California Community College Districts: race/ethnicity of students and faculty

Solutions: 1. White faculty who honestly favor diversity can promote it by quitting. 2. White persons who honestly favor diversity can promote it by refusing to apply to teach, leaving the positions open to non-white applicants. 3. Non-white students who feel like the student trustee who “’feels a sense of erasure and uncomfortableness’ as a Latino student where the faculty is 79% white” can learn that such discomfort is (a) learned and not innate, and (b) not necessarily an indicator of a cultural flaw but instead an indicator of one’s own racism, sexism, and cultural ethnocentrism. 4. Teachers can teach and emulate that intelligence, merit, and worth transcend race, gender, and ethnicity. 5. Ponder: When a student feels more comfortable with a teacher of the same race, ethnicity, or gender, is this a sign that (a) faculty need to match students on these factors, or (b) the student needs to shed his or her racial, ethnic, or gender bias? 5. Ponder: Can only white, Jewish men with a mustache and who don’t wear socks comfortably learn from Albert Einstein? 6. Ponder: Who is truly racist, sexist, or ethnocentric: (a) the person who advocates “diversity” in skin color, DNA, and ethnicity, or (b) the person who advocates “diversity” in ideas, beliefs, and values? 7. Ponder: Is the diminishing of gender diversity in higher education, the reduction of the awarding of Ph.D.’s to males, and the exponential increase of the male drop-out rate in higher education classes, (a) as concerning as are racial and ethnic diversity or (b) simply a predictable product of the success of diversity training and affirmative action that we ought to celebrate?