Local Opinion: Affirmative Action

The woman grabbed my arm as I walked by and asked me, “Hey, kid, how would you like to go to college?”

I had no idea who she was or why she would be out on an East Los Angeles sidewalk asking a 22-year-old stranger about college. I smiled politely and said, “Yeah, that would be great, but I never finished high school. Thanks, anyway.”

I started to walk away, but she grabbed my arm again. “No problem,” she said. “Listen, we can help you get a GED and enroll you in a community college.”

The determined look on her face made me suspicious. Could it be a scam? Why would anybody want to help me get a college education?

“Look, lady, my wife and I have two babies at home and I just lost my job at a sheet metal factory. There’s no way I could afford college. I have to find work.”

Once again, I tried to walk away, and once again, she grabbed my arm. “How about if we helped you find a part-time job and provided you with a scholarship and a loan to pay for school?”

Josefa Sánchez, the resolute woman who stood on the sidewalk that day, was the director of the Centro Joaquín Murrieta, a non-profit organization promoting affirmative action in college admissions. During her tenure, she developed a personal support system that guided working-class Mexican Americans through the labyrinth of red tape involved in the college admissions process.

That chance encounter in 1972 became a turning point that dramatically improved my family’s economic outlook. Over the next several months, Josefa called regularly to remind me about application deadlines and appointments with college advisors or to simply offer encouragement. By 1976, I had earned a B.A. in English from Cal State, and my wife had enrolled in a community college program that led to her becoming a Critical Care R.N. We both went on to serve long and successful professional careers in public service.

We each were the first in our families to graduate from college. My wife was raised by a single mother. My parents were Mexican immigrants who worked in blue-collar jobs, but my mother loved reading, and we always had books in our home. She made sure we had library cards as soon as we could read. By the time I was 13, I had read every science fiction book our local public library branch offered.

Our success did not come easy. Affirmative action opened the door, but it took a mighty effort on our part to step up into the middle class. To make ends meet, I worked eight-hour shifts three days a week, which forced me to take all my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9 in the morning to 10 at night. I remember my wife pasting her nursing class notes on our kitchen cabinet so she could review them as we prepared dinner. Once the kids were in bed, we’d spend hours going over her math homework.

In 1996, just before Josefa’s untimely death, California voters passed Proposition 209, effectively banning statewide the use of affirmative action in college admission standards. The outreach program ended. Within two years, Black and Latino enrollment at Berkeley and Stanford dropped by 50%. Since then, despite many efforts to use poverty and parent education levels as substitutes for race, the 10 University of California campuses have been unable to achieve the levels of diversity that would have been possible with affirmative action.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to add a similar ban to its list of precedent-shattering rulings. If the court does so, it will be another tragic setback in our nation’s ongoing struggle to achieve social justice, and a crucial door to opportunity will close.