Diversity into Integration

Diversity and integration, much discussed on university and colleges campuses today, are certainly a worthy effort.  But, thinking about it, I was perplexed.  For one, the two terms, too often paired as near synonyms, fail to see them as two stages of development, in which the former may prepare for but does not promise the latter. and then the terms seem to be understood racially more than culturally.

Bringing in students of a wide range of ethnic, social, and cultural background creates diversity.  But unless they interact actively, there is no integration.  There is no stew until all the ingredients are mixed in one pot. In this light, Black Cultural Center is an unfortunate institution, because, however laudable its intention, it isolates a particular group of the community from the rest and thus promotes self-segregation despite itself.  This, I believe, is true of GLBT Center and Asian Students Association as well. Intercultural Center may seem less segregating; but it, too, suggests that the interaction among students of different backgrounds are mixed together separate from rather than among the rest of the community.  

I am reminded of the International House; as a student at UC Berkeley I shied away from it, feeling as though students from abroad are corralled together for the presumed commonality of being non-American.  In my first years in the US, at Santa Rosa Junior College, there were some fifteen foreign students (as we were called) — Hungarian, Swedish, Korean, Peruvian, Nigerian, Iranian, German and Japanese, one of each, and several Canadians — a nice global representation.  But being treated as a distinct group, what we shared among ourselves was being foreign.  We were friends, certainly, I was fond of them all.  But I recall how its conceptual artifice made me uncomfortable.  

I am, of course, being idealist.  Cosmopolitan cities like New York continue to maintain ethnic enclaves; and it is probably natural that campuses reflect this pattern.  No complete integration will ever be achieved so long we keep perpetuating such designations as “non-American and “non-white”, terms which by definition are prejudicial for excluding a particular group as existing outside the norm.  The racial designation like Black and White that stubbornly persists in American society, also support the prejudicial distinction between the normative and the exceptional.  

There are on the other hand voluntary groups , defined culturally, formed on the basis of common interest, belief, and/or profession, in urban centers as well as in society at large — garden clubs, choral groups, churches, and specific trade unions. So, on campuses, we may have a film society, badminton club, German table, and conservative society.  These are clearly ethnically neutral.  Even though Jazz may be black in origin, a jazz club today is bound to be racially mixed.  Black Cultural Center, albeit labeled Cultural, seems to operate on the presumption that all blacks represent black culture.  

In my color-blindness in matters of ethnicity, I don’t deny that I am naively idealistic.  But I’d like to see any culture associated with the black race (or Latino, or Asian) integrated in the community at large, instead of being carried out in a designated corner, as it would be realized when we have the advanced stage of integration.  College and university campus, I hope understands this true state of integration and spearhead the efforts toward it.