Angela E. Oh
Los Angeles Human Relations Commission
From "Charting Diversity"
"Shaping the Entering Class: Determining Merit for Admission"
February 18, 2000

Angela E. Oh: I'd like to invite everyone for just a moment to stand up and take a minute to do something very basic because as we talk about the national dialogue, especially the subject of education, I think we can agree on a few things. One of the things is we all start from this place of breathing and this is something that we need to do as we enter these conversations. The other is that I believe everyone in this room probably would agree that we are all educable, meaning we don't all have the answers even when we think we have the answers, and so I start from that place. That's it. For people who want to leave, they can now slide out.

I'll tell a little story about who I am before I give my remarks and then you will perhaps be able to understand at a deeper level why I say some the things that I say. I am a second generation ethnic Korean, born and raised in Los Angeles. I am one of those rare people who can actually claim to say she is native Angelino. This is a face that does not necessarily get seen as an American face in the year 2000. It is. And that dark face over there is and the brown face that you see maybe next to you is, and the one that you can't quite figure out because it's probably of mixed racial backgrounds is an American face in 2000. Our kids know it.

I've been at UCLA and at UC-Irvine this year and I teach courses about race in American society and race in politics and policy. The students tell me over and over again and when I first heard this, it really bothered me, but I've decided that I need to process a little bit deeper what I'm hearing from the next generation. They tell me over and over again that the issue of race and racism is simply not a concern for them. When I first heard this, I got very angry and I'd say to myself in sort of vengeful way, when they hit their first brick wall and their head is cracked open (not literally, figuratively) and they're confused about why they are not getting the promotion that they've worked so hard for, they have not been given the opportunity that they were told they would be given if they hit a certain bar, perhaps, they'll look a little deeper.

The scientists right now in our national laboratories who are of Chinese descent in particular are running into this. These are people who thought if I could just be excellent in my technical capacity, I will be able to be promoted. I will be able to get ahead but when [Ho Li] has shown them that politics is much more powerful than their technical skill, you see-- It's confusing. It's complicated. It's difficult and in education, of course, what we've learned in our national conversations around the future of American society and where we find the unity among our people, one thing we hear over and over again is education. That is the vehicle. That's the vehicle that everybody has identified as the way in which we proceed, but what we've been focusing on is an outcome in all of the social science research that gets talked about in the public space, this issue of access, is that what we really care about?

I would suggest to you that we are equally concerned, if not more concerned, about the issue of completion. Great, you get in. You get in and then you drop out. Now, I'm a criminal defense lawyer by training. The term DWI means something very different in the criminal justice field than it does in academe. Here, drops, withdrawals and incomplete--they're a real problem, you see, and institutions can actually develop policy to minimize this because if you look at some of the research that's been done by the Department of Education, you see that this is a very significant factor that stands in the way of people completing their bachelor's degrees, so one of the things you think about as an institution is how you minimize that phenomena of DWI in academe.

Even if a student has very tough personal circumstances, you find a way to keep them connected to their higher education experience. You find a way to use technology to link them to a course that might be offered on line. You find a way to make it possible for them not to leave because what that's saying research suggests is once they're out, dealing with whatever it is that they're needing to deal with that has caused this DWI phenomena, the tendency to come back, the probability drops and then it affects the ultimate outcome that we all care about--this completion factor.

When my students tell me we don't care about race, racism is not a problem. I'm hearing it differently now. Here's how I hear it now. Because, of course, then I come back at them and I say, oh, you don't think that race is a problem? That's why Mr. Byrd was dragged behind that truck down there in Japser, Texas. You don't think race is a problem? That's why Vincent Chin was murdered at the hands of a couple of out-of-work auto workers in Detroit. You don't think race is a problem? And that's why we have these policies that are being introduced in states like California and Texas and Florida that say we want to take away a very modest tool that helps us begin to look at where we might intervene in trying to create opportunity, not the result. We don't want to give you a reward. All we want is to create the opportunity in introducing a tool like affirmative action but that is not enough. The state of California, 15% of the minority contracting dollars reserved for women and minorities. I guess 85% isn't enough for non-women and minority contractors. And it's a catch-22 because in order to get a contract you have to have done a contract but you can't have done a contract unless you get a contract, so I mean, some policymakers recognized this a few years ago, but that tool's been taken away so we move to another level of solution. We talk about merit.

The way we have to begin to think about admission in places like UVA is going to mean more work for people like yourselves, from students to advisors to people who are teaching, to the highest levels of administration. It's going to mean a greater investment of time and thinking and creativity, something that many, I guess, feel they don't have to begin with. It's hard enough to handle the responsibilities, duties, and needs, both on a professional and personal level, but I guess my answer is, you're just going to have to find that time. You're going to have to find some strategy. If you really care about this issue because in the conversation at a national level what we hear is that, and this is across the boards, yes, students who have an opportunity to learn in a more diverse environment actually feel better about their educational experience and they recognize the value in it because they recognize that the places from which they come don't offer them that opportunity. Does this mean we need to have ethnic studies programs and clubs on campus and things like that? I say yes at this early stage in their lives.

There's a huge debate now in California. Ward Connerly is finished with Prop 209. He's basically gotten that policy in place that says we can no longer consider race or ethnicity and now he's moving on to dismantling all of the ethnic studies program in the University of California. That's the next issue on the table and it will travel to other places that seem amenable to the notion that we get rid of it. His theory is a good one. I mean, it articulates a feeling that all of us have and that is that we would not have the need for these programs because our stories, our experiences, our intellectual contributions, our technical contributions, everything else that we have to offer in our experience would be integrated into American history or sociology or psychology, the arts. It would already be there. That would be wonderful. That's not the world we live in. That's not the world we live in, and I think many of us can recognize that.

So, what it means is that we should have these programs in place. Why? Because as young people they really need to find a place where they can solidify who they are. Some of us spend our entire lives trying to solidify who we are and we don't get there until we take our last breath and then we say, oh, right. The income really doesn't matter. How many bathrooms I have in my house really doesn't matter. What kind of car I drive really doesn't matter, because when you're taking that last breath, suddenly what matters is where were my relationships. Did the fact that I walked in this [sweeter] make one damn bit of difference to another human being? Did I have any meaning? Did I offer any meaning to anybody else at the end of the day? These are things that dawn on us a little too late sometimes.

Students who want to learn about who they are in terms of their morphology and what the world did because of their morphology or politics. They go to these ethnic studies programs. Many of them at the University of California don't come from very different diverse backgrounds. They come, they find out their history. They get really angry. You as institutional players on the administration side, you're going to have to deal with that because it's righteous anger. The injustice that their families experienced, reading the opinions in the United States Supreme Court, best and brightest that this country had to offer talking about how Chinamen could in no way ever as we move through the development of American society become a part of America. These people are too peculiar. Their ways are anti-civilization. Of course, it's an irony that everybody looks to Sun Tzu's Art of War or the Book of Five Rings in management course by Musashi. Now everybody wants to know what these ancient cultures had to offer because their strategies for living were really strategies that give you great insight on how you proceed day to day, so you look at the institutions that we're operating in and the students are saying we don't see race as an issue, but they're not saying we don't see race as an issue through our lives.

What they're saying is in making our friends, in finding our social relationships, in moving toward projects in which we have to engage, we don't have these problems that your generation Professor Oh seems to have. You guys are always talking about injustice and things that aren't right and righteous grievances. We don't see it. Well, that tells me that our generation did part of its job right. We delivered a society that now says it is illegal. You see, when I was born, it was not illegal to discriminate based on race and ethnicity. Somebody could sit in an office and tell me we know you're one of the best and brightest but we can't let you have this job because our clients won't have much confidence in you because of what you look like. Perfectly legal. We know you've got the money to pay for this room, but we don't put up people of your kind. Perfectly legal. That's not legal anymore. That's a huge step. Of course, try to implement the process that's been put in place and we've got another issue, but that's our challenge for this time.

Thinking about education, here's what we know. Access--the Department. of Education just issued a publication. Some of you may know of it, "Answers in the Toolbox." How many of you have seen this? "Answers in the Toolbox." None of you have seen this publication? Oh, my God. This is what it looks like. Okay. It's just released from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. A longitudinal study of 11 years. A base sample of 28,000 students from across the country. This study looks at what institutions can do. The answers, as the author says, are in the toolbox and this is part of the toolbox. It's giving you some intelligence about what factors seem to actually deliver results that you and I want, people who are concerned about education, want. Yes, there's a whole issue around admissions, but more importantly, in my view, it's the completion of that higher education experience and what we know is today, unlike 20 years ago, it takes about five years for people to complete their undergraduate degrees for many reasons. We've got sociological and other kinds of changes going on. We also know that actually, at least in this study, the level of the parents' education is one of the weakest factors in terms of predicting the outcome of completion. Many of the students surveyed, a full close to 30%, don't even know what the level of education is of their parents. They know what their parents do for their occupation, but they don't know what the level of education is of their parents.

What is one of the strongest predictive factors? Intensity of the high school curriculum. Intensity of the high school curriculum--that is measured by course offerings. There is a law suit pending in California right now that actually attacks that. To the extent that an institution in the high school level offers a certain level of math beyond algebra II and most students take it, offers core laboratory sciences, offers civics, offers English at a particular level, it develops what is called an academic resource criterion. It's a conglomeration of several things. What do we rely on? We rely on test scores and grades. Now, you realize, grades, for example, and class rankings, excuse me. About 19% of the schools in the country don't even give you a class ranking at the high school level. Okay. And 53% of the high schools in the country use in their GPA calculation non-academic courses, so what are you really getting on a read there? It's not going to be a very good predictor of completion. The strongest factor was the intensity and that one, that factor, is something that institutions can control. You cannot micromanage individual lives, but you, as people involved in settings like this can look for those kinds of factors and perhaps start working with other institutions to create a situation where we might realistically be able to use this X-percent solution that is offered by so many states.

I just read in the paper this morning, Florida's going to move to its 20% plan. Texas, California, they've both got their X-percent plan, 4%, 10%. That's the easy way out. It's a simple and not very smart solution because of the problems I just talked about right now. Yet, there's another part of me that says but how else, given the situation that we're in do we insure the diversity that we heard this morning is so important. Okay. Because you have schools right now that don't offer the AP courses. That's what the law suit is about that Eva Patterson has brought in California. Is it fair to be expecting that students that don't even have the chance to take those classes must compete in an admissions' process that relies on that sort of thing? No, it's not fair. We don't need to engage in expensive litigation or multi-million dollar studies to reach that conclusion. I don't think, but you know, we feel more comfortable when we have numbers and data and things like that. It's more real. This is how powerful it is.

This Wednesday night I'm teaching a class and I have a young man say to me, we're talking about the intersection between class and race, and we're looking at poverty statistics and he says, I can't even have a discussion about this because those numbers don't add up to 100 [laughter]. We had to stop the class and talk about what the meaning of these numbers are and yes, you're going to have people that are going to check more than one box in identifying their race and ethnicity and that's why you don't have a 100. We were over by 16 points, but he couldn't even move off of the numbers not adding up to 100 before we could get to the substance of the conversation for about five minutes. When that happens on a national level, it takes us five years, maybe 50 years in some instances.

But what we're looking at right now is a challenge that requires us to breathe, because everybody knows that we have now moved from this manufacturing to information age economy. Everybody knows no matter what color you are, black, white, yellow, red, green, purple, if you don't have an education, you cannot compete in this economy. The opportunities will not be there. Nobody misapprehends the importance of this reality today, so what does that mean? We're stuck in this transforming time. I am acting as a cultural interpreter, not as an ethnic person, as a cultural interpreter, meaning that we are looking at all of these things. I often wondered--why is that I studied psychology, business, public health, law and then in law, I don't even go into something that my mother could respect. I'm a criminal defense lawyer [laughter]. She didn't like that too much, and finally, at the end of the day I find myself-- Well, not the end of the day-- In the middle of the day, I find myself doing conversations like this with people who are actually in positions of authority and power and influence at institutions that can make a difference in what this society is going to look like in the next decade or two. Just to be modest. I won't even go century.

What we decide now, what you decide in your individual capacity will make an enormous amount of difference in shaping the whole. This is the level at which you begin to wonder, okay, what kinds of policies can we do first for administrators at the highest levels? You've got to use your persuasive powers. Persuasive powers to lead in a direction that says we want to not only draw these students. You've got to make that statement. The President did not say we are going to put on the front burner the issue of race in America as a frivolous act. Lots of us were working on race relations issues a decade before this initiative was ever even introduced, but the fact that the President said this is an issue that the nation needs to be concerned about, put on the front burner, a topic that many people have been trying to work on in their own local communities for years and years and years affirmed that work and also created a situation where at the national level our major institutions could begin to look at race as a factor. Confront some of the tough history that we all have to confront. That kind of leadership is not particularly productive on the political level, right? Buys you no political capital because you know you're going to be attacked no matter what you say, no matter what you do, but it was an important step to take, a courageous step to take as far as leadership.

For a president of a university to say this matters, we value it, and this is how we value it is a very important thing. At an administrative level, as I said to you before, you need to be figuring out, advising, counseling, policies that are going to minimize student's withdrawal, dropping, incomplete. You need to figure out ways in which you can offer that student who has to leave for whatever reason an opportunity to somehow stay connected to their higher education experience and we do find that one of the major changes that's happened in the last 20 years is that students do not just go to one university and complete. There is a trend that's very clear, that's multi-institutional. If a student comes into your institution and you do not have the course offered here in this university that they may need to bring them to a point where they can compete. In this environment you have an MOU with a community college nearby and you connect that institution with your institution, you offer that student an opportunity to study that particular subject at your community college level and hook in. You don't put up policies that block that possibility. Multi-institutional training is common now. Okay.

And you have to take the time to counsel and advise. You have to take the time to utilize the technology and one last piece that I'll offer is that you have to understand that the media has become a very important and powerful force in this time, and our media is not particularly bright on issues of education and education policy. You have the experience, you have the information, you have the data, you have the analysis that should be put forward. You should be sharing with the media that information, so that when they talk about the debate around affirmative action or they talk about these X-percent solutions, that they have some real intelligence and they're not doing just the 30- and 60-second sound bite that everybody else picks up except throwing a few additional quotes into the picture. Have them be thoughtful. Cultivate them. They are a powerful force. We all have relationships with the media.

I don't know if this was enough, but this is where I'm going to bring it to an end. I thank you very much.