To the Editor:

Thomas Short’s article, “A ‘New Racism’ on Campus?” [August], contributes much-needed clarification to the discussion of campus racism. I am a student at the University of Vermont (UVM) where, as Mr. Short mentions, the administrative offices of the school were occupied by minority students. . . . Perhaps more disturbing than the actual results of this sit-in were the reactions to it by the mostly white student body.

First, most UVM students did not even know that the administrative offices had been occupied. At most, one heard such remarks as, “I was down at the Waterman building and there were a bunch of people standing outside having some kind of protest, Central America or racism or something.” Of the nearly 10,000 students at UVM, fewer than 200 were involved in the general protest, and only about twenty were actually occupying the administrative offices. Two students, myself included, staged an insignificant counterprotest. Most college political events have similar demographics. . . .

Second, after realizing that the student body was largely ignorant of the issue, many professors decided to devote a period or two of class time to discuss racism. During the three discussions I attended, I was only mildly surprised to learn that most students were not aware that there was any racism on campus. However, the professors told us that the reason for our lack of awareness was that racism was deeply woven into the webs of our own psyches. When I asked one of the professors if he, then, was a racist, he explained that it was not possible for him to tell, owing to the complexities of human nature.

Third, professors and students sympathetic to, but not directly involved in, the protest were unable to answer simple questions about it. They did not know what had prompted it, what the protesters’ demands were, or even which minority groups were represented (Jews were a minority, one explained, but not an oppressed one). More difficult questions such as “What is racism?” and “What do you mean by an end to racism?” drew blank stares.

If the majority of college students knew what was going on at their own schools, these protests would draw much more opposition. But until that happens, the only effective counterprotest will occur after the fact, in magazines read by very few college students.

Steven Shaw
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont

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To the Editor:

. . . Viewed objectively, the majority of “racial” incidents at our universities have come from minority students. . . . I am associated with UCLA where, with periodic frequency, a coalition of minority students will violate the laws, as well as the rights, of other students. For example, last spring a mob of minority students, led by a minority-group student politician, was responsible for an assault on students voting for university offices. The mob tore down voting booths and intimidated student voters. This is the sort of action which, if it had been carried out by white students, would no doubt have led to a nationwide liberal protest. And this is only the most recent in a chain of such incidents. On numerous occasions minority activist groups have also occupied the offices of the student newspaper. . . .

A few months ago there was a PBS documentary, Racism 101, which spread the myth that racism was rampant on American college campuses. Yet the only examples it could give were a number of incidents in which white students exercised their rights of free speech and free expression, publishing newspapers, distributing leaflets, putting on plays. . . .

It is also interesting that this television program never once condemned the illegal activities of minority students, despite the fact that they were shown occupying university offices, blocking access to classrooms, and harassing students who were trying to go to class. . . .

Joseph Miranda
North Hollywood, California

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To the Editor:

After reading Thomas Short’s article, I am greatly concerned about what may be the next “civil-rights” cause. Last spring, on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a chorus of complaints began to be heard that the graduation rate for black students was lower than the rate for whites. This was attributed to discrimination and racism. The university authorities were called upon to “do something” to remedy this situation.

I fear that this will become a major issue during the current academic year, and that there will be pressures on departments (and thus on the faculty) to avoid giving low grades to black students. I would not oppose the provision of special coaching facilities for any student who wants to learn and is having difficulty, as is often done for athletes. I would, however, vehemently oppose any move to institute “affirmative-action grading” designed to increase the graduation rate of any particular group. . . .

J. Edgar Williams
Carrboro, North Carolina

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To the Editor:

Thomas Short’s entirely justified indictment of black studies, as conducted at present in many universities, should extend itself also to Jewish studies. That field as well exhibits the traits of special pleading, ethnic celebration, and politicization. Since the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has just now received a complaint from a Gentile denied an appointment in a department of religion for the study of Judaism on the sole grounds that he is not Jewish, the picture is clear. What has happened is the self-ghettoization of Jewish studies outside of the disciplinary framework of academic learning; at some of the leading universities, non-Jews have happily collaborated in excluding Judaic learning from the mainstream of academic concern. . . .

Within the ghetto walls, people do not have to meet the same standards of excellence that apply outside; the walls not only exclude, they also protect. And that accounts for the dreadful condition of black studies and the scarcely different characteristics of Jewish or Judaic studies.

We live in an age in which the old humanities are joined by new ones; women’s studies (in their humanistic mode), black studies, Jewish studies, and a broad variety of other subjects enter the curriculum. The universities require them, because we now know that the humanities encompass a world beyond the European, and religions in addition to the Christian religion, for instance. But how are we to make into our own (and academic) what appears at first encounter to be alien and incomprehensible?

As Mr. Short’s article correctly shows, one solution accepts as special and particular the new humanities, treating as general and normal the old ones. Hence—in the settlement accepted by some—blacks celebrate blackness and exercise thought-control over blacks; Jews teach Jewish things to Jews, and form a segregated intellectual community within the larger academic world.

But I think this subject matter is too urgent and important—and altogether too interesting—to be left to the self-serving proprietors, or to be permitted to be segregated. To deprive interested colleagues and students of access to the rich human experience and expression contained within the cultural artifacts of hitherto excluded parts of humanity diminishes the academic program and misrepresents the condition of humanity. For black, women’s, and Judaic studies among the new humanities, we have therefore to insist that the ghetto walls, once down, may not be reconstructed in the community of intellect.

Jacob Neusner
Program in Judaic Studies
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

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To the Editor:

. . . Some would define the “new racism” on campus as the opposition mounted under the Reagan administration to the affirmative-action gains of the civil-rights movement of the 60’s. For Thomas Short, however, the “real” new racism is the attempt by “radicals of the 60’s, many of whom now dominate the liberal-arts faculties of our colleges and universities,” to use minorities and their concerns for equal access “as a weapon . . . to change the mainstream” of America.

According to Mr. Short, the real problem giving rise to racial unrest on our . . . campuses today is a reversal of what it was in the 60’s. The academic protest movement of the 60’s (which gave rise in the late 60’s and 70’s to the development of special hiring practices and academic programs such as ethnic studies . . .) was a movement for inclusion in the system; racial unrest in the 80’s, however, results, in his view, from the fact that minorities do not want to be treated the same way as others, but desire preferential treatment, separate programs, and separate facilities. Thus, for Mr. Short, the medicine has become worse than the disease.

What he . . . and many others fail to realize is that our society has changed from an industrial society concerned with nationalism and uniformity to an information society concerned with internationalism and diversity. Despite this change, our educational system is still pushing the outmoded, assembly-line model of uniformity. . . . One example is the current “English-only” movement in education, which is actually a nostalgic throwback to a bygone age and irrelevant to the needs of . . . an international world view.

A new age demands new methods and new structures, for the ferment of change cannot be contained in the old structures, lest they burst. . . . The problem with liberals is that they desire to bring about change without necessarily changing the old structures. The result is a lot of fine rhetoric, but slow change, because the concern is with reformation and not revolution.

Mr. Short raises an interesting question in his article: “Why is it that racial tension is at its height precisely in those institutions in which [plans and policies to combat racism] have been most extensively adopted?” The answer is, for the same reason that raised expectations give rise to revolutions—shattered hopes owing to the slow process by which the old structures respond to change.

The purpose of multicultural education and programs of cultural diversity in our colleges and universities is not merely to serve the needs of minority students, . . . but to serve the needs of the entire academic institution, and enable all students, especially the white majority, to . . . understand the multicultural nature of our national and world societies, in order not only to compete effectively, but to develop the quality of compassion—a rare commodity indeed in our greed-oriented society. . . .

Mr. Short places the cause of white hostility toward blacks on the shoulders of blacks by attributing it to the “preferential treatment of blacks and to the conditions of racial separation that exist on campus”—the old “blaming the victim” syndrome. But such thinking suggests that blacks have a price to pay for achieving their gains. Yes, it is true that social interaction on college campuses is largely segregated, and minority groups prefer it that way as a means of socio-psychological support in what is often a hostile environment.

But the cause of racial unrest is not due to minority gains or tactics of survival, but to structures of exclusiveness that while opening some doors keep others sealed shut. Racial unrest is on the increase on our college and university campuses because of: (1) increased expectations for rapid action on promised changes; (2) increased minority-student enrollment; and (3) the lack of an integrated academic-social environment. Minority students must not only be included in the development of special programs and structures, but their concerns and contributions must be integrated into the general curriculum for everyone. They must also be included in the fabric of the social life of the institution, and not just as cosmetic commodities and statistics for state and national affirmative-action reports. . . . We need to prepare all students for the real world, which is one of ethnic and cultural diversity. Of all the nations in the world today, the United States ought to be leading the parade down Main Street in our global-village world society with a new model of multicultural education based on unity in diversity. . . .

A fourth cause of racial unrest is the absence of minority role models and the need for a strong support system for minority students. In other words, there are too few minority faculty, not just to serve as role models for minority students but as educational support and role models for all students.

In truth, the new racism is not a reversal of old demands, but results from the refusal by the majority to learn from the minority, in the same way the latter learned from the former. . . .

Yes, the goal is “to change the mainstream,” as Mr. Short fears, for the ferment of the new wine of cultural diversity in a multicultural, heterogeneous world society will burst the old structures of exclusiveness along with their homogeneous models of education. . . .

Caleb Rosado
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, Illinois

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Thomas Short writes:

My thanks to Steven Shaw, Joseph Miranda, J. Edgar Williams, and Jacob Neusner for their supporting testimony. My thanks also to Caleb Rosado for making the political motive of “multicultural education” plain. Its aim, he cheerfully admits, is “to change the mainstream” of American society, and he wants us to understand that this change is to be revolutionary.

Of course, few proponents of “multicultural education” imbibe Mr. Rosado’s particular concoction. But putting his talk of the global-village information society aside, the rest is standard. The critique of American society as racist and “greed-oriented” is standard; the critique of higher education as enforcing an “assembly-line . . . uniformity,” and as excluding minorities, is standard; and so is the idea that higher education can and should be used to create a new society tolerant of “ethnic and cultural diversity.”

Like so many others safe in the cozy nests of higher education, Mr. Rosado espouses revolution without reckoning its costs. The excitement generated by the prospect of turning academic study into a political movement blinds these enthusiasts to at least three obvious problems.

First, there is the problem of their anti-democratic arrogance. In the name of equality and democracy, this self-appointed elite, convinced that the professorial class knows best, would use the classroom, not Congress, to change America. Yes, of course the university is the place to discuss revolutionary ideas, some of which may point the path we are to take. But that is something quite different from organizing the curriculum to accomplish a particular, previously specified, revolution.

Second, the claims about the existing curriculum are patently ridiculous. A curriculum that includes Marx as well as Locke, Plato as well as Jefferson, St. Thomas and Nietzsche, Jane Austen and the Upanishads (not a rock group), the epistles of St. Paul and the analects of Confucius, not to mention vast bodies of knowledge, scientific, historical, and linguistic, and the unpoliticized study of other civilizations and cultures (which has long been a part of university curricula), cannot fairly be called “homogeneous.” What educated person could ever have thought such a thing? Furthermore, immersion in this body of objective knowledge and diverse philosophies is precisely what has been liberating to peoples around the globe over many centuries. Such a curriculum excludes no intelligent person, black, female, homosexual, or Hispanic, no matter how often professors tell their students otherwise.

Third, the new, ideologically determined pluralism, rather than introducing diversity, trivializes it. The great choices an educated and free person must make are reduced to the level of choice among items on a menu: everything is equally good, only different. You would not know from Mr. Rosado’s or many similar discussions that in his “global village,” just on the other side of Main Street, are Communist China and the Soviet empire and their client tyrannies in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. By this rationale for “multicultural education,” it must seem that totalitarian regimes are no more than a reflection of those cultural differences we should all learn to tolerate. Try telling that to the subjugated peoples whose traditional religious practices, family life, customs, and economies have been obliterated by imposed governments they are free neither to change nor to leave.

The tragedy is that the falsehoods incorporated in “multicultural education” will not be told to those who could expose them, but to the underprepared matriculants of American colleges, who do not know enough to raise the right questions. Steven Shaw is an exception whose letter attests to the rule.

It may seem that we have strayed far from the topic of campus racism, but we have not. For it has been my thesis, now illustrated by Mr. Rosado’s letter, that the hoopla over racism is being generated by those who are using it to promote a further politicization of higher education. Predictably, Mr. Rosado charges that I have “blam[ed] the victim.” However, it is not minority students whom I blame. I agree that certain minorities have been and are continuing to be victimized. But the form of victimization is changing and the blame must now be shifted from redneck whites to left-wing professors. By convincing minority students that they are excluded from the traditional curriculum, these professors do in fact exclude them from an education that enlightens and liberates.

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