2008 UW Diversity Forum
Integrating HWCUs
Integrating HWCUs
The Minority Coalition pushed through a requirement that students take an ethnic studies course before they graduate. However, since there wasn’t a great
capacity at the UW to provide enough courses in African American, Asian, Latino and American Indian studies, the requirement took on a nature different than
what the proponents had envisioned.
“What did they do,” Bonilla-Silva rhetorically asked. “‘We’re going to approve an ethnic studies requirement. But what we are going to do is check the
courses we have on the books and anything that is sort of ethnic fits.’ So rather than going back to our argument that by ethnic studies we mean the groups that
have been historically oppressed in the U.S.: Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, they said ‘This professor is
teaching Polish studies. You know what? That is ethnic. Therefore, it fits.’ So rather than following on the idea that in order for this ethnic studies requirement to
work, you needed to hire more faculty of color, more people who could teach the courses, instead they literally looked around for anything they could claim was
ethnic, even if it was 19th century Russian folklore. Think about my argument about HWCUs. It’s the same curriculum. It was just a matter of parceling out of the
thousands of courses already offered at Wisconsin 10 percent that fit the ethnic studies requirement. So students took the same courses they usually took before,
but now they were called ethnic studies.”
And while the Minority Coalition had asked for a Multicultural Student Center and one was created, it evolved differently than what the proponents had
again envisioned. “The Multicultural Center was put on the side,” Bonilla-Silva said. “It never produced the cultural and social and political programming of
events and activities that we hoped for and expected. So it just literally became a place where folks of color could gather and watch TV. Later on they moved
the offices of various minority organizations in the area. And that was it. It became a hang out place, which wasn’t our idea of what the multicultural center
should be. I believe that we need to hang out. I’m not criticizing that. But I am saying that the multicultural center’s original agenda was not that. It was truly to
produce events, activities, etc. that could further the discussion of racial matters at Wisconsin and in the nation. And that doesn’t happen.”
Bonilla-Silva is concerned that the same type of appearances without real change occurring may play out on a national level if Barack Obama is elected
president of the United States. “The election of Obama may produce change that brings not change and hope that may produce hopelessness,” Bonilla-Silva
said.
Obama’s candidacy, according to Bonilla-Silva, fulfills the dreams or identity of White and Black voters, which causes them not to dig deeper to find out
more about Obama. “For White folks, it is sort of the proof that we are beyond race,” Bonilla-Silva said. “It is a form of self-absolution. I voted for Obama, therefore
I am not a racist. For minority folks who have been forever searching and searching and searching, for the older folks, it’s like ‘This is our time. We will have a
Black president who will deliver us to the Promised Land before they die. For the young and minority folks who were born after 1980 — Reagan changed the
agenda of race and class in America — they haven’t seen any progress in their 30 years. Then Obama is sort of a symbol of possibilities.”
And it is this symbolism that blinds people to the fact that Obama is for the death penalty and that a significant part of his campaign is being funded by
Wall Street figures. “Bundlers have raised 35-40 percent of Obama’s money,” Bonilla-Silva said. “Do they get special access to Obama? Yes! Many of them are
now on his financial committee. And they will be part of his administration. So if someone raises $200,000-$1 million for a candidate, do you think that person
would not get some kind of special entry point with Obama? We get the sanitized version that they are doing it because they believe in Obama. Of course, that
is the same thing people would say when they were raising money for Bush. We are indeed in silly season where we don’t want to think hard. We don’t want to be
critical. We just want to believe the mirage of a Black man getting elected. On the surface, I would be happy to see a Black man elected president. But because
I come from the Caribbean, I also know that ultimately it’s not about a racial uniform, but the politics. And Obama’s politics are typical of the Democratic
Leadership Council that progressive leaders used to criticize for the past 16 years.”
For Bonilla-Silva, the answer doesn’t lie with electoral politics as much as it does with social movement politics. In his view, the end of social movement
politics and the civil rights movement came with the rise of Reagan and the discussion is now limited to what can be done with the Democratic Party. But
Bonilla-Silva feels that the Republicans and Democrats are two wings of the same party and something must be done to move the discussion further.
"We need to create that space through social movement politic so that no matter who is elected, the person has to respond to a reality of people mobilized
in the streets,” Bonilla-Silva said. “Maybe down the road, if the social movement becomes large, that social movement can produce a third party that could
produce a new type of politician. But I’m now concerned more with working on the social movement front than doing what the Left has done in the last 30 years.
No one is talking about going in the streets, talking to folks and organizing them.”
“The best way of forcing people to see and understand reality is social movement politics,” Bonilla-Silva continued. “Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
through their combined actions, civil and uncivil, produced sort of an opening and an awakening in the hearts and minds of many Whites in America, not most,
but many. Sometimes you have to force the issue. And at this point, there is no one producing an alternative interpretation of events.”
capacity at the UW to provide enough courses in African American, Asian, Latino and American Indian studies, the requirement took on a nature different than
what the proponents had envisioned.
“What did they do,” Bonilla-Silva rhetorically asked. “‘We’re going to approve an ethnic studies requirement. But what we are going to do is check the
courses we have on the books and anything that is sort of ethnic fits.’ So rather than going back to our argument that by ethnic studies we mean the groups that
have been historically oppressed in the U.S.: Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, they said ‘This professor is
teaching Polish studies. You know what? That is ethnic. Therefore, it fits.’ So rather than following on the idea that in order for this ethnic studies requirement to
work, you needed to hire more faculty of color, more people who could teach the courses, instead they literally looked around for anything they could claim was
ethnic, even if it was 19th century Russian folklore. Think about my argument about HWCUs. It’s the same curriculum. It was just a matter of parceling out of the
thousands of courses already offered at Wisconsin 10 percent that fit the ethnic studies requirement. So students took the same courses they usually took before,
but now they were called ethnic studies.”
And while the Minority Coalition had asked for a Multicultural Student Center and one was created, it evolved differently than what the proponents had
again envisioned. “The Multicultural Center was put on the side,” Bonilla-Silva said. “It never produced the cultural and social and political programming of
events and activities that we hoped for and expected. So it just literally became a place where folks of color could gather and watch TV. Later on they moved
the offices of various minority organizations in the area. And that was it. It became a hang out place, which wasn’t our idea of what the multicultural center
should be. I believe that we need to hang out. I’m not criticizing that. But I am saying that the multicultural center’s original agenda was not that. It was truly to
produce events, activities, etc. that could further the discussion of racial matters at Wisconsin and in the nation. And that doesn’t happen.”
Bonilla-Silva is concerned that the same type of appearances without real change occurring may play out on a national level if Barack Obama is elected
president of the United States. “The election of Obama may produce change that brings not change and hope that may produce hopelessness,” Bonilla-Silva
said.
Obama’s candidacy, according to Bonilla-Silva, fulfills the dreams or identity of White and Black voters, which causes them not to dig deeper to find out
more about Obama. “For White folks, it is sort of the proof that we are beyond race,” Bonilla-Silva said. “It is a form of self-absolution. I voted for Obama, therefore
I am not a racist. For minority folks who have been forever searching and searching and searching, for the older folks, it’s like ‘This is our time. We will have a
Black president who will deliver us to the Promised Land before they die. For the young and minority folks who were born after 1980 — Reagan changed the
agenda of race and class in America — they haven’t seen any progress in their 30 years. Then Obama is sort of a symbol of possibilities.”
And it is this symbolism that blinds people to the fact that Obama is for the death penalty and that a significant part of his campaign is being funded by
Wall Street figures. “Bundlers have raised 35-40 percent of Obama’s money,” Bonilla-Silva said. “Do they get special access to Obama? Yes! Many of them are
now on his financial committee. And they will be part of his administration. So if someone raises $200,000-$1 million for a candidate, do you think that person
would not get some kind of special entry point with Obama? We get the sanitized version that they are doing it because they believe in Obama. Of course, that
is the same thing people would say when they were raising money for Bush. We are indeed in silly season where we don’t want to think hard. We don’t want to be
critical. We just want to believe the mirage of a Black man getting elected. On the surface, I would be happy to see a Black man elected president. But because
I come from the Caribbean, I also know that ultimately it’s not about a racial uniform, but the politics. And Obama’s politics are typical of the Democratic
Leadership Council that progressive leaders used to criticize for the past 16 years.”
For Bonilla-Silva, the answer doesn’t lie with electoral politics as much as it does with social movement politics. In his view, the end of social movement
politics and the civil rights movement came with the rise of Reagan and the discussion is now limited to what can be done with the Democratic Party. But
Bonilla-Silva feels that the Republicans and Democrats are two wings of the same party and something must be done to move the discussion further.
"We need to create that space through social movement politic so that no matter who is elected, the person has to respond to a reality of people mobilized
in the streets,” Bonilla-Silva said. “Maybe down the road, if the social movement becomes large, that social movement can produce a third party that could
produce a new type of politician. But I’m now concerned more with working on the social movement front than doing what the Left has done in the last 30 years.
No one is talking about going in the streets, talking to folks and organizing them.”
“The best way of forcing people to see and understand reality is social movement politics,” Bonilla-Silva continued. “Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
through their combined actions, civil and uncivil, produced sort of an opening and an awakening in the hearts and minds of many Whites in America, not most,
but many. Sometimes you have to force the issue. And at this point, there is no one producing an alternative interpretation of events.”
By Jonathan Gramling
Part 2 of 2
Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, the keynote speaker for the 2008 UW Diversity Forum, is a jovial, yet very intense intellectual. In
talking to him over the phone, I could picture Bonilla-Silva spending hours at the now-defunct 602 Club on University Avenue when
he was attaining his Ph.D. in sociology from UW-Madison in the 1980s drinking beer and discussing politics into the wee hours of the
morning.
Bonilla-Silva is now a professor of sociology at Duke University. He bluntly talks about race in his books and classroom teaching
and serves as a lightning rod of discussion about race if the comments of conservative bloggers are any indication. Bonilla-Silva,
one gets the impression, enjoys the engagement.
Back in the 1980s when he was a graduate student, Bonilla-Silva was a member of the Minority Coalition, which was pushing
for structural changes at the UW-Madison. According to Bonilla-Silva, their objective was to turn the university into a truly national
university. “We said that in order for this to work, you have to increase dramatically the number of students, faculty and in general,
people of color at the university,” Bonilla-Silva said. “Wisconsin ought to reflect national trends. So if minority folks are 31 percent of
the population and Whites are 69 percent, then no less that should be the composition of minorities and Whites at Wisconsin. But it’s
not just in terms of faculty and students. You have to diversify the staff and you have to have a multicultural center.”
Part 2 of 2
Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, the keynote speaker for the 2008 UW Diversity Forum, is a jovial, yet very intense intellectual. In
talking to him over the phone, I could picture Bonilla-Silva spending hours at the now-defunct 602 Club on University Avenue when
he was attaining his Ph.D. in sociology from UW-Madison in the 1980s drinking beer and discussing politics into the wee hours of the
morning.
Bonilla-Silva is now a professor of sociology at Duke University. He bluntly talks about race in his books and classroom teaching
and serves as a lightning rod of discussion about race if the comments of conservative bloggers are any indication. Bonilla-Silva,
one gets the impression, enjoys the engagement.
Back in the 1980s when he was a graduate student, Bonilla-Silva was a member of the Minority Coalition, which was pushing
for structural changes at the UW-Madison. According to Bonilla-Silva, their objective was to turn the university into a truly national
university. “We said that in order for this to work, you have to increase dramatically the number of students, faculty and in general,
people of color at the university,” Bonilla-Silva said. “Wisconsin ought to reflect national trends. So if minority folks are 31 percent of
the population and Whites are 69 percent, then no less that should be the composition of minorities and Whites at Wisconsin. But it’s
not just in terms of faculty and students. You have to diversify the staff and you have to have a multicultural center.”
| Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva |