Posted on 06/15/2007 7:05:24 AM PDT by The Pack Knight
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 womens 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 AsianPacific 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 schools commencement office couldnt 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 markersa 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 UCLAs 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 smallabout 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 63.
No major objections to ethnic graduations have emerged since. As in so many areas of American life, the preposterous is now normal.
All I can really say is, does anyone think it might be covered differently if this sort of thing was going on at Ole Miss or Georgia Tech?
________________________
Amen.
Italian-Americans
German-Americans
Irish-Americans
Anglo-Americans
White Heterosexual Americans
Chritian-Americans
Jewish-Americans
Canadian-Americans
etc., etc.
?
OR, are they discriminating there, too?
They forgot to say when the white, heterosexual Christian graduation ceremony is! I’m sure that was just an oversight.
So many potential jokes, so little time! ;^)
California going down the drain.
“I,m so confused”, said the adopted straight son of two lesbians, one of which is a 1/2 Black, 1/2 American Indian Muslim and the other a 1/2 Mexican, 1/2 Asian atheist
lol, I graduated from UCLA last year. Most people who aren’t screaming for special recognition just graduate at the ceremony for their respective school (Arts and Letters, Science, ect...)I remember laughing about this same subject last year. This is a result of the race first analysis that professors love to teach. These people are the biggest racists and never recognize the fact.
How about the "community" of the entire college? This reminds me of the Weird Al song with "transsexual Nazi Eskimos."
Sad, that everything that MLK and all thoe people who died in the Civil Rights era, fighting against is now demanded. Like they died for nothing..........
Only white males can be racist. :0)
Rule #2
Even if it's bad, see Rule #1.
So much for integration and assimilation...........
(loud flushing sound inserted here)
bump
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