“Students Of Color” Conference At UC Irvine

The University of California at Irvine recently hosted the UC Student Association’s annual Students of Color Conference. This was no doubt a valuable experience for the participants, since so many of them apparently feel unsafe on their home campuses.

“The SOCC is a safe space for students to be able to speak out clearly to each other and to hear each other,” said Vera Konkankit, thirdyear biological sciences major and campus organizing director and head student coordinator for the SOCC.

In addition to feeling safe, I’m sure the attendees were all inspired by the stirring and courageous advice given to them by UC Chancellor Michael Drake:

“Confidence to be able actually to do things is really really valuable when you get to important things that need to be done,” Drake said. “If you don’t have the confidence, nice words are just nice words. If you don’t have the confidence, the passion is just noise. When you put the two together, you can affect the world and produce change.”

Student leaders highlighted the purpose and importance of the conference:

“This conference is the first step in making the state and making everyone know that we will not be silenced and that we’re going to fight for what’s right for all of California,” [University of California Student Association President Anu] Joshi said….

Zachary Avallone, ASUCI executive vice president, said that the SOCC is important for discussing “how to ensure that UC campuses are diverse and adequately represent the population of California.”

Some might question whether it is proper for a state university to sponsor student organizations and conferences that sound as though they exclude some students based on color, although it’s possible that is not the case, i.e., that students of no color can joint in the activities of the various students of color groups. In any event, the organizers, good progressives all, clearly appear to be aware that “color” is, as they say, socially constructed, that the relevant spectrum on which it appears is not chromatic but ideological. On this view “color” does not exist objectively, independent of the observer; it can only be seen refracted through the historically attuned prism of ethno-cultural domination. Fortunately, one can see the epistemological sophistication of the organizers in this regard in the following evidence of non-”color”-based inclusion:

The SOCC also served as a meeting place for the UC’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender groups, who did not hold a conference this year.

“This was an opportunity for all the students who looked forward to that conference to come here and have the queer people of color to get together and do the same thing as everyone else is doing,” said Dulce García, a fifth-year sociology and Chicano/Latino studies major.

Actually, this last quote suggests that I may be wrong, that attendance was limited to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender groups of color. It’s hard to say, but it’s reassuring to learn that all who came could do the same thing.

The conference was organized around a series of workshops, after which “students divided into caucuses, where they discussed specific issues that face their communities,” after which “students from each of the UCs participated in a “diversity debriefing,” where they discussed how they felt about the topics discussed in their caucuses.”

Workshops covered a variety of topics, such as how historical and current events affect certain races and basic lobbying techniques. For example, one workshop, titled “Ni Una Más: Las Mujeres de Juarez” (“Not One More: The Women of Juarez”), discussed the ongoing violence against women in the area of Juarez, Mexico, which has seen the reported deaths of more than 450 women.

Although it might not be immediately apparent how violence against women in Juarez, Mexico, is relevant to “diversity” in the University of California system, I’m sure that, somewhere, there is a connection. Perhaps if there were less violence against women in Mexico fewer of them would want to come to California. (But wait; wouldn’t that reduce diversity? Oh, well.)

The conferees were also privileged to hear a profound and all too accurate observation in the keynote address on the last evening:

The evening concluded with a keynote speech by Jenny Doh, UCI alumna and former UC Regent, who discussed social borders.

“One thing I know to be true is that borders, whether they’re constructed with concrete or steel or prejudices, even though they look solid, they’re not,” Doh said. “They’re hugely porous.”

Say What? (5)

  1. Federal Dog April 10, 2006 at 6:22 pm | | Reply

    “Confidence to be able actually to do things is really really valuable when you get to important things that need to be done”

    I’m sorry, but the speaker here is a UC official? How educated are the people running colleges today?

  2. tomaig April 11, 2006 at 10:58 am | | Reply

    The keynote speaker’s last name is Homer Simpson’s all-purpose exclamation of frustrated stupidity…”Doh!”

    In fact, I seem to remember this “word” being added to the OED sometime within the last few years.

  3. ELC April 11, 2006 at 1:25 pm | | Reply

    So, when is the Students of Pallor Conference? I understand the big-name speakers will be Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice, talking about their experiences as people of pallor in Washington.

  4. Dom April 12, 2006 at 10:23 am | | Reply

    Among the “Students of Color”, I bet you’ll find some Indians who left India because they got sick of the “Students of Lower Caste Conferences” that their own universities hold. See http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1483043.cms

    (which was linked to by John) for more about this.

  5. Anita April 13, 2006 at 9:38 am | | Reply

    my brother was invited a students of color (he’s black) and women conference thing when he was in college. he pointed out that that included everyone on camputs, except white men. and if you added jews to the mix, that was the majority of people on campus. his comments were not well received. a handful of white men on whom every human ill can be blamed!

Say What?