Ethnic pride isn’t anti-Americanism

If you ask them, multiculturalism is the devil.

A group of Arizona legislators seeks to rid the state of its local evildoers: Native American Student Unions, Black Student Associations and Latino Business Societies.

Their bill, seeking to end the existence of race-based groups and ethnic studies courses that criticize Western civilization, is making its way through the Arizona legislature. It’s silly and out of touch, and if the Republican legislators promoting the bill need a wake-up call, UCLA student groups can offer it to them.

Gabriella Rosca, a third-year history student of Romanian descent, decided to aid her Latin American studies minor by getting involved in school.

“Commonalities between people go so much further than your ethnic background,” said Rosca, who is co-director of Projecting Minds, a community service project run by the Latin American Student Association.

But if these Arizona legislators had their way, there would not be a LASA. The measure would prohibit students from forming groups based on the race of their members. If California were to do the same, UCLA would have to wave goodbye to hundreds of its own groups, despite the fact that their racial identification does not signal a closed-door policy.

According to an Arizona Republic article, Rep. Russell Pearce, the legislator pushing for this proposal, said that groups like MEChA “indoctrinate students in what might be characterized as anti-American or seditious thinking.” You know, things like higher education.

“As MEChA, we work to raise the number of Chicano/Latino students in college, but also to instill in them an awareness of how their position as graduates gives them a greater duty to give back to their community,” said Dante Cruz, internal vice chair of the UCLA chapter of MEChA.

Cruz’s words are laudable, but Pearce seems to think that freedom of assembly was never that much of an American value.

Cruz sees different reasons that these legislators are attacking their freedom to organize: “As a national student organization, MEChA has continually stood against the war, the militarization of our youth, the economic system currently in place and the prison industrial complex.”

With that laundry list of stances, it is easy to see how a fear-mongering legislator like Pearce would prey on a progressive student organization to build his tough-man rep during a congressional campaign.

The controversial text is part of a recently added amendment to Senate Bill 1108, a bill about homeland security advisory councils. The amendment states, “A primary purpose of public education is to inculcate values of American citizenship.”

Those values include democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration, according to the legislative text. The value system would be fine and all if it did not reek of selective intolerance and perceived superiority.

State Rep. John Kavanagh exemplifies the narrow thinking it takes to support the amendment: “This bill basically says, “˜You’re here. Adopt American values. If you want a different culture, then fine, go back to that culture.'”

The presumptuous exclusivity that a far-from-perfect United States is given over this set of values is the biggest intellectual flaw of the bill. That is material for a different column, but a more skeptic review might question the validity of a democracy where nine judges can overrule the presidential choice of millions of citizens, or the reach of our religious toleration when Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever to reach such a distinction, has been welcomed to office with death threats and mistrust.

Nonetheless, ideals such as democratic government and freedom of expression are worthy ones. Other countries have democracy and pluralism, and few Americans actually think such ideals are exclusively found within our own borders.

Pearce’s stance seems to be that the biggest threat to our country is a bunch of college kids organizing themselves to bring more kids with similar backgrounds into their universities. But that goal should be inclusive, not threatening.

“I feel like as an educated college student in this day and age, a group of people that have grievances about their community is something to applaud, and I have felt welcome in my effort to make a change,” Rosca said.

Spoken like a true anti-American multiculturalist.

Ramos is a mutt, and he wants to start the Argentine-Ukrainian Student Union. Ask him about it at mramos@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.

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