David Drucker Drucker is a history
student in his final quarter at UCLA. E-mail him at [email protected].
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Something funny happened to American liberals while they were
leading the nation along the road to a color-blind society: they
turned around and headed back from whence they came.
Nowhere is this more evident than on the college campus, where
myriad segregated graduation ceremonies will commence this month
““ all of them sanctioned and supported by their host
universities.
UCLA, of course, is no different.
Despite all the clamor from the left regarding the desire to
diversify the student body so that our fellow Bruins might
commingle with people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds,
many of this year’s graduates will participate in race and
sexual orientation-based commencement ceremonies.
The only two requirements for participating are that you are
ready to graduate, and that you share a common skin color, ethnic
heritage or choice of sexual partners with that of the group in
question.
Call me kooky, but doesn’t that sound a little 1950s
Montgomery, Ala. to anyone?
Then again, those on the right in this country are partly to
blame for this ironically twisted phenomenon. For 300 years on this
continent and elsewhere, the dominant dogma on race relations held
that people of different races should remain separate.
In the case of Americans who were in the racial minority, the
best they could get out of the dominant white majority was an
appalling “separate but equal” Supreme Court
ruling.
 Illustration by KRISTEN GILLETTE In essence, African
Americans and groups of immigrants who didn’t look the part
had no choice but to form their own means of support. Naturally,
these organizations, schools and acts of social cohesiveness
involved people of same race. They are not to blame.
But the civil rights legislation of the 1960s brought about the
beginning of what would prove to be a sea of change in American
society. Those on the left urged us all to judge Americans
according to what they can contribute to society, rather than on
the superficial characteristic of skin pigmentation.
This begs the question: why are those who spearheaded the
desegregation of American society, both literally and spiritually,
resisting the very change they previously fought for?
Why are the same UCLA students who have been shouting diversity
from the rooftops going to spend the next couple of weeks
segregating themselves from the rest of us in separate-but-equal
graduation ceremonies?
Maybe these neo-liberals decided that a pre-repentant George
Wallace was correct and that race does matter after all.
Wallace, the founding member of the long-defunct Dixie Party
argued at the height of the civil rights struggle that white skin
made you good and nonwhite skin made you bad.
Interestingly, the modern diversity drumbeat has turned that
ridiculous theory on its head, arguing instead that skin color in
and of itself adds value to the UCLA education experience.
Both conclusions are wrong.
If those on the left want to further an America that is open and
accepting, they should be aware that reactionary traditions that
elevate race as the defining factor of our humanity ““ such as
the “separate but equal” graduation ceremony ““
only further divides us.
This is especially true in the case of commencement ceremonies
because they are public proclamations of a university’s
success in graduating its students. They also provide the student
body an opportunity to coalesce in the full view of family and
friends for the purpose of reflecting on the completion of a shared
journey.
Will the parents attending separate-but-equal graduations also
attend the ceremonies intended to include everyone? And if they
don’t, what will the proud parents packed into Pauley
Pavilion and the Los Angeles Tennis Center think?
Hypothetically, what if parents could only attend one session of
pomp and circumstance, and what if the one they chose was the one
that was race based? Would the white couple at the inclusive
ceremony wonder why every other parent around them looked like
them?
Probably not. But wouldn’t you rather they did?
Better yet, wouldn’t you rather send the message,
especially to an older generation, that all people, regardless of
race or ethnic background, can succeed at one of the nation’s
finest institutions of higher learning?
This is not to suggest that all organizations formed in the
spirit of racial and ethnic unity should be disbanded. Far from it.
Such groups have proven quite resourceful in reaching out to
communities with unique needs and concerns that can best be
satisfied by those who share a common background.
And there’s nothing wrong with people coming together for
the sake of reveling in the traditions of a shared heritage.
Even when these groups act publicly, they are still within the
realm of the private. Graduation ceremonies, however, are public.
And participating in a separate-but-equal, race- or ethnic-based
commencement ceremony sends a public message that a person’s
values and talents matter less than what they happen to look like
or where they happen to come from, even if that is not the message
that these graduations intended to send.
It probably flies in the face of every value that most of the
graduates in question would claim to hold. It definitely goes
against the ideal of diverse, racial unity.
It makes you wonder about the future of United States. Without
ignoring past transgressions, the American ideal was one that
challenged us to create a society worthy of the Declaration of
Independence.
Yet UCLA is turning out a future populace that, if judged by
their activities, has no problem with the public racial segregation
of the past.
Whenever I hear of tragic events abroad, like a plane crash or
the actions of a terrorist, the first thing I listen for is reports
of any American casualties. I don’t stop to wonder whether it
was an African American, or a Latino, or an Asian American, or a
Pacific American, or an Arab American, or a Native American or even
an LGBT American.
Forgive me if I left your particular hyphenation out, but
I’m only concerned with the safety of Americans, because an
American is someone I might know, someone who in many ways is an
extended part of my family. In the spirit of the various racially
segregated graduations that Westwood will play host to in the next
week and a half, next time I hear news of a tragedy on foreign
soil, I’ll pay extra close attention to find out if anything
bad happened to one who shares my ethnicity, a
Jewish-Polish-Austrian-Canadian-Spanish-Turkish-American, before I
get upset.