The Supreme Court recently finished hearing arguments on race based college admissions again. This time it’s about Asians getting pinched by The Man. Don’t worry. This argument is never going to end. Your group will get its shot before the Court someday soon.
My first encounter with affirmative action came during a shocking and repugnant afternoon meeting in the summer of1986 in the admissions office of the University of California Riverside (UCR). That was the day I found out how little esteem the government had for me as a citizen.
I had been a dilatory student in high school. I graduated from a Catholic K -8 school and when I matriculated to my local public high school I soon saw all it was offering me for education were things the nuns had already taught me by sixth grade. I relaxed and took the first two years of high school off. Girls and goofing around with my buddies seemed to be a better way to spend my time. I was a jock - a football player and track athlete - and I was smart enough to get by with minimal effort (and attendance) in most of my classes.
Unlike the frenzied high score seekers who populate the test taking mills today I didn’t take the SAT until a week after I graduated high school. I did pretty well (1120) considering I had been out until 2am the morning of the test chugging Old English forty-ouncers with my lifelong friends who weren’t headed off to college.
Even then I had the feeling that college was going to be the great separator of all bonds. It was a night of goodbyes. That was June 1986. I’ve been trying to backtrack ever since.
In August 1986 I got a letter from the University. They wanted to talk to me about my recent application and admission to the school. I had never been on their campus before so instead of brushing off the letter (which is my inherent response to people contacting me in any way) I decided I’d show up.
I was met by two smiling people who wanted to give me wonderful news. I had qualified for admission under a special program. Please understand, faithful readers, Richard Nixon had nothing on me for paranoia. I had a what I’ll call “challenging” upbringing so I have trust levels somewhere below that of an international drug lord.
What is this wonderful thing you’re going to give me I asked in suspicion. My immediate hostility to their news confused them. They went to another office and came back with reinforcements. Three hours later I had argued five college administrators into letting me in the school without any “affirmative action”.
“If I’m not good enough to be here then don’t let me in,” I repeated and repeated and repeated.
The compromise reached was that I would meet with a counselor once a week to check on my progress. I met with the lady counselor once (maybe twice). After I saw she was black and not in the regular counselors’ offices I suspected a game was afoot. I did three quarters and bounced from the school. My time there was the root of my hatred for and distrust of bureaucracy, especially the education bureaucracy.
I left the school thinking affirmative action was all about stigmatizing my race. I still think that but I now I understand it is about much more than race.
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