A new year, a new quarter. It’s a time to reevaluate
ourselves, our values, our ideals. Particularly now, as the state
of the state is in crisis, our government must reevaluate the
efficacy of our social programs.
Particularly this election year, with such a diverse stage of
candidates, we have a number of important choices to make. This
year can make a difference. So instead of just letting it all
happen, or buying into party rhetoric and all that’s said
without anything accomplished, how about we try something
different? How about we bring back a little political idealism? A
good place to start is with a fundamental human right:
equality.
It seems so simple, yet has proven hard to accomplish. Over the
past 20 years, the debate over affirmative action has stifled real
change; we have allowed traditional partisan positions to take
precedence over principle. A fresh injection of idealism is exactly
what we need.
UCLA has a long and proud tradition of fighting racial
prejudice. During World War II, the Daily Bruin called for the
boycott of any business that refused to serve non-whites. Martin
Luther King Jr. spoke here in 1965 after UCLA students and
professors marched with him in Montgomery.
And we weren’t alone. Countless students from other
universities worked with our predecessors to support the civil
rights movement that climaxed in the 1960s.
They acted because they were idealists. They based their
positions on principles rather than expediency. At a time when many
powerful people were content with the status quo, these students
defied centuries of tradition to rally around the idea of racial
equality.
Now, however, many students find themselves at odds with their
predecessors. Instead of an end to discrimination, students today
find themselves campaigning for the return of affirmative action, a
program that gives advantages in things like college admission to
students with certain skin colors.
Affirmative action is not without its impassioned defenders.
Proponents will tell you the program is necessary to balance
advantages held by students who traditionally have not been
discriminated against. Some say affirmative action counteracts
“institutionalized” racism that is unwittingly
inflicted upon, to give an example, University of California
applicants.
Others will merely argue that mandatory racial diversity is
needed, lest we segregate and become inadvertent racists ““
or, at the least, become ignorant of other cultures and ideas.
What no one will say but everyone feels, I suspect, is that
affirmative action is an easy way to do penance and prove to the
world that we are racists no longer. How better, we think, to prove
that we are not prejudiced against others than to be prejudiced
against ourselves? How better, we wonder, to honor and remember
ancient crimes and victims than to perpetuate those same crimes
against ourselves?
So here we are today, defending a new brand of racial
preferences we call affirmative action. Our generation, instead of
picking up where the great civil rights activists of the 1960s left
off, has been reduced to complaining that racism is ubiquitous, and
we may as well get used to it by balancing it with some
institutional discrimination of our own.
What a disgrace.
During the Vietnam War, students at Kent State University and
elsewhere did not ask for a gradual, measured pullback of American
troops. They cried out for an immediate end to what they viewed as
an immoral war, just as we should demand the same when it comes to
ending racism.
Why are we not seeking out and campaigning against every racial
preference we can find, starting with those on our very own campus?
Why do we tolerate and even champion the cause of affirmative
action, instead of recognizing and condemning it as a defeatist
answer to racism? When did we so completely lose confidence in our
principles?
Students come to UCLA and other colleges brimming with idealism,
eager to tackle the issues of the day. In the past, that sense of
idealism led Bruins to reject racial preferences and
segregation.
Today we have lost that idealism, and we scorn those who dare to
dream as naive and foolhardy. Those who dare to campaign against
racial prejudice are often vilified as racists themselves. We find
ourselves turning pragmatic and cynical; we find our easy answer to
racial inequality to be more about coping with the problem than
with rooting it out.
We have abandoned our heritage, and worse, we have lost our
idealism. I, for one, would like it back.
Johnston is a third-year microbiology, immunology and
molecular genetics student.