September 2007
Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los
Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that
scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge. The women’s
studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for
10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict
with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later.
Planning was easier before a new crop of ethnic groups pushed for inclusion.
Students of Asian heritage were once content with the Asian-Pacific Islanders
ceremony. But now there are separate Filipino and Vietnamese commencements, and
some talk of a Cambodian one in the future. Years ago, UCLA sponsored an Iranian
graduation, but the school’s commencement office couldn’t tell me if the event
was still around. The entire Middle East may yet be a fertile source for UCLA
commencements.
Not all ethnic and racial graduations are well attended. The 2003 figures at
UCLA showed that while 300 of 855 Hispanic students attended, only 170 out of
1,874
Asian-Americans did.
Some students are presumably eligible for four or five graduations. A gay
student with a Native American father and a Filipino mother could attend the
Asian, Filipino, and American Indian ceremonies, plus the mainstream graduation
and the Lavender Graduation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered
students.
Graduates usually wear identity-group markers–a Filipino stole or a Vietnamese
sash, for instance, or a rainbow tassel at the Lavender event. Promoters of
ethnic and racial graduations often talk about the strong sense of community
that they favor. But it is a sense of community based on blood, a dubious and
historically dangerous organizing principle.
The organizers also sometimes argue that identity-group graduations make sense
for practical reasons. They say that about 3,000 graduating seniors show up for
UCLA’s “regular” graduation, making it a massive and impersonal event. At the
more intimate identity-group events, foreign-born parents and relatives hear
much of the ceremony in their native tongues. The Filipino event is so
small–about 100 students–that each grad gets to speak for 30 seconds.
But the core reason for separatist graduations is the obvious one: on campus,
assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism.
On many campuses, identity-group training begins with separate freshman
orientation programs for nonwhites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to
bond before the first Caucasian freshmen arrive. Some schools have separate
orientations for gays as well. Administrations tend to foster separatism by
arguing that bias is everywhere, justifying double standards that favor identity
groups.
Four years ago Ward Connerly, then a regent of the University of California,
tried to pass a resolution to stop funding of ethnic graduations and gay
freshman orientations. He changed his mind and asked to withdraw his proposal,
but the regents wanted to vote on it and defeated it in committee 6-3.
No major objections to ethnic graduations have emerged since. As in so many
areas of American life, the preposterous is now normal.
City Journal, June 13, 2007.
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