September 28, 1994 Contact: Jennifer McNulty (408/459-2495)

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION IS ONE KEY TO BREAKING THROUGH RACIAL POLARIZATION IN CALIFORNIA, SAYS LEADING SCHOLAR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--As racial polarization grows and the backlash against immigrants and welfare families intensifies, the University of California has an obligation to develop multicultural courses to foster greater understanding of the diversity of the American experience.

That's the view of Ronald Takaki, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading scholar on the issues of race and culture. Takaki will give a free public lecture at UC Santa Cruz titled "A Different Mirror: A Multicultural Curriculum for the 21st Century," on Monday, October 17, at 7 p.m. in Classroom Unit 1. A book signing and reception will follow.

Takaki sees the recent hostility toward immigrants and the poor as an outgrowth of the state's economic hard times and fears that such scapegoating is polarizing a critical "national conversation" about how people from diverse ethnic and racial communities can learn to get along.

"I think of the night of April 19, 1992, when the fires were burning in Los Angeles and we watched the violent melee in the streets," says Takaki. "I remember the face of Rodney King and his trembling words, 'We can work it out. Can't we all just get along?' But how do we work it out? That's where the University of California has an obligation and an opportunity to help Californians learn about one another."

The key to better racial and ethnic understanding will require an improved economy, strong political leadership, and multicultural education, says Takaki, but education becomes even more critical in times when the economy is weak and political leaders are capitalizing on racial divisions.

At UC Berkeley, Takaki helped pioneer the introduction of an American Cultures requirement that was enacted in 1991. To graduate, each undergraduate must take one course with a multicultural focus. So far, at least 26 academic departments have developed 80 courses, including classes in music, architecture, political science, business administration, public policy, philosophy, and forest and resource management.

"We need to understand our diversity from a pluralistic perspective," says Takaki. "We need a comparative approach to America's racial and ethnic diversity, and we need to understand the ways the paths of different groups have crisscrossed each other."

At UC Berkeley, the administration committed $300,000 in start-up funds to establish the Institute for Teaching of American Cultures and offered stipends to encourage faculty to participate in monthlong summer seminars to expand their knowledge. A parallel seminar has been established for community college faculty. The institute has attracted major outside funding from foundations, but Takaki notes that outside funds are temporary and the institute's future is uncertain given the state's ongoing budget crisis.

Takaki concedes that requiring students to take one course isn't enough, but he says it provides an introduction to understanding American society in terms of race and ethnicity. "We established the requirement for intellectual reasons, and the budget crisis is worrisome because we're standing at the threshold of revitalizing the humanities and social sciences," says Takaki.

The "Berkeley model" has been replicated at the University of Washington, and the University of Michigan has a similar requirement, says Takaki. The comparative multicultural approach provides an alternative to the two dominant branches of the discussion, which Takaki sums up as "Eurocentric exclusionism," which calls for a reaffirmation of Western Civilization, and "ethnic particularism," which places the emphasis on individual ethnic groups and fosters ethnic nationalism. "I think there's a third way to look at the issue," says Takaki, whose books include "A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America" (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1993).

Takaki's lecture is the first this academic year in the Chancellor's Distinguished Seminar Series on Mission, Quality, and Diversity, established one year ago by UCSC Chancellor Karl S. Pister and the Academic Senate. The seminars are the public part of a program in which prominent women and minorities spend a day with faculty and students to discuss how to improve the quality of higher education in the United States.

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