Posted 5 years, 7 months ago at around evening time by oso
With the help of HP, I’m beginning to better understand the mentality of the minority conservative. I don’t mean to generalize – obviously minority conservatives are just as varied as WASP liberals – but for this series I’m going to make some general observations. A lot of liberal minorities call conservative minorities sell outs. They claim these conservatives got lucky and found success in what is otherwise an unjust society and therefore want to hold everyone else to the same standards. (remember That Colored Fella’s post saying minority conservatives, by nature, had a psychological problem?) I think those criticisms are unfair. After several beers, conversations, and emails with HP, I am beginning to better understand what makes him a conservative and what both repeals and appeals to him about liberals. And I can say with confidence it’s not to hold other minorities and the working class to the same unjust standards with which he was able to succeed.
Let me tell a story about a job I had a few years ago. I had just transferred to UCSD and was looking for more meaningful work than pouring espresso. The problem always was that – after tips and the free food and coffee – I made more money working at a cafe than I would have doing something like substitute teaching or working as a research aide. But then a friend of mine – also upper-middle class, White, and liberal – from high school told me about a job she just got as an inner city tutor/mentor … pay: $13 an hour, plus transportation.
Perfect. I interviewed with a pretty girl who seemed to be more on top of her shit than just about any other college student I had ever met. I remember leaving the interview thinking she seemed simultaneously impressed and reluctant. But I got the job and went to our next weekly meeting on Wednesday night. That was when I realized I was hired as the token white guy. The program, called Early Academic Outreach Program (or EAOP) was established in 1976, but didn’t really take off until 1995 when UC regent Ward Connerly (we’ll talk more about him later) successfully outlawed affirmative action on UC campuses. What many conservatives don’t understand is that even if the courts or regents outlaw affirmative action, university administrations and companies will continue to come up with programs which seek diversity because they understand it is better for their business. For example, while proposition 209 barred employers from affirmative action hiring in 1996, many companies such as Qualcomm still have aggressive programs seeking diverse and well qualified candidates.
So the idea of EAOP is to send minority students at UCSD to high schools in low income neighborhoods and evangelize the importance of higher education as well as help the students out out in math and English classes. Since the program seeks greater diversity in higher education, it would (arguably) be hypocritical to not hire a single white male.
Which was me. There were also two and then three white girls, a handful of Asians, Persians, and Native Americans, and the rest (about 50) male and female Latinos and Blacks. Which, if you’ve been to UCSD you know, is a large chunk of the minority student body.
When I first walked into that meeting, I felt the skeptical gaze of just about everyone in the room. It’s not just minority conservatives who question what I call the Peace Corps Syndrome (upper-middle class, suburban Whites feeling they are destined to save all the poor brown people of the world) – minority liberals are as well. In fact, I remember Cindy posting about her own inherent skepticism (if I could only find the link) of a bunch of white kids who showed up at some low income community meeting she was at.
I pretended not to notice. Sat by myself in a corner, listened intently, and only spoke when spoken to. I was assigned to Gompers High School in Chula Vista, which had recorded the lowest average SAT score in the county as well as lowest percentage of graduating seniors. The year before, a student was shot down and murdered because he crossed out the graffiti of another student. When some of the veterans of EAOP heard I was assigned to Gompers, they flashed me a raised eyebrow and ironic grin. One longtime mentor told me he used to arrive late to class at UCSD because when the police order a school lock down at Gompers, nobody is allowed to leave until it is lifted.
I would go to Gompers two days a week from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and tutor kids in geometry and algebra. I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task and I was expecting some hostility from the students, especially after everyone kept hyping up Gompers’ reputation. But I didn’t expect it on my very first day.
“They must be paying you a grip of cash to come all the way down here from La Jolla.” It was the first thing the kid had said more than “uh huh” or “nah” in the 20 minutes I had been explaining to him and his friends why x-1 is the same as 1/x.
In a matter of micro-seconds I thought about how I should respond or if I should respond at all. At first I was going to say that it wasn’t for the money, that’s not why I was there. It was to help people and make the world a better place, yada, yada, yada. But I realized in time that that was my Peace Corps Syndrome coming out. And that it wasn’t entirely true. There are plenty of volunteer organizations in San Diego where you can go and tutor at inner city after school programs, but I never did. Not until I was offered a salary to.
“Yeah, they pay me well. Because I go to a good university and because I know why x-1 equals 1/x.” (I left out the part about them needing a white guy)
“Ahhhh damn, you just got balled son!” all his friends taunted him. Even from kids across the classroom who, up to that point, pretended I didn’t even exist. I got up and walked over to a quiet girl in the front of the class to see if she needed any help.
I wish I could say that’s all it took That the kids trusted me from that moment and came to me for help on their homework or advice about where to take the PSAT or which colleges to apply to. But they didn’t. Not that year. I was always the one coming over to pester them and make sure they understood their assignment or to constantly ask when they were going to give me their fee waiver and SAT registration forms.
It wasn’t until the next year – when they recognized me as familiar – that the trust really started to develop.
Continued here.
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I worked with outreach programs that (at the time) didn’t have enough money to pay their volunteers. Most of the volunteers were people of color, white guys were definitely in the minority.
I believe the entry you were looking for is here:
I have mixed feelings about the fact that there are so many programs specifically targeting the Chicana/o and Latina/o community in and around LA. I know things are bad, but I hate to hear a lot of non-Latinos talking about how they’re going out into the community to “help us.” Yeah, I know they have good intentions, but I wonder about their understanding of community issues when they often come from such different backgrounds.
I think it was the first time I had heard the Peace Corps Syndrome espoused so prominantly.
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Oso,
When I first started reading your blog, I thought you were Latino. When I found out you weren’t, I immediately felt a sense that I couldn’t quite trust you as much as I thought I could.
And truth is I would probably trust you more if you weren’t white. I know you talk a good game, but I’ve never seen it (so is the world of the blogosphere).
My father a white man spoke to me of feminism and racism. And at the same time he would travel to Thailand to fuck young girls trapped in prostitution. He taught me to be loud and to stand-up for myself and yet he prevented my mother from learning English so that he could more easily control her. I know that my father is an extreme and that most white men are not like him but I do feel that a lot of white-bourgeois-liberal-”peace corps syndrome” people, talk one thing and walk another.
I get a feeling when I walk into a room “how do people REALLY feel about me?” The similar feeling to that which, I guess you had when you walked into that meeting. However, so many White people hide that feeling. In elementary school and middle school the racism I dealt with was mostly overt but in High School it ceased to be overt. It wasn’t that the racism had disappeared but rather people learned it was “unacceptable” so they hid it. Sometimes they get so could at hiding it, they’d trick themselves into believing they don’t hold those views.
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Just as a clarification, I think the California Civil Rights Initiative barred discrimination and preferential treatment “in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting”. Qualcomm as a private business is able to continue Affirmative Action programs and racial discrimination, like all private companies, so long as it doesn’t contract with the government of California (which is almost impossible for certain companies).
And not to continue nitpicking, Gompers is not in Chula Vista, but in San Diego (Chollas View). I understand though, living in the South Bay myself, how everyone likes to call everywhere south of downtown “Chula Vista”. Haha.
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Good stuff, Oso. I have something to say about the skeptic gaze, but the thoughts are not gelled yet.
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you’re like coach carter, only different.
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“I was always the one coming over to pester them and make sure they understood their assignment or to constantly ask when they were going to give me their fee waiver and SAT registration forms”.
–Oso
That is good you had that drive to pester. Some people don’t have that kind of drive or courage. There just isn’t enough motivational/inspirational people.
I bet some of those kids will never, ever forget you. Especially if you were kind hearted and gentle with them.
Kudos. Can’t wait to see part two……….
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Last semester we were studying Critical Race Legal Theory. One of their main points was that most of the race theory done by the Realist movement (associated with the larger Progressive movement earlier in the century) was done by white men in elite institutions. They were calling for a larger minority voice in race theory. I certainly agree, but I think that white elite men (just as the white middle class) must also have a role in exposing and undermining institutional and overt racism in the law and in society as a whole. It would certainly be sad, and ingenuine, for whites to say “we can’t understand the problems of minorities and therefore have no obligation to try to change an unjust system.” That said, I can’t fault the skepticism that many minorities must feel. After all, it has largely been in the name of “helping” that whites have subjugated and subordinated other people to their control. Ironically, one of my professors was one of those Race “Crits” calling for a larger minority voice in race theory; he also happened to be a white Jewish male teaching at an elite institution.
I was with your “upper-middle class, White, and liberal” friend as she would call families from the list given by the high school of students who were eligible based on GPA to attend UC. Often the parents, like the students (no coincidence), would not believe that their kids could go to university. Nobody else was telling them otherwise. I think the point might be better taken from somebody the students could relate to as far as background is concerned, but the fact is there is just a drastic lack of information as to the opportunities available and anyone who can help bridge that information gap is helping more than they are hurting.
P.S. “Qualcomm as a private business is able to continue Affirmative Action programs and racial discrimination, like all private companies, so long as it doesn’t contract with the government of California (which is almost impossible for certain companies).” – This may be true from the language of the California Act, but there are other means (Title VII) that prevent discrimination in any business that “affects commerce”. Congress has the power to regulate ANY business (not just public entities) that affects commerce.
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nice post indeed … i’ll look forward to reading more. i can never ever claim to have experienced any sort of racism directed toward me growing up as i am physically as waspy looking as one can get. however … one side of my life, being homosexual, has allowed me to experience discrimination. the only real upside is being able to hide it to those you don’t want to know. i grew up (and currently still live in) one of the most conservative areas of the country. being of a minority here is not an easy thing to be sure. being homosexual is considered an abomination and an afront to god. what is curious to me is that the least accepting people that i’ve ran into in regards to my orientation are the hard core baptist african americans. i’m still not sure how to express my feelings on that but discrimination and in some cases outright hatred towards homosexuals is the one thing that sometimes seems to unite fundamentalists of all creeds.
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Kevin is so smart.
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yeah, I’d take Kevin home.
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i have taken him home. believe you me, he’s no coach carter.
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No sabia que eras ‘blanco,’ o gavacho o lo que sea. Yo soy Rojo. No importa el color. Con que tengas ese respeto a los demas en ti es todo lo que importa. Que no? You reminded me of the girl in the movie A Day Without A Mexican who thought she was a Mexican but in reality was an Armenian and that’s why she didn’t disappear like the rest of the paisanos. Finally, she disappeared when she started acknowledging the Mexican influence in her upbringing. Anyhow, I digress. Unfortunately for me, I still cannot accept a politically conservative minority. “Sell-Out” quickly pops into my head. Just because they “made it” doesn’t mean that everyone else can make it. We are all not equal. That is a given. We all have different abilities and come from different experiences. The point that people miss with affirmative action programs is that they also help economically disadvantaged whites. People think that AA is about filling racial quotas and it really isn’t. More then anything there has been a shift towards helping economically disadvantaged students overall. It just happens to be that minorities tend to be economically disadvantaged. Aside from the AA debate how can conservative minorities go against what the people want? Here in the valley we have many sell-outs. They are against farm worker rights (anti labor in general)…they are anti-immigrant (even though their fathers crossed the border the same way my father did)…etc, etc. What always ‘trips me out’ is how the Bush administration tries to portray itself as being progressive, by hiring minorities for Dubya’s cabinet. Turns out the only minorities he hires are those that are conservative. Being a right-winger is not representative of the various minority communities and that’s the bottom line. Alberto “The Torturer” Gonzales is not representative of the minority communities. Anyhow I am just blabbering on but those are just some thoughts.
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Moreno, give me a break, I had a lot of beer that night. But I surely am no coach carter. Sigh.
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I like el Abogado. He mentioned critical race theory.
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Cindy, I have an idea. I think we should gather El Oso and his friends, Moreno, Abogado, Revaz, Raman, Bobo. We will line them up against a wall and then we can go back and forth each picking one for “our team”. And then we can take them home and have them whisper sexy things to us like “critical race theory”. I call first picks.
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Scooped by The Onion again!
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you are white…? i feel as though i’ve been robbed.
but seriously, great post oso;i want to be the token billionaire mexican, how do i sign up for that assignment?
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I’m no clown elenamary. It’s Bobbo not Bobo.
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I’m gonna hold back on most of my comments until I finish the series.
Elena,
I’ll have it be known that while Abogado and Bobbo (BTW, Laura calls him “boobie”) were at Patpong I was reading Jung in Starbucks. With that said, I think prostitution and especially porn are healthy worst case solutions to the sexual repression in our society. Otherwise, those urges will manefiest themselves in even uglier ways.
The sooner we’re willing to accept male and female sexuality and the differences between them, the better off we’ll be.
Derek,
I agree with both you and Abogado.
Myke,
Some minority conservatives exploit homophobia by by arguing that gay marriage is a pansy, elite, White, liberal cause. That is too bad. You certainly have to suffer a lot of discrimination because you are gay, but being both gay and a minority would make it a thousand times worse. I’m hoping Seyd brings back Ethno Queer.
How do you feel about Andrew Sullivan?
Gustavo,
The difference is that Armenians look somewhat Mexican whereas I look like the guy on the cover of Mad Magazine. I’ll be writing more about my whiteness soon.
Abogado,
The Onion: Brilliant. Of course, Black People Love Us is always a perenial favorite.
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Osito mi amor,
You act as if I am not in favor of prostitution. I am all about the legalization of prostitution and the sex industry in general. I do however have issue with prostitution with minors and others forced into the occupation (or forced into any occupation for that matter).
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Derek,
I agree – I’d never call Market and 47th Chula Vista … but at the time, that’s what their mailing address was. Which is weird because now Cal-SOAP says city of “San Diego.” Regardless, it’s not that far away.
Elena,
Good points. I think I misread your comment a tad.
HP,
Just came across another minority, conservative columnist. Unfortunately, he too was being paid with tax payer dollars to support Bush policy.
From the Union-Tribune:
Hope the snow is killer brah.
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[...] I entered UCLA in 1998 as part of the first class to be negatively impacted by the ban on affirmative action. One of the main ways university administrators, legislators, Regents and students sought to mitigate the impact was by exponentially increasing funding to outreach programs. These programs targeted “disadvantaged schools”. Basically, they were schools in rural areas and the inner city. The schools had large populations of low income, first generation and underrepresented minorities (codeword for black, Chicana/o and Latina/o and Native American). I volunteered for a student-initiated program begun in the spring of 1998 (we didn’t get paid, unlike EAOP which Oso worked for). We served one school and no more than 20 students. The program now has a huge staff of about 40 undegraduate coordinators, tutors and peer advisors. They get funding from students who voted to increase their fees to fund outreach programs, matching grants from the UCLA chancellor’s office, monies from the state legislature and partnerships with school districts and community-based organizations. Some of the high school students I once advised and tutored are now UC students, one has already graduated and others work with outreach programs on their respective campuses. [...]