You’re doing diversity wrong.

By: Gabriel Sundaramoorthy

Should we mistake movies for reality, we might expect our schools to be divided into a tiered class system with jocks and cheerleaders on top, nerds at the bottom, and everyone else sorted in between. There would be no other quality that influenced your position in school. While certainly not ideal, that system, where you can influence your status, seems like a utopia compared to the truth of social sorting. See, what that media narrative fails to acknowledge, is the most pervasive method of stratification, so evident, yet never discussed: race. 

Take a moment to examine your relationships and the relationships of those around you. Think about the clubs, committees, and campus organizations you are part of. Recall the faces that you briefly, drunkenly see when you’re at a party—not the open, anybody-can-wander-in parties, but the exclusive, invitation-only ones. Setting aside single, one-off instances, are you regularly interacting with the 6% of UCLA undergraduate students who are African-American, the 35% who are Asian (including South Asian) and Pacific Islander, the 21% who are Hispanic, and the 26% who are White? If you can honestly answer “yes,” then congratulations! You are part of an elite minority of UCLA students who will graduate with the benefits of diversity. If your experiences aren’t as multicultural, fear not, you have simply fallen victim to the implicit biases, allure of comfort, and structural forces that everyone experiences. You are not racist or hateful, but merely human.

UCLA consistently ranks among the most diverse schools in the nation. The University’s leadership has done an excellent job of ensuring that our population reflects that of the region. Now, it seems to be the students, not the administration, who have been slow to embrace diversity. UCLA has failed to live up to its mission of creating an open-minded, understanding, compassionate, and inclusive community, not because its leadership hasn’t created enough policies and outreach programs, but because students themselves have failed to venture out of their comfort zones and interact with people of different racial backgrounds. While diverse communities like UCLA promise to educate on different perspectives, creating an unparalleled breadth of knowledge and insurmountable altruism for the good of society, such promises may never come to fruition until these barriers can be overcome.

Far too often, friend groups and organizations throughout the UCLA community lack the presence of multiple major minorities. As a Latino myself, it is impossible to ignore that activities and groups of all kinds lack representation of Latinx and Black students. The most guilty of this phenomenon are the traditional, frats and sororities, whose members are predominantly White; there’s a reason why “Black/Latinx frats” aren’t just “frats”. Although they may have some occasional diversity, frats and sororities impose a process of assimilation and White-ification on newcomers, eliminating diverse perspectives, but still allowing them to claim diversity. However, the problem extends to even the most open-minded of clubs. The Bruin Review, which, in my experience, has one of the most diverse memberships on campus, has a notable lack of Latinx individuals when compared to school-wide statistics.

While largely unconscious, in any environment where you are pressured to find comfort and community with others, homogenous groups of individuals whose culture mirrors your own are the easiest to join. The similar mindset, tastes, and lived experiences make it easy to get along, engage in conversation, and group together—which, for historically disadvantaged communities, is invaluable. Collective power is an excellent catalyst for positive change to correct historical and ongoing prejudice and racism. There is, therefore, an important place for groups like Living Learning Communities and Cultural Interest Fraternities. However, the danger comes when comfort can only be found in those specific groups, preventing minorities from ever branching out. Diversity, inclusion, and equality are never achieved if entire swaths of people are never comfortable joining, participating, and leading the numerous campus organizations that would otherwise provide them with innumerable resources. In a world where connections are everything, and those connections with the most power are predominantly White, to lack diversity is to perpetuate centuries of White privilege.

Unfortunately, issues of deficient diversity are self-propagating cycles. The lack of minorities in an organization will discourage those very minorities from joining, and the cycle repeats. It is therefore an unfortunate truth that members of those minority communities are tasked with the heavy burden of moving outside their comfort zone should they want to have access to the same success as their White peers. While moving outside your comfort zone is important for anyone, it is wholly unfair that a timid Latinx or Black individual will access fewer resources than an equally timid White individual, simply because White people have historically dominated the largest and longest standing campus organizations. Minorities have grappled with that burden for decades, and making one side of the problem responsible for taking all of the steps to solve it has failed. 

If we ever want change, then some of that burden must be shifted to those with the most power to create change. While the most common complaint from minorities who don’t find comfort outside their racial group is that “nobody else gets it,” that’s not the reason why it’s so difficult for them to branch out; just because you don’t understand someone else’s struggle, doesn’t mean you can’t make them comfortable. The problem is that, far too often, those not in diverse groups don’t even try to understand that there is something to “get.” Those with privilege find it hard to imagine that not everyone has had the same experience they have. They assume everyone has lived with the same wealth, family security, and entitlement. Only by intentionally seeking to solve exclusive behavior can we ever address this issue. In every interaction, you must make it your responsibility to reach out, create comfort, and check your privilege. On a structural level, campus organizations need to take action to reach out, because simply being open to diversity is not enough. In much the same way UCLA creates diversity in predominantly white majors by collaborating with cultural studies departments, predominantly White clubs and fraternities should reach out to organizations from the Grupo Folklorico to the BBSA with the intent of fostering exchange. Only then can we actually live out the promise made to us by media and campus leadership: the promise of diversity.