By David Weiner, Daily Forty-Niner
May 15, 1997
Cal State Long Beach enjoys a reputation as one of the most ethnically diverse campuses in California - indeed, in the United States.
But, as with other universities across the country, achieving a diversity in its curriculum that reflects its multiethnic student population has been a slow, sporadic journey that seems to be a perpetual work in progress.
Cal State Long Beach is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the agency responsible for accrediting all colleges and universities in the western United States. Included in the criteria examined by WASC is diversity, in both hiring and curriculum.
"It's not exactly that they have any affirmative action requirements ... what the organization does is say, in effect, that you have to have some kind of plan, that you try to attract a diverse pool of students," said Keith Polakoff, vice president of academic affairs. "So it's not harshly restrictive, but it does provide the right kind of framework.
"The main way we approach it is in our hiring," Polakoff said. "Ensuring that we're hiring from a diverse pool of applicants and that the people we hire can truly represent the variety of backgrounds of our students. We try to get hiring out of - or beyond - the old boys' network."
Polakoff added that Dr. David Hood, professor of history and chairman of CSULB's Academic Senate and the school's official liaison with WASC, is involved more directly with addressing the college's curriculum, while Polakoff's focus is on hiring.
Dr. Maulana Karenga has been the chairman of CSULB's black studies program since 1989. He said the program grew out of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, like all black studies programs.
The first black studies program was established at San Francisco State in 1969. CSULB's program began offering a bachelor's degree in 1977, although black studies courses began here in 1971.
Currently, about 40 percent of the students enrolled in black studies courses are non-African-American.
Black studies programs are needed, Karenga said, to ensure "that we not simply teach white studies, because that is an inadequate education. We feel that the white studies program was simply a self-congratulatory narrative about Europe. No matter what you think about Plato and Shakespeare, the reality is that ancient African, Asian and Indian civilizations have something to say about politics, about spirituality and philosophy too."
Echoing Karenga's comments, Dr. Patricia Rozee, director of the women's studies program at CSULB, said she thinks the university has a long way to go before reaching equality in its instruction toward male and female students.
"There are some professors who work very hard to be inclusive, but in general the courses are pretty weak in dealing with women and their contributions to the various fields," she said.
Rozee is looking forward to a program this summer that will attempt to train selected CSULB faculty members on how to include women in their curriculum.
The program, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, is called Women and Scientific Literacy, and focuses on learning in science, an area of particular concern to Rozee and others concerned with women's experience in the classroom.
"It's very hard to retain women in the fields of math and science because of pedagogy - the way you teach a course," Rozee said. "For example, in geometry courses, when math teachers talk about measuring something, they usually use carpentry terms. Women will just zone out when that happens, because they have no experience with that. If they talked about how to measure fabrics, for example, most men would zone out. So why can't they use an example like colored construction paper, so men and women can follow it with equal interest?
"It's what we call an inclusion issue," Rozee continued. "Teachers call on male students more often, and they tend to ask them more conceptual questions, whereas women tend to get asked more rote questions, dealing with simple memory."
It is those kinds of age-old habits that the Women and Scientific Literacy program will attempt to correct. CSULB was one of only 10 universities in the country selected for the program. With government matching funds, the grant will total $76,000.
The slow pattern of progress toward achieving diversity in the curriculum corresponding with the ascent of affirmative action in the 1960s and '70s can be seen by examining the university's course catalogs in 10-year increments.
The 1960 Long Beach State College Bulletin made no mention of equal opportunity for minorities or women under its general policies or admission requirements sections. Of 37 upper-division history courses, only nine dealt with Latin American, Asian or African history.
By 1970, the California State College, Long Beach, General Catalog listed a non-baccalaureate program in Asian Studies and an interdisciplinary program referred to as the Center for Latin American Studies. The Asian Studies program was limited to the study of Japan, China and India.
By 1970 courses in the history department were broken into sections, with nine upper division courses on Latin America, nine on Far Eastern and South Asia and two courses on Africa.
The sociology department is far outstripped by the anthropology department in number of courses devoted to other cultures and ethnicities .
The biggest change, by far, is reflected in the 1980 California State Long Beach Bulletin. For the first time, the General Regulations and Procedures section included a passage stating "non-discrimination on the basis of sex" and "non-discrimination on the basis of handicap."
No mention is made of non-discrimination on the basis of race. Also, for the first time, there are baccalaureate programs in Asian Studies, Black Studies and Mexican American Studies.
Meanwhile, the history department still has only seven Latin American courses, nine Asian courses and only one class devoted to the study of Africa. Sociology courses are offered in Sociology of Women and Ethnic Group Relations.
By 1990, the college showed the first inkling of real awareness with the following passage in the Purpose section of the California State Long Beach Bulletin: "The urban setting of the university demands a comprehensive approach to the education of the broad and diverse constituents of the region."
And under Rules and Regulations, there is a policy on non-discrimination on the basis of sex, physical handicap, race, color, national origin, marital status or sexual preference.
The college still offered baccalaureate programs in Asian and Asian American Studies, Black Studies and Mexican American Studies, but it also offered a Liberal Arts concentration in American Indian Studies, a certificate in Latin American Studies and a minor in Women's Studies.
In the history department there are 10 upper-division courses in Asian studies and seven devoted to Latin America, and in the United States section of the department are courses on Ethnic Groups in Urban America, Chicano History, History of the Afro-American in the United States and a two-part course called History of Women in the United States.
Exactly where all that leaves CSULB as it heads into the 21st century is open to debate. Asked if the proliferation of curriculum programs such as black studies have created the perception among other professors that less effort is needed on their part to achieve diversity, Karenga said he saw no such condition.
"I don't run into people who are that far behind that they don't realize the need for a diverse and interdisciplinary presentation of their material," he said.
"I believe people are moving toward it [diversity]," Karenga
said. But he also knows that society has a long way to go. "People
don't mind having festivals with food and clothes, celebrating ethnic diversity,"
he said. "But they don't want to share wealth and power."