, never having direct communion with
oppression, view minority protest as embellished complaining or as
Jones eloquently puts it, “denial.”
It comes as no surprise that these minority groups criticize the
UC Regents’ reinstitution of segregation and are viewed as
radical while privileged groups support the dismantling of
Proposition 209. Clearly, if one is treated well by society one
will reciprocate in kind. But these minority student groups,
entities comprised of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, will
not reciprocate acquiescence to an institution that is trying to
eliminate them. To do so would be outright complicity.
In light of the anti-affirmative action sentiment in California,
the fact that many minority groups are becoming more cohesive can
be empowering and self-affirming in an alienating setting like UCLA
where a plethora of students come from more affluent, suburban
backgrounds.
How can Jones say that affirmative action, a privilege Martin
Luther King and other civil rights activists so dearly bequeathed
to minorities with their lives, would be seen as reprehensible in
King’s vision of the world?
King’s world envisages a place where blacks are not
profiled for the color of their skin, economic disparity would be
nil, and racial equality would preempt affirmative action. We have
invariably failed in reaching this goal. As Wolfenstein stated,
“the revolution is unfinished.”