They caught me by surprise. I asked some friends for their thoughts on affirmative action, not imagining either would open the conversation with a sharp retort. They both did.
"Affirmative Action is going to backfire on white people." I had asked one friend what he thought about Washington state voters passing a measure similar to California's Proposition 209 this past election day. I didn't say "white people." But that's what my friend heard. "When white people wake up and realize this is a brown city, they're going to wish they had some affirmative action," he said.
I asked another friend about "The Shape of the River", a landmark book by the former presidents of Princeton and Harvard that offers results on 30 years of affirmative action. In so many words, and with many charts and anecdotes, authors William Bowen and Derek Bok conclude that affirmative action worked.
This other friend, a Chicano graduate of Harvard, told me, "Liberals and Democrats are not immune to racism." His answer came without prompting to give a political angle, but there it was: "It's horribly patronizing. 'We let you into our elite school, so now go back to the barrio and help your people. Stay on the hacienda.' They probably don't want to go themselves or send their own kids," he said.
That night I thought about my friends' testy reactions. Yes, many of us are still on edge about Prop. 209, which was passed by California voters -- not earlier this month, but two years ago. All of the affirmative action arguments, pro and con, drifted back to me from the deep storage I had placed them following the 1996 vote on Prop. 209. But the debate wasn't the point. Slowly my anger rose. Everyone has overcome obstacles, and I've overcome my share, too.
Throughout my life I have chosen not to stop and fight, but to do what I'm going to do. If a door slams in front of me, I won't try to open it or break it down - I'll look for another way in. Being called names or written off or persecuted are not as important as my choice to achieve a goal. In the process, I've taught myself to not let anger or pain overcome me, nor to let my strong emotions control my decision-making process.
But that is not to say I didn't live through the pain and anger of affirmative action. So, as I sat thinking about my two friends and getting angrier by the second, I had a flashback. But the images of my flashback were those of joy.
The first images that came to mind were me straddling my bike at my Stanford mailbox, holding a $9,000 grant offer -- the exact amount I need to finish my final two quarters at the university. That stunned me. I had told no one, not even my friends, of my financial predicament. But someone at Financial Aid, or the Dean's Office -- maybe the president of Stanford himself -- was actively, affirmatively, looking down on me.
Schools like Stanford consider you adopted the moment you matriculate. The big challenge for a prospective student is getting adopted. I believe affirmative action played a role in my "adoption" into Stanford, but maybe it didn't. I don't know. I never asked anyone who would know. I filled out the application like any other applicant. I paid the $55 application fee and sent the records and paperwork just as 18,000-plus other prospective Cardinal students did. No one at Stanford knew my name, nor that my application was in the stack, nor had I ever met personally with anyone who could pull a string.
Then another flashback: graduation day three years later, standing in my black robe under the hot June sun, pressing the edge of my diploma between my fingertips. My inner Chicano spoke up. "Chavo, you earned that diploma."
All the hard work, the pain and loneliness and poverty, the laws-of-physics-defying 28-hour days in the library were, in God's grace, of my own doing. Whether or not affirmative action played a role in my acceptance into Stanford, I worked for and won that sheepskin.
My anger comes from the fact that someone would assume me "unqualified" without knowing me, my story, my work ethic or my so-called qualifications. That anger is why my one friend tells me Prop. 209 will backfire on Whites. To him, the offense of such mal-intentioned behavior can't accrue forever.
It's also the reason my other friend harbors feelings toward those whom he calls "liberals and Democrats." He feels belittled by people who would assume his proper place is in the barrio helping "his people," propped up by tools he had to be "given" because he would have never earned those tools on his own. It makes me wanna holler. But I don't.
The good news is that in our marketplace I have to perform the job no matter what door or window I came through, or else I'll get the boot. Today, I might actually be judged by the content of my work. I may or may not be a columnist for this newspaper because of my sunset-brown skin, squat nose, and thick-dark hair, but if the readers think I'm bunk, I'm out of here.
This hope in today's market-driven test of quality, plus my faith, are what keep anger from ruining my day, every day. Some veteranos will read this column, then take me aside and remind me of the days when, no matter how good my qualifications, I would have been overlooked because of my race. The job, they will tell me, would have gone to some less-qualified white guy.
I respect that opinion. It's the truth. I'm grateful to these civil rights warriors for skirmishes large and small fought for the benefit of people like me.
I know perfectly well that, three decades ago, affirmative action - along with the Civil Rights Act and federally mandated desegregation - emerged as a necessary development. The dominant majority at that time would not have placed a civil rights proposition on a California ballot. It remains to be seen if today's dominant majority truly seeks civil rights for all people, or if anti-affirmative action measures in California, Washington and elsewhere are just selfish ethnocentrism in the tradition of their fathers.
I know one thing: the onus is on them, not on me.
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