A quick unnecessary update after my graduation: I am Asian, not white. Thanks to Brown and other incompetent instructors, I pushed myself to my limit and graduated with two majors in two years while receiving the Magna Cum Laude. Looking back to this comment, I wish to put more sarcasm to better use! Upon farewell, I want to share a few things with those who are with me, and for those who are not:

1. If you have done nothing wrong, DO NOT apologize.
2. Force yourself to take hard classes, you will learn much more and it worths every penny of your tuition. EASY CLASSES ARE EASY FOR REASONS.
3. If you found yourself in a position where no one appreciates, think through it twice and interrogate it, thoroughly. If you still have found it right, stick with it and voice for it. DO NOT BACK DOWN, or at least DO NOT LIE TO YOURSELF.

Guess I will never come back to this site again. Why Brown should give a damn about my comment? Why should those people who feverishly enjoy cutting corners care? Why should those who blindly submitted their "freedom-to" to an ideology which they do not even know what does entail? They don't, they just don't, yet they will never do.
And welcome to the reality, lads.
Ciao.

Original post:
First of all, I would like to openly applaud for the "Oct. 6th, 2019" comment on the forum, for his/her courage to be the dissident, amidst this dissident-unfriendly status quo. Hereby, on this precious occasion, I would like to share some of my enshrined subjective experience objectively, in a timely manner, and amidst this delicate nature. Abiding by the first amendment that we used to be proud of, I would like to conjure my fallow peers, regardless of what political propensity you have: you read, you think, you choose.

I took Professor. Karida L Brown's Sociology 180A this fall. Everything does appear roseate, Professor Brown demonstrated her cuddly facade and denounced that she cared about everyone's success. However, the brutal truth might be that she only cares about her "supporters", while leaving her dissidents a cold shoulder. That is not out of my expectations. Soon I realized that 90% of my peers have some extent of political pre-supposition in this class, and concord with professor Brown. No one questioned her inappropriate commentary(politicized, or just not right), everyone seems to agree with her with full consent, and of course, she was delighted about that. What if we take a look at other sessions? Also in this fall semester, I took Sociology 101 and Philosophy 100A (I have two majors). In these two classes, we had a great amount of debate, questions, so long and so forth. Why is this class a far cry comparing to others? The only rational explication for this situation is, perchance, due to Professor. Brown's extravagant teaching skills par excellence.

The conjuncture that I luckily realized what kind of person she is and her per se duplicity, was the grade and the paraphernalia of the reflection paper. With a similar confrontation just like the latest commentator had, or even worse, I got an F- for my reflection paper after a month I have submitted my work. Everything I did, was abiding by her rubric, despite the fact that I wrote a mild criticism to the quote which author Charles Mills wrote. Shocked and frustrated, she left me a concise comment, which was "come to see me with the explanation of the grade". Fair, fair enough. I have a firm belief that UCLA as "the top 1 public university in the U.S", all professors are judging students with their demiurgic consciences as if the Samson in Israel. Professor. Brown, should be one of them. should she? Not quite so for two reasons:

First, she allegedly purported during the lecture, that she will grade everyone's work by the end of the submitted week. Her procrastination directly caused me to drop this class by the last day of the dropping date WITH A W. I do understand that we all have our own business to tackle, but to say the least, I will not show my fabricated zealousness when I cannot facilitate what I have promised.

Second, to use fait accompli as the staunchest evidence, I have received an A+ and an A- for my other two classes, also two A- in my summer session, I am afraid that my writing expertise will not evaporate in a jiffy. With a score like 48/100, Professor. Brown should have offered me an adequate explanation based on the courtesy, or grading the paper on time as she has promised, which neither of them came into fruition, unfortunately.

By the end of my "meaningless, but trying to make it a bit meaningful" comment, I would like to spare my last sentences by asking the professor. Brown a few questions:

First, do you care about your students? if you don't, please do not demonstrate the inconsistency.

Second, if you do care, are you caring for the students who are coming from a financially or socially inferior background, while neglecting the others?

Last but must not be the least, if you treat one group differently from the others which sprouted from ex nihilo, as the dictum goes "one good turn deserves another", may I treat you differently, comparing to other professors? shall I call this "a reverse classism/racism"? I thought this class was supposed to end racism.

In the end, I deeply understand some of you may incur your indisposition, that originated from the confiscated sense of belonging which manifested in irrationality, will dislike my comment. I am hereby stating that everything I have said above is true. We are all engulfed by subjective facts, you and me. University, as the final tender land for impartial knowledge, I should have the bounden duty to remain clean from political trivials that resulted in implicit discrimination. If this is not inequality, not biased and exorbitantly opinionated, then what are these?

If Professor Brown saw this comment, please email me "for the explanation of this comment".

I also do have discontentment with her lecture contents, but I both lack of stomach and time to write since I have to file a complaint and submerge myself with philosophy dignitaries. The purpose of this comment is not because I dislike Professor Brown personally, but due to my conscientiousness and further betterment of UCLA.

Till next time, Fiat Lux.

With 40%+ of A rates, it slaps some of the comments here in the most brutal way.

I took Sociology 180A, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity with Professor Brown.
Do not even get me started on this class. This professor claims to preach and make the class 'fair' for everyone, but in actuality she does the exact opposite. First of all, my friends and I were never able to properly follow along or know what was going on in class. The only interesting part was when she would randomly show videos, but lectures, and her slides, never made sense. Not helpful in any way. She comes off as sweet, but she can actually be rude and is not fair at all. I spent so many hours with my TA working on my midterm and final, only to find out that they submit all the students work in a 'pool' and is graded at random. Someone please explain the logic there. Why would I spend countless hours with my TA (which I did) only for another TA to grade my stuff? I specially geared my assignments the way my TA advised me too and the TA who ended up grading my assignments didn't like the way my assignment was going.
Another important thing to mention that makes me extremely angry is the fact that I have asked Professor Brown (and the TAs) CONSTANTLY how they would want my paper and project do go and what they thought of my ideas. I KID YOU NOT, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME I would ask, they would say, "yeah that sounds great go for it! This is really up to you, we want to see how you think and we want to hear YOUR opinions!! We want you to take this the way you want to take it!" BS. THIS WAS BS. Not true at all. Because when I did do this and gave my own personal opinions and the way I viewed the prompt, it was not up to their standards or correct (*EVEN THOUGH I WENT TO BOTH MY TA AND THE PROFESSORS OFFICE HOURS. ANDDDDD THE WRITING CENTER!!!!*) Better yet, the way I viewed the quote wasn't what the quote was saying. Are you kidding me? It's a quote, everyone dissects quotes in different way, ITS OPEN ENDED, and if you are specifically stating in the prompt that you want to hear from US and hear what WE THINK, it is excruciatingly unfair to put my grade in jeopardy for that. (Prompt was to explain what we think the quote means and what the man who wrote it wanted to make clear, and connect it to class ideas). Same for the final project, they wanted us to personalize it, and guess what happened there..Yup, you can probably guess. This class is honestly horrifying.
Next, Professor Brown and the TA's never noticed, acknowledged, or even recognized effort. Ever. It was always about what we got on our assignments. I wish they would have thought, "Okay this wasn't exactly how I would have pictured this to go, but this student showed up to our office hours, cares, and really did try". I was always at office hours, would sit in the front and take notes, and I ended with a much lower grade than my friends who would sit on their phones in the back of class and chewing on their snacks every class. Not to mention, one of my friends did his midterm paper the day it was due, did not care about the class, and even took my advice on how to organize his paper, got a 100%. I on the other hand, who worked on my paper for weeks, ended up with a high C low B, and there was nothing I could have done to change that.
It takes a lot for me to dislike a class, because I personally enjoy being a student, but this class was a whole other story. Only take this class if you need to. I regret it beyond measure and got nothing but anger and frustration out of it.
The whole point of the class is to expose us' inequality' and how detrimental that can be for people who feel unequal in society, while I personally felt like I was not treated the same way other students in the class were being treated. It was assumed that I was not able to connect to the material and for that I was not given the time of day the same way others were.

It is absurd to make easiness tantamount to the quality evaluative term "good-ness"... sigh

I cannot articulate how awful this class was, so I will just say that the review from "fiat lux" is 100% accurate. One thing I would like to add is that professor brown and the ta's insinuated that my class started a petition to change the deadline of the midterm because she is black. This was of course not the case, and the template that was used for the petition was the same for another class that had a white, male professor. Although I was lucky and received an A (emphasis on lucky), many of my peers were not as lucky and ended with very low grades. I would highly recommend AGAINST taking this class as it caused me and my peers an enormous amount of anxiety. This was by far the worst experience I have had while at UCLA.

Is she the easy A you're looking for? Absolutely not, but she is a great professor who will try to help you if you work with her. For my class, many people did not like her and found her unhelpful, but in reality, those were the same students who did not attend our live meets or did not make any effort to meet with her during her office hours. As a class, we asked for an extension for our midterm and asked for her to cut down the page limit, and she did. She is very understanding and helpful If you do your part. This course is HEAVY in reading and writing. Your total grade depends on 3 assignments the midterm, a reflection about the class readings, and a final group project (which can be done alone). As long as you read the weekly readings and meet with her during her office hours to discuss your questions, you should be fine. If you slack off and give 20% of your energy, you probably will not pass. I loved her class and would definitely retake it with her if I went back in time. However, her TA's are not helpful what so ever. If you are confused about the class readings and need help to understand, I would not suggest meeting with the TA's because they will confuse you even more. I would suggest speaking to Dr. Brown directly via email or during her office hours because the TA's are just as clueless as the students are.

What a gem of a professor! She was so charming and helpful to all students. She was extremely relatable and is such a bright light at UCLA. Seeing her constantly made me smile. Her class consisted of short and easy essays and no tests. I would 100% recommend this class!

I had Dr. Brown for the RACE AND UNIVERSITY course of SOC 180A. It wasn't an easy class because there are a lot of dense readings that you have to understand to succeed in the class. However, Dr. Brown and most of the TAs were so good at breaking down these big concepts into digestible information so I was able to succeed with an A!!

We only had three assignments that made up our grades: 1 midterm essay, 1 reflection essay, 1 final project (can be done in a group or solo). Dr. Brown was so accommodating. Any time you needed an extension, she gave it to you with no questions asked. She also gave our entire class a four-day extension for the midterm essay and some students had even more of an extension on top of that. The reflection essay was easy, you just need to write about an experience in your life and relate it to one of the readings you read for that week. You only need to do 1 reflection essay for any given week. I suggest you do it during week 1, 2, or 3 because if you wait until the last minute, all your midterms or finals from other classes may prevent you from writing a good reflection. The final project is teaching the professor and the TAs on any of the topics you discussed in class through a medium of your choice: film, documentary, e-zine, podcast, website.

The only problem I had with the class was that it took 9 weeks for us to get any grade into the grade book. I did my reflection on week 2 and I received a grade during week 8. And my midterm grade from week 5 was given to me week 9, so that was really stressful since I didn't know how well I was doing. I feel like there was really no excuse for the late grades though because I understand this quarter was difficult to navigate but it shouldn't take 9 weeks to get some sort of grade.

Overall, my experience in class was solid. I learned so much and even though some of the readings were so long, the lectures and TAs were able to break down these concepts without me having to read every single page. OH! But I advise that if you are not confident in writing thoughtful essays, do not take this class. This is a writing-intensive course. You need to go into the class knowing how to write a great essay. The professor and TAs aren't going to hold your hand in writing these essays.

A lot of people in the class did not have the same experience as I did. Their experiences were more negative than mine. Some people thought the grading was too harsh. Some people believed the professor and TAs were not fair. One person was apparently called dumb by one of the TAs. To be fair, most of the people in my class were transfer students so I think it was more of a shock to see how different CC and UC are. But I would just like you to know that I was able to get an A in this class without completing every single reading and not putting as much effort into this class compared to my others.

YOU WILL SUCCEED IF YOU HAVE HAD A RECORD OF GETTING As IN WRITING INTENSIVE COURSES HERE AT UCLA. It's nothing new.

I loved this class and would jump at the opportunity to take another course with Dr. Brown. It's not easy, but it's incredibly interesting and rewarding. It will make you think critically about your social positionality at UCLA and in general. The first half of the class covers race theory, which you write about in your midterm (the hardest part of the class in my opinion, 33%). The second half of the class covers research on race, ethnicity, and class in academia. The class culminates in a group final with a lot of creative freedom (34%). You also have to write a one-page single-spaced paper reflecting on a reading from one week (33%).

The worst part of the class was my classmates; they constantly complained about being 'blindsided' by grading policies that were stated on the syllabus and wasted class time with their repetitive and disrespectful complaints. Granted, many students had troubles due to COVID that they felt were not being accounted for, but their approach was unprofessional and rude. As a previous review notes, this class is mainly transfer students (Dr. Brown does this intentionally because she's awesome), and I think some of my classmates were unprepared for the rigor of her class. She will not hold your hand through the work, but if you are kind to her she will be very kind to you.

I did every reading, went to every live lecture, worked hard on the midterm and final, and got an A+. If you have the opportunity to take this class, I highly recommend it but be ready to work hard to EARN your grade.

One critique of this class was that there were no discussion sections. Sections would have been really really helpful for understanding the material, but unfortunately, almost all the TAs in this class were unhelpful during office hours.

This class, although difficult at times, is FAIR GAME. If you do not do the readings and don't attempt to understand the readings (go to your TA's office hours and attend the live sessions for help) you won't do well.

A lot of people in my class complained about how the class was too hard and graded too hard when the reality is that they probably just didn't write a solid essay. Dr. Brown is VERY accommodating and wants to push you. Remember that this course is a WRITING INTENSIVE course so don't complain when the writing is too tough... it's literally a part of the class because as sociologists we should know how to write and analyze.

The class was graded on 3 assignments-- a reflection paper (1 page), a midterm essay (5-7 pages), and a final project (can be done in a group or alone). I ended up getting a 100% on the reflection, a 90% on the midterm, and currently don't have my final grade but from the comments of my professor and TA it seems like I am well onto an A.

You won't do well in this class by complaining. Read the articles (there's kind of a lot of reading, but understand the concepts more than finding minute details) and go to your TA's office hours for clarification on the material. They help clear up sooooo many concepts!!

The only annoying thing is that it took until week 9 for us to receive a single grade which is a little ridiculous, but it's not like not knowing our grades would have changed the fate of our final grade since we already submitted them in. And we really can't complain about our grades when Dr. Brown gave us like a 5 day extension on our midterm papers.

Basically, if you are a solid essay writer, take the class. It's interesting and as long as you understand the midterm prompt and analyze you should be able to get a 90% or higher on the paper. As for the reflection paper, it's easy. But if you're not that experienced with college-level writing, this class might be difficult for you.