One of President Obama’s most popularly recognized speeches is on the topic of race – a subject that pits histories of injustice against the American promise of equality. Since the civil rights movement, strategies for overcoming social barriers have been as diverse as the groups they attempt to represent. And UC Davis students need not look far for a case in point.

Vociferous protesters on “May Day” (International Workers‘ Day) certainly invoked some discomfort, no doubt to raise awareness about racial, ethnic and cultural issues. Other incidents illustrate the vain tactics being used to foster acceptance, such as reminding people to “check their privilege” and accusing men of their inability to be marginalized (a surely debatable claim). But these cases, to name only a few, raise a serious question: Is it possible that when groups continually emphasize differences, they inadvertently reinforce the feelings of otherness and marginalization that they attempt to overcome?

To begin the discussion, identity group politics attempt to advance the interests of its members, whose collective identity is based on the perception of being oppressed. Contemporary examples of groups include African Americans during the civil rights movement, feminist women and the LGBT community, not to mention some of UC Davis‘ own student organizations and activists. And to be sure, many of these identity groups remain marginalized today.

However, the hurdle of identity group politics is that in order to achieve a group identity, the group members must continually reinforce what makes that group so apparently different. In other words, the group must define how it differs from the norm and announce how its members continue to be oppressed because of it. By extension, preserving that newly established identity means being able to say who is and who is not a member of the group. In many cases of racial and ethnic-based politics, group membership therefore becomes based, not on shared experiences, values and ideas, but the expression of our biology.

Is there an essential or authoritative experience to being of mixed-race or African-American or mestizo? Do we unintentionally marginalize others like us by over-generalizing? At what point are we simply stereotyping?

Instead of connecting people based on common empathies, the homespun form of identity politics often fixates on exclusion. Theorist Michel Foucault explains the rationale: By emphasizing a group’s distinctness – or “peculiarities” – the subjected group can take ownership of the things that make them different from the norm. This can feel very empowering. Theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak accounts for the “strategic” value of crude generalizations about a people, which through public protest and demonstration can tactically dismantle the structures of suffering.

But when used uncritically, writes Spivak, group identities based around stereotypes – and not necessarily shared experience – tend to be fleeting shortcuts to empowerment. They’re especially damaging to the group members themselves.

In a recent study, Claude Steele, a Stanford psychologist and researcher, demonstrated that racial and gender stereotypes in standardized testing could be overcome simply by changing the students‘ expectations. In other words, by eliminating the storied expectations that women/minorities underperform on these exams, Steele virtually eliminated the expected “achievement gap” between them and White male students as well as Asians. The similarly documented “Obama effect” suggests that the inspiration of an African-American president has helped black students perform better on exams by decreasing racial anxieties.

Underserved groups deserve better representation than the yellers and shouters that dominate much of campus politics. Whether by megaphone or in student senate meetings, the tone by group advocates should no longer be accusatory and divisive. Ultimately, including as many people as possible into the discussion about identity means listening more than we speak.

Proposition 1D is an attempt by state lawmakers to avoid cuts in general fund-supported state spending. It would overturn Proposition 10, passed in 1998, which earmarks tobacco tax revenue in California for First 5 early childhood programs throughout the state.

Both proponents and opponents of Proposition 1D will tell you one thing – look at the facts. The proposition would divert $268 million in annual tobacco tax revenue and the $340 million First 5 has in reserve away from First 5 and into the state’s general fund. The state will have to find $608 million from somewhere else if 1D does not pass.

Finding any revenue at all to address the budget deficit is hard for state lawmakers; finding a different $608 million will present a difficult task for the state senate.

Given this, we still recommend voting against Proposition 1D.

The First 5 program in Yolo County currently has an annual budget of approximately $3.5 million. Last year they spent $3.1 million to aid approximately 10,000 children in Yolo County.

If Proposition 1D were to pass, the First 5 Yolo program would have its funding severely cut. Estimates suggest that programs and outreach would be reduced to reaching only 5,000 children. In addition to the 50 percent drop in number of children reached, approximate funds per child would plummet from $199 per year to $87 per year.

Those in support of 1D say that the money cut from First 5 would be spent on other state government health and human services programs such as Medicaid, foster care, child care subsidies and preschool programs. While this might be true, voters would have to rely on state lawmakers to keep their word, as nothing guarantees that the money will be spent in these areas, only that it is possible. Nothing in the language of Proposition 1D suggests that now is a good time to start trusting politicians.

Moreover, First 5 programs are already addressing the areas listed above. Although these programs “only” aid children from birth to age five, we feel that these years are the most important for children to get the attention, education and healthcare they need.

Supporters of Proposition 1D also point out that First 5 programs have a vast sum of money that is currently unspent. The fact is that the majority of this money, rather than moldering away in a vault as some would suggest, is tied up as money First 5 needs to fund its multi-year contracts. These are contracts and multi-year plans that have been painstakingly mapped out to provide maximum benefit for children as they grow up. Shifting the First 5 reserves to the state’s general fund would cut these contracts short and leave millions of children in the lurch.

Programs and departments all over the state are being forced to cut their budgets. Everyone from law enforcement to the offices of higher education in the state has had to make sacrifices. The only reason to make such sacrifices is to make sure that the state doesn’t collapse. We don’t want the state to collapse. We want our children to have a stable, prosperous place to grow up in. Given this long-term goal of improving the quality of life for future generations, it would seem the height of foolishness to hamstring the funding of a program that is currently doing exactly that.

State lawmakers should sit down and have a productive dialogue with First 5 representatives in order to reach a mutually beneficial compromise, rather than the hasty, drastic action they are currently trying to enact.

Until such a compromise can be reached, we urge everyone to vote against Proposition 1D.

Part of growing up means coming to the inevitable realization that, sometimes, things will not go the way you had hoped. Unfortunately, for those of us currently doing our growing up here at the University of California, Davis, it would appear that these unfortunate times occur more often than not.

Last week, a vote by the University of California Board of Regents to approve Linda Katehi, UC President Mark Yudof’s selection for the next chancellor at UC Davis, was met with mixed feelings of celebration and confusion. While some are hailing Yudof’s selection as a progressive pick that will help Davis be viewed as a system-wide powerhouse, many students on campus have been left scratching their heads and wondering how a man like Yudof can find the peace of mind to sleep at night.

For those of you unfamiliar with the growing controversy surrounding President Yudof’s selection, stand by for a brief history lesson.

As of right now, Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef rakes in an annual $315,000, while Linda Katehi earns a respectable $356,000 for her service as provost and vice chancellor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

While these staggering figures should be ample compensation for two executive officials working in their respective public universities, recent events are beginning to make it look like the already bulging pockets of UC officials need to be, once again, lined with a fresh coat of cash.

Katehi’s salary, which was also approved by the regents last week, will start at the obscene amount of $400,000 per year. Those of you who were paying attention during my history lesson would know that this amount means a 12.4 percent increase from Katehi’s current salary, and a whopping 27 percent increase over Vanderhoef’s previous salary.

It’s also important to remember that a chancellor at the University of California already receives a place of residence, an annual $9000 allowance for automobile expenses, a guaranteed faculty position upon completing their term as chancellor, as well as a laundry list of other benefits that would make any other position in higher education seem like an entry level spot at ITT Tech.

By this point, I’m hoping that at least some of you have made the connection between this absurd example of out-of-control executive compensation and the current financial woes of the UC system, and are asking the question of how the regents can afford such careless spending.

Those of you who have read my column over the past two years can probably figure out where this is going, but for those of you who haven’t, get ready for a series of peculiar coincidences.

Last Thursday, which I may remind you was the exact same day that the UC Board of Regents approved Katehi and her disgustingly bloated salary, the Board also voted to increase undergraduate student fees by a margin of 9.3 percent. Oh, and don’t forget to tack on the additional $450,000 annual salary the regents approved for Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Yudof’s selection to take the helm at the UCSF campus.

So let’s take a moment and try to process all this information. At the beginning of this year the UC system was facing a two-year budget deficit of roughly $437 million. To combat such a dramatic financial shortcoming, the UC Board of Regents have consistently raised fees since 2001, bringing about an astonishing 70 percent increase in tuition over the last eight years.

Meanwhile, amidst all the talk of budget deficits and the ever-growing financial burden on UC students, President Yudof can somehow justify handing out an $85,000 salary increase without even batting an eye.

Does this remind anyone else of the UC executive compensation scandal back in 2006, the same scandal that arguably forced former President Dynes to resign? Or, perhaps even better, does anyone else find it slightly ironic that when Yudof first accepted the position of president he vowed to, “regain the trust of Californians and the Board of Regents,” while overcoming these financially challenging times?

If anything has become clear after last Thursday’s meeting, it’s that any hope of economic relief for students won’t come from the top ranking UC officials. Unfortunately, they’re all too busy looking out for each other, which, I’m sad to say, has become business as usual within the UC system.

JAMES NOONAN feels sorry for anyone who isn’t graduating next month, and urges them to pick up the pace. This “higher education” thing isn’t getting any cheaper. Feel sorry for him at jjnoonan@ucdavis.edu.

My father used to tell me ridiculously inaccurate “factoids” when I was a kid. When the mood striketh him, he told me stuff like: the Native Americans built the Statue of Liberty to scare white people away from their land; that people had four toes because a powerful earthquake can fuse two random toes together; and that those huge white windmills on the hills were actually depressed airplane propellers that did not get to live out their dreams of being part of a plane. (He also told me that communism was the world’s worst evil, but I don’t think he was joking with that one.)

Despite this informal schooling based on my father’s sheer boredom, I still turned out pretty normal, yeah? Sure I used to wet my bed every day until I was 19, but according to the American Psychiatric Association, I am what you consider “normal,” with only a few maladjustments dealing with the male gender (pssh, whatever that means). Thus, I’m confident that I can raise some decent babies because what the hell, how hard can it be? Just feed those bastards popcorn everyday for like 18 years and boom, you got yourself a second form of income.

First, it’s okay to be disappointed. In my quest to live with the guilt of incessantly letting down my parents, I have a motto: Parents are supposed to be disappointed in you; the day they cease to be is the day they cease becoming parents.

In my case, I’d be pretty sad if my kid wasn’t terribly interesting or witty. Not to say that I am myself, but if my daughter became a big dull dud, I wouldn’t know what to do. Think how unfortunate it’d be if your kid were someone even you wouldn’t want to be friends with at that age. What if I avoided those important mother-daughter talks not because discussing about dating and men is awkward to me, but because talking to Eliza (that’ll be her name by the way, don’t steal it) will just bore me to tears?

How could I make her more interesting? Should I let her join the circus, or abandon her at the zoo for a couple of hours just to give her a good story to tell at future cocktail parties? More importantly, am I going to get in trouble with child services for even thinking these thoughts?

At the expense of a good laugh, it’s okay to give your kids wrong information sometimes. For this, I thank my father’s miseducation of me, but who could blame him? It’s too much fun (wrongly) molding a child’s brain. For instance, I am determined to teach my kids the wrong names of colors just so when they grow up, they’ll always have a difficult time registering that yellow is called yellow and is not actually blue. I mean, they’ll see the same shades as everybody else, but they just have to take an inordinate amount of time saying it right because they were taught wrong by me, teehee! And don’t even get me started on that multiplication table – or as my children will come to know it as the “multiplication musical chairs of backwards long division.“

Be supportive. My friend Trung and I were talking about how the proverbial envelope could be pushed any farther when we got to be thirty. While I contemplated how much sexier female pop stars could possibly get or how much more offensive rap music could become if they really tried, Trung was considering how things in the sex and relationships department could shock us as parents.

He wondered how he’d have to handle his teenage daughter being a fervent advocate of furry fandom, for example. Basically, furrydom is an affinity toward what Wikipedia defines as “anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics” (it doesn’t have to be a sexual fetish, but it often develops into one). Now he has to deal with the fact that his kid volunteered to be the school’s mascot not because she had so much spirit, but because it actually got her jollies off.

And what about my kid? What if my son turns out to be a necrophiliac and one day falls in love with and wants to marry a corpse? Do I have to meet its parents and have the corpse over for Thanksgiving? Is it wrong to brag about my son since their kid sort of lost the whole “game of life” thing? (“Oh that’s nice that your son is a doctor, my Judy wanted to be one too but she can’t because, well you know … she’s dead.“) What about the wedding rehearsal dinner? Do we just put the corpse in the coffin or tie it up with string and pull a Weekend at Bernie’s? And what if the corpse is a guy and my husband is more bothered by the fact that our son is a homosexual than a necrophiliac? Damn, do you think they teach this shit in Lamaze classes?!

LYNN LA genuinely wants to thank her parents for not screwing her up too badly and for giving her a mildly enjoyable, yet thoroughly neurotic, childhood. To thank your parents in a completely unemotional and detached manner, e-mail them and then Cc: it to ldla@ucdavis.edu.

Last weekend, while reveling in the new Star Trek movie‘s general awesomeness vision of a unified, space-faring humanity, I realized how little we are currently doing to make this vision a reality.

That‘s not to say we should don ugly space-sweaters and go looking for pointy-eared aliens suspiciously resembling Lord of the Rings elves, but begin to think about the long-term survival of Homo sapiens (that‘s us). If the human race hopes to survive in the long haul, then it must expand and intensify its exploration of space and eventually establish colonies outside of Earth. Why? Well, hold your Spaceballs because I‘ll tell you.

Overpopulation: Today there are just over 6.8 billion people living on the jolly blue and green rock we call home. The world population growth rate fluctuates between 1 percent and 1.5 percent and with so many people getting busy, nearly 80 million people are added to the word population every year, and by 2050 the world population is projected to reach about 10 billion, a shit ton of people for little ol‘ Earth to support. Colonizing other celestial bodies in the solar system and beyond could remedy this by providing a population safety valve and preventing a Malthusian nightmare from occurring. The moon and Mars are prime candidates for future colonization. Once habitable planets are discovered outside of the solar system, mankind could close the immense distances between the stars by building the theoretical warp drive designed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierrie.

Resources: The earth cannot long sustain the rate humanity is currently consuming its resources, and all who have endured Houseboats undoubtedly understand this sentiment. Unless you want to be the guy/gal stuck suckling ketchup packets for sustenance on day 2, people must manage their scarce resources (Natty kegs and hot dogs) to last through the 3-day haul. Like the impoverished Houseboater abandoning ship to search for more Natty, humanity must also go beyond the Earth to secure natural resources. Asteroids could be mined for iron-nickel ore and other valuable metals and ice-covered asteroids and comets could be tapped to provide new water sources. This would lighten Earth‘s heavy burden, save the planet, while satiating mankind‘s hunger for resource consumption.

International Cooperation: In addition to being a pinnacle of human technological achievement, the International Space Station represents what the international community can accomplish when it unites under a common purpose. Space exploration unites humanity, gives it a common purpose and decreases the chances mankind will destroy itself. As colonization of the Solar System and beyond commences, nationalistic rivalries will be replaced with a pervasive sense of international cooperation that will hopefully bring stability to Earth. Ever read Ender‘s Game? It‘s kind of like that, minus the xenocidal aliens (although that would work too).

Cataclysmic Disaster: When it comes to the long-term survival of a species, it‘s never a good idea to put all of your marbles into one basket, but unfortunately this is exactly humanity‘s state of affairs today. If a mass extinction event were to occur on Earth today like it has in the past (i.e. what the asteroid cataclysm did to the dinosaurs and Gigli to Ben Affleck‘s acting career), then would be game over for Homo sapiens. Establishing a human presence outside of Earth would increase the likelihood of long-term survival by sowing humanity‘s seed among the stars.

To ultimately achieve these ends and ensure humanity doesn‘t bite the dust, space agencies worldwide and especially NASA need to taste bigger pieces of the budgetary pie while at the same time receiving more public support. Eventually NASA, the European Space Agency and other national space agencies should unite to form an International Space Agency, combining all the resources and brainpower of the human race to venture into the great unknown.

If the world can set aside its differences, come together, and make Homo sapiens a space-faring race, then the fantastic future displayed in Star Trek may one day change from science fiction to science fact.

MIKE HOWER thinks the 21st century is not as technologically marvelous as it was cracked up to be. We don‘t even have phasers yet. Beam him a message at mahower@ucdavis.edu.